Friday, September 19, 2014
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Computerization, Transportation, Globalization, and the loss of the local
Some time ago I posted here on the Uniform Bar Exam, a development, in my view, which is wholly negative. One of the selling points of the UBE, for its proponents, is that it makes bar admission "transportable".
African American lawyer in the early 1940s. Contrary to general supposition, law has long traditionally been an introductory occupation filled in part by members of minority groups and classes. While this is contrary to the "rich lawyer" image many people erroneously hold of the law, it makes sense as the profession is traditionally one that has low start up costs in terms of everything but the education, and minority classes often have legal needs by the fact that they are minorities. Indeed certain stereotypes and former stereotypes, such as "Irish Lawyer" or "Jewish Lawyer" are explained by this phenomenon. A layer like this certainly didn't have a transportable career, and was part of his community.
It does, but is that a good thing? And what does that mean?
"Transportability" is not a new phenomenon, but it is an accelerating one. And its one of those little thought out byproducts of technology that have massive unintended impacts. It might serve to look at it a bit, as while "transportability" is simply inevitable in some things, it isn't in everything, and its not necessarily that good of thing in some circumstances.
Transportability really means the ability to rapidly relocate from one place to another, as the immigrants qualifications will be equally valid in any location, or at least in multiple locations. But, and what is often missed when transportability is discussed, is that actual relocation is not necessary in this day and age. Rather, a person can "transport" themselves and out of a location by telephone and Internet. Indeed most current litigation attorneys already do this to some extent. I do. In addition to Wyoming, I practice in Colorado's Federal Courts, which I can do electronically for the most part.
Now, the advantages of this are fairly obvious, but right now the brake on "transportation," if you will, is that for lawyers you must be admitted by the other state's bar in some fashion, or at least you must be admitted in front of the other state's particular court you seek to practice in. This is not new, and the UBE, discussed below, does not propose to change that.
What is proposed to be changed, however, is how a person does that.
Right now, a person must pass a bar exam for that state, so you still have to pass some bar exam recognized by the state. But what the UBE does is to allow you to take it in one state, and simply pay a fee to be admitted in other states that will recognize the UBE without requiring more. Wyoming still requires more, but what that more is, is to sit through a day long CLE class, which any person could do without any real effort other than sitting there and enduring it. So, suddenly, the license becomes transportable.
So what's wrong with that?
Well, here it is.
I'm a type of lawyer whose practice is statewide, and my practice even laps a little into neighboring states, as noted, but I am of this state, and very familiar with it. I was born here, grew up here, my wife is from here. I went to the same high school, in different years, as my wife, father in law, mother in law, aunts and uncles, and father. I have pretty deep connections here.
Which is not to say that there isn't movement in and out of here. When there's an oil boom going on, as there is now, there are a lot of new people here. Some stay, some leave. Some people from here move out as soon as they can (with that being a seemingly common desire of young people, who starting about 30 years after that become hopelessly nostalgic for what they left). But moving in and out, is not the same as turning on your computer and "being there" in the form of a stream of electrons.
That's something that is seemingly missed by the advocates of transportability. Not only has our society become more mobile, but it's less attached than ever. Somebody who is located in a big city elsewhere, now, can pretend to be practicing in a completely different state with which they have no real connections.
They may believe that the do, but that's part of the delusion. And once that connection is lost, it's truly lost.
Nearly every lawyer practicing in a state, no matter what he did, took on some projects and clients that were because he lived there. An organization, some local cause, or just people he knew. Now, that won't be true. Will a lawyer in Denver represent youth group for free in Casper, or sit on his Parish Council in Rock Springs? Will a lawyer in Billings take on the cause of a widower in Sheridan.
Will he know what farmers and ranchers in Buffalo worry about, or what somebody whose road is now full of oilfield traffic experiences, or what the economic concerns of a man who has a roustabout company in Glenrock thinks, or will he even really care.
Making professions, professions of any kind, sort of like an Amazon service, remote, electronic and disconnected, is not a good idea. Professions were to be of communities. Indeed, any economic activity or occupation is. By being so remote, we stand the chance of not only being disconnected, but harmful.
Indeed, it will also be highly self defeating, which the backers of transportability never apprecaite. They want their careers transportable, but only theirs.
With professions that can be made highly transportable, like the law, or accounting, there's no reason whatsoever that they can't be transported right out of the country. There's no requirement, and nobody is proposing one, that to practice law anywhere in the US you must be a citizen of the United States. So, if Wyoming's bar can be transported to Colorado or Montana, why not Mumbai? Not only do I think that this can happen, I think it will happen.
Why not? If the practice of law is, as it typically is, the writing and reviewing of documents and materials, why not have that done by a lawyer, admitted in Wyoming, who lives in Delhi? Chances are high that some very highly skilled underemployed lawyers could be found there, who could do a fine product, and who could work in an area of the law where they rarely needed to appear in court. So, for example, the vast droves of Colorado lawyers who claim to be "oil and gas" lawyers in Wyoming, could quite easily be replaced by the same in Delhi, to some extent, where the same lawyer would probably work for $25.00/hour.
Much of this, because of its nature, is something we are going to have to experience and deal with no matter what. But that doesn't make it all good, and technological advances that allow us to live in one city and work in another have their problems. When it comes to professions, that's wholly negative, in my view. We can do something about that, even if we can't do much about a lot of this, and we should.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Mid Week At Work: Enduring investigation.
Caption reads:
Navy's crack speed pilot faces Senate Committee seeking reason for resignation. Lieut. Al Williams, crack Navy speed pilot who recently resigned rather than accept a transfer to sea, appeared before a special Senate Naval l Affairs subcommittee today. The committee is investigating the reason for the resignation of the noted pilot. In the photograph, left to right: Senator Patrick J. Sullivan, Wyoming; Lieut. Williams; Senator Millard E. Tydings, Maryland, chairman; and David S. Ingalls, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aviation
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
University of Wyoming Women's Rugby: Wyoming v. U...
University of Wyoming Women's Rugby: Wyoming v. U...: ...
After seemingly picking on (but not intending to) American football the past few days, I offer these recent photos I took of women's rugby at the University of Wyoming.
I don't have a clue what the rules are, but rugby is really fun to watch, and I've always liked it. This is the first time, however, I've seen the women's team at UW in action.
It's a fast moving game, which is part of what I like. It shares a common ancestor with American football, but to those of us who are big fans of it, American football seems slow. Rugby is a much faster paced game.
Played without padding or helmets, it's also one which features a lot of injuries, but it doesn't seem to share the same percentage of really severe injuries, perhaps because of the lack of armor in the game.
After seemingly picking on (but not intending to) American football the past few days, I offer these recent photos I took of women's rugby at the University of Wyoming.
I don't have a clue what the rules are, but rugby is really fun to watch, and I've always liked it. This is the first time, however, I've seen the women's team at UW in action.
It's a fast moving game, which is part of what I like. It shares a common ancestor with American football, but to those of us who are big fans of it, American football seems slow. Rugby is a much faster paced game.
Played without padding or helmets, it's also one which features a lot of injuries, but it doesn't seem to share the same percentage of really severe injuries, perhaps because of the lack of armor in the game.
Rootless
From Harrop's op ed this week questions whether we need a "place called home". It's an excellent piece, questioning the value of rootlessness. Ironically, the local paper today also features a front page article on an English woman who seems fairly rootless, having moved from a small city in England, to Paris, and whom is now studying range management at the University of Wyoming, after having worked on a Big Horn Basis ranch.
Harrop quotes from As You Like It in her article, although she doesn't quote the whole text, which reads:
Rosalind: A traveler. By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your land to see other men's. Then to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.
Jacques: Yes, I have gained my experience.
Rosalind: And your experience makes you sad. I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad--and to travel for it too.
Forrop goes on to note who we seemingly envy the traveling, but there's something to be sad about their rootless lives. And she wonders what occurs to these people in their old ages, do they settle in someplace new, where they have no connections, or return to the place they abandoned and pick up their old lives.
Well, by observation, at least some do. My home state, for many years, exported its young population, some of whom remained sort of romantically attached to the state for their careers, and then whom return later. As Americans, with Freedom To Travel written into their organic foundational and mythological law, the Constitution, they have that right.
But Farrop is on to something, although she's hardly unique in noting it. Agrarian poet, educator and novelist Wendell Berry earlier noted it in his essay Becoming Native To This Place. Berry notes that unless a person has real roots in a place, he's lacking a bit in something and by extension, everything suffers form a rootless population.
Indeed, that's the irony of travel. Travelers travel, usually, to see the authentic, unless they travel to one of the Disneyfied locations that Americans so love to visit. Absent that, when the travel to see Hawaii, or Paris, or Ireland or Scotland, they travel to see the real places, not a bunch of people like themselves who have a generic culture and no roots. They sense, really, that those cultures have something deeper, in being attached to the land and knowing it.
Americans have always been somewhat rootless, but in prior days they tended to move within their immediate regions. In the Frontier era, people moved, but often less than ten miles before establishing a new home. Some moves, of course, were huge, but they tended to be a big singular move. Now some people move constantly, and while relocation within a region remain very common, and because they are within a region are not really the type of move we mention here, the phenomenon of some people moving again and again, following a career, or just moving, is not unusual.
Well, it is a big sad. By constantly moving they never become, as Berry would have it, "native" to a place, and they lack something as a result. If our culture becomes more fluid, as it seems to threaten, and as some hope, this will become even more pronounced, and an era may arrive when people have no attachment to their region, don't even know it, have no attachment to their communities, and don't even know them, and have no attachment to each other.
Random Snippets: Trivial questions on the news.
This past weekend the new moderator for Meet The Press did an interesting and in depth interview of a member of President Obama's administration regarding ISIL and our plans to take that on.
At the tail end of it, the moderator suddenly shifted and told the guest that he was sure that the guest had spoken to the President about football player Ray Rice and did the President have a view on the NFL's recent actions regarding Rice, and if something should be done to the commissioner of that organization.
Seriously?
While it would be contrary to what the guest stated, I hope that in serious discussions at the White House the NFL's problems or those of its player, indeed the entire topic of professional sports controversies doesn't come up. Here we're talking about war, and the moderator is asking about the NFL? Rice's actions were inexcusable, but we're talking about the life and death of thousands here in war. That's much more signficant than the NFL.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Monday at the Bar: Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work: Annual Shad Bake, Bar to Bench,...
Mid Week at Work: Annual Shad Bake, Bar to Bench, 1924. District of Columbia Bar.
Do they still have the Shad Bake?
New feature (at the bar refers to the admission to practice law, not a bar serving drinks). And yes, this photo is recycled.
Do they still have the Shad Bake?
New feature (at the bar refers to the admission to practice law, not a bar serving drinks). And yes, this photo is recycled.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Football and Injury
I just posted a thread on being out of touch. One thing I've noted here before, is that I'm really out of touch about sports. Truly out of touch.
This is the start of the year where high school football becomes a bit deal for a lot of people, and its of course closely followed by parents and siblings who have family members playing football. That's fine, and to be expected. It's also the season where old alumni follow the games of their old schools, including high schools, and of course universities.
One of the things I've noted before in regards to this is that the best evidence is that American football has a hideous head injury rate. Frankly, playing football is very dangerous for youth. It simply is. It amazes me, as an observer, how adults will worry a great deal about injury from activities that a person is highly unlikely to be injured at, and not at all from one where the injury rate is high. I've heard, for example, parents worry about kids becoming interested in shooting sports, but at the same time feel that football is just fine. A person is much more likely to be injured playing football that shooting or hunting.
I'm not campaigning for something here, but I'm making this post to note that the National Football League has released a study that finds 30% of its players will suffer from Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, with the suggestion being that this is due to game related head injuries. To be fair to the NFL, almost every single player in the NFL was a college player and a high school player before that.
Now, I'm not saying that we should ban high school football, or college ball. But as a person who is so disinterested in football that I just can't follow a game no matter how hard I try, I have to admit that every time I see a young person I know suited up in a football uniform, it inspires concern in me.
Seems pretty self evident that the head injuries associated with this sport are a present danger to the players, and that needs to be addressed right away. No amount of grid iron glory will seem worth it when a person starts to suffer neurological deficits.
This is the start of the year where high school football becomes a bit deal for a lot of people, and its of course closely followed by parents and siblings who have family members playing football. That's fine, and to be expected. It's also the season where old alumni follow the games of their old schools, including high schools, and of course universities.
One of the things I've noted before in regards to this is that the best evidence is that American football has a hideous head injury rate. Frankly, playing football is very dangerous for youth. It simply is. It amazes me, as an observer, how adults will worry a great deal about injury from activities that a person is highly unlikely to be injured at, and not at all from one where the injury rate is high. I've heard, for example, parents worry about kids becoming interested in shooting sports, but at the same time feel that football is just fine. A person is much more likely to be injured playing football that shooting or hunting.
I'm not campaigning for something here, but I'm making this post to note that the National Football League has released a study that finds 30% of its players will suffer from Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, with the suggestion being that this is due to game related head injuries. To be fair to the NFL, almost every single player in the NFL was a college player and a high school player before that.
Now, I'm not saying that we should ban high school football, or college ball. But as a person who is so disinterested in football that I just can't follow a game no matter how hard I try, I have to admit that every time I see a young person I know suited up in a football uniform, it inspires concern in me.
Seems pretty self evident that the head injuries associated with this sport are a present danger to the players, and that needs to be addressed right away. No amount of grid iron glory will seem worth it when a person starts to suffer neurological deficits.
Random Snippets: Out of touch
I've concluded that there's no better way to confirm that you are out of touch than to get a bit of the sports or entertainment news.
Right now, the news is full of stories about a football player, last name of Rice, who was caught on camera beating up the woman who is now his wife (I don't know if they were married at the time). The themes of that is what the NFL should do about that.
Now, I think it's horrible that he beat up his wife or girlfriend, but beyond that its one of those things that actually surprise me that its such big news. I don't approve of that conduct at all, but what that means, it seems, would self evidently apply pretty much to him and her, and maybe society in general in terms of domestic abuse being horrible and it should be stopped. But does the NFL as his employer have a unique duty here? I really don't know why it would, unless every employer does. That is, if I learn that somebody beat up their spouse, and I honor bound to fire them? I hadn't thought that I was unless it was on company time. Maybe this incident was on NFL time? I don't know. I do know that in my role as a lawyer I've learned of plenty of reprehensible behavior that I find personally repugnant at all sorts of levels, but unless they were on company time for somebody I hadn't thought that required the person to be fired. Does it? Does the NFL have a morals clause in its contracts (now nearly a thing of the past)? I have no idea.
Is this even a football player people have heard of? I don't know the answer to that either.
Secondly, recently in the news there's been a huge outbreak of female personalities complaining about their private images (you can fill in the details here) being released. I don't know who most of those people are, although in a couple of instances they're apparently well known singers. No idea. Now I've heard their songs, and I'm not impressed.
Likewise, recently the big song of the summer seem to be a song called "Fancy". Now, I've heard that. But why is this song so nifty. Don't know the answer to that either. For that matter, having listened to it on the radio prior to seeing any images of the songteuse, I assumed, quite incorrectly, that the singer was probably an American, and probably an African American from an urban background, given the accents deployed in the song. Nope, she's an Australian. I have to wonder if African Americans find this offensive. I would. She's co-opted a black musical style and affected an urban African American accent.
Isn't that a little offensive somehow? Are people offended. And doesn't that pretty much mean that rap must truly be passe? No offense to Australians intended, but if young Australian women are carrying the banner for hip hop, the genre has obviously moved on.
Finally, at our house, a movie about the filming of Mary Poppins has been getting a lot of air time. Showing that I'm not just out of touch on current events, but on lots of stuff, I don't have a clue why that would be interesting as a topic. I've never seen but a few snippets of Mary Poppins, the film, in the first place, and it looks boring. A movie about it would seem to be doubly boring.
Right now, the news is full of stories about a football player, last name of Rice, who was caught on camera beating up the woman who is now his wife (I don't know if they were married at the time). The themes of that is what the NFL should do about that.
Now, I think it's horrible that he beat up his wife or girlfriend, but beyond that its one of those things that actually surprise me that its such big news. I don't approve of that conduct at all, but what that means, it seems, would self evidently apply pretty much to him and her, and maybe society in general in terms of domestic abuse being horrible and it should be stopped. But does the NFL as his employer have a unique duty here? I really don't know why it would, unless every employer does. That is, if I learn that somebody beat up their spouse, and I honor bound to fire them? I hadn't thought that I was unless it was on company time. Maybe this incident was on NFL time? I don't know. I do know that in my role as a lawyer I've learned of plenty of reprehensible behavior that I find personally repugnant at all sorts of levels, but unless they were on company time for somebody I hadn't thought that required the person to be fired. Does it? Does the NFL have a morals clause in its contracts (now nearly a thing of the past)? I have no idea.
Is this even a football player people have heard of? I don't know the answer to that either.
Secondly, recently in the news there's been a huge outbreak of female personalities complaining about their private images (you can fill in the details here) being released. I don't know who most of those people are, although in a couple of instances they're apparently well known singers. No idea. Now I've heard their songs, and I'm not impressed.
Likewise, recently the big song of the summer seem to be a song called "Fancy". Now, I've heard that. But why is this song so nifty. Don't know the answer to that either. For that matter, having listened to it on the radio prior to seeing any images of the songteuse, I assumed, quite incorrectly, that the singer was probably an American, and probably an African American from an urban background, given the accents deployed in the song. Nope, she's an Australian. I have to wonder if African Americans find this offensive. I would. She's co-opted a black musical style and affected an urban African American accent.
Isn't that a little offensive somehow? Are people offended. And doesn't that pretty much mean that rap must truly be passe? No offense to Australians intended, but if young Australian women are carrying the banner for hip hop, the genre has obviously moved on.
Finally, at our house, a movie about the filming of Mary Poppins has been getting a lot of air time. Showing that I'm not just out of touch on current events, but on lots of stuff, I don't have a clue why that would be interesting as a topic. I've never seen but a few snippets of Mary Poppins, the film, in the first place, and it looks boring. A movie about it would seem to be doubly boring.
Sunday Morning Scene.
St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City Utah
From Churches of the West: St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City, where there's more text on the same.
From Churches of the West: St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City, where there's more text on the same.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Scottish Independence?
This upcoming week we may see Scotland acquire something it hasn't had since the 18th Century, that being Scottish independence. If a majority of Scottish voters vote "yes" on a referendum on September 18, Scotland will resume independent status and the United Kingdom will shrink to just being England and Wales.
Let's hope Scottish voters take a page from the Quebecois and vote "no". Its a terrible idea.
Yes, the Scots remain a separate culture, but even before de jure unification the Scots, English and Welsh people had been so closely associated with each other, as they would have to be given that they all share a single large island, that the intertwining of their destinies was inevitable. They've so impacted each other that they are a British people, with separate, but not that separate, national identities. They further share a common history, and like or it or not, they'll continue to share a common fate as they move forward. It'll be easier to deal with that fate together, rather than separately.
It'd be a shame to see the United Kingdom cease to be that. Here's hoping that Scotland remains in it.
Thomas Berger passes
I learned, just tonight, that Thomas Berger, the novelist, died in July at age 89.
Berger was the author of Little Big Man, a great novel and one of my absolute favorite. Even though I'm engaged, slow motion, in trying to write a historical novel (for which this blog is supposedly research), I read very few novels of any kid. But this is a great one.
Most people familiar with this title are probably familiar with the now dated movie. I like the movie, but in some ways the movie hasn't passed the test of time. The book, however, certainly has. It serves the function that the best historical fiction does, acting to illuminate the truth of which the fiction is based. Its great.
I haven't read any of Mr. Berger's other novels, including the 1999 sequel to Little Big Man, which was well received. I may read at least that latter novel. At any rate, however, if Mr. Berger had contributed only one book to the American library, Little Big Man would ahve been a great addition.
May he rest in peace.
Berger was the author of Little Big Man, a great novel and one of my absolute favorite. Even though I'm engaged, slow motion, in trying to write a historical novel (for which this blog is supposedly research), I read very few novels of any kid. But this is a great one.
Most people familiar with this title are probably familiar with the now dated movie. I like the movie, but in some ways the movie hasn't passed the test of time. The book, however, certainly has. It serves the function that the best historical fiction does, acting to illuminate the truth of which the fiction is based. Its great.
I haven't read any of Mr. Berger's other novels, including the 1999 sequel to Little Big Man, which was well received. I may read at least that latter novel. At any rate, however, if Mr. Berger had contributed only one book to the American library, Little Big Man would ahve been a great addition.
May he rest in peace.
Repeating History. Learning from the Crusades
I just bumped up the Myths thread, which includes a lot of historical myths. I thought about adding this one to it, but it deserves its own thread, so here it goes.
Depiction of the Sarcens outside of Paris in 732. That's right, outside of Paris. The Islamic invasion of Europe in this early Caliphate stage advanced this far north, which it would do again (outside Vienna) 700 years later.
One of the most often repeated lines about history is George Santayana's observation that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is often changed to "those who have not learned from history are doomed to repeat it", and similar variants, all of which are true. Probably something that can be added to that is that those who learn history incorrectly, or who misunderstand history, get to repeat it as well, frequently to their horror.
And so we have the Crusades.
The Crusades weren't called the Crusades at the time that they occurred. That's a term tagged on them in later years, post Reformation, when they were understood as sort of a singular episode. Even that understanding isn't really correct, as it seems to assume, quite falsely, that the Church declared war on Islam, and then the Crusades happened, and then they ended. None of that is really right. Looking at what really happened is worth doing, as we didn't learn the history, and now we are in fact repeating it.
The Crusades were once more or less accurately understood, but over the past several decades there's been a lot of hand wringing in the western world about how awful we (Europeans) were, or sometimes how awful the Catholic church was, for picking on the Moslems in the Middle East. That's the current view now, backed up in self-righteous statements people have issued over the years, seemingly assuming that we enlightened folks would never do something like that now, and we just failed to comprehend Islam. None of that is even close to being historically accurate.
The First Crusade was "called" in 1095. By that time, however, the Christian world had endured Islamic armed invasion for about 400 years. The first waive of it had come during Mohamed's lifetime when he expanded his new religion by the sword, taking over the Arabian peninsula in the process. This lead him into Christian lands, which would remain Christian for decades thereafter, in spite of the invasions, and whose remnants even today still exist. In the following decades Islam was spread by Arab armies in wars of conquest all over North Africa and into Spain. The Moslems' armies of conquest then spread over the Pyrenees and into France, until Charles Martel arrested their progress, and turned them around, in the Battle of Tours in 732, just mere decades after Mohamed's death. This arrested the progress of Islam's advance by the sword, all the way up in central France, and the process began of rolling the Islamic tide back in Spain, a process that wouldn't be complete until 1492.
In Middle East, Moslem forces, by the 11th Century, were oppressing the Christian residents of that region, which in many instances constituted the majority of the population and were pressing into the Byzantine Empire. The Great Schism had not yet occurred, although the differences that would lead to it in culture were starting to manifest themselves, and the Byzantines called for help. The result was the Crusades.
We have tended to view that as some sort of unwarranted invasion for some time, but in reality, in an era when history generally progressed slowly, it wasn't seen that way at all. It was an armed expedition to help a Christian Ally, the Byzantines, and to protect the Christian population of the Middle East, which was often the majority in any one region, all against an aggressive Islam that was an unwanted and unrelenting invader. It was seen as a massive existential threat to the region, and to the safety of the Western World.
In other words, the Arab Islamic Armies (and later the Ottoman Turks) were seen pretty much the way we're seeing ISIL right now. In taking on ISIL, we're pretty much doing what they started doing in the 11th Century.
Well, we might want to quit picking on the Crusaders, I suppose, given that.
And we might want to consider that the defensive wars of the Crusades were initially a success, but ultimately failed. As a defensive war, they succeeded in arresting Arab Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire and in removing Islamic over-lordship of Christian lands. They no doubt also occupied some Islamic territory as well. But ultimately, they failed. The reason is simple. It wasn't because Europeans were trying to control a foreign culture. Recent research has shown that the majority Christian population in those regions where they were the majority adapted to the Europeans pretty quickly and even generally welcomed the European immigrants that came along after the armies. No, what happened is that after the initial successes, the Europeans generally lost interest in the region and when it fell again, viewed it as a far off distant threat. The threat wasn't even appreciated again until the Turks invaded Anatolia and took Constantinople in 1453. Ultimately, the Moslem armies would be turned around in Vienna, in 1529.
So what can we learn from this? Well, a variety of things I suppose. One thing is that before condemning our own culture for taking on a military project, perhaps we ought to consider what they were really thinking and why. The other may be that when regarding a threat, just because it was in antiquity doesn't mean that it really has fully gone away, but maybe just gone smaller or larger. The Battle of Tours was 300 years distant from the First Crusades, and 1400 years from the Siege of Constantinople. We're about 500 years from that Siege, and the similar one at Vienna, making us closer in time to those events than Charles Martel was.
I'm not saying that those who have invaded Iraq and who contest for Syria are fully analogous to Mohamed's armies of the 7th Century, nor to the Ottoman Turks of the 15th. But they see themselves that way, and we would be pretty naive to at least not appreciate their world view, and the world view of those faced with similar or at least somewhat similar threats in the distant past, and learn by them.
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