Saluting George Washington on Veteran's Day

And, on the subject of Veteran's Day and the role the military does and does not have in maintaining freedom, let us consider George Washington and his Continental Army, and how we honor them.

We do not honor Washington and his Continental Army in the way that we honor Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant.  We don't marvel at his military genius, as we do for Lee or Grant, or thrill to the battles that he won.  While we have Civil War reenactments that recreate the battles in every detail except for the killing.  The Revolutionary War just doesn't inspire that sort of devotion.  Part of it, I assume, is that no one wants the play the British.  But the other reason is that it would be embarrassing.  Washington's Continental Army lost most of the battles it fought.  Yes, granted, it won the Battle of Trenton and inspired the famous patriotic painting above.  But the Battle of Trenton is not exactly one that bears reenacting.  Instead of facing off in a fair fight, Washington's army sneaked up on the Hessians while they were holding a Christmas party, which seems like rather dirty pool.  He contributed much of he planning to the turning point Battle of Saratoga, but was not present to command.  And although he was, of course, present for the decisive (for some reason) Battle of Yorktown, but the French played a major role in that.

So what do we honor Washington and his Continental Army for?  The place name most people think of when it comes to Washington and his army is Valley Forge, which was not a battle at all, but a winter encampment.  We remember and honor Washington and his army for enduring cold, hunger and disease and sticking together.  It is entirely appropriate that we should honor them in that way.  In every war before the 20th Century, more soldiers died of disease from squalid conditions than were killed in battle.  And besides, battle takes up only a small part of any army's time.  Procuring food and shelter are much more of their ongoing existence.  And, although there were many desertions, for an army to be barefoot in the winter and not know where its next meal was coming from, but not to desert en masse, or to mutiny, or take to uncontrollable looting really is an important achievement.

But we honor George Washington not just for holding together a starving and freezing army.  We honor him having an army often unpaid and desperate for supplies and an incompetent government seemingly incapable of providing them and still respected civilian control of the military.  He never marched his army against the Continental Congress to oust these blunderers and get things done.  And when his army, angry over still not being paid, finally did mutiny, Washington sympathized with their grievances, but talked them down anyhow. 

And, of course, he was honored not only in the U.S., but throughout Europe for not using the prestige that accompanied him as military hero to become a military dictator, but retired to Mount Vernon and returned to politics only as an elective civilian rule, and only for two terms.  George III is quoted as saying, "If that is true, he's the greatest man of our age."  Reading over the notes from the Constitutional Convention and the ratification debates, it has become clear to me that, contrary to what I was taught in school, no one at the time was the least bit worried about a hereditary monarchy.  What they feared was a military dictatorship.  One need look no further than France just a few years later to see that such fears were well justified.

So yes, by all means, let's honor our veterans.  But let's not turn honor into idolatry.  And let's remember that in the end, our army can protect freedom only by deferring to civilian leadership, however unworthy it may seem.

A Very Politically Incorrect Comment this Veteran's Day

I have been wanting to do this post since the NFL protests, with one side saying that football players kneeling during the Star Spangled Banner insults our troops overseas and the other saying that our troops overseas are fighting for the players' right to protest.

It also harkens back to a song my school sang on the Bicentennial, "Freedom is a word often heard today/But if you want to keep it there's a price to pay/Each generation has to win anew/Cause it's not something handed down to you.  Freedom isn't free."  In fact, it is inspired by every time I hear that "freedom isn't free," taken to imply that the more wars we fight, the freer we are.

It is also inspired by a poem I saw long ago in the Washington Times generally denigrating democratic (small-d) politicians ("who would betray a fellow man") as self-seeking, squalid and sordid compared to soldiers who are models of pure, unselfish patriotism.  "It's not the politicians with their compromising ploys/That have given us the freedom that our country now enjoys."

But what finally inspired me to write it today (on Veterans Day) was a tweet on Twitter:

It’s the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of press
It’s the soldier, not the speaker, who has given us freedom of speech
It‘s the soldier, not the organizer, who gave us freedom to assemble
We can‘t thank them enough, but we must try.

And this counter-tweet, "please PLEASE stop vomiting this nonsense all over social media every May and November."

So let's talk about how we achieved our freedom.  I do think it fair to say, by fighting against un-freedom.  But there are many kinds of un-freedom, some that soldiers can protect us against, and many they cannot.

The most obvious kind of un-freedom is foreign conquest.  If there is one definition of freedom recognized the world over and throughout all history, it is freedom from foreign conquest.  Our military does protect us from that kind of un-freedom, and for that we should be grateful.

Another kind of un-freedom is the un-freedom that is inevitable when a country lives under the shadow of constant menace.  Freedom and security are often spoken of as being opposed, but without a certain minimum of security, we cannot be free.  Our military protects us from any foreign menace that might force us to live in fear, or as an armed camp.  So, again, let us be grateful for that.*

But the military can only protect a country from external menaces and give the country the scope to create its own domestic institutions.  Whether the institutions that a country creates at home are free institutions or not is not something the military can control.  Or rather, when the military controls a country's domestic institutions, then that country by definition is not free.  It is a military dictatorship.  Once the military gives a country the scope to create its own institutions and agrees to step aside to allow civilians to create those institutions, it is the civilians who decide whether those institutions will be free or not. 

It isn't always easy.  In the countries that have free domestic institutions today, there are many heroic stories of how it was won, but the military plays a supporting role at most.  In other countries, it was the story of the majority rising up against a ruling elite.  In the U.S., the story has been one more of dissenting minorities standing up to the tyranny of the majority.  Freedom of the press was won, in many cases, as a struggle to resist wartime restrictions placed on what could be expressed.  It has its heroes, its villains, and even a few martyrs.  But it was not fought by soldiers on the battlefield, it could not be won on the battlefield, and it is most unlikely to be lost on the battlefield.  The same can be recounted any number of times, with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and countless others.**

Nor are our soldiers overseas fighting for our domestic freedom at home.  Looking at the numerous wars we are fighting overseas, can anyone point to a single shred of evidence that we are any freer for fighting them, or that we would be any less free without them?  Or that fighting any more wars overseas would make us any freer at home?  Some may object that even if our wars abroad do not make us freer at home, they bring freedom to other people and therefore make our world more secure and allow liberty a better opportunity to flourish at home.  And it is true that we freed Europe from the Nazis and safeguarded them from the Communists and thereby allowed freedom and friendship to flourish.  It is also true that we freed Europe from the Kaiser, too, but Europe ultimately gave up its freedom between the wars and became a series of dictatorships. 

Korea is an even better example.  Our army saved South Korea from the Communists.  If we had not saved South Korea from the Communists, it would be just like North Korea today -- one of the least free countries the world over.  To this day our army (together with the South Korean army; must give credit where it is do) continues to protect South Korea from North Korea. But saving South Korea from the Communists did not, by itself, make South Korea free.  It merely made it possible for South Korea to be free.  For a long time, that country continued to be an unfree military dictatorship. 

And in the US today, the military contributes to our freedom somewhat by safeguarding it in places far from home, but mostly by staying out of domestic politics altogether and leaving it to the democratic process.  Our free government rests with politicians who concede defeat when they lose, or who win and make the sordid, squalid compromises that are necessary to get things done, instead of calling in the army to crush their opponents by brute force.  It rests with the whole brigade of volunteers and professionals who campaign for politicians but stay within proper bounds.  It rests with journalists who expose abuses by the powerful, and tipsters who give them leads.  It rests with lawyers who stand up for the little guy and judges who give them their day in court.  It rests with protesters who speak their minds and counter-protesters who speak theirs, and police who keep them apart.  It rests with the countless organizations, some political, some not, that make up a free society.  It rests with a public that understands the rules of democratic fair play, that accepts defeat when they lose and accepts that no win is final and absolute.

And the reason our democracy is starting to look imperiled today is not just that people are losing faith in our institutions.  It is because people are losing faith most of all in democratic institutions like Congress or their state legislature, and keeping most faith in the most authoritarian institutions, like the military.  Because democracy is government of the people, and if the people don't want it, it cannot endure. 

So let's give our honor to our veterans for defending national sovereignty.  And to the figures of the past who squeezed open old doors to give us the free institutions we have today.  And to the politicians, journalists and countless others who make the system work today.  And We, the People, who the whole system rests upon.  Because know that in the end, whether our freedom survives depends above all on us, and whether we maintain the habits and discipline that freedom and democracy require.

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*Of course, there may be other factors at work here, too.  Like the wide oceans that lie between us and either Europe r Asia, and our being so much more powerful than either Canada or Mexico that neither could possibly threaten us.  And, yes, our military might is at least partly responsible for this fortunate situation.  But so is the attractiveness of this country that brought over enough people that made our population so vastly larger than our neighbors'.  So is their energy that much us so much wealthier than our neighbors. So is the wisdom of our political leadership that managed to pursue friendly relations with our neighbors instead of making them enemies.
**The obvious exception is slavery, which was defeated on the battlefield.  But if there is one thing that the failure of the Reconstruction should make clear, it is that freedom cannot be imposed at gunpoint on an unwilling population.  The Army could end slavery; it could not create freedom.

If Trump Shot Someone in the Middle of Fifth Avenue, Continued

OK, the latest development show that I have missed part of what would most likely happen if Trump shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. 

I still believe that he would begin by denying it, insist that the tape of him doing it was "fake news," the witness were paid Hillary shills, and that the forensic evidence linking the bullets to his gun were a violation of the Second Amendment. Once the evidence got too strong to deny, he would lock himself in the bathroom and send out whiny, petulant tweets explaining that it wasn't his fault the other guy stepped in front of the bullet and besides, the Secret Service saw him point the gun, so why didn't the wrest it away from him.  Not to mention than any elitist who hangs out on Fifth Avenue deserves to die anyhow.

But somewhere along the line people with who are more disciplined than Trump would figure out that Trump's tweets just wouldn't quite cut it.  So the whole right wing media complex, the Fox News/Breitbart/talk radio/Murdoch axis would come out with a new argument.  Actually the guy Trump shot fired at him first, so Trump shot him in self defense.  Although Trump would be surrounded by the Secret Service and the victim's failure to hit anyone or anything on a crowded street might be a bit much even for the Right Wing Noise Machine, so they might have to settle on saying that he was pointing a gun and about to shoot. 

A minimum of research would no doubt soon reveal that the victim was a registered Democrat and probably donated to the Clinton campaign or at least wrote something favorable to her.  This would put the alternative facts machine into high gear that they would start spinning out all sorts of conspiracy theories about how this assassination attempt was actually engineers by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.  (If right wing commentators were smart, or at least had smart lawyers, they would drop the subject of the victim as quickly as possible for fear of libel suits and instead focus on the imagined conspiracy, whose members would all be either public figures or figments of their imaginations).  The absence of a gun or any other evidence whatever to support this theory would simply be taken as proof of how well planned the conspiracy was, that the members were able to conceal all evidence of its existence.

At least we got a tax cut

Trump would learn about the whole thing from watching Fox and Friends and tweet out that he just learned that the guy he shot was was about to shoot him on behalf of the Democrats and call for an investigation.  House Republicans would say that they didn't think Trump shooting someone was important enough to call for an investigation, but would throw their energies into looking into the Democrat's dastardly plot to kill the President.  Eventually, toward the end of Trump's term, they would acknowledge that there was nothing to be found, but by then the effect would have been made and a sizable portion of the population would believe that Democrats attempted to assassinate Trump and only his sharp reflexes thwarted the plot.

And if anyone thinks this is an exaggeration, just look at what is happening now.