Saturday, September 21, 2013

The Big Speech. The Man in the Arena, Theodore Roosevelt, the Sarbonne.



Strange and impressive associations rise in the mind of a man from the New World who speaks before this august body in this ancient institution of learning. Before his eyes pass the shadows of mighty kings and war-like nobles, of great masters of law and theology; through the shining dust of the dead centuries he sees crowded figures that tell of the power and learning and splendor of times gone by; and he sees also the innumerable host of humble students to whom clerkship meant emancipation, to whom it was well-nigh the only outlet from the dark thraldom of the Middle Ages.

This was the most famous university of mediaeval Europe at a time when no one dreamed that there was a New World to discover. Its services to the cause of human knowledge already stretched far back into the remote past at a time when my forefathers, three centuries ago, were among the sparse bands of traders, ploughmen, wood-choppers, and fisherfolk who, in hard struggle with the iron unfriendliness of the Indian-haunted land, were laying the foundations of what has now become the giant republic of the West. To conquer a continent, to tame the shaggy roughness of wild nature, means grim warfare; and the generations engaged in it cannot keep, still less add to, the stores of garnered wisdom which where once theirs, and which are still in the hands of their brethren who dwell in the old land. To conquer the wilderness means to wrest victory from the same hostile forces with which mankind struggled on the immemorial infancy of our race. The primaeval conditions must be met by the primaeval qualities which are incompatible with the retention of much that has been painfully acquired by humanity as through the ages it has striven upward toward civilization. In conditions so primitive there can be but a primitive culture. At first only the rudest school can be established, for no others would meet the needs of the hard-driven, sinewy folk who thrust forward the frontier in the teeth of savage men and savage nature; and many years elapse before any of these schools can develop into seats of higher learning and broader culture.

The pioneer days pass; the stump-dotted clearings expand into vast stretches of fertile farm land; the stockaded clusters of log cabins change into towns; the hunters of game, the fellers of trees, the rude frontier traders and tillers of the soil, the men who wander all their lives long through the wilderness as the heralds and harbingers of an oncoming civilization, themselves vanish before the civilization for which they have prepared the way. The children of their successors and supplanters, and then their children and their children and children's children, change and develop with extraordinary rapidity. The conditions accentuate vices and virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all the good qualities and all the defects of an intense individualism, self-reliant, self-centered, far more conscious of its rights than of its duties, and blind to its own shortcomings. To the hard materialism of the frontier days succeeds the hard materialism of an industrialism even more intense and absorbing than that of the older nations; although these themselves have likewise already entered on the age of a complex and predominantly industrial civilization.

As the country grows, its people, who have won success in so many lines, turn back to try to recover the possessions of the mind and the spirit, which perforce their fathers threw aside in order better to wage the first rough battles for the continent their children inherit. The leaders of thought and of action grope their way forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly, that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes from devotion to loftier ideals. The new life thus sought can in part be developed afresh from what is roundabout in the New World; but it can developed in full only by freely drawing upon the treasure-houses of the Old World, upon the treasures stored in the ancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this is where I speak to-day. It is a mistake for any nation to merely copy another; but it is even a greater mistake, it is a proof of weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from one another and willing and able to adapt that learning to the new national conditions and make it fruitful and productive therein. It is for us of the New World to sit at the feet of Gamaliel of the Old; then, if we have the right stuff in us, we can show that Paul in his turn can become a teacher as well as a scholar.

Today I shall speak to you on the subject of individual citizenship, the one subject of vital importance to you, my hearers, and to me and my countrymen, because you and we a great citizens of great democratic republics. A democratic republic such as ours - an effort to realize its full sense government by, of, and for the people - represents the most gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with great responsibilities alike for good and evil. The success or republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure of despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme. Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or very few men, the quality of the leaders is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nations for generations lead a brilliant career, and add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of average citizen; because the average citizen is an almost negligible quantity in working out the final results of that type of national greatness. But with you and us the case is different. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average women, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.

It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their- your- chances of useful service are at an end. Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier."

France has taught many lessons to other nations: surely one of the most important lesson is the lesson her whole history teaches, that a high artistic and literary development is compatible with notable leadership im arms and statecraft. The brilliant gallantry of the French soldier has for many centuries been proverbial; and during these same centuries at every court in Europe the "freemasons of fashion: have treated the French tongue as their common speech; while every artist and man of letters, and every man of science able to appreciate that marvelous instrument of precision, French prose, had turned toward France for aid and inspiration. How long the leadership in arms and letters has lasted is curiously illustrated by the fact that the earliest masterpiece in a modern tongue is the splendid French epic which tells of Roland's doom and the vengeance of Charlemange when the lords of the Frankish hosts where stricken at Roncesvalles. Let those who have, keep, let those who have not, strive to attain, a high standard of cultivation and scholarship. Yet let us remember that these stand second to certain other things. There is need of a sound body, and even more of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character - the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man's force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor. I believe in exercise for the body, always provided that we keep in mind that physical development is a means and not an end. I believe, of course, in giving to all the people a good education. But the education must contain much besides book-learning in order to be really good. We must ever remember that no keenness and subtleness of intellect, no polish, no cleverness, in any way make up for the lack of the great solid qualities. Self restraint, self mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution - these are the qualities which mark a masterful people. Without them no people can control itself, or save itself from being controlled from the outside. I speak to brilliant assemblage; I speak in a great university which represents the flower of the highest intellectual development; I pay all homage to intellect and to elaborate and specialized training of the intellect; and yet I know I shall have the assent of all of you present when I add that more important still are the commonplace, every-day qualities and virtues.

Such ordinary, every-day qualities include the will and the power to work, to fight at need, and to have plenty of healthy children. The need that the average man shall work is so obvious as hardly to warrant insistence. There are a few people in every country so born that they can lead lives of leisure. These fill a useful function if they make it evident that leisure does not mean idleness; for some of the most valuable work needed by civilization is essentially non-remunerative in its character, and of course the people who do this work should in large part be drawn from those to whom remuneration is an object of indifference. But the average man must earn his own livelihood. He should be trained to do so, and he should be trained to feel that he occupies a contemptible position if he does not do so; that he is not an object of envy if he is idle, at whichever end of the social scale he stands, but an object of contempt, an object of derision. In the next place, the good man should be both a strong and a brave man; that is, he should be able to fight, he should be able to serve his country as a soldier, if the need arises. There are well-meaning philosophers who declaim against the unrighteousness of war. They are right only if they lay all their emphasis upon the unrighteousness. War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is a war. The choice must ever be in favor of righteousness, and this is whether the alternative be peace or whether the alternative be war. The question must not be merely, Is there to be peace or war? The question must be, Is it right to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virile people must be "Yes," whatever the cost. Every honorable effort should always be made to avoid war, just as every honorable effort should always be made by the individual in private life to keep out of a brawl, to keep out of trouble; but no self-respecting individual, no self-respecting nation, can or ought to submit to wrong.

Finally, even more important than ability to work, even more important than ability to fight at need, is it to remember that chief of blessings for any nations is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land. It was the crown of blessings in Biblical times and it is the crown of blessings now. The greatest of all curses in is the curse of sterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon willful sterility. The first essential in any civilization is that the man and women shall be father and mother of healthy children, so that the race shall increase and not decrease. If that is not so, if through no fault of the society there is failure to increase, it is a great misfortune. If the failure is due to the deliberate and wilful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune, it is one of those crimes of ease and self-indulgence, of shrinking from pain and effort and risk, which in the long run Nature punishes more heavily than any other. If we of the great republics, if we, the free people who claim to have emancipated ourselves form the thraldom of wrong and error, bring down on our heads the curse that comes upon the willfully barren, then it will be an idle waste of breath to prattle of our achievements, to boast of all that we have done. No refinement of life, no delicacy of taste, no material progress, no sordid heaping up riches, no sensuous development of art and literature, can in any way compensate for the loss of the great fundamental virtues; and of these great fundamental virtues the greatest is the race's power to perpetuate the race. Character must show itself in the man's performance both of the duty he owes himself and of the duty he owes the state. The man's foremast duty is owed to himself and his family; and he can do this duty only by earning money, by providing what is essential to material well-being; it is only after this has been done that he can hope to build a higher superstructure on the solid material foundation; it is only after this has been done that he can help in his movements for the general well-being. He must pull his own weight first, and only after this can his surplus strength be of use to the general public. It is not good to excite that bitter laughter which expresses contempt; and contempt is what we feel for the being whose enthusiasm to benefit mankind is such that he is a burden to those nearest him; who wishes to do great things for humanity in the abstract, but who cannot keep his wife in comfort or educate his children.

Nevertheless, while laying all stress on this point, while not merely acknowledging but insisting upon the fact that there must be a basis of material well-being for the individual as for the nation, let us with equal emphasis insist that this material well-being represents nothing but the foundation, and that the foundation, though indispensable, is worthless unless upon it is raised the superstructure of a higher life. That is why I decline to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country; and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him a real benefit, of real use- and such is often the case- why, then he does become an asset of real worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the service having been rendered, then admiration will only come from those who are mean of soul. The truth is that, after a certain measure of tangible material success or reward has been achieved, the question of increasing it becomes of constantly less importance compared to the other things that can be done in life. It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and their can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself. But the man who, having far surpassed the limits of providing for the wants; both of the body and mind, of himself and of those depending upon him, then piles up a great fortune, for the acquisition or retention of which he returns no corresponding benefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be made to feel that, so far from being desirable, he is an unworthy, citizen of the community: that he is to be neither admired nor envied; that his right-thinking fellow countrymen put him low in the scale of citizenship, and leave him to be consoled by the admiration of those whose level of purpose is even lower than his own.

My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property. In fact, it is essential to good citizenship clearly to understand that there are certain qualities which we in a democracy are prone to admire in and of themselves, which ought by rights to be judged admirable or the reverse solely from the standpoint of the use made of them. Foremost among these I should include two very distinct gifts - the gift of money-making and the gift of oratory. Money-making, the money touch I have spoken of above. It is a quality which in a moderate degree is essential. It may be useful when developed to a very great degree, but only if accompanied and controlled by other qualities; and without such control the possessor tends to develop into one of the least attractive types produced by a modern industrial democracy. So it is with the orator. It is highly desirable that a leader of opinion in democracy should be able to state his views clearly and convincingly. But all that the oratory can do of value to the community is enable the man thus to explain himself; if it enables the orator to put false values on things, it merely makes him power for mischief. Some excellent public servants have not that gift at all, and must merely rely on their deeds to speak for them; and unless oratory does represent genuine conviction based on good common sense and able to be translated into efficient performance, then the better the oratory the greater the damage to the public it deceives. Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in any commonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if they tend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which they are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage, sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admire the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do wrong to the republic.

Of course all that I say of the orator applies with even greater force to the orator's latter-day and more influential brother, the journalist. The power of the journalist is great, but he is entitled neither to respect nor admiration because of that power unless it is used aright. He cna do, and often does, great good. He can do, and he often does, infinite mischief. All journalists, all writers, for the very reason that they appreciate the vast possibilities of their profession, should bear testimony against those who deeply discredit it. Offenses against taste and morals, which are bad enough in a private citizen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments for debauching the community through a newspaper. Mendacity, slander, sensationalism, inanity, vapid triviality, all are potent factors for the debauchery of the public mind and conscience. The excuse advanced for vicious writing, that the public demands it and that demand must be supplied, can no more be admitted than if it were advanced by purveyors of food who sell poisonous adulterations. In short, the good citizen in a republic must realize that the ought to possess two sets of qualities, and that neither avails without the other. He must have those qualities which make for efficiency; and that he also must have those qualities which direct the efficiency into channels for the public good. He is useless if he is inefficient. There is nothing to be done with that type of citizen of whom all that can be said is that he is harmless. Virtue which is dependant upon a sluggish circulation is not impressive. There is little place in active life for the timid good man. The man who is saved by weakness from robust wickedness is likewise rendered immune from robuster virtues. The good citizen in a republic must first of all be able to hold his own. He is no good citizen unless he has the ability which will make him work hard and which at need will make him fight hard. The good citizen is not a good citizen unless he is an efficient citizen.

But if a man's efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moral sense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more dangerous to the body politic. Courage, intellect, all the masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are merely used for that man's own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights of others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worships these qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless of whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. It makes no difference as to the precise way in which this sinister efficiency is shown. It makes no difference whether such a man's force and ability betray themselves in a career of money-maker or politician, soldier or orator, journalist or popular leader. If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and condemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty. The homely virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtues which make the woman a good housewife and housemother, which make the man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need, stand at the bottom of character. But of course many other must be added thereto if a state is to be not only free but great. Good citizenship is not good citizenship if only exhibited in the home. There remains the duties of the individual in relation to the State, and these duties are none too easy under the conditions which exist where the effort is made to carry on the free government in a complex industrial civilization. Perhaps the most important thing the ordinary citizen, and, above all, the leader of ordinary citizens, has to remember in political life is that he must not be a sheer doctrinaire. The closest philosopher, the refined and cultured individual who from his library tells how men ought to be governed under ideal conditions, is of no use in actual governmental work; and the one-sided fanatic, and still more the mob-leader, and the insincere man who to achieve power promises what by no possibility can be performed, are not merely useless but noxious.

The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achieve them in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from aspirations so lofty that they have grown fantastic and have become impossible and indeed undesirable to realize. The impractical visionary is far less often the guide and precursor than he is the embittered foe of the real reformer, of the man who, with stumblings and shortcoming, yet does in some shape, in practical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those who strive for better things. Woe to the empty phrase-maker, to the empty idealist, who, instead of making ready the ground for the man of action, turns against him when he appears and hampers him when he does work! Moreover, the preacher of ideals must remember how sorry and contemptible is the figure which he will cut, how great the damage that he will do, if he does not himself, in his own life, strive measurably to realize the ideals that he preaches for others. Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which it can in practice be realized. We should abhor the so-called "practical" men whose practicality assumes the shape of that peculiar baseness which finds its expression in disbelief in morality and decency, in disregard of high standards of living and conduct. Such a creature is the worst enemy of the body of politic. But only less desirable as a citizen is his nominal opponent and real ally, the man of fantastic vision who makes the impossible better forever the enemy of the possible good.

We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extreme individualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme socialism. Individual initiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; and yet we should remember that, as society develops and grows more complex, we continually find that things which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative can, under changed conditions, be performed with better results by common effort. It is quite impossible, and equally undesirable, to draw in theory a hard-and-fast line which shall always divide the two sets of cases. This every one who is not cursed with the pride of the closest philosopher will see, if he will only take the trouble to think about some of our closet phenomena. For instance, when people live on isolated farms or in little hamlets, each house can be left to attend to its own drainage and water-supply; but the mere multiplication of families in a given area produces new problems which, because they differ in size, are found to differ not only in degree, but in kind from the old; and the questions of drainage and water-supply have to be considered from the common standpoint. It is not a matter for abstract dogmatizing to decide when this point is reached; it is a matter to be tested by practical experiment. Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless, because of the failure to agree on terminology. It is not good to be a slave of names. I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. The individualism which finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checked very early in the growth of civilization, and we of to-day should in our turn strive to shackle or destroy that individualism which triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craft instead of ruling them by brutality. We ought to go with any man in the effort to bring about justice and the equality of opportunity, to turn the tool-user more and more into the tool-owner, to shift burdens so that they can be more equitably borne. The deadening effect on any race of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system could not be overstated; it would spell sheer destruction; it would produce grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immortality, than any existing system. But this does not mean that we may not with great advantage adopt certain of the principles professed by some given set of men who happen to call themselves Socialists; to be afraid to do so would be to make a mark of weakness on our part.

But we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a lie. We should not say that men are equal where they are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where it does not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurable equality, at least to the extent of preventing the inequality which is due to force or fraud. Abraham Lincoln, a man of the plain people, blood of their blood, and bone of their bone, who all his life toiled and wrought and suffered for them, at the end died for them, who always strove to represent them, who would never tell an untruth to or for them, spoke of the doctrine of equality with his usual mixture of idealism and sound common sense. He said (I omit what was of merely local significance):

"I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all - constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere."

We are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men who would make us desist from the effort to do away with the inequality which means injustice; the inequality of right, opportunity, of privilege. We are bound in honor to strive to bring ever nearer the day when, as far is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the ideal that each man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is in him by the way in which he renders service. There should, so far as possible, be equal of opportunity to render service; but just so long as there is inequality of service there should and must be inequality of reward. We may be sorry for the general, the painter, the artists, the worker in any profession or of any kind, whose misfortune rather than whose fault it is that he does his work ill. But the reward must go to the man who does his work well; for any other course is to create a new kind of privilege, the privilege of folly and weakness; and special privilege is injustice, whatever form it takes.

To say that the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the incapable, ought to have reward given to those who are far-sighted, capable, and upright, is to say what is not true and cannot be true. Let us try to level up, but let us beware of the evil of leveling down. If a man stumbles, it is a good thing to help him to his feet. Every one of us needs a helping hand now and then. But if a man lies down, it is a waste of time to try and carry him; and it is a very bad thing for every one if we make men feel that the same reward will come to those who shirk their work and those who do it. Let us, then, take into account the actual facts of life, and not be misled into following any proposal for achieving the millennium, for recreating the golden age, until we have subjected it to hardheaded examination. On the other hand, it is foolish to reject a proposal merely because it is advanced by visionaries. If a given scheme is proposed, look at it on its merits, and, in considering it, disregard formulas. It does not matter in the least who proposes it, or why. If it seems good, try it. If it proves good, accept it; otherwise reject it. There are plenty of good men calling themselves Socialists with whom, up to a certain point, it is quite possible to work. If the next step is one which both we and they wish to take, why of course take it, without any regard to the fact that our views as to the tenth step may differ. But, on the other hand, keep clearly in mind that, though it has been worth while to take one step, this does not in the least mean that it may not be highly disadvantageous to take the next. It is just as foolish to refuse all progress because people demanding it desire at some points to go to absurd extremes, as it would be to go to these absurd extremes simply because some of the measures advocated by the extremists were wise.

The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive liberty which he thus claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country in the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so he does not wrong his neighbor. Persecution is bad because it is persecution, and without reference to which side happens at the most to be the persecutor and which the persecuted. Class hatred is bad in just the same way, and without regard to the individual who, at a given time, substitutes loyalty to a class for loyalty to a nation, of substitutes hatred of men because they happen to come in a certain social category, for judgement awarded them according to their conduct. Remember always that the same measure of condemnation should be extended to the arrogance which would look down upon or crush any man because he is poor and to envy and hatred which would destroy a man because he is wealthy. The overbearing brutality of the man of wealth or power, and the envious and hateful malice directed against wealth or power, are really at root merely different manifestations of the same quality, merely two sides of the same shield. The man who, if born to wealth and power, exploits and ruins his less fortunate brethren is at heart the same as the greedy and violent demagogue who excites those who have not property to plunder those who have. The gravest wrong upon his country is inflicted by that man, whatever his station, who seeks to make his countrymen divide primarily in the line that separates class from class, occupation from occupation, men of more wealth from men of less wealth, instead of remembering that the only safe standard is that which judges each man on his worth as a man, whether he be rich or whether he be poor, without regard to his profession or to his station in life. Such is the only true democratic test, the only test that can with propriety be applied in a republic. There have been many republics in the past, both in what we call antiquity and in what we call the Middle Ages. They fell, and the prime factor in their fall was the fact that the parties tended to divide along the wealth that separates wealth from poverty. It made no difference which side was successful; it made no difference whether the republic fell under the rule of and oligarchy or the rule of a mob. In either case, when once loyalty to a class had been substituted for loyalty to the republic, the end of the republic was at hand. There is no greater need to-day than the need to keep ever in mind the fact that the cleavage between right and wrong, between good citizenship and bad citizenship, runs at right angles to, and not parallel with, the lines of cleavage between class and class, between occupation and occupation. Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position.

In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. Bitter internecine hatreds, based on such differences, are signs, not of earnestness of belief, but of that fanaticism which, whether religious or antireligious, democratic or antidemocratic, it itself but a manifestation of the gloomy bigotry which has been the chief factor in the downfall of so many, many nations.

Of one man in especial, beyond any one else, the citizens of a republic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to them to support him on the ground that he is hostile to other citizens of the republic, that he will secure for those who elect him, in one shape or another, profit at the expense of other citizens of the republic. It makes no difference whether he appeals to class hatred or class interest, to religious or antireligious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his own interest. The very last thing an intelligent and self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is to reward any public man because that public man says that he will get the private citizen something to which this private citizen is not entitled, or will gratify some emotion or animosity which this private citizen ought not to possess. Let me illustrate this by one anecdote from my own experience. A number of years ago I was engaged in cattle-ranching on the great plains of the western Unite States. There were no fences. The cattle wandered free, the ownership of each one was determined by the brand; the calves were branded with the brand of the cows they followed. If on a round-up and animal was passed by, the following year it would appear as an unbranded yearling, and was then called a maverick. By the custom of the country these mavericks were branded with the brand of the man on whose range they were found. One day I was riding the range with a newly hired cowboy, and we came upon a maverick. We roped and threw it; then we built a fire, took out a cinch-ring, heated it in the fire; and then the cowboy started to put on the brand. I said to him, "It So-and-so's brand," naming the man on whose range we happened to be. He answered: "That's all right, boss; I know my business." In another moment I said to him: "Hold on, you are putting on my brand!" To which he answered: "That's all right; I always put on the boss's brand." I answered: "Oh, very well. Now you go straight back to the ranch and get whatever is owing to you; I don't need you any longer." He jumped up and said: "Why, what's the matter? I was putting on your brand." And I answered: "Yes, my friend, and if you will steal for me then you will steal from me."

Now, the same principle which applies in private life applies also in public life. If a public man tries to get your vote by saying that he will do something wrong in your interest, you can be absolutely certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do something wrong against your interest. So much for the citizenship to the individual in his relations to his family, to his neighbor, to the State. There remain duties of citizenship which the State, the aggregation of all the individuals, owes in connection with other States, with other nations. Let me say at once that I am no advocate of a foolish cosmopolitanism. I believe that a man must be a good patriot before he can be, and as the only possible way of being, a good citizen of the world. Experience teaches us that the average man who protests that his international feeling swamps his national feeling, that he does not care for his country because he cares so much for mankind, in actual practice proves himself the foe of mankind; that the man who says that he does not care to be a citizen of any one country, because he is the citizen of the world, is in fact usually and exceedingly undesirable citizen of whatever corner of the world he happens at the moment to be in. In the dim future all moral needs and moral standards may change; but at present, if a man can view his own country and all others countries from the same level with tepid indifference, it is wise to distrust him, just as it is wise to distrust the man who can take the same dispassionate view of his wife and mother. However broad and deep a man's sympathies, however intense his activities, he need have no fear that they will be cramped by love of his native land.

Now, this does not mean in the least that a man should not wish to good outside of his native land. On the contrary, just as I think that the man who loves his family is more apt to be a good neighbor than the man who does not, so I think that the most useful member of the family of nations is normally a strongly patriotic nation. So far from patriotism being inconsistent with a proper regard for the rights of other nations, I hold that the true patriot, who is as jealous of the national honor as a gentleman of his own honor, will be careful to see that the nations neither inflicts nor suffers wrong, just as a gentleman scorns equally to wrong others or to suffer others to wrong him. I do not for one moment admit that a man should act deceitfully as a public servant in his dealing with other nations, any more than he should act deceitfully in his dealings as a private citizen with other private citizens. I do not for one moment admit that a nation should treat other nations in a different spirit from that in which an honorable man would treat other men.

In practically applying this principle to the two sets of cases there is, of course, a great practical difference to be taken into account. We speak of international law; but international law is something wholly different from private of municipal law, and the capital difference is that there is a sanction for the one and no sanction for the other; that there is an outside force which compels individuals to obey the one, while there is no such outside force to compel obedience as regards to the other. International law will, I believe, as the generations pass, grow stronger and stronger until in some way or other there develops the power to make it respected. But as yet it is only in the first formative period. As yet, as a rule, each nation is of necessity to judge for itself in matters of vital importance between it and its neighbors, and actions must be of necessity, where this is the case, be different from what they are where, as among private citizens, there is an outside force whose action is all-powerful and must be invoked in any crisis of importance. It is the duty of wise statesman, gifted with the power of looking ahead, to try to encourage and build up every movement which will substitute or tend to substitute some other agency for force in the settlement of international disputes. It is the duty of every honest statesman to try to guide the nation so that it shall not wrong any other nation. But as yet the great civilized peoples, if they are to be true to themselves and to the cause of humanity and civilization, must keep in mind that in the last resort they must possess both the will and the power to resent wrong-doings from others. The men who sanely believe in a lofty morality preach righteousness; but they do not preach weakness, whether among private citizens or among nations. We believe that our ideals should be so high, but not so high as to make it impossible measurably to realize them. We sincerely and earnestly believe in peace; but if peace and justice conflict, we scorn the man who would not stand for justice though the whole world came in arms against him.

And now, my hosts, a word in parting. You and I belong to the only two republics among the great powers of the world. The ancient friendship between France and the United States has been, on the whole, a sincere and disinterested friendship. A calamity to you would be a sorrow to us. But it would be more than that. In the seething turmoil of the history of humanity certain nations stand out as possessing a peculiar power or charm, some special gift of beauty or wisdom of strength, which puts them among the immortals, which makes them rank forever with the leaders of mankind. France is one of these nations. For her to sink would be a loss to all the world. There are certain lessons of brilliance and of generous gallantry that she can teach better than any of her sister nations. When the French peasantry sang of Malbrook, it was to tell how the soul of this warrior-foe took flight upward through the laurels he had won. Nearly seven centuries ago, Froisart, writing of the time of dire disaster, said that the realm of France was never so stricken that there were not left men who would valiantly fight for it. You have had a great past. I believe you will have a great future. Long may you carry yourselves proudly as citizens of a nation which bears a leading part in the teaching and uplifting of mankind.

The Big Speech: New series

As folks who stop in here know, we have several posts that are trailing posts. That is, they basically repeat.  Here's a new one, but it'll be done as a series.  This series is "The Big Speech."  This will feature famous or noteworthy speeches.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

MId Week At Work: Smokejumpers



The evolution of PE.



These are photos of the local high school receiving some instruction on the use of pack mules, as part of a PE class.  This morning, as I went by, there was a trailer full of mules waiting to be used.

Man, use of pack mules in PE.

Things sure have come a long ways since I was assigned to a combined "boxing and gymnastics" PE class, which I hadn't chosen, back at the same high school.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Needs body work . . .

Needs body work . . .

Man, this is a common site around here.  A beat up old car that was simply abandoned.  Usually the location of an old homestead (as per here), but sometimes, just out in the middle of nowhere.

Parts too.  I'll be there's Model T parts alongside every out back road in the  West.

The Big Picture: Nebraska Nationa Guard. Pre WWI


Friday, September 13, 2013

A return to the pocket watch

My son related to me today that in school there'd been a discussion on wristwatches.  Kids, the class observed, don't wear watches anymore.

"What do they do?" I asked.

"They check their phones."

"A return to the pocket watch then" I replied.

It is really.  Or at least partially. But people omitting wristwatches to check the time on their phones, which they carry all the time, are checking the time on something that's bigger than old pocket watches were.

Oh, sure, phones do more. . . but so did pocket watches.  They both marked status for one thing.  And they both could carry photos, although a pocket watch carried only one, if one. Both are, or were, treasured items, with pocket watches being more treasured in their day than Iphones are today.  And both spawned accessories for carry.

They aren't identical, of course. But things change to some degree less than we suppose.

Monday, September 9, 2013

Blurred Minds: Look at what’s happened to summer songs | Opinion | The Seattle Times

Blurred Minds: Look at what’s happened to summer songs | Opinion | The Seattle Times

Epilogue

When I posted Froma Harrop's article on this on August 28, I confess I wasn't sure if I'd heard the song or not.  A cousin of mine, who posted about it on Facebook, assured me that I had, but I don't listen to much radio so I thought it possible that I hadn't.

I had.
OK now he was close, tried to domesticate you
But you're an animal, baby, it's in your nature
Just let me liberate you
Hey, hey, hey
You don't need no papers
Hey, hey, hey
That man is not your maker
I didn't recognize it right off, however, for the reason mentioned above. Having said that, I've been to a couple of weddings this summer in which there was music, and this song showed up at them.  I finally realized that I had in fact heard it.

My comments would mirror Harrop's, except perhaps more so.  Harrop, I"d note, is regarded as a "liberal" columnists, not a conservative, so this very conservative view coming from a self professed liberal is noteworthy.  I won't try to add to what she notes, as it's so well put.
And that's why I'm gon' take a good girl
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
You're a good girl
Can't let it get past me
You're far from plastic
Talk about getting blasted
I hate these blurred lines
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty
Go ahead, get at me
I am bothered by this, however.  The lyrics of the song are horrific.  I thought about quoting some here for illustration, but the song is overall all so morally objectionable I gave up at first, before going ahead and putting them in (fair comment, under copyright).
What do they make dreams for
When you got them jeans on
What do we need steam for
You the hottest bitch in this place
I feel so lucky
Hey, hey, hey
You wanna hug me
Hey, hey, hey
What rhymes with hug me?
Hey, hey, hey

I don't think it needs  to be, as the tune carries it.  But when you see a lot of young women out on the dance floor to this song, and I have, the lines are indeed getting blurred, and they're blurring them.  Effectively, in some odd way, that endorses this view, and perhaps it even causes some self endorsement.  A personal demeaning of their worth.  Their is nothing blurred about the message of Blurred Lines.  Women are objects for the taking, irrespective of their attachment to anyone else or its nature.  It comes close, very close, to endorsing rape.

And that's by all accounts an endorsement that already seems to be out there.  The last couple of weeks have been full of the news that a Montana judge gave a teacher to committed statutory rape a sentence of only 30 days.  The victim had killed herself following the crime.  The judge made a comment about the girl being in control of her conduct, seemingly not appreciating that we was a minor of 14 years of age and apparently a troubled one at that.  No blurred lines it would seem, unless I suppose if you take the Blurred Lines view of things, which so many people seem to.  Even the many, many who are horrified by the sentence probably can't see the message of a song like Thicke's contributing to the atmosphere that causes a 30 day sentence to seem not so horrific.
One thing I ask of you
Let me be the one you back that ass to
Go, from Malibu, to Paris, boo
Yeah, I had a bitch, but she ain't bad as you
So hit me up when you passing through
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two
Swag on, even when you dress casual
I mean it's almost unbearable
In a hundred years not dare, would I
Pull a Pharside let you pass me by
Nothing like your last guy, he too square for you
He don't smack that ass and pull your hair like that
So I just watch and wait for you to salute
But you didn't pick
Not many women can refuse this pimpin'
I'm a nice guy, but don't get it if you get with
It says something about the state of our views that a song like this even can become popular, although the tune is catchy and it sticks in your head in a major way.  Subtle it is not, and by all accounts, one of the two video variants isn't subtle either, as it features two topless women, as Harrop notes, parading around in the video, again advertising their wares.  This is all the more of a condemnation of the an atmosphere that allows this to occur, as that video is hawked to teenagers and those in their 20s, who are all the more taught the lesson that women are not really human beings, that its a man's world, and that women are toys.

Indeed, it's shocking to see how these views not only remain, but have corrupted over the past 40 years.  Forty years ago there were a series of movie comedies based in part on the roles of men and women which now people will view as bizarrely sexists or, at best, sort of disarmingly antiquated.  The musical comedy How I Succeeded In Business Without Really Trying is one such example. All the women are secretaries in the film, all of them. At one point in the film, which came on at the height of Playboy's popularity and its objectification of women, the secretaries sing a song called A Secretary Is Not A Toy, with the point being that the shouldn't be toys for men, i.e., ready made mistresses, but that some were.  Now, with the view held by Blurred Lines we don't even need to get that far.  A couple of years ago we had a Blacked Eyed Peas song dedicated to nothing other than the lead singers chest, and what that would get her, and now Robin Thicke has effectively answered that question.
Baby can you breathe? I got this from Jamaica
It always works for me, Dakota to Decatur, uh huh
No more pretending
Hey, hey, hey
Cause now you winning
Hey, hey, hey
Here's our beginning
I always wanted a good girl
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
You're a good girl
Can't let it get past me
You're far from plastic
Talk about getting blasted
I hate these blurred lines

I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty
Go ahead, get at me.
On those female models, or whatever a person would consider them, shame on them too.  Women have long campaigned for equality in this country, and everywhere.  Women in the western world have long struggled for full equality with men, and complained about being held back.  Women elsewhere, having started so very far behind those in the European based civilizations, dare, for the most part, not to even hope.  Great strides have been made, but ever single woman who takes her shirt off for public display in this fashion drags all women back decades.  How are young men going to take their message seriously when they not only aren't up to the Secretary Is Not A Toy level, but somewhere centuries behind it.  This conduct confirms every male instinct that they are just that, and less.  Not smart, and for the taking.  Some may have bought off on the old Playboy male view that this "liberated" women to act like men, which discredits men to start with, but what it really did is liberate men to totally disregard women, the impacts in our society of which are plain to see.  In other societies, the globally broadcast Western debasement of women is powerful ammo for those who would literally keep women barefoot, pregnant, and in berkas, as the argument becomes that rejecting Western values protects their virtue.

I don't know where all of this can be addressed, but it has to be.  I see Thicke is defending himself as a family man now, not even realizing the irony of that statement.  Would he want his daughters viewed the way his song would have it?  But there's certainly a long ways to go. Even the dress of teenagers at this point had declined to the point of nearly offering wares on the market.  But perhaps the fact that this song has hit rock bottom to such an extent that it's actually taking criticism for it is a bit of a sign of hope.

The Big Picture: Love' Field, Dallas Texas. 1918


Friday, September 6, 2013

13 Classic Cattle Pics - Modern Farmer

13 Classic Cattle Pics - Modern Farmer

Holscher's Hub: Pontiac Super Chief

Holscher's Hub: Pontiac Super Chief:

Very nicely preserved Pontiac Super Chief in the lot this morning.  My goodness, two door cars sure were big back in the day!

The quotable G. K. Chesterton

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

New roads; new ruts.
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism — the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

Friday Farming: Missouri, 1909


Thursday, September 5, 2013

Public Surplus: Auction #961934 What's up with the State of Montana and knives?

Some time ago, because I was interested in a truck that my county was auctioning on line, I registered to receive up dates on the Public Surplus Auction website.  I must have done it incorrectly, as I never did receive updates on the truck I was interested in, but I still get updates from all around the region.

I've noticed in these that the State of Montana is constantly auctioning surplus pocket knives.

Public Surplus: Auction #961934

Why does Montana have so many pocket knives to auction?  It's odd.  I wouldn't even have guessed the government would buy pocket knives, or at least that a state or county would, as I'd just presume that people who need pocket knives would go out and buy their own.  I must be missing something.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Douglas Wyoming Prisoner of War Camp.


There were POW camps all over the Western United States during World War Two.  Locally, at least Douglas Wyoming, Scotsbluff Nebraska and Ft. Robinson Nebraska, had POW camps.  Probably more locations around here did, these are just the ones I'm aware of.


Locating POW camps in the West made sense.  The vast terrain made escape nearly impossible.  Some attempts were made, of course, and a few were successful, but not too many.  Douglas in fact had one such escape by German prisoners, who were recaptured after a few days.  At the time of their recapture, they asked what state they were now in and were surprised to learn that they hadn't even made it out of Converse County.


My father, who was a teenager in this time period, had a personal recollection regarding this camp.  He was going somewhere with his father and the train stopped in Douglas and military policemen came on with a German officer.  The MPs told my father and grandfather that the officer was being transported to a hospital, as he was suffering from mental problems.   My father recalled that his uniform was very impressive.


Next to nothing remains of the POW camp at Douglas.  This is typical for these wartime installations. They were not really well built to start with, and there was not thought at all given to preserving them for any reasons. Today, the Douglas POW camp is down to one building, depicted above.  This building was used as an officers club for American officers stationed at the POW camp, and it contains some murals painted by Italian POWs. The "IOOF"" on the building represents its post war use as an Oddfellows lodge.
 

Midwest High School Football Team

1237131_553040101409976_2133685376_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 672 × 524 pixels)

Neat old photograph of the Midwest, Wyoming, football team from some time in the 1930s.  Apparently there team was quite good.

A lot of my friends have been noting the start of high school and university football seasons this weekend.  I wish I could enjoy their enthusiasm, I guess, but for some reason I have just never been able to get into football.  As earlier noted on this blog, I'm not opposed to it, I just can't retain an interest in it.  In this context, it was interesting to note that a father of an old family friend recently was telling me how his son, a good friend of mine, follows all the teams, even though the father, like me, just has never been able to develop an interest.  Funny how that works.

I'll confess that with all the new information on head injuries, I do worry about young players now.  The best evidence on head injuries shows how even minor ones can have long lasting lifetime impacts.  That's hard not to worry about for people.

Friday, August 30, 2013

It's War! Or maybe not. . . .

This is a post that I started quite awhile back and then let sit. That's actually pretty common for posts that appear here.  Frequently they're started and then sit.  Surprisingly little time actually is taken up by this blog, and so big posts, when they appear, have sometimes come about in a very slow motion fashion.

I'm finishing this one up as I just posted one that relates directly to it, that being the one on the apparently forgotten provision of the U.S. Constitution giving Congress, but only Congress, the power to declare war.  That's a pretty important power, and as I note there, I don't think that the framers of the Constitution would have felt that wars, which of course involve death, should be entered into lightly, without the consent of the people.  Seemingly both the Presidents and Congress have been content to ignore that since World War Two, although at least two of the wars fought since World War Two would not have, in my view, required a declaration of war.

So let's look at US wars and see how things play out, historically.

As noted in the other post, the Constitution, at Art 1, Sec. 8, provides:
The Congress shall have power To 
  * * *
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
It also provides:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States . . .
So what does all that mean?

Pretty easy right?  The Congress, and only the Congress, can declare war.  The President is top dog of the military.

Well, maybe not as easy as may seem  Or if it is, it sure has been ignored an awful lot.

What is a war, anyway?

Wars have been called "duels between nations."  And in the era in which duels were quasi legal,that made some sense, in that those contests were subject to a certain code of conduct, and had certain defined rules.  A better definition, however, is that wars are a type of international lawsuit, subject to fairly well defined and strict rules of procedure and conduct, much like lawsuits are. For that matter, duels were also, but that's because lawsuits and duels have a common origin, as odd as that may seem.  Trial by combat was widely accepted as a legal means of settling private disputes in the Middle Ages, and was really only outlawed when it became to expensive for society, replaced by civil litigation.  Even at that, for "affairs of honor" duels were tolerated, if illegal, for centuries, albeit governed by a strict code of conduct.

Wars are like lawsuits. The Combatants have a species of legal relationship between each other, and the law governs the State of War between them.  War can, moreover, only be engaged in between sovereign states, who are the only entities which can legitimately wage war.  Wars begin with a Declaration of War, and when one country has had enough, that country "sues for peace" and a treaty of peace, or a complete surrender, ensues, returning a State of Peace.

Well, that's nice, but what does it mean really, and hasn't that been pretty much what's happened all along?

The United States has fought in a lot of armed conflicts, if an armed conflict is defined as the committment of our military forces against some other armed, organized, body.  It's interesitng to see how many were declared wars, and how many were something else.  Here's the list I can think of, off hand:

1. The Revolution.  No Declaration of War, really, but the Continental Congress did declare that a state of war existed between the United States and the United Kingdom, so we can regard that as a declared war.  The British were somewhat slow to regard it in that fashion, but by the end they did somewhat, if never formally.

2.  The Whiskey Rebellion.  Rebellions aren't wars, because if you recognize the legitimacy of the rebels, you recognize their sovereignty.  This was the country's first insurrection, but it wasn't really much of one at that.

3.  The Barbary Wars.  Here's an odd one, it's our first foreign armed conflict, and while our opponent is sometimes regarded as having a been a stateless entity, Congress did declare war..  Thomas Jefferson committed the Navy to the principal of Freedom of the Seas, which we've been proponents of ever since. That required him to take on the Barbary Pirates, which were less pirates than quasi sovereign Moslem principalities.   Given the distance involved, the Navy pretty much had to act on the spot, which it did, engaging on both the land and the sea.

In some ways, this conflict is amongst the most analogous to our current war in Afghanistan, except that a declaration of war was made, which is a significant legal difference.  This is amazing to think of.  Congress took the duty to declare war so seriously, at this point in our history, that it actually issued a declaration of war against a quasi sovereign in what would now be regarded as sort of a semi minor police action.

4. The Naval War on Revolutionary France.  Almost completely forgotten, before we took on the British in the War of 1812, we took on Britain's opponent, Revolutionary France.  No war was declared, but that's because Jefferson was winking at the Constitution, making this the first of our questionable conflicts.  It's iffy if our actions were legal or not, but neither nation saw fit to declare war, and Congress didn't press it, even though there were those who were eager for such a declaration.  Jefferson correctly, if not legally, realized that this would throw us into a full scale war as an ally of Britain, which would have been a bit strange at the time, so he skillfully avoided that.  The war had to be ended with a peace treaty, pretty much showing that it was a real war.  Additionally, given that this war came in the same time frame, in which Congress did see fit to declare war on the Barbary states, it's clear that the concept of declaring war was a strong one.

5.  The War of 1812. The US did declare war on the United Kingdom, and we pretty much got our heads handed to us.  For many years, we denied this, if we thought about it at all, but basically the UK, which had a better position at law than we'd like to admit, worked on defeating Napoleon and ignored us, loosing one significant naval battle, until it had the time to put us in our place.  In the meantime, Canadian militias pretty much pounded us ever time they got the chance.  The war ended when the British told us to agree to a peace or it would really hurt us bad, and we agreed with them.  A real peculiarity of this war is that its supposed cause wasn't that much different than the cause of the undeclared war with France, but if we had won it, we would have stood to gain a lot more.

6. The Mexican War.  After the war of 1812, we took a break in wars (almost, see below) and didn't fight with any sovereign governments for awhile.  It's of interest to note, however, that the gap between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, a period of a little less than 30 years, was actually an exception to the rule at the time.

The Mexican War, for those with a long historical memory, is the US's most controversial war.  American historians commonly agree with Mexican historians that it was a US land grab, but the real history of the war isn't quite so clear.  It was probably the most inevitable war the US ever fought, and it was the most unpopular war in some regions of the country we've ever fought.  It had the highest desertion rate of any war we've fought, and it's the only war we've ever fought were our opponent was able to form a unit in its own army made up of our deserters.

It's also a freakishly American war, in that the war, fought from 1846 to 1848, so the US desperately trying to get out and refusing to completely take over a completely defeated opponent.  Save for Britain, most European powers would have simply annexed Mexico if they were in our shoes. . . completely.  Britain would have probably departed but left a controlling entity.  We took a huge landmass that had belonged to Mexico, as Mexico likes to remember, but most of it wasn't actually in Mexican control, so the grab, if that's what it was, grabbed stuff that the Mexicans weren't controlling, for the most part.

 Stereocard of monument to U.S. troops who died in the Valley of Mexico during the Mexican War, one of the most controversial and most publicly disliked of U.S. wars.  It was also the first U.S. War that was photographed in any fashion.

7.  The Mormon War. The Mormon War? What? Yes, this was, from the US's point of view, the second time that the US committed troops against a rebellion.  Now nearly completely forgotten, the war broke out when conflict arose between the US and the Mormons regarding Mormon practices and Mormon control of Utah politically.  The cause and origin of the war remains in debate, but it was a real war that saw the US commit very significant forces to a distant region in order to put the rebellion down. The rebellion itself sort of dribbled out and peace was restored after significant US forces arrived in the region.

Termed a war, it isn't, legally, as Utah wasn't sovereign.  It was a domestic insurrection.

8. The Civil War.  The Civil War wasn't a war either, although it is certainly the most war like non war we've ever fought.  Legally, the South was never a sovereign nation as the U.S. Supreme Court determined, post war, that the Southern states had no legal basis to effect a succession from the United States, and therefore they were simply rebellions states.  As no foreign nation ever recognized the Confederacy, a necessary event for sovereignty to exist, the South was never sovereign anyhow.  None the less, even the Union recognized that the rebellion was so close to a state of war, that it took on the character of a war, and treated the Confederate forces as legitimate armed combatants, which the North had no legal obligation to do.  Indeed, under the law of the period, the North could have treated every Southern soldier as a traitor, which would have been a bad move, but which also would have been bad for them.

 Pennsylvania cavalrymen during the Civil War. The bloodiest war the US has ever fought, technically, it wasn't a war at all.

9.  Okay, before moving on to the next war with a foreign power, I'm going to mention the Indian Wars. Were they wars?  Interesting question.  They lasted, however, basically from 1776 to about 1906.  Longer, actually, as Indian wars were a feature of colonial life long before the US severed its ties with the United Kingdom.

Those who follow such things will be quick to point out that there was never a declaration of war against an Indian nation. That's true, but what's missed there is that their sovereignty was in fact recognized by the US. That's right.  Indian Tribes were sovereign nations, in the eyes of the US. They still are too.

Under a complicated set of legal theories, they were a species of strangely lessor sovereignty, and the US Constitution reserved dealing with Tribes to Congress.  For that reason, no declaration of war was never necessary, legally, to engage in combat with them, as odd as that may sound now.  So the Indian Wars can be regarded as not only wars in fact, but wars legally.

If looked at this way, the United States was in pretty much a continual state of war from 1776 up until about 1890, more or less.  There were gaps in there, but not all that many.  Oddly, the worst of these wars all came before the Mexican War, contrary to the popular imagination, as the US Army was very weak prior to  that period, and most of the fighting was between Tribes and Civilians or Tribes and Militias, there being at the time next to no difference between the two (civilians and militias) on the American side.  Prior the Army policing the Frontier, almost all Indian Wars were fought on a no quarter basis by both sides.  The introduction of regular forces to these wars tended to actually introduce a controlling element into them.

An interesting fact about the Indian Wars is that the US recognized them as real wars to the extent that it recognized the Indian right to bear arms against the U.S. in them.  As late as Wounded Knee, generally regarded as the last big Indian Wars event, this came into play in that one Carlisle Indian School educated Indian combatant was tried for murder for having participated in the event and having killed a soldier in it.  He admitted that he had, and that his action was intentional, but the court acquitted him of wrongdoing on the basis that he was an armed combatant fighting in a state of war.

Geronimo and fellows, legal combatants.

10.  The Johnson County War.  Okay, this isn't in here fairly, but just to note that things like this occasionally occurred.   This war was one of many private wars fought in the American west, but it's unusual in that the Governor of Wyoming, Governor Barber, who was really fairly complicit in the Invasion of Johnson County, declared as state of insurrection to exist when it got out of hand and his buddies starting getting pounded.  Relying on the Governor's statement, President Harrison committed Federal troops to the matter to restore order, who did so by arresting the Invaders, which wouldn't have been what Barber had in mind, but it did keep them from getting killed.  Not a war, but an suppression of a domestic rebellion, basically.

Federal troops also became involved in the Lincoln County War, in New Mexico, which was similiar, in a way, in that it involved private combatants.

11.  The Spanish American War.  This war, started in 1898, provides the best example of a war fever war in American history.  The theoretical causes of the war, the sinking of the USS Maine and Spanish brutality in Cuba, turned out, retrospectively, to be largely in error.  The Spanish didn't sink the Maine, and they weren't really uber nasties in Cuba.  In a lot of ways, this war happened simply because Americans suddenly took offense to a colonial power still hanging around in the hemisphere, and we wanted them gone.

 The USS Maine in Havana Harbor.

This war also turns out to be freakishly American in some ways, as we didn't take over Cuba, and we did engage in some serious efforts to aid it, after booting the Spanish out.  Cuban public health massively improved under our tutelage, which is something we hadn't started out to do,  and which shows, perhaps, that we were more attentive than the Spanish.

12.  The Philippine Insurrection.  An accidental byproduct of our war with Spain, we ended up with Peurto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.  An insurrection against the Spanish was already going on when we showed up in the Philippines and it soon turned into one against us.

This war is not a war, as we regarded ourselves a legitimate occupying power. After all, Spain gave this area up to us, and we didn't intend to stay.  We didn't regard the islands as self rule worthy at the time, but intened to get them up to shape.  We sort of did, which took us all the way to the 1940s, but even after that the country had 40 years of rocky leadership.

This war was the first American non war in a foreign jungle, and it just wouldn't end.  To some degree, it never really did end, although we declared it over in 1907. The fighting didn't really end, however, it just slowed way down.  A true end to it sort of came in some areas when the Japanese invaded, and then they inherited it.

This war was also oddly similar to some ones we have been in recently.  After the initial stages of it, in which Phillippine Catholic democrats were put down, the war became one against Moslem insurgents.  They proved tough to conquer, and we basically never fully did.  We did enough to leave the country, 40 years later, as one single country, but even now it smoulders a bit.  The entire episode became very nasty, and very unpopular in the US.  The war probably would have resembled the Vietnam War in lack of popularity, had press coverage been at an equivalent level at the time.

13  The Boxer Rebellion.  The Boxer Rebellions was the first instance in which the US participated in a multi-nation mission.  In this instance, it was a military mission in China which the major European powers were bigger participants in, directed against Chinese forces seeking to expel foreign influence.  This would not be classified as a war as there would have been no sovereign entity to declare war against.  It's the first US military action that bears a strong resemblance to modern multi national actions, although the colonial element of this one was pronounced.

14.  Intervention in Mexico.  This series of events strikes me as the most analogous in US history to the current conflict in Afghanistan, other than that Mexico is next door.

This isn't a war, but a series of armed interventions that commenced in 1913 when Mexico descended into revolution. The first intervention, at Vera Cruz, was undertaken to protect American lives and property, but it also saw the U.S. Navy prevent a German commercial ship from landing arms in Vera Cruz, which was technically an act of war against whoever the legitimate Mexican government was.  As there wasn't one, it probably wasn't such an act, as Mexico was in full blown rebellion at the time.

After that, the interventions really got rolling in 1915 when revolutionary general Pancho Villa crossed the US border and raided Columbus New Mexico in retaliation for the US allowing Carranza to transport troops across Texas by rail.  What President Wilson was thinking in allowing Carranza to do that remains a question, but it was a bad move on his part which ultimately lead the US to a protracted campaign in Mexico.

From there, things got really weird as the US never did catch Villa, although it fought troops of his Army Del Norte from time to time.  It also, however, ended up fighting the Carranzaistas, who the US regarded as the legitimate government.  The whole thing was a mess.

The popular version of this story is that the whole thing wrapped up priro to World War One, but it didn't.  The US continued to commit troops across the border in to the early 1920s, in retaliation to cross border raids from "bandits." The whole episode was later basically forgotten, but it's a supremely interesting one in a lot of ways, from its tactics, implements, firsts and analogies to the present.

 John J. Pershing, commander of the Punitive Expedition, and later commander of U.S. forces in Europe during World War One.

15.  World War One.  World War One was our first declared war in twenty years, but in that twenty years there hadn't been a day of peace .  Anyhow, World War One is well known, of course, and all of the major belligerents had issued declarations of war.

 African American doughboys, World War One.

16. The Banana Wars.  The Banana Wars were not one single event, but an entire series of interventions throughout Central America and The Caribbean.  Starting with the end of the Spanish American War and running up to 1934, these wars saw some intense fighting but were generally limited to actions that the Navy could undertake.  It's amazing to think of in a modern context, as these actions occurred on a very frequent basis over a 30 year period, something the American public would not tolerate now, or at least would not tolerate through the deployment of ground forces the way that they did.

17. World War Two.  Like World War One, this was a declared war and needs no explanation.

 Marines on Okinawa, World War Two.

18.  The Korean War.  The Korean War wasn't a declared war, but a conflict, and President Truman didn't ask Congress's permission to commit forces to stop North Korean aggression against South Korea, although Congress shortly became involved in various manners, and therefore did approve of the action.  For a non war, this was a big one, with 50,000 American causalities.

This is also the first war in which the United Nations took an interest.  With the USSR boycotting the Security Council over the UN's declination to admit Red China to the UN, the UN acted to condemn North Korean aggression and the US mission became part of  UN effort.  This was the first post WWII coalition war.

The Korean War virtually became a template for all American post World War Two wars.  President Truman opted to commit troops to Korea and did. Congress followed behind and approved the funding.  Truman was careful never to seek a declaration of war, but perhaps he legally should have.  The North Korean government was a legitimate, if nasty, one and therefore a real declaration may have been a legal necessity.  Congress seems to have never seriously questioned the action of sending in troops, what with the results of Czechoslovakia just prior to WWII still fresh in mind, and of course the original intent was simply to stop the North Koreans, rather than occupy the country. Still, limited intent though it may be, Congress' failing to act is questionable.

 U.S. soldier in Korea, Korean War.

19.  The Vietnam War.  Like the Korean War, this wasn't a war, but a conflict. Technically, the United States was aiding a sovereign power, the Republic of Vietnam, against a domestic insurrection supported by a foreign set of sovereigns.  

The Vietnam War has a very odd early history that's often forgotten.  The US had declined to become involved in the French effort in Vietnam, which left lasting resentment with the French, who would pull out of the military portions of NATO in the 1950s partially out of resentment built up here, and over Algeria. The US sort of crept into involvement in the late 1950s, and by the early 1960s it was actually Australia, not the US, that was clamoring for a commitment of Western troops, something the Australians have sort of forgotten as blaming the US for their experience in Vietnam became common.  Australia actually informed the US at one point that if the US did not begin to become more involved, it would.  About that time, the US tried to make the war in Southeast Asia a South East Asian Treaty Organization project, but that failed to occur, so the US ultimately became the leading foreign power in the effort to keep South Vietnam from falling to the Communists.  Because of the nature of this war, which was principally a domestic insurrection supported on both sides by outside powers, it's difficult to image a declaration of war even being possible, although later day critics of the war have suggested that one would have been more legally proper.

Late in this war, the US entered the territory of Cambodia, which some people will tend to treat as a separate event, but which really isn't properly considered so.  Often termed an "invasion,", which is perhaps technically correct, the same era saw deep divisions in the Cambodian government with that country's military supporting US action against communists on its soil, but with the head of state, a prince, opposing it.  The action was really an incursion into a neutral party's soil, which could be regarded as an act of war, but which was not treated that way. The same thing happened in regards to Laos during the war on more than one occasion.  All of this reflected the regional nature of the contest, which saw the communist forces make use of neighboring territories.  In this fashion, this war bears an odd resemblance to the Indian Wars in which the US and Mexico recognized a right to cross each others borders in pursuit of warring Indian tribes.

 Two members of the U.S. Army's Special Forces in Vietnam, with members of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

20. The First Gulf War.  Our first war against Iraq was also not a declared war, but rather a commitment of troops by the President in aid to a foreign power, that power being Kuwait.

The problem here is that it isn't so much like the Vietnam War as it is like World War Two, or perhaps the Korean War, in its basic nature.  We committed troops against a foreign sovereign and had to occupy its territory.  Its hard not to view that as a real war, in which case a declaration of war should have been necessary.

21. The Balkans. President Clinton committed the Air Force to action over the Balkans in the 1990s, in the one and only example of a war ever being won through air power. Again, it wasn't a declared war, and for that matter was hardly even noticed.  This ones a closer call.  Our actions would legally have been a causi belli justifying a declaration of war against us, but it wouldn't seem that our actions were so extensive that we would have been required to declare war ourselves.

22.  The Second Gulf War.  The second war against Iraq was also undeclared, although in its case it more strongly resembled a nation v nation contest than any war the US had been in since World War Two.  Congress came close to voting on it in a fashion that resembled a declaration of war, and likely would have declared war if asked, but they were never asked.  This war is arguably two wars, as the first war against Baathist Iraq concluded and then, shortly thereafter, a second one against insurgent forces commenced.

 US troops in the guerrilla phase of the second Gulf War.

23. The Afghan War.  The current war in Afghanistan commenced as an invasion of what was essentially a stateless nation, as the country lacked a real government.  Indeed, its lacking a real government is what made it a haven for Al Queda.  This war also lacks a declaration, but there would have been nobody to declare war against, although in some ways this isn't too different from what occurred with the Barbary Wars.

 U.S. Army soldier in Afghanistan, photo by U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Margaret Taylor.

This list is arguably not complete, as various military missions could be added and would be by some people. The US, for example, invaded Grenada during President Regan's terms.  Was that a war?  Well, maybe. But maybe it was more of a localized military action of the type which generally hasn't been regarded as a war. For example, the US engaged in a punitive expedition in South Korea in the 19th Century which is regarded as a war, and in fact which is barely even remembered.  And we engaged in a naval battle with Japan during the Civil War, but that doesn't rise to the level of a war.

Others, it would be noted, would omit some of the conflicts on this list.  Was the Punitive Expedition a war?  Well, not a war like World War One, anyhow.

A remarkable item about this list is how many conflicts there are listed on it.  Indeed, if we include everything on it, the US would not really have had a year of peace from 1776 until 1935, really.  A lot of those years didn't see a lot of armed conflict, but they saw a little in most of them. 

But, the most remarkable thing on the list is that of the 23 conflicts listed, only seven featured declarations of war.  If we include the Indian Wars, and arguably we should, eight of the conflicts were "legal" wars.  Three were incidents of suppression of rebellions, and those cannot feature a declaration of war. That would still leave us with 13 conflicts that did not feature a declaration of war, and which do not come under an exception that would preclude a declaration of war from being necessary.

Does that make those wars illegal?  That is, without a declaration of war, were the wars invalid? That's a closer question.

It's clear that Congress can declare war, but must it, under certain circumstances? That is, if the President commits troops into action against a foreign sovereign, is a declaration of war necessary?

Well, the Constitution does not say that the United States may only engage in warfare if Congress declares war.  And it also says the President in the Commander in Chief of the Armed forces.  That would seem to suggest, as Presidents have argued, that the President can commit troops anywhere, anytime. But if that were the case, why would the Constitution provide that Congress, and not the President, declares war, and issues letters of marque and reprisal?

What would seem to be clear is the framers, living when they did, and doing what they did outside of Congress, were pretty familiar with the legal definition of war.  They were also, however, with the limitations of 18th Century communications.   Congress, in the late 18th Century, saw it as a very real possibility that a war could erupt via foreign, probably British, invasion, which would require state governors to meet the foreign army with mustered militia, and which would require some time prior to Congress being able to declare war.  It also, however, contemplated that Congress would, or at least might, need to declare war.  It needed the ability to allow the President to act in crisis. And, frankly, the Constitution was drafted in an era when the memory of monarchs taking the field of battle still existed, even though it had largely passed, so the idea of a President actually commanding troops in the field didn't seem that odd.

What ever happened to the Delcaration of War?

The U.S. Constitution provides, at Art I, Section 8, the following:
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States:
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
That's what Congress is empowered to do, and that's what its duties are.  Let's look again at one of them:
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
 Only Congress can declare war.  Not the President.

War is a legally defined state of conflict between sovereign nations.  In a way, war can be regarded as "duels between nations", or actually lawsuits between nations, settled by the jury of armed force.  A species of trial by combat, legally defined.  Not all armed spats between nations are "wars" legally, and conflicts between a recognized government and an unrecognized entity, while it may take on the "character of war" is not a war, at law.  True wars end when one nations "sues for peace", showing the degree to which they're a legalistic affair. Some things, moreover, are legal in wars, and others are not.

Right now, we're pretty clearly getting ready to rocket Syria. Whether the Syrian government deserves it or not, sending a missile strike against a recognized government is certainly a causi belli for that government. But does it require a Declaration of War under the U.S. Constitution? Can Congress even find that clause of the Constitution?

It's always been the case that the President has been regarded as having legitimate powers to deploy the armed forces into some sorts of hostile actions without a Declaration of War, and not every armed conflict is a war. Supporting a legitimate government against a rebellion, for example, has not traditionally been regarded as a war.

But taking on a sovereign nation full scale is clearly a war. Something less than that? Well, maybe not.

Without debating the pluses or merits of the conflicts individually, it seems to me that our action in Afghanistan would not have have been regarded as a war, in legal terms.  Afghanistan lacked a government to declare war against. Our two wars (or perhaps its really one) against Iraq seem to me to be a true war, requiring a declaration of war. Taking on Syria now? Well, not sure. Seems to me probably yes, it's a war.

I raise this not because I'm a pacifist (although I really debate the wisdom of getting tangled up in another Middle Eastern sandbox) but because ignoring this really important duty of Congress, by Congress, and by the Executive branch, really bothers me. It shows Congress to be a much of spineless wimps in this area and gives the power of life and death over thousands to a single man. Seems like a poor idea.

Thoughts and opinions?

Friday Farming. Harvesting grain, Beach North Dakota,