Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog

It’s always good to have a story, especially one that upholds your political beliefs.  So, imagine my reaction upon reading Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.  I don’t know if Taubes himself has any leanings in the direction, but his book is the most compelling libertarian story of the past 50 years.

There are some basic principles of the libertarian critique of governmental policies designed to solve Pressing Problems.  These are, that those government policies often:

• mis-diagnose the problem
• makes decisions based on political realities instead of scientific ones
• crowds out competing (and potentially more accurate theories or solutions) either directly, by criticizing them, or indirectly, by denying them funding
• end up making the problem worse, or exacerbating a different problem via unexpected side effects
• cause a legion of special interest groups of corporations to arise to take advantage of (as well as reinforce, through their own interest) the government’s potentially wrong decision

If you’re not particularly disposed to these ideas already, this all sounds like wishful thinking about government incompetence.  Yet this is exactly the story presented by Taubes as the history of the fat vs. carb nutrition debate in the US over the past 50 years.

To sum up, without all the science (read the book, it has all the data you need), the story goes like this: about 50 years ago, a few prominent scientists, particularly Ancel Keys, decided, based on incomplete evidence, that fat was the cause of heart disease, and that carbohydrates were a good replacement for it in our diets.  Unfortunately, not only was the decision premature, it also was wrong, and here’s the most important part: it was wrong even based upon the evidence they had at the time — they simply ignored or dismissed it.  This isn’t a case of science improving and rendering an old government policy wrong, this is government policy making the wrong choice despite the evidence.

The anti-fat movement (led by Keys) then convinced the government and the media of the correctness of their case, which was then enshrined as policy by a government panel: fat bad, carbs good.  This is partly why the food pyramid’s base, the largest section, was all carbohydrate-rich breads and pasta.  The low-carbohydrate movement (the opposition of the anti-fat movement), despite having an increasing body of evidence that stated that fat was not bad, and carbs were not good (each subsequent study failed to prove the anti-fat hypothesis), were pushed aside, labeled as cranks or corporate stooges of the companies that produced high-fat food.  Billions of dollars of NIH funding flowed into anti-fat research, food manufacturers touted the heart-friendly effects of their products, and groups like the CSPI arose to plug anti-fat agendas.  Government policy and millions in advertising now set, Americans duly changed their diets to become more “healthy” — ushering in a wave of all the “diseases of civilization” that low-carb advocates predicted: diabetes, obesity and various forms of cancer.

Then, once the obesity epidemic (if not directly caused by the high-carb policy, certainly exacerbated by it) became the new threat, established policy and scientists blamed it on fat as well.

You probably could not invent a story that fit the libertarian critique so well.  Confirmation bias alarm bells went off the entire time I was reading; but the Taubes book is exhaustively researched and annotated — not just with the data (often based on studies that examined the results of low-tech societies, which ate mainly meat and other high fat diets, transitioning to the higher-carb diet of Western societies, and their subsequent explosion of diabetes and obesity — and cancer) but with the specific charges leveled at each by the anti-fat movement in an effort to erroneously discredit them.  Some people will write a book based on the results of a single paper, and present its conclusion as definitive proof.  This book presents the results of hundreds of papers and studies, all of which disprove the anti-fat hypothesis or support the low-carb one — every one dismissed and ignored.  It is also a devastating critique of academia, which, once a theory was established as the conventional wisdom, had no interest in examining data that might undermine it.

To recap: the government picked some bad science and enacted incorrect policies based on it, which damaged the health of millions of Americans, costing us billions of dollars in healthcare bills, millions of lives (here I merely repeat the government’s claims about the damage of the “obesity epidemic”) and did little to actually prevent the problem for which it was designed.  They suppressed, ignored and slandered those who disagreed, who had the data on their side both at the time, and today.  Then, when the damage reports came rolling in from their actions, promptly demanded that they were the only people capable of fixing this problem, and confidently prescribed the exact same medicine which had caused the problem in the first place: the low fat, high carb diet*.

How is this not the centerpiece of the libertarian argument for a less-activist government?

* – to be fair, they also advocated good things, such as an increase in exercise, and a decrease in the consumption of sugars and soda.  The latter again points out the crazy logic of advocating high carb diets: those carbs roughly translate into the same end result in your body as the sugar.

Apparently there are some people who are angry at a black guy being cast in the Thor movie as a Norse god.  I haven’t seen it, but in addition to liking Idris Elba quite a bit, I don’t see the problem here.  The most hilarious accusations are that this somehow is an insult to “white culture” — which, I suppose the implication is that the Scandinavian people who believed in this mythological pantheon, are for some reason exemplars of that culture.

The problem here is that whatever “white culture” is, I sort of guess that it probably involves, at minimum, some list of nice things that white people did in the past.  And the sort of person who would be very concerned about white culture might consider, say, the civilizations of Europe, the preservation of pre-Dark Ages knowledge or the spread of Christianity as three of those nice things.

Here’s where the problem with considering the Vikings part of this comes in — they were, to put it mildly — historically opposed to these developments.  I don’t mean they lodged complaints at the white people’s local 182, I mean they sailed up on ships and brutally murdered lots of the white people who were doing these nice things.  It seems like, whatever white culture is, when a group of people run around killing, raping and plundering those who represent it, no one should get really irritated when the ancient gods of said plunderers are victims of some perceived insult.

While I agree with the point, it’s funny to see this stated in reference to tax cuts: (via Andrew Sullivan)

A ‘permanent” tax cut is a fiction. No tax cuts are forever. Congress amends the Internal Revenue Code annually, and sometimes more than once a year. Since World War II, it has done a major overhaul about once a decade, and is overdue for its next renovation.

At the same time, our recent experience with four dozen allegedly time-limited tax cuts that Congress extends more or less routinely each year suggests the word “temporary” does not carry the same meaning in Washington as it does elsewhere.

What about all the “temporary” tax increases, spending increases and subsidies that we still have?  Sure, I suppose it’s true they’re not “permanent,” but they sure seem to be.  It seems strange to be bringing this point up now, as opposed to at some point in the last few decades.

Amateur time travelers always go back in time and kill Hitler.  But I think the entry of the US into WW1 was even worse than Hitler’s rise of power — because they actually led to the circumstances that made Hitler possible.  Without the punitive Versailles treaty made possible by the US breaking the trench warfare stalemate, Hitler is just a simple WW1 veteran.  You can kill two birds with one time-travelling stone!  The other key point (from the same year, in fact, the US declaration of war and Lenin’s trip to Russia occurred the same week!) that results in almost untold suffering was the export of Lenin to Russia, where he transformed a potentially moderate revolution into an extremist one.  So, if you only have one time machine, you might want to consider going back and stopping Lenin too.

But I’ve just come across the holy grail of time travelling history revisionism: Arthur Zimmerman.  Yup, astute high school history students will remember that he was the author of the Zimmerman telegram, the German message to Mexico asking them to (!!!) declare war on the US and reclaim some southwestern states.  Thankfully, the Mexican leader smartly declined this opportunity, but not before the Americans became convinced that this constituted casus belli.  It’s not an exaggeration to state that without this revelation, the US may not have entered WW1.  But here’s the kicker: Zimmerman, in his role as foreign secretary, was also personally responsible for that other terrible historical event:

In March 1917, with the imminent collapse of the Russian front, Zimmermann took steps to promote Peace in the East with the Russians, a proposal that was of immense importance to Germany at the time. The foreign secretary set forth the following: regulations for frontline contacts with the opposite side; reciprocal withdrawal of the occupied areas; an amicable agreement about Poland, Lithuania and Kurland; and a promise to aid Russia in its reconstruction and rehabilitation.

Last not least, Lenin and the émigré revolutionaries would be allowed to pass through Germany to Russia by train. These proposals once carried out, would free Germany’s armies in the east and allow them to be concentrated in the west, a master-stroke that would reinforce the German western front vastly. Zimmermann thus contributed to the outcome of the October Revolution.

So, aspiring time travelers, if you’ve only got one paradox-causing bullet to shoot, here’s your target.

It is a perfect storm of awesome that combines the Dutch Republic, Calvin Coolidge and the Declaration of Independence (three of my favorite things that have lots of letters in them):

The idea that the people have a right to choose their own rulers was not new in political history. It was the foundation of every popular attempt to depose an undesirable king. This right was set out with a good deal of detail by the Dutch when as early as July 26, 1581, they declared their independence of Philip of Spain. [...]

But the principles of our declaration had been under discussion in the Colonies for nearly two generations before the advent of the French political philosophy that characterized the middle of the eighteenth century. In fact, they come from an earlier date. A very positive echo of what the Dutch had done in 1581, and what the English were preparing to do, appears in the assertion of the Rev. Thomas Hooker of Connecticut as early as 1638, when he said in a sermon before the General Court that–

“The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people”

More America-Dutch convergence.  Thanks to Radley Balko (dirty Harding-supporter that he is), via Volokh Conspiracy.

If you think religious tolerance, fierce civilian independence, decentralized Republics instead of kings, and (relatively) free economic systems are good things, then you have to like the Dutch too!

Tim has been writing a lot about the Vietnam War through the lens of information and centralization, but while following some of his links, I ran across this interesting fact:

At the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in December 1986, reformers, upset by the lack of economic progress after the Vietnam War,^[26] replaced the “old guard” with new leadership.^[27] The reformers were led by 71 year-old Nguyen Van Linh, who became the party’s new general secretary.^[27] Linh was a native of northern Vietnam who had served in the south both during and after the war.^[26][27] In a historic shift, the reformers implemented free-market reforms known as Đổi Mới (renovation), which carefully managed the transition from a command economy to a “socialist-oriented market economy“.^[28][29]

With the authority of the state remaining unchallenged, private ownership of farms and companies engaged in commodity production, deregulation and foreign investment were encouraged while the state maintained control over strategic industries.^[29] The economy of Vietnam subsequently achieved rapid growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction and housing, exports and foreign investment.

For those keeping score, the United States left in 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War.  That means in only 11 years, a communist state that literally defeated the most powerful capitalist nation on the battlefield… voluntarily turned to free market reforms; even before the collapse of the Soviet Union was apparent.  They even managed to defeat the communist Khmer Rouge (though for some moronic reason we apparently supported them?) in the bargain.  So, the US lost the war, but instead of a sequence of countries falling to Communism via the Domino theory, the exact opposite happened — Vietnam liberalized economically and even fought wars with two communist countries (China and Cambodia) in the meantime.  So is this the reverse domino theory?

Edit: I remember reading that both Vietnam and Cambodia have relatively high approval ratings of the US, but I can’t find where I read that — the only data I can find on global US approval rates is the BBC study, but they didn’t include either country.  If anyone knows where to find this, let me know.

From Johann Hari (via Radley Balko):

Who now defends alcohol prohibition? Is there a single person left? This echoing silence should suggest something to us. Ending drug prohibition seems like a huge heave, just as ending alcohol prohibition did. But when it is gone, when the drug gangs are a bankrupted memory, when drug addicts are treated not as immoral criminals but as ill people needing health care, who will grieve?

And another:

By 1926, he [Capone] and his fellow gangsters were making $3.6 billion a year—in 1926 money! To give some perspective, that was more than the entire expenditure of the U.S. government. The criminals could outbid and outgun the state. So they crippled the institutions of a democratic state and ruled, just as drug gangs do today in Mexico, Afghanistan, and ghettos from South Central Los Angeles to the banlieues of Paris. They have been handed a market so massive that they can tool up to intimidate everyone in their area, bribe many police and judges into submission, and achieve such a vast size, the honest police couldn’t even begin to get them all.

The recent unrest in Jamaica mirrors this: the drug dealers are stronger than the government.  This may seem shocking to Americans, but we were in the same situation 70 years ago.  What was the solution then?  I almost don’t even care about domestic policy any more — the global destabilization that the War on Drugs is creating is incredible.

While I think the similarity between the Dutch and the United States is great, part of the reason for this is because the Dutch also drastically influenced the English, most directly through the person of William III, Prince of Orange, Dutch Stadtholder, and secondarily King of England.  Three of the most important features of English society that were passed to America (and subsequently became defining characteristics of the new nation) were direct results of William’s ascension to the English throne.   (more…)

Just as the US needed the Civil Rights Act to help clear up some of the abuses and discrimination that exist post-Emancipation, there were serious issues in other countries.  One of the most dramatic of these was “The Revolt of the Whip,” in the Brazilian Navy: (more…)

I know the United States is supposed to be heir to the English tradition, but halfway through reading “The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age” by Simon Schama (whom I love) I get the feeling that we were probably much closer to the Dutch, in both experience and character.  And it’s not just that New York used to be New Amsterdam.  Throughout the book, there are stories that exactly mirror stories from the US — in ways that Britain just doesn’t. (more…)

Because I didn’t complain enough the last time some libertarian person had a minor disagreement with what everyone considers to be established historical fact, reality decided to make me have to sit through another one.  At least this one is higher profile, I guess.  Hurray.  I’ll come back in a week when people are talking about things that matter.  I have to agree with this entire paragraph from Mr. Cockburn (via Hit&Run):

Here’s Maddow, brandishing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as though this is the only matter worth considering in the forthcoming race between Rand Paul and the Democrat, an awful neo-liberal prosecutor, Kentucky’s current attorney general, Jack “I’m a Tough Son-of-a-Bitch” Conway. Between Conway and Paul, which one in the U.S. Senate would more likely be a wild card – which is the best we can hope for these days – likely to filibuster against a bankers’ bailout, against reaffirmation of the Patriot Act, against suppression of the CIA’s full torture history? Paul, one would have to bet, and these are the votes that count, where one uncompromising stand by an outsider can make a difference, unlike the gyrations and last-ditch sell-outs of Blowhard Bernie Sanders, no doubt a hero to Maddow and Goodman. Liberals love grandstanding about what are, in practice, distractions. You think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is going to come up for review in the U.S. Senate?

Yeah.  He has the same response I have: “who cares?”  I don’t know if I really like Rand Paul (Cockburn obviously doesn’t) but I think that his stated views, even including the ones I disagree with, would make him a much better addition to the Senate than his opponent.

But I’ve got another response: an analogy.  If Paul’s opposition to laws restricting racist association today means that he would’ve opposed the CRA, and therefore is a horrible racist that we should oppose, then what should we make of modern gun control advocates?  In the past, racist Southern states and towns used gun control laws to take weapons away from blacks who were using them to defend themselves against the KKK, or just violence in general.  Does that mean that modern gun control activists would have snatched those weapons out of their hands and left them to be killed?  Does it mean that they are horrible racists today?  Of course not.  Things have changed.

There certainly are lessons to be learned from analyzing the past, but there are also important lessons to be learned today — and like I said before with the 1880 women’s rights issue — not learning those lessons can still cause incredible damage.  Like Cockburn says:

Between Conway and Paul, which one in the U.S. Senate would more likely be a wild card – which is the best we can hope for these days – likely to filibuster against a bankers’ bailout, against reaffirmation of the Patriot Act, against suppression of the CIA’s full torture history? Paul, one would have to bet, and these are the votes that count, where one uncompromising stand by an outsider can make a difference[.]

Don’t let the question of “what would Candidate X do if he or she had a time machine” get in the way of “what will they do on the major issues today?”

I can’t even read my normal sites without coming across some pointless discussion of libertarian theories about 1880′s women’s rights, all of which inspired by literally a single word in an excellent David Boaz piece.  I don’t mean that women’s rights are pointless — only that a wide-ranging discussion about the 1880′s incarnation of them, when every single participant agrees that they have no desire to return to the policies of 1880, (maybe “Hot Tub Time Machine” should have time-traveled to the 1880′s instead!) is stupid.  The debate is literally, actually, about how much people don’t want to go back to then.  Some really really don’t want to, some only sorta don’t want to, some really really really don’t want to.  Gripping stuff, I know — especially since Mr. Caplan, who touched it off, doesn’t even advocate any modern policy changes (as far as I can tell?) as a result of his crazy beliefs.  I’ll be the first to admit I love rehashing some old historical debate — I got yelled at for slandering some silly old JFK speech right here — but this is going overboard.

So this debate, then leads at least one non-libertarian to conclude that libertarian ideals, when taken to the extreme, will lead to feudalism. Okay.  I consider myself libertarian, but honestly — I don’t really care if extreme libertarianism leads to feudalism because I don’t want extreme libertarianism.  I assume, like the South Park creators, that any ideology taken to an extreme will lead to bad results.  But none of this matters a whole bunch.  The conclusion of the Crooked Timber post, I assume, is that we shouldn’t listen to libertarians about regular policy things, because what’s the point of merely providing a critique of some dystopian libertarian feudal society or how they think about 1880 marriages?  That last part is supposed to be rhetorical, but I guess in light of how many people actually are debating this, maybe I’m wrong!

Yet on these regular day-to-day topics — about which many, many writers got distracted from by debates about “coverture” (which I thought was the first part of a symphony, but apparently not!) — libertarians have lots of (non-extreme, but rather pretty marginal) suggestions that are actually really good.  And I don’t say “really good” because I happen to be libertarian, I say that because we have real, actual evidence that they are the right way to go.  Some of those boring positions:

• Maybe we shouldn’t spend so much money invading other countries.
• Putting thousands of people in jail for smoking pot isn’t such a great idea, and no great tragedy will occur if we stop — see Portugal or the Netherlands.
• Budget crises are real, and we shouldn’t just ignore them and keep spending — see California or Greece.
• Immigration is spectacularly good for both the immigrant and the destination country — see, uh, America.
• Maybe the police shouldn’t shoot innocents and non-violent offenders so often.

These are front-line, high profile issues where libertarians are miles better than either major party.  And these aren’t piddling little things either — people are actually dying and suffering because the US pursues the wrong policies on these things.  But no, since libertarians are wrong on 1880 gender issues and their blind allegiance to their stupid ideas will invariably lead to feudalism, we probably shouldn’t listen to them.  Any ideology taken to extremes, will almost certainly cause bad stuff to happen, and despite my beliefs, I don’t think libertarianism is any different.  But here’s why I’m frustrated by this entire debate: all our current belief systems (nobly moderate though they may be!) that have shaped the social system we have right now are causing massive amounts of human death and suffering… this very moment.  Not in the past, not in some future — right now.

And while things are indeed getting better over time, it’s just ridiculous to be focusing on completely irrelevant, 130 year old minutiae, instead of doing the things today that actually allowed us to make it better: fighting against vastly more serious violations of human rights.

Seen in Valley View, Ohio: the vanity license plate [STASI HQ].  Is this some band name I don’t know about?  Or did someone really get a East German secret police-themed plate?  If I had known this was a valid genre, I might’ve looked into reserving [NKVD GUY] or [GES TAPO] or perhaps [HI CHEKA].

Or [WE KGB C U] or [AW NSA QQ].

What about [CIA QT PI]?  I can go on.

Sometimes very famous people say things that are so stupid, you can’t even believe the people are applauding:

The commercial just pisses me off, but you really only need the first few seconds of the JFK speech.  What the hell does “we choose to do this thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” mean?  It’s just flatly moronic.  People choose to do things based on the benefit they estimate to receive minus the cost of doing so.  There are tons of hard things we could choose to do — some even harder than going to moon.  How about not nearly provoking a nuclear holocaust with Russia?  How about not sleeping around with East German spies?  How about not becoming addicted to drugs?  If only we could’ve achieved these “hard” goals as well!

But remember: we’re not talking about what a person might choose to do.  We’re talking about what a government is choosing to do with its citizens’ tax dollars.  He’s saying “we choose to do something hard instead of something easy” with your money.  Money you could’ve bought food or toys for your kids with, but instead was spent putting a man on the moon in some vain display of National Greatness.  Depending on your political leanings, this could’ve been used to fight poverty or provide healthcare for the uninsured.  Isn’t that great to hear that your government is explicitly choosing things to do are expensive, difficult and risky (however you want to define “hard”) instead of things that, you know, actually help people?

If you retort, “well, this is all just political showmanship, we had real reasons for doing this” then fine — but why is he babbling this stuff in public if it doesn’t mean anything?  And why do people remember this as a stirring speech when it contains such third-grade idiocies like that?  I still don’t understand why people like JFK at all.  Does getting shot really make up for being a terrible president?

Don’t even get me started on “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  Good thing I can rely on superior historical Americans to retort with: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  Does anyone even listen to what these people are saying?  Or do the billowing flags and resonant marches just summon up that deep lizard part of our brain to blindly prostrate ourselves before Important Men saying Important Things?

I love reading Ta-Nehisi Coates, especially for stuff like this: 

We watch a lot of old movies in this house. It’s an odd thing–you’re watching these people live these lives in these places, and yet you know that, as a black person, they would have most likely thought of you as subhuman. It’s something to watch The Heiress, and know that in both the time it was filmed, and the time it takes place, you were a less-than. Half of me is watching Marlene Dietrich Barbara Stanwyck scheme her way through Double Indemnity, the other half is wondering how big of racist she was. 

And this is just relatively recent history.  He goes on:

I can not read about the Confederacy, the way I’d read about the aristocrats in the French Revolution. I can’t get drawn in by the daring of Forrest’s raids, or Lee’s genius. Stonewall Jackson has the coldest, most determined eyes I’ve ever seen. And yet we know what they were set on. I can’t go all the way in. I can’t get out of my own damn skin.

Now, he’s talking about something a lot more personal and recent than the subject matter that many historical pieces deal with — but this has always struck me as weird.  The way we judge historical figures, especially in cinema, seems to be tainted by our modern perceptions, so we often see the anachronistic liberal sentiments held by ostensibly historical figures who would’ve believed no such thing. Civil War movies, as Mr. Coates points out, are probably the most guilty of this.   So in this, movie makers are aware that they’re dealing with people who probably held what we would consider to be highly distasteful beliefs — yet in some other cases, we exalt as heroes those who were, first and last, defined by contemptible ideologies or beliefs.  

Take 300.  I loved the movie, but it’s really hard to avoid taking a deeper look at its heroes — the Spartans.  While their longtime enemies the Athenians were experimenting with democracy, (the blind eye turned to their own reprehensible beliefs is another story!) they pioneered the first racialist police state that would (and did) make the Nazis proud.  Every single one of the noble Spartan soldiers in the movie would have taken part in the crypteia:

Young Spartan men who had completed their training at the agoge with such success that they were marked out as potential future leaders, would be given the opportunity to test their skills and prove themselves worthy of the Spartan military tradition through participation in the krypteia.

Every autumn, according to Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus, 28, 3–7), the Spartan ephors (classical Greek Ἔφοροι) would pro forma declare war on the helot population so that any Spartan citizen could kill a helot without fear of blood guilt. Unarmed, the kryptes were sent out into the countryside with the instructions to kill any helot they encountered at night and to take any food they needed.  

So not only did they run a brutal slave society, (actual productive labor was considered beneath the full Spartan citizen) but every year the most recently brain-washed of their soldiers were sent into the countryside to murder their own slaves in their sleep, and steal what little food they had.  

Given that the helots were the vast majority, we can easily deduce what position most of us (or ancestors, if you happen to be Greek) would be holding in Spartan society: oppressed slave.  Great!  Who are we supposed to be cheering for again?  Even if we assume that without Sparta, Greece would have been conquered by the Persians, it’s not clear this would have had a massive change on Western history, given that the Persian empire wasn’t particularly concerned with how their vassal states ran their private affairs.  Even with the victory at Thermopylae, Greece was later completely subjugated by the Romans, who rather than extinguishing their innovations, were responsible for exporting them around the continent.

So basically the message here is that no matter how kindly a historical figure (and no matter how saintly their reputation today) is portrayed in modern media, they were almost certainly either actually themselves barbaric, murderous bastards or subscribed to a myriad of incredible racist, sexist, bigoted and contemptible beliefs.  This applies around the world, and for all of history, right up until nearly modern day — opinion polls have only barely started showing majority acceptance of things like interracial marriage, homosexuality, atheism and many others.  And even here, this is only in a relatively small number of countries — there are many where it probably wouldn’t even be safe to conduct the poll on such topics.

This is why, even though I certainly enjoy a number of them, I find that romanticized historical dramas usually leave a bad taste in my mouth.  So many feel like unthinking apologies for inexecusable crimes.  Not to particularly rain on anyone’s nostalgic parade, but history is best seen as one long, horrifying Dark Age, spiced up with some extra brutal Dark-er Ages.  Every few hundred years, with increasing frequency, we see a few tiny flickering lights of sanity peeking out (though usually quickly snuffed out), until finally today we seem to have a dim glow hinting that perhaps darkness is not our natural condition after all.

Update: one of the few historical figures who I think would actually seem like a decent guy today is Benjamin Franklin.  I can’t seem to find any dirt on the guy.  Every time I try, I just find some quote or action that just makes me like him even more:

Franklin bequeathed £1,000 (about $4,400 at the time) each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust to gather interest for 200 years. The trust began in 1785 when a French mathematician named Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour wrote a parody of Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack” called “Fortunate Richard.” Mocking the unbearable spirit of American optimism represented by Franklin, the Frenchman wrote that Fortunate Richard left a small sum of money in his will to be used only after it had collected interest for 500 years. Franklin, who was 79 years old at the time, wrote to the Frenchman, thanking him for a great idea and telling him that he had decided to leave a bequest of 1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted Philadelphia. As of 1990, more than $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin’s Philadelphia trust, which had loaned the money to local residents. From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. When the trust came due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school students. Franklin’s Boston trust fund accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that same time, and was used to establish a trade school that became the Franklin Institute of Boston.^[69]

Damn it, Ben, you win again.

Update 2: 

 

In 1773, when Franklin’s work had moved from printing to science and politics, he corresponded with a French scientist on the subject of preserving the dead for later revival by more advanced scientific methods, writing:

I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection.^[66] (Extended excerpt also online.)^[67]

Oh man.

This post by Ta-Nehisi Coates, while spurred by the Supreme Court nominee, proceeds to a much deeper issue:

One must be clear about what constituted “violent” distrust “between” blacks and whites in the 20th century. In meant thousands of whites, in Atlanta, in 1906, assembling on the streets to randomly murder black people. In Springfield, Illinois, in 1908,  it meant whites pillaging a Jewish businesses for arms, and then proceeding to the black side of town, attacking black business and black homes, and thousands of black people fleeing for their lives. It meant whites–across the nation–in 1910 assembling in mobs and murdering random black people (On the 4th of July!). The cause? Jack Johnson had the temerity to win the championship. It meant whites in East St. Louis, in 1918, perpetrating  a pogrom against the city’s black population, and killing over 100 black people because, “southern niggers need a lynching.”

This is hardly a complete listing of the terrible things that occurred.  So I thought about this in contrast to the effort to track down and prosecute people like John Demjanjuk.  And it has to be pretty damn galling.

I am sure that anyone whose parents/grandparents were victims of the crimes above are aware of it.  I’m sure they told their children “do not let this happen again.”  But for the perpetrators, who certainly outnumbered the victims, I don’t feel like there is a great awareness of their crimes.  1918 was not so long ago, and that certainly wasn’t the last time something bad happened.  Some of them are no doubt even still alive, and certainly there are thousands if not millions of children and grandchildren of men who did things like this.  Do they know?  Are even a tiny fraction of them aware?  

Did you ever perhaps look into the slightly out-of-it grandfather who occasionally makes highly politically incorrect statements?  Whether or not he did anything himself, he was alive at a time when white people (ones he almost certainly knew) went out into the streets and killed black people — and now he’s making stupid comments.  

Instead of grandpa heroically flying in on a WW1 biplane, maybe he’d walk up holding a torch and a noose.  Which is more likely?  Do you know?  Does Ancestry.com have categories for “noted racists?”  Sure, this is a painful topic, but imagine how painful it is for the people whose grandparents had it happen to them knowing that the vast majority don’t really care?  I wonder how much more painful it is for those whose grandparents were killed or injured by those for whom we not only ignore or excuse their crimes, but revere as national heroes?

History’s primary relevance (for me) is in how we judge the actors in the past, and therefore how we will judge modern or future actors.  Modern figures may (often correctly) surmise that their brutal crimes will get a free pass so long as they only abuse the right people, or perhaps pen the right history books.  It may be difficult to prevent or punish modern atrocities, but we can all certainly find it our hearts to condemn the ones that have already happened.

Update: unrelated post by Andrew Sullivan, but he certainly points out how often past butchers get promoted past “national hero” to “religious icons.”  Triple horror points for the listing of horrible abusers of Jewish people, also in the category of “past sins committed by people who are now heroic figures.”  Man, the past sucked.

Update: despite the negative tone, and before I get lambasted by people, I will say that as a country, things are not completely bad.  There is a general sense that actions such as slavery, Japanese internment, the racial terrorism mentioned above, are all bad things, and I believe that most people would loudly oppose them if they came back on a wide scale.  Good for you, America.  But this all seems to be dealt with on a non-personal scale.  Most admit that internment was wrong, but major figures who supported it are still national heroes, such as FDR and Earl Warren.

Update: this is worth reading again.

Apparently (this is contested of course) the reason the writers of the bible chose to have Eve created from the rib of Adam was an ancient Sumerian myth:

Some hold that the origin of this motif is the Sumerian myth in which the goddess Ninhursag created a beautiful garden full of lush vegetation and fruit trees, called Edinu, in Dilmun, the Sumerian earthly Paradise, a place which the Sumerians believed to exist to the east of their own land, beyond the sea. Ninhursag charged Enki, her lover and husband, with controlling the wild animals and tending the garden, but Enki became curious about the garden and his assistant, Adapa, selected seven plants and offered them to Enki, who ate them. (In other versions of the story he seduced in turn seven generations of the offspring of his divine marriage with Ninhursag). This enraged Ninhursag, and she caused Enki to fall ill. Enki felt pain in his rib, which is a pun in Sumerian, as the word “ti” means both “rib” and “life”. The other gods persuaded Ninhursag to relent. Ninhursag then created a new goddess named Ninti, (a name made up of “Nin”, or “lady”, plus “ti”, and which can be translated as both Lady of Living and Lady of the Rib), to cure Enki. Ninhursag is known as mother of all living creatures, and thus holds the same position in the story as does Eve. The story has a clear parallel with Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib, but given that the pun with rib is present only in Sumerian, linguistic criticism places the Sumerian account as the more ancient.

Sorry, my apologies, just thought it was interesting, especially when you consider by how much the Sumerian culture predates the biblical story.  The have a flood myth too, as well as a heroic descent-into-the-underworld.

Thanks to Professor Kramer.

Every time something like this torture issue comes up, people compare what horrible evils we commit today vs. some idealized past where everyone was noble and good and only hurt bad nasty Nazis.

Unfortunately this was not the case:

According to a report from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the camp was a testing ground for Allied mustard-gas experiments during World War II:

The numerous testing facilities operated by the Allies in South Asia were particularly concerned with analysing the effects of CW in tropical conditions. Often live human volunteer subjects were exposed to high doses of mustard agents, with anywhere from adequate protection to no protection at all. Photographs show that Indian soldiers also took part in these “volunteer” trials. Of the numerous testing ranges operated by the Allies in South Asia during the war, live agents were tested at the following sites: Deolali, Dehra Dun, Coimbatore, Kumbla, Porkhal, Chakra, Cambellpur (present day India), and Maurypur (present day Pakistan).

Microkhan’s bolding. Of course, Indian “volunteers” were not the only poor souls doused with mustard gas during World War II trials. A fair number of American sailors apparently got the cruel treatment, too.

This is not to excuse the present.  This is to condemn the past.