Thomas Bruscino and "The new old lie"

We have recently waxed eloquent about The New Criterion, the favorite periodical of the MH household.  That doesn’t by any means indicate that we always agree with what is published in those pages.  In a recent essay, Thomas Bruscino’s writes about what he calls “The new old lie.”
That lie, per Bruscino, is the idea that war is meaningless. He charges the American arts community with attempting to paint all war with a nihilistic brush for more than a century.
Emotions are freshest and hottest regarding our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Bruscino traces this “war is meaningless” strain of thought in the American art world back to writers like Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane. Their exposure (direct in the former’s case, indirect in the latter’s) to the horrors of the American Civil War caused them to take a more aloof stance toward the war experience, emphasizing realism over more idealized depictions of heroism.
Crude anti-war cant deserves a vigorous response, to be sure, especially when it is disguised as subtle art or insightful criticism. While attempting to critique the literary left, however, Bruscino spins off logical crudities of his own. Will those who might be susceptible to the siren song of the anti-war left finish reading his essay persuaded of a need to rethink things? No, a more likely result is that they might think that there are no compelling arguments capable of challenging their positions.
Can artistically sensitive souls on the left ever be brought to think that America’s wars have been, in the main, necessary and that any new war should thus be given the benefit of the doubt? Probably not. Perhaps only slightly more hopeful is the prospect of the left embracing an idea that would have been unremarkable in America as recently as the early 1960’s – namely that service to one’s country in uniform is intrinsically honorable, even ennobling.
While such wholesale conversions are unlikely on the part of what Bruscino calls “the cynics,” reflexive anti-war and anti-military sentiment expressed by artists and critics on the left should be answered with enough force to dissuade them from hoping for sympathy from a broader spectrum of Americans. Whether essays like Bruscino’s are helpful in this regard is quite another question.
Effective refutations do not begin with a rhetorical straw-man, and Bruscino creates a big one – namely that writers who oppose war are primarily motivated by the idea that war is meaningless. While there are doubtless devoutly consistent pacifists in the arts community, the intellectual left that informs writers and other artists has as often as not been inspired more by the idea that we are on the wrong side of a given war. Were this not the case, anti-war artists during the Cold War would have been equally critical of the Soviet bloc. During the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda was famously photographed sitting in the seat of an anti-aircraft battery used to shoot down American aircraft. Presumably the anti-war Fonda thought that shooting down American airmen was a meaningful, positive act of violence.
As another example, when President Clinton bombed Serbian civilian targets during Orthodox Easter, it seems – based on the silence – that the denizens of the left felt that this destruction of life and property ordered by President Clinton had some positive meaning. President Bush bombing civilian Muslim targets during Ramadan would doubtless have sparked outrage, on the other hand.
It is, at this point, worth stopping to note Bruscino’s persistent used of the loaded label of “cynic.” Leaving aside the fact that cynicism can just as easily underlie advocacy for war, alternative terms would be more accurate and fair when describing those anti-war views that percolate out into the general American consciousness from time to time. “Skepticism” would be a good choice, and more fairly frames the debate. Skepticism about war serves a critical function, whether that skepticism comes from sources hostile to American patriotism or from those devoted to it, although undoubtedly carrying greater weight when it comes from the latter.
Returning to the question of meaning in war, these words of Bruscino about President Lincoln’s eloquent words at Gettysburg are worth noting:
But was Lincoln right? Did the soldiers at Gettysburg give the last full measure of devotion to a cause? Have our soldiers ever fought for something more than just to survive the horrors of combat? The answer is much more complicated than the critics allow, which by default means that their absolutist view is wrong. But that assertion does not let them off the hook—in fact, it should make them rethink exactly what they hope to prove with their cynicism about war.
Really? Yes, absolutist views are usually at least partly wrong, but why should that fact cause anyone to rethink having a general cynicism or skepticism about war? A presumption against going to war is healthy. The very idea that in a free society a war skeptic should be given the burden of proof verges on moral rubbish. Quite the contrary – those who would take their nation to war should have the burden of proof in each instance. When this responsibility is worn lightly and public support for war is drummed up with jingoism or worse, such as was too often the case in that bloodiest of wars – WWI, a backlash of cynicism is hardly surprising.
The real question that citizens ask is never whether war is intrinsically meaningless. The question is always whether this war is so necessary at this time that it justifies sending these young American men and women to that country, where they will risk potential death, disability, or disfigurement in the service of those particular goals. In a more antique world, the end result of this deliberative process took the form of Congress voting to declare war.
Forcing such a clear declaration and forcing it to be defended clearly and truthfully – that is the role of skepticism. Pity the country that has insufficient numbers of such skeptics in civilian and military leadership when war is being weighed against other alternatives. This is no small matter when durable public support for a military effort is needed, whether for the war at hand or for an even more important one yet to come.
Bruscino correctly points out that wars have consequences, and that the results of a war can determine which nation’s values survive to live in another chapter of history. Successfully concluded wars are generally won by nations that can and do act with effective, swift, harsh, and brutal destructiveness. This is, indeed, the Achilles heel of the true anti-war advocate – a successful campaign to avoid acts of war can result in being on the receiving end of that kind of brutal destruction.
When Bruscino writes that “the outcome of war determines which cause gets to survive, thrive, and guide the lives of people in peace, and just as importantly, which cause does not get to shape the peace,” he is certainly correct. But this is not a debate-ending point in an argument over whether to enter into a given war. It is rather an argument for winning wars rather than losing them.
The persuasiveness of the anti-war left as it engages the broader public has nothing to do with arguments, whether cogent or sophistical, about the meaninglessness of war in general. What the American public can be persuaded of, though, is that this particular war is a bad idea. It is precisely on this point where anti-war sentiment can be most successfully translated from a fringe position of activists into a mainstream, policy-altering phenomenon. There is, however, a preventative – avoiding particular wars that really are meaningless, especially when compared to the expenditures of blood and treasure involved.
The American public, which has shown great forbearance with our nation’s military undertakings, even those of murky outlooks, has discovered that Iraq is not going to be colonial Philadelphia on the Euphrates and that Afghanistan’s shining cities on the hill are actually Taliban great keeps.
Thus, the real problem facing those who would promote our current wars is not the far left and its assertions of the meaninglessness of war. The real problem is war fatigue in the heartland. Heartland fatigue comes not because the denizens of those parts are being worn down by unanswered pacifists writing in The Atlantic Monthly. It comes because they meet the soldiers arriving at their local airports and visit the hospitals and gravesides, and because they are intelligent enough to see that in return for her pains, America has gone deeply into debt and weakened her economy. It comes because the soldiers in their lives are going back for second and third tours of duty in wastelands on the other side of the globe, with little prospect of achieving lasting victory.
At root, the fact that war is thought by some intellectuals to be meaningless has little effect on America and her ability to wage necessary wars. What does have a profound effect is that even a superficial encounter with war reveals that it is evil, even when it is necessary. Most importantly, war is the result of human choice. In the case of a powerful nation like ours that is unlikely to be invaded any time soon, it is at present always the result of our own choice, rather than someone else’s.
Pundits and politicians who advocate for making the choice of war are now facing an increasingly skeptical public that wonders whether decisions for American military intervention over the last 25 years have been arrived at with an appropriate seasoning of prudence. If Americans end up embracing for a time the anti-war cynicism of the left, it will be in no small part the result of the recent dearth of healthy skepticism when deciding whether war is necessary.

Romney: The first thing we do, let's call all the lawyers

You didn't need to be a pundit extraordinaire to know what the sound bite was going to be from tonight's GOP debate.

The collective "Whaaaat?" of millions of Republicans could be heard when Mitt Romney, not just once but twice, said that he would have to ask "the lawyers" whether it was within his power as President to do a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear capabilities without Congressional authorization.

There were two answers possible. One was Ron Paul's correct response -- namely that only Congress has the power to declare war, and that we've never had a situation in our nation's history where we knew about an impending attack and didn't have time to consult Congress. He was ridiculed for this by Rudy 9/11 Giuliani -- on whom the Paul's argument was lost, and who tried to turn Paul's statement into one where he said that America had never been attacked.

The other possible answer was some variation on the theme that other candidates used: yes, you get Congressional authorization if there's time, but not if there isn't.

Fred Thompson had a solid response, saying that there would always be time at least to consult with Congressional leadership, pointing out that no matter how urgent something might be -- eventually you need the support of the American people in any armed conflict, and without the help of Congress, you aren't likely to get that support.

While Romney otherwise turned in a solid performance in the debate, somehow he managed with this particular (and predictable) question to come up with an inexplicable third way -- it was one of those moments when his corporate experience was a real liability, since his answer conjured up teams of corporate handler/lawyers instructing the President on what to do in a potential national security emergency.

How exactly would Romney think that he would have time to call in his attorneys but not leaders of Congress? Good question. We imagine that Romney and his handlers will be up late tonight formulating answers to that and other questions.

Bad war -- worse ending

Yesterday, MH went through the exercise of analyzing Sen. Tester's decision of how to respond to the MoveOn.org ad attacking Gen. Petraeus. It was hardly a matter of great importance -- these votes amounted to deciding how to posture in response to a posture.

The more meaty votes related to the Iraq War were votes that failed, with Sens. Baucus and Tester voting with the bulk of Democrats (the losing side of the votes) on two of the three.

The one that came closest to passing was one mandating a set amount of time out of Iraq for soldiers -- of the three, it was ironically perhaps the measure that was farthest from the authority that Congress has over military matters. If anything is the responsibility of the chain of command, it is the decision of where to assign whom, and for how long.

Failing by an even wider margin (mustering a mere 47 votes) was a measure setting timetables for withdrawal. Again, this is a matter that belongs to the chain of command -- how many troops to have in the theater of action.

Failing by the most dramatic margin of all was the Feingold amendment setting an absolute deadline for cutting off funds. Sens. Tester and Baucus voted against this measure, even though it was the only measure of the three that came closest to being within the authority of the Congress.

While Montana Headlines has opposed this war from the beginning, our position has remained that there is only one clearly legitimate means by which Congress can unilaterally end it: passing a new Iraq resolution that clearly rescinds the authorization for use of force that Congress previously gave the President.

Even that is uncharted territory, but it would give Congress clear justification for cutting off funding. Given that the vote to cut off funding lost 28 to 70, and given that no bill has been passed rescinding the earlier authorization of force, it is clear that neither party is remotely ready to exercise Congress's true authority regarding war.

What is sad about this war is that it is the result of political failures on the result of both parties: a failure of clear thinking and internal debate on the part of Republicans, and a failure of nerve on the part of Democrats fearing to be saddled with the political liability of being called weak on issues of national security.

Part of the Democrats' job was, incidentally, made more difficult because of Bill Clinton's own dirty little senseless war in the Balkans. When Clinton put the American military to work helping solidify the Muslim European toehold in the Balkans, it made it difficult to vote against use of force after Muslim terrorists directly attacked American soil.

The bottom line is that while Democrats and Republicans alike can posture on the war for political purposes, there is no end game by which either party can come out smelling pretty.

Both parties are complicit in getting us into the war, and neither party can get America quickly out of the war without leaving the Middle East and the world a more dangerous place than it was when Iraq was first invaded.

We are in a situation where even if the President and his advisers and the leadership of both parties worked in a truly bipartisan manner to end the war in a way that made for the most stability and security, America would still be hard-pressed to find a good ending for the Iraq War.

As it is, with both parties clinging to delusions that there is a way to use Iraq come up with a partisan "win," we will never have a chance to see whether we as Americans could bring the matter to a close in a way that doesn't cause harm to our country's interests and reputation.

Sen. Tester's confusion continues

When Sen. Jon Tester ruled out of order an amendment on the Senate floor condemning the now infamous MoveOn.org ad that called General Petraeus "General Betray Us," saying that it was not germane to the bill under consideration, there was some, shall we say, strong reaction from the right -- implying that Tester had made his ruling because he owed MoveOn a favor.

Now, Tester did indeed greatly benefit from MoveOn's largesse in his razor-thin victory over Sen. Burns. There is no need to detail the various direct and indirect help MoveOn provided. The Montana Headlines household has particularly fond memories of the numerous phone calls we received from places like New York and New Hampshire, making sure that we Montanans learned things about Conrad Burns that folks up in the Northeast were more up on than us.

Someone in the MH household must have been involved at one point in some sort of unsavory associations for the number to have made it so prominently onto the MoveOn telephone list, but no confessions were ever extracted, and the matter is now behind us.

Be that as it may, 527s are now part of the political game, and although conservatives were slow on the uptake in figuring out the new rules, John Kerry discovered that the blade can swiftly cut both ways, especially when it is being wielded by men who understand battle.

But back to that decision that Tester made on the floor of the Senate when presiding.

Now, anyone who thinks that Tester was actually the one who made that decision is dreaming. There's a reason why both parties feel comfortable having the most junior and least experienced Senators take turns sitting in the chair presiding over routine Senate floor proceedings.

Whoever made that decision -- the parliamentarian, the Majority Leader, or another high-ranking Senate leader -- doesn't matter. Tester may have announced the decision, but he didn't make it. Criticizing him for instructions that were whispered in his ear or that were texted to him on his Blackberry is unreasonable.

Then, Tester was furthermore criticized for not immediately condemning the MoveOn ad on his own. It was understandable, though, that Tester didn't do so, since he may either have agreed with the MoveOn sentiment that Gen. Petraeus was giving misleading testimony to Congress or he may just have thought that MoveOn had the right to say whatever they please about Petraeus -- soldier or not.

Republicans, of course, were planning to try again with another resolution, and Democrats were ready with a substitute amendment -- they proposed condeming not only the MoveOn ad but also, by implication, a few blasts from the past when prominent Democratic politicians who were veterans allegedly had their patriotism questioned in ads run against them in their campaigns.

It was an odd pairing, since the ads the Democrats objected to were from years ago and since they were directed not at someone serving on active duty but rather at politicians who were voluntarily in the rumble-tumble of electoral politics. It made sense as an attempt at political maneuvering, but little sense from a logical point-of-view.

Note the roll-call vote. Every single Democrat, including Sen. Tester, voted "to strongly condemn attacks on the honor, integrity, and patriotism of any individual who is serving or has served honorably in the United States Armed Forces, by any person or organization." Republicans knew what the "has served honorably" part meant: any veteran running on the Democratic ticket couldn't be criticized and should never have been criticized. They rightly voted against it.

But Republicans weren't ever claiming that a veteran was forever immune from criticism -- they were rather condemning an ad that could reasonably be read as impugning the patriotism and honesty of an active duty soldier. Either one agrees that such ads are inappropriate and that it is a legitimate function of Congress to defend the honor of a general appointed by unanimous consent, or one doesn't.

When Tester didn't have anything to say after his floor ruling, the logical assumption was that he disagreed with the sense of the Republican amendment -- otherwise he would have said something, as noted above, in order to avoid any appearance of being in thrall to MoveOn.

Knowing the firestorm that had been raised by the ruling that he announced on the floor, if he really felt that questioning the patriotism of General Petraeus was something worthy of condemnation, he could have squelched it immediately with an announcement saying that he agreed with the sense of the amendment, but had made a purely parliamentary ruling. Simple.

And it would have pre-empted any allegations that Tester made the ruling as a payoff to MoveOn -- or out of fear of retribution from MoveOn and the liberal netroots. Such a statement would have avoided any appearance of being indebted to an organization that poured money into his campaign. One would think that Tester, having run on ethics, would have been sensitive to this and beat Republicans to the punch, saying something before they had a chance to.

If, that is, he really agreed with the sense of the amendment that he later voted for.

Let's be completely clear: Montana Headlines is not saying that Tester should have made a statement like this if he didn't agree with the sentiment that the Senate should "strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus..." There is a strong case to be made for having Congress stay out of the free speech of political organizations, as David Crisp has pointed out.

Old-school conservative Republican Ron Paul, AKA "Dr. No," would probably have voted against it for that very reason.

So why did Tester vote for either amendment -- the Democratic one, let alone the Republican one?

Why did Tester wait until he was forced into a vote by Republicans -- and then blink?

Tester's vote shows that his votes and decisions were neither motivated by his conviction that the MoveOn ad was worthy of condemnation, nor by concerns of avoiding the appearance of being owned by MoveOn, nor by a belief in having the Congress stay out of the free political speech of others.

His base is not is not impressed at the way he caved in and threw a bone to his right, Baucus-style.

And the rest of us would only have been impressed with such a condemnation of the MoveOn ad had it happened right away after the floor ruling -- demonstrating that Tester both knew his own mind on this matter and that he wasn't hesitant to express it for fear of the netroots. We recognize a bone when one is insultingly tossed on the ground in front of us.

MH would have been impressed had he voted against all of the amendments, saying that it was none of Congress's business. We would even have respected him for saying that he agreed with the MoveOn ad and wasn't going to condemn something that he thought was true.

As it is, we still don't know what Tester really thinks. But we do again learn that whatever is at the front of his mind, it isn't an abundance of caution avoiding the appearance of voting according to his campaign pocketbook.

Sun-Tzu , Clausewitz, and a country worth fighting for

Robert D. Kaplan, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, has written one of the more important articles we have encountered of late dealing with issues of war and the military. Kaplan, writing in The American Interest, begins with this observation:

Some truths are so obvious that to mention them in polite company seems either pointless or rude. What is left unstated, however, can with time be forgotten. Both of these observations apply today to the American way of war.

It is obvious that a military can only fight well on behalf of a society in which it believes, and that a society which believes little is worth fighting for cannot, in the end, field an effective military. Obvious as this is, we seem to have forgotten it.

Kaplan goes on to discuss that "the greatest asymmetry in our struggle with radical Islam" is morale, plain and simple. And he goes on to discuss why this is, and what it means for us as a country. He writes:

If a glimpse of the future is possible, it must come from an intimacy with the present clarified by the great works of the past.

For over four years now I have been traveling much of the world in the company of U.S. soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen.

Upon a halt in my travels, I re-read both The Art of War by the 6th-century BCE Chinese court minister Sun-Tzu and On War by the early 19th-century Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz.

What struck me straight away, thanks to my recent travels-in-arms, was not what either author said, but what both assumed. Both Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz believe—in their states, their sovereigns, their homelands.

Because they believe, they are willing to fight. This is so clear that they never need to state it, and they never do.

Kaplan goes on to talk about the fact that he only began to understand the contexts in which Clauswitz and Sun-Tzu wrote after spending long periods of time with American soldiers. In short, "after living beside junior officers and senior NCOs whose logic, like theirs, flowed from patriotism and personal commitment."

We all know the canard that says that most men and women only join the military because they want an education and it is the only way to get one for many. We know this because world-renowned military psychologist Rosie O'Donnell repeatedly threw it into Elisabeth Hasselbeck's face on The View.

And yet, when one is inside the world of the military, it is indeed a world heavily populated by one end of the patriotism bell-curve. Some are offended by this suggestion, since it seems to imply that those who didn't serve their country in uniform are unpatriotic. Far from it. But as Kaplan points out, there is a growing divergence between the mindset of the American elite and the mindset of those who have dedicated their lives to military service.

This disconnect has been brought into stark view by the kind of wars or struggles we are now engaged in:

The suicide bomber is the distilled essence of jihad, the result of an age when the electronic media provides an unprecedented platform for exhibitionism. Clausewitz’s rules of war do not apply here...

[]

Even as we narrow our own view of warfare’s acceptable parameters, trying to harm as few civilians as possible in successful operations, our enemies amplify the concept of total war: They kill tens, or hundreds, or occasionally thousands of civilians in order to undermine the morale of millions.

The killing of 3,000 civilians on September 11, 2001 might have temporarily awakened a warrior spirit in American democracy, but such a spirit is hard to sustain in the crucible of an ambiguous conflict.

In Iraq, a country of 26 million people through which more than a million American troops have passed, the loss of a few Americans and three dozen-or-so Iraqis daily in suicide bombs is enough to demoralize a homefront 7,000 miles away.

A non-warrior democracy with a limited appetite for casualties is probably a good thing in terms of putting the brakes on a directionless war strategy.

That does not change the fact, however, that Americans as a people are ever further removed from any semblance of a warrior spirit as we grow increasingly prosperous and our political elite grows increasingly secular.

And there, in that last sentence, is the thing that gnaws at so many of us, even if we (wearing our civilian hats, so to speak) disagree with the wisdom of this particular conflict in Iraq.

While it is perhaps less true in the South and in certain other states like Montana, which have strong traditions of military service, that gap is there, and it is keenly felt by those who serve -- particularly those who have dedicated their lives to such service: officers, NCO's, members of elite fighting forces.

In order to make what the military does more palatable, we actually weaken ourselves in the eyes of the world:

In such a world, the real threat to our national security may be our own lack of faith in ourselves, meaning not just faith in a God who has a special care for America, but faith in the American national enterprise itself, in whatever form.

This lack of faith in turn leads to an overdependence on ever more antiseptic military technology. But our near obsession with finding ways to kill others at no risk to our own troops is a sign of strength in our eyes alone.

To faithful or merely nationalist enemies, it is a sign of weakness, even cowardice.

It is not that faith -- the kind of faith that wins battles and wars -- is absent in America. It is, however, increasingly compartmentalized within American society -- compartmentalized by region, class, and self-perceptions of intellectualism (or absence thereof.)

Kaplan talks about the virtual absence of military recruits from our nation's elite universities -- a state of affairs that America in the 1950's would have found astounding. In one particularly poignant story, he tells about a recent graduation at Stanford:

...in the decades ahead American troops may become less soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen, and more purple warriors—in essence a guild in which the profession of combat-arms is passed down from father to son.

It is striking how many troops I know whose parents and other relatives had also been in the service, especially among the units whose members face the highest level of personal risk.

Contrast this with the fact that, at the 2006 Stanford commencement ceremony, Maj. General Lehnert, whose son was the lone graduating student from a military family, was struck by how many of the other parents had never even met a member of the military before he introduced himself.

The entire article is well worth reading, since the subject matter is a vital one for our country:

The point is to remember what we have forgotten. A military will not continue to fight and fight well for a society that could be losing faith in itself, even if that society doffs its cap now and again to its warrior class.

Quotation of the (long Senate) night

From the man who is perhaps the favorite Senator around Montana Headlines:

Added Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., of his Democratic colleagues: "I bet I can stay up longer than they can."

And so he did, speaking on the floor after even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had retired, a little after midnight, to a cot set up in a parlor adjacent to his office.

Coburn, of course, in the course of a career as a physician delivering babies, has pulled more all-nighters than the rest of his Senate colleagues combined -- and he actually has had to do something real, unlike the bad theatrics of last night, when Sen. Reid courageously filibustered his own bill.

Gazette editorial by a dishonorably discharged soldier: a poor choice

The Billings Gazette ran an opinion piece by Camilo Mejia, who was convicted of desertion by court-martial in 2004 when he failed to return to military duty after a 2-week furlough.

He was sentenced only to one year in prison and a dishonorable discharge (a mark of shame in and of itself for anyone who has served in the miliary.) Given that the traditional punishment for desertion is execution, Mejia got off pretty easy.

As is typical with so many "courageous" protesters, Mejia didn't plead guilty and take his punishment like a man. He instead used various claims under international law in an attempt to avoid conviction and punishment.

Mejia has since become a darling of the anti-war movement, or at least that part of it that doesn't understand the concept of honesty and honor when serving in uniform.

The Billings Gazette editorial staff should be ashamed of itself for printing a version of Mejia's apologia -- on the day after Independence Day, no less.

From the bookshelf: Hesiod and early Greek agrarian thought

Works and Days
By Hesiod

There are many places where one could start in examining the literature devoted to agriculture and the agricultural life, but one of the most natural is Hesiod’s Works and Days.

Dating back to the age of Homer in the 8^th c. B.C., Works and Days has a surprising familiarity, in no small part because it is written from the point of view of a small landowner who lives and works the ground, raises his livestock, watches the weather and seasons, and pays close attention to the importance of piety – neither offending the gods nor omitting reverence toward them.

The familiarity begins immediately with an upfront portrayal not of idyllic fauns and satyrs prancing in forest glades – but with strife. One kind of strife is the cruel one – war. The other is one is a positive force, albeit one that requires no less effort and attention

Set in the roots of earth, an aid to men.
She urges even lazy men to work:
A man grows eager, seeing another rich
From ploughing, planting, ordering his house;
So neighbour vies with neighbour in the rush
For wealth: this Strife is good for mortal men –

…Do not let Wicked Strife persuade you, skipping work,
To gape at politicians and give ear
To all the quarrels of the market place.
He has no time for courts and public life
Who has not stored up one full year’s supply
Of corn, Demeter’s gift, got from the earth.
When you have grain piled high, you may dispute
And fight about the goods of other men.
But you will never get this chance again…

And with that note of warning from Hesiod to pay attention to business, Montana Headlines really should sign off, since there is still work to be done outside around here while it is still light. But first, a couple of comments:

One of the most intriguing modern scholars of the agrarian life of the classical world is Victor David Hanson, a professor of classics at a California university. Conservatives may be more familiar with his essays on military issues for National Review and other publications -- his dual interests of agriculture and war are rooted in Hanson's scholarship, in which he traces the roots of the independent Greek city-state not to the slaveholding and philosophizing aristocracy, but rather to the independent farmer/warrior hoplite.

America, too, was founded by men who revered hard work, who viewed the ownership of land as central to the success of the Republic, and who put down the plow and left their land to take up arms when necessary for the defense of their homeland. Until well into the 20th century, this remained a familiar pattern.

At some point, Montana Headlines will review some of Hanson's books in greater depth, but Hanson has this to say about the rise of Greek agrarianism in his classic work The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, saying that there was in the 8th c. B.C. --

...a transformation of the mind, a radical change of attitude... This alteration in the Greek mentality involved a new ideology of work derived from land ownership, not tenancy.

More specifically, it entailed an idea that manual labor, time spent on the soil, was both intrinsically ennobling, moral if you will, and a wise economic investment that would lead (not necessarily in one's own lifetime) to greater agricultural production and hence more wealth for coming generations.

Moral and ennobling -- yet Hesiod has a certain cold and unflinching realism about the rigors of rural life and the realities of human nature that complicate an already difficult task. Like any farmer or rancher today who makes a living from the land, Hesiod doesn't romanticize the life.

A modern-day farmer or rancher will rarely speak in words about the moral and ennobling aspects of what he does, but he will tell you about it through action -- tenaciously holding on to land and a way of life regardless of prospects for financial success. And his actions will usually show that he, like Hesiod, takes the long view, thinking about how to make it possible for at least one child to continue with that way of life. Hesiod likewise makes it clear that the ancient Greek farmer, at least in the Homeric era with its rise of small landholders, wasn't just doing it for the money.

There was also a fall of the Greek small farmer -- and that is part of Hanson's story as well, a story that will resonate with anyone with ties to American rural life. But that is for another day.

Where is the resolution?

Some time back, there was an exchange between Montana Headlines and 4&20 Blackbirds regarding the constitutionality and wisdom of cutting off funding to the Iraq war without first deauthorizing it formally (back when that wonderful little cerebral site was still in action.) The initial MH post is here, the 4& 20 response here, with an MH followup here. In the final 4&20 post of the series, Jay Stevens agreed with us that a clear path to ending the war was with a new or revised Iraq war resolution – although by no means was there agreement that this would be the only constitutional way to end the war.

While Montana Headlines isn't particularly fond of Norman Podhoretz's world-view when it comes to military action (last we heard, he thinks that Iraq has been going just fine all along and that military action against Iran will go equally fine) -- he did write a very interesting book about 25 years ago, back when he was a new convert to conservatism (conservatism of a peculiar sort, granted, but he meant well.) That book was Why We Were In Vietnam.

The interesting thing about the book was not that it made a case for whether we should have been in Vietnam or whether we could have won it. What was intriguing about Podhoretz's view was how he summarized the ways in which each of the Presidents involved -- Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon -- tried to win the war "on the cheap."

We have been watching an administration and a Congress that in various ways – sometimes taking playing tag-team, sometimes acting in concert – have for several years tried to do this war on the cheap. Not enough troops at the right times, not enough foresight and planning, not enough realism about how the Middle Eastworks, not enough humility, and not enough domestic political unity behind the war – even while everyone is eager to “support the troops.”

Congress this week was right to provide ongoing funding without a timetable or other instructions to the executive on method. It is not the job of Congress to tell the generals in the field how to conduct a military action. It is, however, Congress's duty to fund any action that it has authorized -- and the Iraq action is still Congressionally authorized. The game-playing with deadlines and benchmarks and timetables and funding was properly brushed aside by the President.

Republicans in Washington believe that the alternative to fighting to provide stability in Iraq is unacceptable regional chaos. Democrats are in a situation where they promised to end the war in the last election, but lack the courage to introduce, let alone pass, a new resolution that specifically revokes the previous Congressional authorization.

If they were to do introduce a new resolution, they should also state that Congress made a mistake by not voting -- up or down -- in the first place to declare war on Iraq, as the Constitution indicates Congress should do when we attack another country. Such a resolution to declare war may have failed, thereby preventing this misadventure. But if Congress had indeed declared war, the outcome would likely have been very different.

Congressional Republicans and the President may be deeply mistaken and delusional about having any hope for achieving stability, but at least they are voting and acting in accordance with their convictions. Former Sen. Fred Thompson has taken the position that this one last effort must be made, and given the fact that Gen. Petraeus (whom nearly everyone claims to support and hold in high esteem) believes the surge has a chance at achieving stability, he is probably right.

Those Congressional Democrats who ran on a platform of ending the war, such as our Sen. Tester, should have the courage to introduce a new Iraq resolution that revokes authorization for the war. Doing so would not be unpatriotic or unsupportive of the troops. Yes, it would go down to defeat because too many Democrats fear the political consequences of appearing weak and because they fear taking responsibility for how the region would explode after our withdrawal, but they should go on record.

How to conduct a war is the responsibility of the military, under the commander in chief.Whether we are in a state of war, however, is the decision of the American people, expressed through their constitutionally elected representatives in Congress.

For now, Congress has apparently decided that the overall will of the American people – brave talk by progressives about a “mandate to end the war” in the last election notwithstanding – is to remain on task in Iraq. Until that changes, Congress should fund the war without strings attached and support the President.

If it does change, and Congress decides that the will of the American people is to end the war, expressing that will through an official withdrawal of authorization, the President should arrange for an orderly withdrawal, with an emphasis on the safety of our troops.

Reid/Feingold bill comments

For some reason, we've had no luck posting comments on wordpress blogs -- first Mark Tokarski's blog, then City Lights (which seems to use the same comments engine), and 4&20 Blackbirds. We've got our technical department working on it, but we paleolithic types have problems with this sort of thing. Anyway, here is what Montana Headlines wanted to post as a contribution to the open thread on the Reid/Feingold bill.

This is an appropriations bill, which means that Bush can unquestionably veto it, just as Clinton threatened to veto the funding bill for his Kosovo war. That one was a little different, in that the Republican House at one point doubled what he asked for, directing the extra funding into other areas of the military that they felt were neglected (little or no domestic pork, unlike some of what we have seen recently.)

On the other hand, there are plenty of quotations that indicate that Republicans in those days -- even those like Sen. Jesse Helms who had voted against and still opposed the War Powers Act of 1973 -- seemed to have little doubt about Congress's legitimate role in determining the scope and length of a military action.

Again, Kosovo was different in that there was no conceivable case to be made for American security, whereas the Iraq war has been pitched as part of a response to the events of September 11th -- correctly or incorrectly.

A question is whether a President could veto a new Iraq resolution that did not involve appropriations, but rather was explicitly an act of Congress exercising its constitutional power to "declare war" by "undeclaring war."

On first blush, it wouldn't seem that the President could veto such a binding resolution, but this would probably be an aspect of Constitutional law without any comparable Supreme Court precedent, since all declarations of war and authorizations for war have come at the request of a President, and all withdrawals from military action have involved at least the acquiescence of the President.

The President could argue that the "promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime" part of the original Iraq resolution hasn't been completed. We will leave aside the point that this portion of the bill should never have existed -- candidate Bush in the 2000 campaign, who rightly criticized the Clinton/Gore administration for "nation-building" and for a lack of humility on the world stage, would have agreed. Too bad he started listening to the wrong advisers -- and it his responsibility to listen to the right people.

The crafting of a binding resolution would force the House and the Senate to come to agreement on what the country's military objectives in the Middle East should be. The Framers came to the conclusion that the Congress as a whole should have the power to declare war (Alexander Hamilton's proposal was to give the Senate with that sole power, upon which the executive was to have "the intire direction of War when authorized or begun."

What was eventually settled on was wise, since Congress is the best reflection of the will of the populace as a whole. Silence in the Constitution on the exact ways in which the executive and legislative branches are to share the powers and responsibilities of war was also probably wise. As we have reviewed some very interesting historical comments, especially regarding Congressional opposition to the Mexican-American War and WWI, we have been hard-pressed to find the specific mechanisms by which revered figures like Daniel Webster and Henry Clay believed that Congress could exercise its power to stop a war.

Political consensus renders moot the need to make clear things about which the Constitution appears to be deliberately vague. This would mean, of course, that Sen. Lieberman plus at least 9 Republican Senators and a majority of "Blue Dog" Democrats would have to sign on to the resolution -- and ideally, such a resolution would gain far broader Republican support and even the acquiescence of the President. Given the unpopularity of the war at present, one doubts that any resolution passed today by Congress would read in a way that would please the most fervent supporters of the war -- but neither would it please its most fervent opponents. For both groups it's all or nothing.

The question is whether the Democrats in Washington have the courage to undertake the crafting of a new binding resolution that could actually pass. They will get more political points from a tough, "get out of Iraq now" funding bill that the President can veto, followed by their giving him (as Obama proposes) the funding he wants -- i.e. enough rope for Bush to hang his own party.

That is probably what Congressional Democrats will do -- but it flies in the face of what Democrats currently say they want (and with which many of us on the right strongly agree) -- a clear reassertion of Congressional power when it comes to declaring war such as the Constitution indicates. And by extension, Congress would be reassuming the sometimes unpleasant and politically inconvenient responsibilities that come with those powers.

Either way, we should hope that this isn't pushed into the federal courts, since war is fundamentally a political issue that needs to be worked out between Congress and the President. In other words, worked out by "we, the people."

Self-destructing candidacies

Regular readers of Montana Headlines know that it is a rarity when we comment on something national unless it is tied in with something happening at the Montana level. This is one of those times.

We learned reading a summary of leftie blogopinions in 4&20 Blackbirds that Obama's candidacy may have just been lost when he stated that he would vote to fund the troops if Bush vetoes Congressional bills that have strings attached to funds for the war in Iraq.

We don't know about whether he's getting the internal Democratic political calculus right, but Obama has a point, whether he knows it or not. Unless Congress is also prepared to pass a resolution that specifically de-authorizes the war, it is asking for a Constitutional crisis to have Congress merely defund the war. Any attached instructions for military commanders also are asking for a Constitutional crisis.

Consider: Congress has the constitutional authority and responsibility to declare war (and, as we have stated before, presumably to undeclare war), and it is tasked with raising funds to support the military. It was probably never contemplated by the Founders that the two might not go clearly hand-in-hand with each other.

Congress needs formally to "undeclare war" if it wants to make a defunding iron-clad. Saying that the war is illegal because no war was declared is to say that every military action since WWII has been illegal -- there is a good case to be made for that, but we doubt that the Democratic Congress is willing to make that case, since in so doing it would indict 4 Democratic Presidents.

Conservatives who have followed the actions of federal courts in recent decades will find it interesting to see what will happen if this goes to federal court in a Constitutional showdown. The President can justifiably claim that Congress authorized the war but that it hasn't carried out its Constitutional responsibility to fund the actions it authorized.

He can furthermore justifiably claim that the Constitution gives no authority to Congress to dictate how a military action is to be conducted. The Supreme Court is unlikely to come up with an emanation from a penumbra saying that Congress has somehow developed constitutional military command authority.

The real question is whether the Supreme Court would use the many episodes of precedent, applied in hallowed areas of liberal activism, where the courts have ordered legislative bodies to fund things that said legislative body doesn't want to fund. We know all about that right here in the great state of Montana. The will of the legislative branch goes out the door -- even the power of the purse -- if the courts decide that the legislature is not meeting constitutional responsibilities. Courts can order legislatures to spend money, and even force them to impose taxes to spend the money that the courts tell the legislature to spend. At least according to modern judicial theories.

Anyone who thinks that the President doesn't have the willpower to take this one all the way through the courts is kidding himself. And we doubt that Democrats would want to chance the fallout from any Supreme Court decision -- regardless of what it is. The President, needless to say, has nothing to lose, and is standing on firmer ground.

Which brings us back to Obama. It is incredible that America would even consider making someone of such thin qualifications President -- but regardless, Obama may be reading this one better than Reid.

This is a separate issue from whether Democratic activists would forgive him for funding the surge, of course. It is early for self-destruction, in any event, especially when one has $20-30 million in the bank.

What is more interesting is that the GOP may actually see a more genuine implosion over this issue. Rudy Guiliani made the incredible assertion recently that the President could just fund the troops anyway -- presumably by taking money appropriated elsewhere and putting it into the war effort. This seems breathtaking in its disregard for the letter and spirit of the Constitution, and makes one wonder if all of those assertions of a Guiliani presidency being an authoritarian nightmare don't have some element of truth behind them. If Bush were to take this advice, he would probably find himself justifiably impeached. We doubt that he will do anything so foolish.

Anyone who thinks that the other presidential contenders aren't going to know how to exploit this serious foot-in-mouth from Guiliani is underestimating, oh, lets pick a couple of names at random: Brownback and Gingrich.

We notably didn't include another legislator. This is because on another front, we have John McCain seeing his candidacy going down in the flames of the Iraq troop surge, which he has been almost alone in championing for many months, if not years. One really has to feel for McCain, since his only path to the nomination was through an attempted repair of his reputation for party disloyalty with a firm support for the President's Iraq policies.

Having shot himself in the foot with nearly the entire party in 2000 for the way in which he ran his campaign against Bush, having destroyed the GOP's fund-raising advantage by getting outflanked by Feingold and the liberal 527s in his noble crusade to (chuckle) take money out of politics, having cut Sen. Frist's feet out from under him as a ringleader of the Gang, having played coy about accepting a VP nomination as a Democrat under John Kerry (we now learn that he may actually have initiated the talks), and having toyed with jumping parties only to be beat to it by Jeffords -- well you get the idea.

If he hadn't done any of those things, he'd be the nominee and would already be raising funds for the general campaign. But then, if pigs could fly... Again, it's sort of pathetic to see McCain reaching now for his tattered mantle of party loyalty -- at precisely the time and on exactly the issue where it would be most advantageously and justifiably shed.

National Review recently had a front cover article (no link available) with Ramesh Ponnuru making a case for McCain -- but it is too little, too late. The libertarian side also had its own front cover article on Reason magazine with exactly the opposite take, predicting that a McCain presidency would be an authoritarian nightmare (recurring themes in our two front-runners, nightmarishly enough.)

Again, it's also too early for GOP campaigns to implode. But it will be interesting to see who is actually still standing in both parties when that February 7 primary comes around.

Missile envy -- part II

Montana Headlines has certainly taken the occasional gratuitous shot at our two Democratic U.S. Senators. Our posts on the Kobe beef scandal spring immediately to mind. On one occasion, we even felt compelled to apologize for unfair comments about Sen. Baucus.

Perhaps we were unfair to Sen. Tester in our last Missile Envy post. It is interesting, though, that 4&20 Blackbirds feels it is self-evident that Montana Headlines took a gratuitous swipe at Jon Tester -- and yet in the same post we are expected to accept without question broad liberal canards such as the assertion that the Iraq war is illegal.

The last we checked, all that Congress has to do is to vote to deauthorize military actions in Iraq that it had previously authorized and then the war will be illegal if it continues -- but not until then. We are also expected to believe the class-warfare rhetoric (gratuitously thrown in at the end?) that the war has gone badly because "it was more important for conservatives to increase tax breaks for the rich and multi-national corporations than it was to actually make a real effort in Iraq."

One hardly knows what to say. But then, regular readers of Montana Headlines know that we have never been in the business of defending either the war or the administration's handling of it -- we have stated that we would applaud Sen. Tester if he were to sign on to a more honest bill like Sen. Russ Feingold's, to deauthorize and defund the war. Believe us, given the relentlessly vituperative and unrefined rhetoric directed at Republicans from much of the left regarding the Iraq war, it is tempting to think up ways to defend the President out of sheer partisan loyalty, regardless of how negatively we view the Mideast morass. But we won't.

Around here, given a choice between tax cuts and a war in Iraq, we would have chosen the former, every time, from day one. We would choose border control, domestic fiscal responsibility, stabilization of Social Security, efforts to preserve small farmers, ranchers, and businessmen, or any number of conservative domestic priorities over foreign military interventions. And we are hardly alone, since as we have noted before, there has long been what we call a "war gap" in the Republican party.

We Republicans do tend to support a Commander in Chief in his decisions on how to prosecute a Congressionally authorized military action, and we have an allergy to anything that fails the sniff test of Vietnam anti-war rhetoric -- which did hurt troop morale, and does now. But those, as went the phrase from back in the day, are our hang-ups.

But we will get back to 4&20's comments on our post, which deserve a response, given that site's general reputation for being fair as well as hard-hitting.

The heart of the offending passage was our comment on Tester's statement about Malmstrom's "critical role in defending our homeland" and that "now is not the time to weaken it in any way":

Yeah, that oughta do the trick. Jon Tester is going to be really convincing as a true believer in the importance of defending the homeland with nuclear weapons. And if he does manage to become convincing at it, he won’t have to worry about being the toast of the progressive community for much longer.

We are then asked what exactly we are getting at. Perhaps we suffered from a lack of clarity resulting from not spelling things out. Our statement did not criticize progressives for being against the Iraq war: that would be hypocritical, since we oppose it ourselves. We weren't criticizing progressives for wanting to put more money into the VA -- although what that has to do with nuclear deterrence, we don't know. Etc.

Our statement was pretty clearly focused on the issue at hand: Malmstrom and the efforts by Congressional delegations to preserve the economic benefits of military installations in their states. That particular Air Force base primarily defends our homeland in one very specific way: nuclear missiles. Jon Tester is currently leaping to assert strongly that Malmstrom's nuclear mission shouldn't be weakened.

And yet, it took only a few seconds of searching the web to find
candidate Jon Tester's response to "Citizens for Global Solutions" during his Senate campaign:

Nuclear Weapons

10. Would you actively oppose the appropriation of funds for the research, development and deployment of earth-penetrating and other new forms of nuclear weapons?

Yes.

I oppose testing and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including so-called "bunker-buster" type weapons. New forms of nuclear weapons undermine international efforts toward nonproliferation and threaten national security.

So, let's get this straight: Jon Tester is an ardent supporter of the importance of keeping outdated ICBM's that are designed for the outdated mission of wiping out entire cities of civilians (note that said ICBM's just happen to be based in Montana.) And yet last fall he clearly opposed the development of newer, more effective, and more reliable nuclear weapons -- ones that might be of more limited tactical use in attacking specifically military targets?

There is a common thread in Tester's responses, and it is neither a sophisticated and knowledgeable support for a strong national defense nor a courageous and principled advocacy for pulling back from a dependence on nuclear weapons. The common thread is rather his saying what a particular audience wants to hear.

When talking to the Citizens for Global Solutions (who concluded their questions by making sure that Tester would take their endorsement and their money), he told progressives what they wanted to hear by giving a nice statement against nuclear proliferation and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. And now, he is giving an impassioned plea to keep active ICBM's in Montana -- also what the intended audience wants to hear.

One principled stance or the other would make sense. The combination of the two seems more like old-style politics, with Tester hoping that his left hand doesn't notice what his right hand is doing. Our criticism is that simple. And it's not gratuitous.

War, military service, working class Republicans, and liberal intellectuals

No-one from Montana Headlines was able to attend the lecture by Stanley Hauerwas, a well-known theologian and pacifist, at Rocky Mountain College’s religion symposium.

The topic of his lecture according to the reports of its contents, however, is roughly that war gives a sense of purpose and other intangibles to a people that religion can and should replace with worship.

Reading about his comments, what came immediately to mind was an insightful article by the self-described anarchist and anthropologist David Graeber that was published in the January 2007 issue of Harper’s:
“Army of Altruists – on the alienated right to do good.” (Note: the article is neither available on-line at the Harper’s website nor is it any longer on newsstands. The link above is to a blog that discusses the article – if one happens to notice and read the fully reproduced text of the article while in the process of reading the blog comments, so be it.)

While Hauerwas concentrates on the “glorification of war,” Graeber takes on the specific issue of why so many young men and women willingly serve in the military. When one serves in the military, there is always the acute awareness that one can be sent to serve in a place of danger and be killed. Even today, when that awareness is more acutely felt than at any time since Vietnam, retention rates in all branches of the armed services are amazingly high.

He postulates (correctly, in our experience) that this isn’t nearly so much a result of attractive economic and educational opportunities that military service provides (an attractiveness that could, in the left’s thinking, be replaced by better civilian job availability and educational assistance) as it is the opportunity to pursue a career in something higher and nobler than merely making money. This is close to what Hauerwas is saying, but has a crucial distinction, since the draw and appeal that Graeber discusses is present in military service whether or not our country is in a state of war.

Graeber expands the discussion into the more general, and acutely relevant, subject of why so many working-class Americans reject the left and embrace the Republican party in America.

It is impossible to do Graeber’s lengthy article justice in a brief discussion, but the fact that it is written by an activist and academic who would by any standard be considered a member of the left’s “intellectual elite” makes it all the more remarkable. Conservatives from working class or rural backgrounds who find themselves in the presence of inquisitive liberals, especially in institutions of higher learning, are often asked why the overwhelmingly non-privileged “red America” votes Republican, “against our economic interests.” (This question is probably second in frequency only to various versions of the question: “you don’t seem so terribly stupid or uneducated – why do you vote Republican?”) One gets the feeling that one could have a conversation with Graeber without having those questions asked or implied.

We would disagree with some of Graeber's conclusions, and he has some odd conspiracy-theory angles in the article that give Republicans entirely too much credit for being capable of long-term political planning. Yet, Graeber does “get it” to a degree that Montana Headlines has perhaps never heard articulated by someone on the left. Perhaps Graeber’s experiences in studying relatively primitive Madagascar cultures as an anthropologist aids him in understanding how to approach strange foreign cultures such as one might find in “red America.” Even that is really probably not fair, since Graeber is nowhere condescending.

Here are some passages that gives a flavor of the article. Again, they are no substitute for the entirety of Graeber’s argument:

…progressives cannot even seem to understand the problem. After the last presidential election, the big debate in progressive circles was the relative importance of economic issues versus what was called “the culture wars.” Did the Democrats lose because they were not able to spell out any plausible economic alternatives, or did the Republicans win because they successfully mobilized evangelical Christians around the issue of gay marriage? The very fact that progressives frame the question this way not only shows they are trapped in the right’s terms of analysis; it demonstrates that they do not understand how America really works.

Let me illustrate what I mean by considering the strange popular appeal, at least until recently, of George W. Bush. In 2004 most of the American liberal intelligentsia did not seem to be able to get their minds around it. After the election, what left so many of them reeling was their suspicion that the things they most hated about Bush were exactly what so many Bush voters liked about him. Consider the debates, for example. If statistics are to be believed, millions of Americans watched George Bush and John Kerry lock horns, concluded that Kerry won, and then went off and voted for Bush anyway. It was hard to escape the suspicion that, in the end, Kerry’s articulate presentation, his skill with words and arguments, had actually counted against him.

This sent liberals into spirals of despair. They could not understand why decisive leadership was equated with acting like an idiot. Neither could they understand how a man who comes from one of the most elite families in the country, who attended Andover, Yale, and Harvard, and whose signature facial expression is a self-satisfied smirk, ever convinced anyone he was a “man of the people.” I must admit I have struggled with this as well. As a child of working-class parents who won a scholarship to Andover in the 1970s and, eventually, a job at Yale, I have spent much of my life in the presence of men like Bush, every inch of them oozing self-satisfied privilege. But, in fact, stories like mine–stories of dramatic class mobility through academic accomplishment–are increasingly unusual in America. (Emphasis ours)

Graeber goes on to postulate that what happened on the left was that the expansion of opportunity via education imploded during the late sixties and early seventies. It “hit a dead end” and radicalized campuses “were, predictably, exploding...”:

What followed could be seen as a kind of settlement. Campus radicals were reabsorbed into the university but set to work largely at training children of the elite. As the cost of education has skyrocketed, financial aid has been cut back, and the prospect of social mobility through education–above all liberal arts education–has been rapidly diminished. The number of working-class students in major universities, which steadily grew until the Seventies, has now been declining for decades.

The matter was further complicated by the fact that this overall decline of accessibility happened at almost exactly the same time that many who had previously been excluded (the G.I. Bill of Rights, after all, had applied basically to white males) were finally being welcomed. These were the identities celebrated in the campus “identity politics” of the Eighties and Nineties–an inclusiveness that notably did not extend to, say, Baptists or “rednecks.” Unsurprisingly, many focused their rage not on government or on university administrations but on minorities, queers, and feminists.

Graeber returns to a variation of the original question of why so many working class Americans vote Republican:

Why do working-class Bush voters tend to resent intellectuals more than they do the rich? It seems to me that the answer is simple. They can imagine a scenario in which they might become rich but cannot possibly imagine one in which they, or any of their children, would become members of the intelligentsia.

If you think about it, this is not an unreasonable assessment. A mechanic from Nebraska knows it is highly unlikely that his son or daughter will ever become an Enron executive. But it is possible. There is virtually no chance, however, that his child, no matter how talented, will ever become an international human-rights lawyer or a drama critic for the New York Times.


Graeber goes on to say that if this hypothetical daughter wants to do something higher and nobler, there are two choices: work for her church or join the military. There are actually a few more choices than that, but his point is a good one. He notes primarily financial factors and the institutionalized ways in which the children of academics/intellectuals are given privileges within elite academic institutions. He does not note (or perhaps notice) the role that traditional beliefs play as the children of "red America" negotiate any institution of higher learning, let alone an elite one -- beliefs generally disapproved of by most faculty and certainly rarely valued by them.

Difficulties experienced by bright but traditionally-minded students from relatively well-off families are significant enough. When one removes any financial advantages, a poor white Nebraska male with traditional Christian beliefs, no matter how bright or motivated, not only will be sorely disappointed if he dreams of being a drama critic for the New York Times -- he will likely never even review movies for the Omaha World-Herald.

Thank you, Billings Gazette

The headline of today's Gazette says it all about the loss of one of our own: American Hero

The article reminds of why we feel that way.