Another interesting World War One themed advertisement.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
UW College of Law Survey - UW_College_of_Law_Survey_Results.pdf
Microsoft Word - UW College of Law Survey - UW_College_of_Law_Survey_Results.pdf
Recent results of a Wyoming State Bar poll on the University of Wyoming's College of Law.
The comments are really interesting, but not uniform at all. Frankly, I don't know what a person could actually derive from these comments.
Recent results of a Wyoming State Bar poll on the University of Wyoming's College of Law.
The comments are really interesting, but not uniform at all. Frankly, I don't know what a person could actually derive from these comments.
On the Anniversary of September 11, 2001. . . how well have we done?
Today is the anniversary of the Al Queda attack on the United States in 2011. Thirteen fast years have gone by, and since that day we've conceived of ourselves of being at war with a vague terrorist enemy. Indeed, at least at one time we conceived ourselves as having defeated that enemy. That concept has taken us into an acknowledged two wars, which I think has been actually three, and we're now involved in a fourth.*
A soldier of the multi ethic Free Iraqi Forces reunited with his father, in 2003. He hadn't seen his father in a decade. A decade later, Iraq is in a civil war, and we're in a war with a self declared Islamic State recalling a an era much older than the history of our nation. The FIF soldier wears then obsolete U.S desert BDUs and a US armored vest. U.S. Army Photo by Spec. Tyler Long.
How well have we done in addressing the existential threat? We should ask ourselves that question now, as we begin to launch off into a forth war, a war which we have no choice but to fight, and which may in fact have been one in which we were in some ways engaged, without our realizing it, prior to that terrible day 13 years ago. Have we identified the enemy, and what motivates him? I'm afraid we have in part, but perhaps only in part.
Any nation engaged in a war needs to address the seemingly simple topic of who the enemy actually is. How does the enemy conceive of themselves? We would think that this would be self evident, but frequently it is not, and just as frequently one nation conceives of the enemy through a thick filter of its own self perception.
We've been guilty of that many times in the past century. During World War Two the Italians proved themselves not to be our enemy, as they abandoned their own government and acted in Italy's best interest by abandoning the Fascists. Even now we hear some people claim that during that same war it wasn't the Germans, but the Nazis, who were our enemy in Germany, even though the evidence is well established that the German people were complicit in Germany's crimes. During the Vietnam War was our enemy the Communist in the north, or Vietnamese nationalism? That topic is still debated. In the present crisis that started thirteen years ago is our enemy Al Queda, or is it something broader and deeper? Or have we made it somehow broader and deeper through our own errors or omissions, or simply because War Changes Everything? We should ask these questions now.
We've been guilty of that many times in the past century. During World War Two the Italians proved themselves not to be our enemy, as they abandoned their own government and acted in Italy's best interest by abandoning the Fascists. Even now we hear some people claim that during that same war it wasn't the Germans, but the Nazis, who were our enemy in Germany, even though the evidence is well established that the German people were complicit in Germany's crimes. During the Vietnam War was our enemy the Communist in the north, or Vietnamese nationalism? That topic is still debated. In the present crisis that started thirteen years ago is our enemy Al Queda, or is it something broader and deeper? Or have we made it somehow broader and deeper through our own errors or omissions, or simply because War Changes Everything? We should ask these questions now.
Let's start with the clear enemy, Al Queda. Who and what are they? Ever since 9/11 we've been repeatedly told that they're an aberrant extremist Islamic movement. Are they? And if so, what do they want and how to they justify it? Did we take them on in a correct fashion, and have we beaten them?
Well, lets take a closer look.
Al Queda is an Islamic armed movement, to be sure, but that doesn't make it unique. Even if we only go as far back as the mid 19th Century we can find many other examples of armed Islamic movements, including ones that took on Western powers. So it would seem that there's some precedent for movements of this type, so merely stating that its an organization of that type doesn't get us where we need to go. This is particularly the case as in modern times there's been some other very distinct examples of the same thing. Islamic radicals assassinated Anwar Sadat, and they toppled the Shah of Iran. Hamas, an offshoot in some ways of groups in Egypt, but also of Shiia fundamentalism in Iran, has continually waged war against Israel for well over a decade. So they've been around for awhile.
Taking a closer look at Al Queda, they're principally an organization of Sunni fundamentalist who were dedicated to the long term proposition of the restoration of a Caliphate such as it existed in early Islamic times, when its territorial extent was larger than that which had been controlled by Rome. Being lead by educated men, they did not dream of an immediate accomplishment of that goal, which would be impossible, but rather had it as a distant one, in the same way, basically, that mainstream Bolsheviks conceived of a Communist world some day, not right away. For a short term goal, they wanted to push the United States out of the Arabian Peninsula, which they regarded as an affront to Islam. Their strategy involved attacking American military assets in the Middle East at first. When this failed, they conceived of, oddly enough, basically the same idea that the Soviets naively had explored as an opening gambit in the event of a Third World War, which was to strike the American financial district in New York City.
What so angered them, we must ask, about the US that it determined to murder innocents in a building and earlier attempted to sink the USS Cole? Just having troops on the Arabian Peninsula did that. And they were there because we'd gone to the aid of Kuwait when Baathist Iraq attacked and attempted to annex it.
Baathist Iraq was a strictly secular regime, tolerating all religions, or none at all. It wasn't culturally tolerant, but rather universally culturally repressive. It was far from a model of democracy, and was more of a model of retained fascism in a way, which oddly enough made it an enemy of Al Queda, who called the Baath Party "the communist", which they weren't. There was indeed an Iraqi Communist Party, but the Baath Party, like all fascists parties, suppressed it. So one would think that Al Queda would have welcomed the U.S. role in that first fight against Iraq, but it did not. It abhorred the thought of "infidels" on what it regarded as the holy soil of the Arabian Peninsula.
Or, perhaps, indeed probably, it feared the thought of what a western democratic people would mean to the oppressed population of Saudi Arabia, a region which in antiquity had populations of Christians and Jews, but which was locked up in Sunni fundamentalism under a kingdom. So, to try to end this affront, it determined to wage a terrorist war against us.
What so angered them, we must ask, about the US that it determined to murder innocents in a building and earlier attempted to sink the USS Cole? Just having troops on the Arabian Peninsula did that. And they were there because we'd gone to the aid of Kuwait when Baathist Iraq attacked and attempted to annex it.
Baathist Iraq was a strictly secular regime, tolerating all religions, or none at all. It wasn't culturally tolerant, but rather universally culturally repressive. It was far from a model of democracy, and was more of a model of retained fascism in a way, which oddly enough made it an enemy of Al Queda, who called the Baath Party "the communist", which they weren't. There was indeed an Iraqi Communist Party, but the Baath Party, like all fascists parties, suppressed it. So one would think that Al Queda would have welcomed the U.S. role in that first fight against Iraq, but it did not. It abhorred the thought of "infidels" on what it regarded as the holy soil of the Arabian Peninsula.
Or, perhaps, indeed probably, it feared the thought of what a western democratic people would mean to the oppressed population of Saudi Arabia, a region which in antiquity had populations of Christians and Jews, but which was locked up in Sunni fundamentalism under a kingdom. So, to try to end this affront, it determined to wage a terrorist war against us.
Were those goals and methods consistent with Islam? We've been repeated told since 9/11 that "Islam is a religion of peace" and that Al Queda is an aberration. And that Al Queda is a de facto aberration is self evident, as most Moslems most places don't act in this fashion. Still, the blanket assertion that this is self evidently contrary to the stated nature of Islam has not really been examined, and it doesn't bear up well upon examination.
The Koran, which is taken by Moslems as the actual words of God, fully advocates the use of violence against non believers in context, with that context seemingly being at least warfare to conquer. Non Islamic students of the Koran generally hold that the "peaceful" language of the Koran was written before the violent texts, and it can be taken from this that the history of the text follows Mohammed's success in spreading his message violently, which he did. Early on, Islam had to just hold on as one religion, almost certainly a Gnostic based heresy or a Gnostic influenced new religion, amongst many religions in Mecca, which was tolerant to nearly any religion. Later, as it gained ground, Islam became highly intolerant of other religions with some slight tolerance of Judaism and Christianity, in no small part, probably, as it was a Gnostic heresy based upon them. Indeed, while Gnosticism had tended to be hostile to some degree against orthodox Christianity (or we could say Catholicism, as the Catholic Church was the only church at the time. That Islam licensed violence is really indisputable. Indeed, not only did it license warfare, but the text actually allows Moslem combatants to take the women of their enemies, physically. Excused as a necessity in the text, reflecting that Islamic fighters were away from their homes, they could use the women acquired with "their strong right arms" and were told now to worry about that creating any progeny. People tend to turn a blind eye towards this, as its shocking, but that's what it says. Recent actions by ISIL in doing just that are fully compliant with the Koran.
Al Queda, having aligned itself with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, found it self in an enviable position prior to 9/11. In the catbirds seat with the support of a regime of Islamic "students" (the meaning of "Taliban") it seemed safe and secure. It decided to go bold, in an act it through would take down the American economy. It showed itself naive, just as the Soviets had with an earlier secret plan that also would have struck the New York financial district. And it didn't properly gauge the American reaction. We, of course, went to war there, and largely eliminated it. But didn't eliminate it completely. And now we find its strain of thought weaving itself through individual Afghans, and it seems somewhat on the rise there. So, did we achieve our initial aim there? It would seem we did at least in part, although we also seem ready to quit the fight and leave Afghanistan with no modern institutions, which it has largely lacked since the 1970s at least. We best rethink this.
We also went into Iraq, and that seems now to be a clear error.
It was frankly a misguided effort to start with. The war in Iraq had nothing at all to do with Al Queda, which despised the Baath regime. And Al Queda wasn't hte stated aim in any event, but the elimination of chemical weapons we believed held by Iraq and which the Iraqis stupidly wouldn't confirm they lacked. The Iraqis guessed badly, having been lead to believe that we would not topple the regime as we had not done so in 1990-91 and we hadn't supported the uprising against the regime thereafter. They failed to appreciate that American administrations, and therefore goals, change at least every eight years.
Defeating the Baath regime proved to be easy, but what we did not anticipate is that the vacuum in the regime's power would be immediately filled by contesting Islamic forces, including Al Queda in Iraq, which is now known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. With the war against Al Queda in Afghanistan hardly even commenced, Al Queda remained more than powerful enough to support regional splinter groups and it did (and does). One of these was Al Queda in Iraq, which commenced a guerrilla war against the coalition forces.
Al Queda in Iraq was a bit different than Al Queda. Fighting successfully in the field against the coalition at first, it came to dream of establishing a Caliphate immediately, not some day. It, and other local forces, were put down, but it didn't go away. When the war ended, we supported the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq, which quickly went Shiia against all others, and alienated all the rest of the population over time.
Almost immediately thereafter, the lid seemingly came off of despotic governments all over the middle east, and there were uprising is Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Interpreted in the west as nascent democratic movements, only in Libya, with its complicated ethnic and political history, was that more or less true. Elsewhere, Islamic fundamentalist movements were a strong element in every uprising, seeking to push out an autocratic or military government in favor of an Islamic one. In Egypt and Tunisia that succeeded, until the armies, the most liberal and westernized institutions in those countries, pushed back, preventing them from becoming second and third Irans.
Then came Syria, about which we've already written. Ruled by a Baathist government, but controlled by Alawites, the multicultural country was ruled by a strongman but by necessity the government, controlled by a group that Moslems regard as heretical, was tolerant towards all religions. And the country in fact, like Iraq, was the home to several. Engaged in fighting Islamic militants since the 1990s, it found itself engaged in a civil war in which western pundits naively assumed would necessarily result in a democratic victory, when in fact a Sunni theocracy was the obvious likely outcome.
Out of that, Al Queda in Iraq, seeing its chances expanded, re branded itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Syria) and declared the Caliphate the immediate goal. In the west its naively believed that its moved beyond Al Queda, but in reality the better evidence is that the local Al Queda in Iraq simply saw its chance to make the long term goal the present one, and effectively evolved into the Al Queda that counts. It expanded its war into Iraq, and up until our insertion of air power, the western arming of the separatist Kurds, and the Iranian arming of Shiia militias, it came darn close to achieving its goal.
And what is that goal, well as we've already blogged, its the establishment of a Caliphate, and its declared t he Caliph to be in power, and the seat of his power is to be Baghdad. It's used methods that we have not seen in this scale since Mohammed's own time, that being mass armed violence, and the assault, capture and enslavement of non Moslem women.
So, we must now ask ourselves, is this an Islamic aberration, or is it something that's consistent with the Moslem faith. This question really matters, as determining what war we are fighting, and when it will end, depends entirely on that. A war ends when the enemy gives up, not when we decide its over.
Al Queda, having aligned itself with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, found it self in an enviable position prior to 9/11. In the catbirds seat with the support of a regime of Islamic "students" (the meaning of "Taliban") it seemed safe and secure. It decided to go bold, in an act it through would take down the American economy. It showed itself naive, just as the Soviets had with an earlier secret plan that also would have struck the New York financial district. And it didn't properly gauge the American reaction. We, of course, went to war there, and largely eliminated it. But didn't eliminate it completely. And now we find its strain of thought weaving itself through individual Afghans, and it seems somewhat on the rise there. So, did we achieve our initial aim there? It would seem we did at least in part, although we also seem ready to quit the fight and leave Afghanistan with no modern institutions, which it has largely lacked since the 1970s at least. We best rethink this.
We also went into Iraq, and that seems now to be a clear error.
It was frankly a misguided effort to start with. The war in Iraq had nothing at all to do with Al Queda, which despised the Baath regime. And Al Queda wasn't hte stated aim in any event, but the elimination of chemical weapons we believed held by Iraq and which the Iraqis stupidly wouldn't confirm they lacked. The Iraqis guessed badly, having been lead to believe that we would not topple the regime as we had not done so in 1990-91 and we hadn't supported the uprising against the regime thereafter. They failed to appreciate that American administrations, and therefore goals, change at least every eight years.
Defeating the Baath regime proved to be easy, but what we did not anticipate is that the vacuum in the regime's power would be immediately filled by contesting Islamic forces, including Al Queda in Iraq, which is now known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. With the war against Al Queda in Afghanistan hardly even commenced, Al Queda remained more than powerful enough to support regional splinter groups and it did (and does). One of these was Al Queda in Iraq, which commenced a guerrilla war against the coalition forces.
Al Queda in Iraq was a bit different than Al Queda. Fighting successfully in the field against the coalition at first, it came to dream of establishing a Caliphate immediately, not some day. It, and other local forces, were put down, but it didn't go away. When the war ended, we supported the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq, which quickly went Shiia against all others, and alienated all the rest of the population over time.
Almost immediately thereafter, the lid seemingly came off of despotic governments all over the middle east, and there were uprising is Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Interpreted in the west as nascent democratic movements, only in Libya, with its complicated ethnic and political history, was that more or less true. Elsewhere, Islamic fundamentalist movements were a strong element in every uprising, seeking to push out an autocratic or military government in favor of an Islamic one. In Egypt and Tunisia that succeeded, until the armies, the most liberal and westernized institutions in those countries, pushed back, preventing them from becoming second and third Irans.
Then came Syria, about which we've already written. Ruled by a Baathist government, but controlled by Alawites, the multicultural country was ruled by a strongman but by necessity the government, controlled by a group that Moslems regard as heretical, was tolerant towards all religions. And the country in fact, like Iraq, was the home to several. Engaged in fighting Islamic militants since the 1990s, it found itself engaged in a civil war in which western pundits naively assumed would necessarily result in a democratic victory, when in fact a Sunni theocracy was the obvious likely outcome.
Out of that, Al Queda in Iraq, seeing its chances expanded, re branded itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Syria) and declared the Caliphate the immediate goal. In the west its naively believed that its moved beyond Al Queda, but in reality the better evidence is that the local Al Queda in Iraq simply saw its chance to make the long term goal the present one, and effectively evolved into the Al Queda that counts. It expanded its war into Iraq, and up until our insertion of air power, the western arming of the separatist Kurds, and the Iranian arming of Shiia militias, it came darn close to achieving its goal.
And what is that goal, well as we've already blogged, its the establishment of a Caliphate, and its declared t he Caliph to be in power, and the seat of his power is to be Baghdad. It's used methods that we have not seen in this scale since Mohammed's own time, that being mass armed violence, and the assault, capture and enslavement of non Moslem women.
So, we must now ask ourselves, is this an Islamic aberration, or is it something that's consistent with the Moslem faith. This question really matters, as determining what war we are fighting, and when it will end, depends entirely on that. A war ends when the enemy gives up, not when we decide its over.
So the use of violence by Al Queda, and now by ISIL, isn't really an aberration, or is it? The Koran doesn't license the use of violence against other Moslems. That may be a fine distinction for those who aren't Moslems, but that is also the case. Here's where Al Queda and its progeny ISIL seem to have gone off the mark. They both kill a lot of Moslems. They know doubt are rationalizing it, but that's something that we don't seem to quite have appreciated. Our enemy is okay with killing most of us, in tehir basic texts, as long as it is based on a religious aim. Killing other Moslems, however, is not Islamic.
We know that by and large, most Moslems most places ignore most of this aspect of their faith. The Koran does sanction, as we've noted, war, enslavement and assault. But most Moslems don't do any of that. Indeed, adherence to this view seems to be largely concentrated amongst Arabs, who initiated the religion in the first place, and radicalized Punjabs and Europeans. That's something we haven't seemed to really grasp either. Moslem Indonesians, for example, seem to have little interest in this aspect of their Faith. Indeed, most Moslems most places certainly don't act on it, assuming that they are even aware of it, which they may in fact not be, as the Koran is regarded as authentic only in the language it was first written in (which Moslems believe to be the direct word of God), Arabic. Indeed, its' very common for non Arab Moslems to memorize vast tracks of the Koran but have no idea what they are saying, and converts to the faith in the west largely come into it with the highly developed view Christians hold towards the Bible, which does not hold the text to be God's direct words, but rather to be inspired by God.
Indeed, we also know that beyond that, we also have the historical example of Moslems serving in the colonial armed forces of Christian nations, which would cut the opposite way. Lots of Moslems served in the French Army up into the 1960s. And we can find similar British examples, so there's obviously some nuance to this, somewhere.
But where?
We'd do well to figure it out. But I don't think we've tried very hard, and it would serve us well to do so. We have seen uprising of Moslem "fundamentalist" dating back to the mid 19th Century at least, or basically any time there were westerners in the Arabian region. So the call of "fundamentalism" is strong and longly held. It would not seem to be a call to "fundamentalism" at all, but rather a call towards fundamentals. A faith that was expanded originally by warfare and which expanded into, and controlled, areas that were majority Christian for centuries thereafter, the faith is used to the idea and based on the idea of armed conflict and conquer. A return to at least armed conflict is part of its history, and warfare waged by groups hearing that call is often brutal in the extreme. Even during World War Two Moslem troops in command of the French went on a notorious rampage directed upon Italian women at one point. But at the same time, we know that most of the time most Moslems remain peaceful and in fact ignore large tenants of their faith.
We also know, or should know, that the entire "moderate Islam" line is a complete fable. The percentage of Moslems who have a doctrine that has formally adapted to such a view is tiny. There are those who have, but generally the Hellenized view of Islam fell out of favor, and was regarded as heretical by Moslems, in the Middle Ages. Therefore, while there are many peaceful Moslems, there's no peaceful Moslem theology and those who like to believe their is are living in a fantasy land.
Indeed, the differnce in mainstream Islamic groups is slight, and people who like to point to them as huge are fooling themselves and lack a large doctrinal difference to point to. This does not mean that they get along with each other, but that's more in the nature of human nature than doctrinal difference. Students of Christianity will note that the Catholic and Orthodox have not always gotten along well, even though they view each others holy orders as fully valid and from the outside those familiar with them are often stunned how close these "two lungs of the church" are.
We do know, however, that nowhere in Islam does it sanction the killing in this fashion of other Moslems. And there, at least, Al Queda and ISIL are clearly outside the Islamic fold. They seemingly have no problem with that. ISIL of course mostly limits itself to warfare against Christians, Zoroastrians, and Shiias (where it can site to doctrinal difference, no matter how slight), but that it kills some Sunni Kurds cannot be disputed.
We also know, or should know, that the entire "moderate Islam" line is a complete fable. The percentage of Moslems who have a doctrine that has formally adapted to such a view is tiny. There are those who have, but generally the Hellenized view of Islam fell out of favor, and was regarded as heretical by Moslems, in the Middle Ages. Therefore, while there are many peaceful Moslems, there's no peaceful Moslem theology and those who like to believe their is are living in a fantasy land.
Indeed, the differnce in mainstream Islamic groups is slight, and people who like to point to them as huge are fooling themselves and lack a large doctrinal difference to point to. This does not mean that they get along with each other, but that's more in the nature of human nature than doctrinal difference. Students of Christianity will note that the Catholic and Orthodox have not always gotten along well, even though they view each others holy orders as fully valid and from the outside those familiar with them are often stunned how close these "two lungs of the church" are.
We do know, however, that nowhere in Islam does it sanction the killing in this fashion of other Moslems. And there, at least, Al Queda and ISIL are clearly outside the Islamic fold. They seemingly have no problem with that. ISIL of course mostly limits itself to warfare against Christians, Zoroastrians, and Shiias (where it can site to doctrinal difference, no matter how slight), but that it kills some Sunni Kurds cannot be disputed.
Our war in Afghanistan was necessary, and we won it. But we've done a bad job of securing the peace there, and now we are leaving before it is fully secured. The Afghanis are not Arabs, and the country has a long history of tolerating all sorts of peoples, including Jews, Communists, and Buddhists. This is evaporating, or has, and will if we leave too soon. We haveint' fully done in Al Queda in Central Asia, and we best do that before we leave. And we should leave Afghanistan intact and functioning, which it isn't yet.
Invading Iraq was, in my view, a mistake. All over Arabia and North Africa we've totally failed to appreciate the irony that the most western of governments in that region are also the most fascistic. That's icky, but true. They hold to no religion so they do not favor any. They educate women, and in terms of domestic policies they tend to focus on economics more than anything else. They are like Mussolini's Italy, gross, overblown, blowhards, but making the trains run on time and granting quarter to no other movements, secular or religious. As much as we hate to admit it, over time, these governments would fall of their own accord, but when they did, it would have been because they educated their population, and most particularly their female population, to the point where that population will not put up with them any longer.
And once women in the region are educated to that extent, they won't put up with the old jihad interpretation of Islam either. That fact is one that we should appreciate. Mohamed held that the majority of the population in Hell was female, and the prize for males in Heaven were females. That's an appealing vision to primitive men, stuck in a teenage view of teenage girls, but it has no appeal to educated males and even less appeal to educated women. It was already being interpreted out of the Koran by Hellenized Islamic theologians before they were put down and condemned as heretical in the Middle Ages. That view will fall out of favor once most women in the Middle East are educated, but we have a long ways to go before that.
In that meantime, we need to be aware that the virtues of "tolerance" and "multi culturalism" are not human instincts, but learned behavior in their entirety. Intolerance is the human norm and instinct. In the west, these values are universal because of the long influence of Christianity, and we've imported them to receptive cultures around the globe. We haven't succeeded in exporting them to the Middle East whatsoever, and we're a long ways from doing so. Only in partially Christian Lebanon, Syria and Egypt do these views really have a toehold. In the closed world of the Arabian Peninsula they have no traction at all. One of our prime "allies" in that region, Saudi Arabia, is a model of repression, with the door completely closed to religious tolerance and rights for women.
All of these facts we need to acknowledge. When we take in, in the west, large numbers of immigrants from this region, we take in these views, which will take at least a generation or more to evolve out of those populations. When we do that we also provide for western youth who live in the any value is a good value, or no value at all, world we've developed since the mid 60s with an attractive option to join something that clearly believes in something, no matter how contrary to our values it may be. When we look at governments in the region, we need to see what they do on the ground level, not at that the electoral level, even if that means holding our nose and pocketing our hands from time to time. And where peoples who are more western are ready to carve off of those who are not ready to move forward, such as the Kurds, we need to support them. Where others remained entrenched in the 7th Century, like Saudi Arabia, we need to back away from them, as they'll fall anyhow, and they in no way support our values.
Most of all, we need to be ready for a long haul with that section of the Arabic and Islamic population that regards this as a Holy War, and which will pop up for time to time for the foreseeable future. Just because we don't view this as a Holy War doesn't mean they don't, and just because we believe we've won at one one point in time, doesn't mean we have.
Friday Farming: Shipping cattle by rail.
A practice very much of the past. Once the mainstay of cattle and sheep market transportation, this has been completely taken over by trucks.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Holscher's Hub: Rental housing, Bosler Wyoming
Holscher's Hub: Rental housing, Bosler Wyoming
We've had some thread on nicer older hotels up here, so perhaps its time to show some other types of lodging.
Here are a series of cabins, or rentals, from an earlier era in Bosler Wyoming. Bosler is a very small town, which was once somewhat more substantial, although it was never large. Sitting right next to the Union Pacific Railroad, it no doubt housed railroad employees on a continual basis at one time.
The town is not far from Laramie Wyoming, and the modern highway no doubt basically did Bosler in.
Bosler Consolidated School, Bosler Wyoming.
Bosler Consolidated School, Bosler Wyoming.
This is the Bosler Consolidated School, in Bosler Wyoming.
These photos present a glimpse of schools not all that long ago. I don't ever recall the Bosler Consolidated School being open, and Bosler itself has been barely there my entire life. My guess would be that this school must have been closed at least as far back at some date in the 1970s, and probably prior to that. But, based on its brick construction, I'd also guess that this school dates no further back than the 1920s. Bosler must have been more of a going concern at that time, and it was more of one in the early 20th Century. Now, it's just a small location on State Highway 287 just before you get to Laramie. No doubt the number of kids attending here dropped down to a small number and then the school simply closed, with the students being bused either to Laramie or Rock River.
There must be a lot of little schools like this. Well built buildings from an era when transportation wasn't as good or sure, and when there were more people in the little towns.
These photos present a glimpse of schools not all that long ago. I don't ever recall the Bosler Consolidated School being open, and Bosler itself has been barely there my entire life. My guess would be that this school must have been closed at least as far back at some date in the 1970s, and probably prior to that. But, based on its brick construction, I'd also guess that this school dates no further back than the 1920s. Bosler must have been more of a going concern at that time, and it was more of one in the early 20th Century. Now, it's just a small location on State Highway 287 just before you get to Laramie. No doubt the number of kids attending here dropped down to a small number and then the school simply closed, with the students being bused either to Laramie or Rock River.
There must be a lot of little schools like this. Well built buildings from an era when transportation wasn't as good or sure, and when there were more people in the little towns.
Holscher's Hub: Sweetwater Wagon Ruts
Holscher's Hub: Sweetwater Wagon Ruts: Wagon ruts along the Sweetwater River, from the Oregon Trail.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Mid Week at Work: Annual Shad Bake, Bar to Bench, 1924. District of Columbia Bar.
Do they still have the Shad Bake?
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
The Big Speech: Pais Dinogad
Pais Dinogad. Welsh, 7th Century
Peis dinogat e vreith vreith
O grwyn balaot ban wreith
Chwit chwit chwidogeith
Gochanwn gochenyn wythgeith
Pan elei dy dat ty e helya
Llath ar y ysgwyd llory eny law
Ef gelwi gwn gogyhwc
Giff gaff dhaly dhaly dhwg dhwg
Ef lledi bysc yng corwc
Mal ban llad llew llywywg
Pan elei dy dat ty e vynyd
Dydygai ef penn ywrch penn gwythwch pen hyd
Penn grugyar vreith o venyd
Penn pysc o rayadyr derwennyd
Or sawl yt gyrhaedei dydat ty ae gicwein
O wythwch a llewyn a llwyuein
Nyt anghei oll ny vei oradein
Dinogad's tunic is very speckled
From the skins of martens it was made
Whistle! Whistle! Whistling
We call, they call, the eight captives
When your father went to hunt
Spear on his shoulder, club in his hand
He called his lively dogs
'Giff, gaff! Catch, catch! Fetch, fetch!'
He killed fish in his coracle
Like the lion killing small animals
When your father went to the mountain
He would bring back a head of buck, of boar, of stag
A head of speckled grouse from the mountain
A head of fish from the falls of Derwent
At whatever your father drove his spear
Whether wild boar, or wild cat or fox
None would escape if they had not strong wing
Peis dinogat e vreith vreith
O grwyn balaot ban wreith
Chwit chwit chwidogeith
Gochanwn gochenyn wythgeith
Pan elei dy dat ty e helya
Llath ar y ysgwyd llory eny law
Ef gelwi gwn gogyhwc
Giff gaff dhaly dhaly dhwg dhwg
Ef lledi bysc yng corwc
Mal ban llad llew llywywg
Pan elei dy dat ty e vynyd
Dydygai ef penn ywrch penn gwythwch pen hyd
Penn grugyar vreith o venyd
Penn pysc o rayadyr derwennyd
Or sawl yt gyrhaedei dydat ty ae gicwein
O wythwch a llewyn a llwyuein
Nyt anghei oll ny vei oradein
Dinogad's tunic is very speckled
From the skins of martens it was made
Whistle! Whistle! Whistling
We call, they call, the eight captives
When your father went to hunt
Spear on his shoulder, club in his hand
He called his lively dogs
'Giff, gaff! Catch, catch! Fetch, fetch!'
He killed fish in his coracle
Like the lion killing small animals
When your father went to the mountain
He would bring back a head of buck, of boar, of stag
A head of speckled grouse from the mountain
A head of fish from the falls of Derwent
At whatever your father drove his spear
Whether wild boar, or wild cat or fox
None would escape if they had not strong wing
And now Syria
WWI vintage poster for Middle Eastern relief.
And now, its being debated in Congress.
I'll applaud the President for submitting this to Congress. Just last week or so it appeared that the President was set to simply order the Navy to conduct strikes against Syria, in retaliation for the Syrian government using chemical weapons on its own people, without bothering to bring in Congress, but the British Parliament turned that around. That only occurred as Parliament was being asked by Prime Minister David Cameron to support the upcoming U.S. strike. Parliament said no. That caused the President, in what now seems to be a miscalculation, to seek authorization from Congress. Right now, to my surprise really, Congress doesn't seem likely to grant that authority. As a result, there's some discussion on the President ordering the strikes anyway, which would be a massive political miscalculation. Of our allies, there's a movement in Canada to require their PM to follow Britain's lead and submit the question to Parliament, which would likely vote no. France appears to be the only country that is likely to support us, but probably for historical reasons that we have a very dim appreciation of.
Bedouin riding through Roman triumphal arch, Palmyra Syria, 1939.
In Congress views on this topic are split three ways. One camp wants to authorize the President's proposal, which is to make a limited strike over a 90 day period in retaliation for the government's use of chemical weapons on civilians. Another wants to stay out of the war entirely. A third will vote no as, ironically, it wants to jump into the war, topple the government and create a new one we, we think, will like better.
That's basically John McCain's position, or at least that's his position
by implication. But do we dare to suppose that's realistic? And if it is not, do we dare get into this thing at all? Do we even understand Syria?
Straight Street in Damascus. This street is so old its mentioned in the New Testament.
Americans tend, to an almost charming degree, to believe the diametrically opposed beliefs that the United States is the best country in the world and that every other country is just like us. What country may be the best in the world is a subjective matter, but objectively, not every nation and not every people are just like us. Far from it.
Most nations in the world, or at least most successful ones, are "nation states". A nation state is a country made up of one nation. This notion, or rather this fact, is so contrary to our own experience that generally we don't really grasp what it means. Indeed, in our pledge of allegiance we even state that we are "one nation, under God."
"Syrian" (almost certainly Lebanese) children playing in the streets of New York City. There is a huge global diaspora of Lebanese. According to some, the Lebanese diaspora is the most successful, in terms of business and wealth, in the world. The Lebanese are distinct for a variety of reasons, including that at the time of the formation of their country Maronite Catholics made up a majority of the population.
Perhaps, over time, the American "nation" has become just that, but most stable countries in the world have been formed by nationalism, and that nationalism long ago separated out the borders of the country along cultural boundaries. This appears to be changing in the modern world, but it's still largely the case. That is, France is a country for the French. Italy is a country that united in the 19th Century in an effort to combine all the Italians, and some who were sort of Italians, into one country. Germany united in the 1870s as a confederation of German principalities.
Roman temple for Emperor Diocletian, a figure frequently noted for persecution of early Christians.
Conversely, the Austro Hungarian Empire flew apart in the early 20th Century partially because the constituents of that empire no longer wanted to be ruled by a common government. Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia became separate countries, with that process rolling along right up until almost the present day, as Czechoslovakia, made up of the Czechs and the Slovaks, split into two separate countries, each of which is a nation state. We witnessed something similar to this in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when a country made for the "south Slavs" busted up along ethnic lines that essentially only they could discern.
Not all modern countries are nation states, of course. The United States, for example is not. And countries that share a common origin to that of the US are not. That is, Canada and Australia, also nations that were formed via the immigration from many parts of the Europe and even the globe aren't. The United Kingdom isn't, although in the true European fashion the various nations that make up the UK; IE., England, Scotland and Wales, have remained nations rather than blending to a surprising degree. And as noted, this was so much the case for Ireland, once part of the UK, that it violently departed.
A person could legitimately ask, of course, what the heck this has to do with Syria, but it has a great deal to do with it. Syrian isn't a nation state. And not only isn't a nation state, it isn't like the US or Canada in which the various ethnicities mix fairly readily. They don't mix.
A person might find that surprising, and many Americans apparently don't realize this at all. We keep hearing about "they Syrians" but who are they? A person with an ear for history might presuppose that the Syrians of today are the Assyrians of old, but they'd only be very partially correct.
Syrian Bedouin, 1939.
Assyrians do indeed living on, in some fashion, in the DNA of many Syrians today, but modern Syria isn't he Assyria of old. Even by the time of Christ what is now Syria had come under the influence of some foreign populations, namely the Greeks, which is why Syrian actually fit so seamlessly into early Christian history. The coastal region of what was in very modern times Syria was at that time, as now, Lebanon, and that area had its own ancient populations that contributed to its nature, namely the Phoneticians, who may have descended from the Philistines.
Syrian gypsies.
As noted, Syria was a region of the Middle East whose population took rapidly to Christianity, and there have been Christians in Syria ever since the 1st Century. Christianity took so rapidly to Syria that Damascus was where St. Paul was headed in order to persecute the Christians when he had his Epiphany. And that also tells us that there were Jewish populations there at that time as well, but there were throughout the Middle East at the time. Christians were first called that in Syria, Antioch to be precise, although that city is now in Turkey, on the Syrian border.
Ruins of Crusader era church in Syria, 1939.
Like the rest of the Middle East, Syria was invaded by the Arabs during the early Islamic period, and like places where there was a strong Christian presence, the Arabs were never able to fully supplant the native Christian population. This has very much been the case in Syria. Today, Syria is made up of Islamic populations, Christian populations, often in their own areas, Alawites (a minority Moslem group), the Druse and some Kurds. None of these groups has much in common with the other, except by the exent to which the minority groups, the Christians, Druse and Alwaties fear, and have reason to fear, the majority Moslem Arabs.
Representatives of the Orthodox in the US, following the Russian Revolution. In addition to Maronite Catholics, Syria has populations of Antiochean (Syrian) Orthodox. Contrary to the way history is sometimes imagined, Roman Catholic Crusaders, upon taking Antioch, restored the Antiochean prelate to his seat.
The Ottoman Turks occupied and governed Syria for eons, until the Ottoman Empire disappeared due to World War One. France received Syria, with which it had strong historical ties, as sort of a consolation prize for helping the British defeat the Turks during the Great War. France
occupied Syria from 1918 until 1946, keeping it through several changes in the French republican government and even into the Vichy period. Syrian troops served the French in World War Two, both in the Vichy cause and the in the Free French cause. In some ways Syria was the French
consolation prize for its role in the Middle East in World War One, as the French also fought the Ottoman's there, but
it also recognized that France's role in the region existed for
historic reasons going back to the Crusades. Many of the Christian
Kingdoms of the Crusading period saw significant French colonization and
a recent work by a British author has made the point that during this
period not only were a majority of the residents Christians (and were
well after the fall of the Crusader kingdoms) but that in some areas,
but not all, they were basically French colonies. French trade with the
region kept on keeping on in to modern times, and its worth noting that
about the only government that appears inclined to get into Syria now
is France.
The British High Commissioner for Palestine, left, and the French High Commissioner for Syria, right, with young lad in middle, 1926.
Anyhow, while the French have a pretty poor record in
regards to the success of their 19th and 20th Century colonies, in terms
of becoming modern states so their experiences must be used as examples with caution, Syria did have the benefit of both Ottoman
and Syrian administration and that doesn't appear to have lead to a real
concept of forming a modern state really. If France was unable to do
it in 20 years, I don't think we'll be able to in ten or fifteen, or whatever period we'd be willing to invest in the country if we got in full bore. And to suppose that the Syrian rebels are going to create a parliament and recognize civil liberties without European or American boots on the ground is absurd. The French, we might note, had the benefit of being successors to the Ottomans, which
meant that the Syrian population wasn't really inclined to be hostile
to a foreign overlord, as they now will be under any scenario.
Kurds, a stateless people, are native to a region encompassing parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Kurds are actually responsible for the final stages of the spread is Islam, not the Arabs, and have given it an enduring memory of a unitized theocratic state and the false myth of enduring a Christian invasion. Ironically, not all Kurds are Moslems today, nor have they ever been.
On French
administration, one thing worth noting is that the French came to the
conclusion that it wasn't possible to rule Syria as a single political
entity, and they ultimately created districts on ethnic lines. Lebanon
exists today for that reason. The Alawites and the Druse also had their
own regions. We always seem to think that any country we step into
makes sense as a nation, and that would go counter to the modern
experience of the Middle East in general, and Syria in particular. That
is, why Syria at all? For that matter, why Iraq? It probably makes
more sense that these countries be busted up into their ethnicities,
which do not mix. But we won't do that. And whoever we prop up isn't
going to want to do that either as no government ever desires to become less powerful and control less country. In other words, the Kingdom of Sweden might have been willing to recognize that Norway wanted to be its own country in 1903 without fight, but Syria isn't going to do that with any of its minorities. For that matter, even the highly civilized United Kingdom fought to keep disenchanted Ireland in the group form 1918 to 1922, and I doubt that any Middle Eastern nation would do less.
Druse refugees, 1925. The Druse are an Islamic sect despised by other Islamic groups. They live in Lebanon, Israel and Syria today. Early opponents of the Turks, and allies of the British in World War One, today they are closest to Israel.
Regarding the ethnicities, examination
of the sides in Syria ought to really give us pause. Syria has some really distinct ethnicities.
By and large,
Syrian Christians are afraid of the rebels, as they fear that a rebel
victory will mean their end, and in my view it probably would. Alawites
feel the same way. We (the US) feel that because the government is
brutal, we should depose it, but should we depose it in favor of a
probable bigger brutality? I just can't see a way out of this mess that
doesn't leave us with blood on our hands in one way or another.
On
that, it's interesting to note that some 20 years ago or so the Syrian
government crushed another rebellion, and that's come up in this context
from time to time. But, what of that rebellion? It was by hard core
Islamist. Had it succeeded, Syrian would be an Arab Iran today. The
crushing of the rebellion was brutal. That's inexcusable. But had it
not been crushed, the result would have been grim for us. Do we even
want to have to be associated with the results of a civil war there
today, given that any result is grim from our prospective?
Indeed,
when we look at the overall state of the Middle East, I think its'
general folly to view any of the existing political entities as likely to be permanent. No government there looks stable
long term, and those that do are challenged by demographics. That being
the case, it might be best to view the Middle East today the way we
viewed Eastern Europe prior to WWII. A mysterious backwater that
hopefully will muddle its way out of the mess its in on its own. One
thing we can be thankful for is that with changes in technology, the
Middle East is becoming less and less significant economically or in
terms of material resources, so we might actually hope for a day when it
can conduct its regional spats without us having to be too afraid of
the results.
Postscript
When we posted this one year ago, it probably looked like we were engaging in a rather paranoid example of Realpolitik. Well, events here have really born us out. Those who were cheerleading for intervention in Syria last September, when we posted this, would have effectively handed Damascus to the Islamic State, which proved to be sufficiently powerful as to be able to expand its old fashioned religious war, with modern weapons, into Iraq and nearly topple that government. The Presidents reluctance, therefore, to intervene in Syria proved wholly justified. Indeed, it now appears inevitable that we will soon be committing air assets over Syria and bombing the same enemy that the Syrian air force is.
Make no mistake, Assad is not in the warm and fuzzy category of leader, and Syria deserves better. But Syria also isn't Ireland, whose rebels will adopt a parliament and immediately become a model of democratic behavior. It has a long way to go, and we best be careful lest it become part of the Islamic State, or something like it.
Postscript
When we posted this one year ago, it probably looked like we were engaging in a rather paranoid example of Realpolitik. Well, events here have really born us out. Those who were cheerleading for intervention in Syria last September, when we posted this, would have effectively handed Damascus to the Islamic State, which proved to be sufficiently powerful as to be able to expand its old fashioned religious war, with modern weapons, into Iraq and nearly topple that government. The Presidents reluctance, therefore, to intervene in Syria proved wholly justified. Indeed, it now appears inevitable that we will soon be committing air assets over Syria and bombing the same enemy that the Syrian air force is.
Make no mistake, Assad is not in the warm and fuzzy category of leader, and Syria deserves better. But Syria also isn't Ireland, whose rebels will adopt a parliament and immediately become a model of democratic behavior. It has a long way to go, and we best be careful lest it become part of the Islamic State, or something like it.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fishing and gardening
For those who follow dietary trends, the current in vogue diet is the "Paley\o Diet". And for those who take the National Geographic, you are aware that they've been running a semi scary series of articles on food in the 21st Century.
Elk hunter in northwest Wyoming, first decade of the 20th Century. For many in this region, this scene could have been taken any October.
The National Geographic articles have been inspired by the scare that's existed since at least the early 1970s that the planet is about to run out of food, although that particular article isn't really on that topic. Quite frankly, and as well explored by an earlier National Geographic article, there's small chance of this indeed. If anything, production agriculture has so vastly increased the global food supply that there's an overabundance of food and most fears of this type are very poorly placed. Production agriculture, in fact, has hardly touched Africa and there's vast potential there, although not without vast cultural cost at the same time.
That's not what this article addresses, however. Rather, it addresses something that has been so obvious to me for decades that it not fits into one of those "geez, I wish I'd thought of marketing that way back when. . . " categories.
That is, human beings are evolved to eat a diet that we ate in our aboriginal state, for the most part, which we could still largely do. Failing to do so has all sorts of negative health impacts.
Now, I am very well aware that this idea, which is an obvious truth, runs counter to the whole peak of the vegan trend, but that entire trend is one that is basically neopaganistic and hateful of nature. We are part of nature, are evolved to eat a natural diet, and that diet was a wild one.
Deer hunters with camp, early 20th Century.
So, hence the paleo diet trend, which I've largely ignored A better study of this was presented by the National Geographic.
And what did the National Geographic discover? Well, people in their native states are hunter gatherers, with the emphasis on hunters. They eat a lot of vegetative material, but mostly because they're left with little choice. When they don't have meat, it's because they can't find it, and they crave it. If meat is abundant, their diet is heavy in it. If it isn't, they feel deprived and make do with what they can find.
Don't have the time, or perhaps energy to pursue deer or elk, or whatever. Well, poultry lovers, perhaps you should try something a little more wild. Women hunters with pheasants. Pheasant taste better than chicken any day. For those who worry, moreover, about mass poultry production and how chickens are killed and raised, these pheasants enjoyed a wild bird life and generally when they're culled, they go from that to processed, so to speak, instantly.
And, as we now are increasing learning (and which I've known for decades) a natural diet of that type, with what you could locally hunt, is the best thing for you.
Now, as folks around here know I'm a fan of agriculture, and indeed I own beef cattle (although I'd live off of deer, elk and antelope if my wife, who is more of a beef fan, would allow). And agriculture does have a peculiar role here.
Female pheasant hunter, 1960s, Colorado.
Agriculture is, or can be, the enemy of the wild in that it's allowed, as has long been known, civilization to rise. Only the production of surplus foods can sustain urban development and our type of civilization, even though farmers and ranchers are often shunned by the people who depend upon them 100% in cities. This has long been known, and some cultural anthropologist in fact make a big deal out of it and sort of smugly argue that all production agriculture is the enemy of the wild.
But in fact, as the National Geographic explores, agriculture can exist and does exist in a blurry line with hunting and gathering in those societies. Nearly all, but not all, hunter gather societies are actually small farm, hunting, and gathering societies. That's been obvious for millennia, but is generally ignored.
Rabbit hunter, early 20th Century. Rabbit taste nearly identical to chicken, and is the leanest meat on the planet. It's so lean, in fact, you can't survive on a diet of it alone. In many nations, domestic rabbit is a common table item. It oddly isn't in the U.S., but there's no good reason for that. Wild rabbit taste like chicken and can be used anywhere chicken is.
Okay, so what's all this have to do with diet?
Just this. While it puts me in the category of food campaigners, a wild diet is the best diet, and some direct relationship with your food is vastly superior to none. People who sit around extolling vegetarianism or veganism are largely allowed to do that on the backs of farmers who are supporting their pagainistic anti natural dietary beliefs. People who have a direct relationship with consumption and understand it (the two not necessarily being the same) tend to feel differently.
Trout fishing in the Catskills. Fishing is really fish hunting, and I've always thought that people who try to make a distinction between hunting and fishing are fooling themselves. For that matter, anyone who eats fish, poultry or meat and doesn't think that they'd personally hunt or fish is really fooling themselves anyhow. While on this, I'll also note that I truly find the modern emphasis on "catch and release" a bit bizarre.
Even now, in the 21st Century, many of us could have that direct relationship. Most urbanites have the room to plant a garden (and yes, I've done so in the past but haven't the past several years, so I'm being a bit hypocritical). And hunting is on the rise in the United States. Taking some of your food in the field, either by hunting or fishing, is to be encouraged, and not only has the benefit of giving you a diet that somewhat replicates the one you are evolved to actually eat, but it gives you a lot of exercise as well. Indeed, something non hunters don't appreciate is that the actual work in hunting involved can be quite intensive, and usually really dedicated hunters in the west try to stay in shape for that reason. For those who can't do that, a direct relationship with your beef supplier, or pork supplier, or poultry supplier, is nearly always possible. The cow in our freezer has always been the trendy "grass fed" beef just because of that sort of, but of course it's one of our own that's a "volunteer" having determined to retire from calf raising.
World War One vintage poster campaigning for War Gardens, which the U.S. encouraged to be planted in towns and cities.
World War Two photograph of a Victory Garden being planted. This fellow had such a big yard (its in a town) that he's acquired a tractor to do it.
School Gardens probably passed away about the time this poster was made during World War One, but there's plenty of space in most urban areas for yard gardening.
There's no down side to any of this, and we can only hope that this trend continues in the future, with more hunting, gathering and planting, on their own. Shoot, most urban areas are so darned boring in real terms, the benefits can hardly cease.
Deer hunter bringing in a deer on skies. The uninitiated will think, "oh surely, that's the far distant past". Well, not always. I haven't hunted deer on skies, but I have hunted snowshoe hares on skies many times.
Conscripted into JrROTC
Natrona County High School's JrROTC program is the oldest one in the United States, being over 100 years old.
Male high school students in 1946. Quite a few of these boys are wearing their JrROTC uniforms, which was one of the standard Army uniforms of the 1940s.
I've blogged on this before, but based on the fact that the school was a land grant high school, something that most people don't even realize existed, it featured, in recognition of that status, compulsory male military education all the way from the day it first opened, up until some date in the 1970s. The changes in society brought about by the Vietnam War ultimately caused the School Board to eliminate JrROTC as a required course at that time, which was made easier by the fact that Casper's second high school, Kelly Walsh, did not have JrROTC at all. Nor did the county's third high school, Midwest. So it was not only becoming unpopular as a compulsory course, but it was also inequitable to require some students to take it, while others did not, merely based upon where a person lived.
Up until the 1970s, it doesn't seem to have been unpopular, although it doesn't seem to have been terribly respected post World War Two either. Prior to 1945, however, it was a different world, and I've been told that parents appreciated the required course as the Army provided the male uniform for it, giving parents a much needed set of school clothes in an era when resources were tight. Anyhow, by the mid 1970s, that requirement was gone, and the program wasn't all that popular when I graduated from NCHS in 1981 (I didn't take JrROTC either).
Well, in a scheduling oddity, for at least one NCHS freshman, conscription into JrROTC is back.
I happen to know the young man, an nice rural kid who, like most rural kids, is older than his years. His father was a Marine, he's already a fair cowboy, and it probably is no sweat to him. But, because classes must be filled, and there's only so many slots available for any one thing, and because if the class you wanted wasn't available, they'll slot you into one that is, he's been assigned to JrROTC. Perhaps more than one kid has been, I only know of the one.
A surprising local return, in a minor way, to practices of the past.
Flap de jour: Dick Cheney at the Wyoming State Bar Convention
Okay, so you've had enough of celebrities and their inappropriate photos, and "artists" who appropriate those photos to protest Google, and even of people famous for being famous who keep the spotlight on themselves by appearing on magazine covers in an inappropriate fashion?
Well, in a week featuring such flaps, plus new concerns over an Apple product associated with them, we have a meatier, or at least better attired, flap.
Dick Cheney at the Wyoming State Bar Convention.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, smiling in this portrait, but will he be smiling after the State Bar Convention?
Dick Cheney, formerly the Vice President of the United States, has been invited by the Wyoming State Bar Association to speak at its 2014 Annual Convention in Cheyenne.
Yawn. . . big deal, right? Well, its turning out to be a minor local controversy. How could that be true.
First a word about the State Bar. I don't know how it works in every state, but as Wyoming has a "self governing" bar, every Wyoming lawyer is a member of the State Bar Association. We're all assessed annual fees to the bar, and the bar performs a variety of services that make it a quasi governmental entity, one of two such entities of which I'm aware of in Wyoming's history, but the only surviving one (the Wyoming Stock Growers Association was also, at one time, a quasi governmental agency as it regulated the round ups and employed the stock detectives, who were law enforcement officers. Like every state bar everywhere, it holds an annual convention. And like every bar convention everywhere, it has an annual banquet as part of it, which features a keynote speaker. This year's in Cheney.
Now, I should note that I don't attend the bar convention, unless it happens to be in town. The reason for that is that this is September, and if I was going to take a week off of work, I'd go hunting, not to the state bar convention. Indeed, as I recently noted here, I have to think the choice of September as the annual meeting month, which it has been forever, demonstrates that who ever came up with that choice was leading an incredibly dull life. July when its too hot to do anything, or January when its too cold, would have been the sane choices.
What lawyers with time off in September should be doing.
At any rate, however, its in September, and this September the choice is Cheney as speaker.
I'll confess that when I received my flyer for the convention, as all members of the bar do, I was a bit surprised. For one thing, I was surprised just by the choice of Cheney. For another, I was a bit surprised it was somebody so interesting as a public figure. Then I put my flyer in the round file, recalling that the convention was in September, and moved on.
Well it turns out that some lawyers are upset, some by the choice of Cheney and some by the biography that he supplied and which was published in the flyer.
This just hit the newspaper today, but I've known about it for awhile, as a subscriber to the Wyoming Trial Lawyers Association list serve was telling me about the heated exchange on that list, much of which seemed to be centered on Cheney as a choice himself. That's the more interesting part of the reaction.
Cheney is a large public figure with an association with Wyoming (he is not, contrary to the widely circulated error, our "native son", he was born and partially grew up in Nebraska, coming here in his teens). As a figure who represented Wyoming in Congress, served in the Ford Administration, then served in the George Bush I administration, and who went on to serve as Vice President, he's a hero to some in the state and is widely admired in this heavily Republican state. Locally there are at least two structures named for him, one being the Federal building and the other being the NCHS stadium (or perhaps its the field, I can't recall exactly which). So his choice is really fairly logical, as long as we don't assume that the speaker at a bar convention must absolutely be a lawyer, which I don't assume, and which is a misplaced assumption.
Indeed on that, law belongs to the people and lawyers should be cognizant of that. Therefore, interesting public figures, lawmakers and former lawmakers should make good choices, irrespective of whether they are controversial or not, and in some cases particularly if they are controversial. For a profession that prides itself on independent thinking if we don't want a controversial speaker, we're making ourselves into hypocrites.
And, like him or not, Cheney is a very good speaker. I saw him speak at the NCHS graduation some years ago, and he was frankly excellent. And I say that as a person who isn't really a Cheney fan otherwise.
This is how I think the bar should view it. You don't have to love him to listen to him, and he is intelligent and does speak very well.
Of course, some don't want him as they politically disagree with him, which is also a dangerous reason to silence somebody. And its a huge mistake for lawyers to do that.
This state is very Republican and very conservative. The average man suspects, in the back of his mind, that all lawyers are Democrats and members of the extreme left. In truth, the lawyer demographic is much more left leaning than the general public, here and pretty much everywhere. We're not really a popular profession, and if we appear to be wanting to shut up Dick Cheney as we disagree with him politically, it doesn't speak well of us in terms of our dedication to our stated principals.
It also confirms, in an era when we've opened up the floodgates of admission to the bar to out of staters, that the legal community is way out of touch with locals. It really isn't. Lawyers are in fact in touch with their communities and their members, but for a despised class to appear to be shutting somebody up for political reasons sends a message that we probably don't really want to be broadcasting right now.
As to the second part of the reason that people are upset, however, there's a point, although a minor point, there. Cheney's self published biography was included whole in the flyer, and it included a statement about how President Obama's policies are making the things more dangerous for the United States. That's a blatantly political statement, and one that's consistent with Cheney's views, but it is an opinion, not an established fact, and the Wyoming State Bar appeared to be endorsing that view. Cheney shouldn't have included that in a submitted biography, but the State Bar should have read it and taken that statement out. The State Bar has now, however, apologized for that, and that's good enough.
Again, as I have things to do, and if I had the time available, I'd invest it in more pleasurable and personally meaningful pursuits, I'm not going to go to the State Bar and I've only gone to the banquet one single time. But for those who are going anyway, they ought to go and listen. They may not like what they're hearing, but frankly if they don't, they'll be experiencing what litigants, courts and jurors frequently do. And we expect all of them to keep an open mind and listen.
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