Posts
The Trump and Hillary ads that I saw last night were the best
political ads that I had seen in the 2016 general election. I got
goosebumps after watching both of them! They were very well done. In
this post, I would like to comment on each ad, and add some
side-comments.
A. Here is
a link to the Trump ad. As a dramatic soundtrack plays, Trump is
giving a speech against the elites, whom he claims are concerned for
their own interests rather than the interests of American workers.
Images are shown of these elites, including Wall Street, Hillary
Clinton, and Janet Yellen. Trump says that the only one who can stop
this is “you.” Images appear of Americans from different races, looking
into the camera, and Trump says that he is fighting for them. There
are images of Trump enjoying the campaign, as he gives a thumbs-up to
supporters and claps (I think it was at an African-American church).
The anti-elite part of the ad reminded me of a John Birch Society
documentary, since the JBS rails against rich globalist elites. Indeed,
Trump’s final ad is being called anti-Semitic, since it shows some Jews
and supposedly echoes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish
international bankers running the system for their own benefit. One
need not draw this conclusion, though, since Trump may just be railing
against elites, as Bernie Sanders railed against elites. Plus, in
considering the question of whether Trump is anti-Semitic, I do think
the fact that Trump’s own son-in-law (Ivanka’s husband) is an Orthodox
Jew is important; Ivanka even converted to modern Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner. Some may think that counts for nothing, but I disagree.
(I should note that The John Birch Society long denied being
anti-Semitic, stating that several members of the conspiracy that it was
criticizing, such as the Rockefellers, were Gentiles.)
As a side-comment, here is a link to Pat Buchanan’s latest column, “What Hath Trump Wrought.”
According to Buchanan, even if Trump loses, the Republican Party will
have to deal with Trump’s challenge against the establishment. The GOP
cannot return to the Bush dynasty or the usual establishment
Republicans, after Trump has come in, swept the primaries, and continued
to receive sizeable support notwithstanding his numerous gaffes and
scandals.
B. Here is
the link to the Hillary ad, entitled “Roar.” The music is awesome.
And, while the ad is about Hillary, it focuses more on what she wants to
accomplish: students being debt free (that resonates with me!), and the
health of the climate.
That is something I have liked about Hillary. Although she has run a
lot of anti-Trump ads, she has also offered a positive vision of what
she wants to do. I was watching her on TV last night, and I liked that
she said that she wants to be the President of all Americans, both those
who vote for her, and also those who do not vote for her. Behind the
scenes, who knows what shenanigans go on? But, on the surface, at
least, her campaign has been rather positive.
I said that these were the two best ads of the general election this
year. If we want to include the primaries, I think Bernie Sanders’ “America ad” is awesome!
Showing posts with label john birch society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john birch society. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Friday, September 16, 2016
Book Write-Up: War Against War, by Michael Kazin
Michael Kazin. War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918. Simon and Schuster, 2017. See here to purchase the book.
Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and co-edits the publication Dissent. War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 is about the American anti-war movement during World War I. The book talks about who was involved in the anti-war movement and why, chronicles the events that led up to American intervention into the war, and discusses the attempts by the U.S. government to suppress anti-war dissent through such measures as the Espionage Act.
A book that was continually on my mind as I read Kazin’s book was William P. Hoar’s Architects of Conspiracy, which I read back when I was in the sixth grade. Hoar’s book was published by Western Islands, which was the publishing arm of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, and my understanding is that some of the chapters of Hoar’s book also appeared in the Bircher periodical American Opinion.
Why was Hoar’s book on my mind as I was reading Kazin’s book? In a sense, much of what I knew about World War I and the players involved came from Hoar’s book, and I have not read much about World War I since then. The school that I attended as a child covered the high points of World War I, such as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the Zimmermann telegram. But it did not talk much about the prominent personalities who had an opinion about the war: Woodrow Wilson, Charles Lindbergh, William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Jane Addams, Eugene Debs, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the list goes on. Hoar’s book covered a lot of those personalities.
But, in significant areas, the narrative in Hoar’s book was different from the narrative in Kazin’s book. Both clearly overlapped in that both were highly critical of American entry into World War I. But Hoar talks about World War I within the context of his sweeping narrative about how the rich Insiders were trying to create a one world government. In the course of Hoar’s narrative, there are heroes and villains. Woodrow Wilson was a villain because he broke his promise not to get America into war, and because he promoted the League of Nations after World War I. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was a hero because he valiantly opposed American entry into the war. Charles Lindbergh, Sr. (father of the famous pilot) was likewise a hero because he opposed American entry into the war (and also the Federal Reserve, which is another story). Henry Cabot Lodge was a hero because he stood against American entry into the League of Nations. Henry Ford was a heroic anti-Internationalist. Andrew Carnegie was a villain because he supported a one-world government. Jane Addams was a villain because of her left-leaning stances. The progressives were bad because they wanted socialism.
Kazin’s book presents a picture that is more complicated. Woodrow Wilson emerges as a figure who was trying to keep America out of war as long as he felt he could, and he had reservations even after the U.S. got into the war. William Jennings Bryan was largely critical of American intervention, yet, at the same time, like many in the anti-war movement, he supported a globalist system to keep the peace, the sort of system that many Birchers would find abhorrent! Charles Lindbergh was critical of American entry into the war, but he was one of the few Republicans to oppose it: in Kazin’s telling, many Republicans wanted a stronger military and supported the war because that would benefit their wealthy corporate backers. Henry Cabot Lodge supported American entry into the war. Henry Ford was against the war and sided with leftists who wanted a one-world government, or something like that. Andrew Carnegie and Jane Addams opposed American entry into the war, as did the progressive Robert La Follette. Hoar’s heroes were not entirely heroic, by Bircher standards, and his villains were not entirely villainous. At the same time, while Kazin talks a lot about the leftist opposition to American involvement in World War I, Kazin also tells the story of Southern conservative Democrats who were against the war.
(This is not to suggest that I had a Bircher view about World War I until I read Kazin’s book, but rather that Hoar’s book was on my mind when I was reading Kazin.)
Kazin is a compelling narrator and storyteller. He gives the background of many of the people who opposed World War I, and their reasons for opposing American entry. Among the criticisms of American entry was a sense that it would benefit wealthy capitalists rather than workers, a belief that negotiation could alleviate the international tension, a utopian desire for a globalist sort of system to maintain the peace, a recognition of the horrors of war, and a sense that America need not worry about foreign conflict because America was invulnerable to outside attack, since two oceans protected it. Moreover, for a while, President Woodrow Wilson was reluctant to create a standing army or to boost U.S. military spending because he preferred the Jeffersonian Democratic aversion to a strong military.
Kazin also talks about the rationale of Americans who supported the war. There was a sense that war brought out the best in people, giving them the opportunity to think beyond themselves and to exercise such virtues as courage. There was some fear that Germans could attack America’s cities, and the Zimmermann telegram confirmed in some minds that the Germans had hostile intentions towards the United States and could attack from Mexico. Germans were interfering with U.S. and British trade by sinking ships. Some American labor representatives thought the the war could boost the economy and help workers. There was a desire for the U.S. to be strong: Theodore Roosevelt especially articulated this, as he portrayed Wilson as a weakling. Among certain leftists, there was concern that Germany could threaten the newly emerging Soviet Union, which they saw as the beginnings of a model and just society.
In reading Kazin’s narrative, I had difficulty identifying a clear event that got America into the war. Even after the Germans sank the Lusitania, Wilson was still dragging his feet. There were anti-war people who considered the Zimmermann telegram a fake. But, as Germans continued being aggressive and rejected peace overtures, more and more Americans got tired and thought that the U.S. should enter the war. Wilson later targeted the anti-war activists whom he once embraced because he thought that they were undermining morale.
Kazin explores interesting historical topics: how women conducted the anti-war movement in a different manner from men; the different attitudes toward the war within the African-American community, as some championed the war as an opportunity for African-Americans to support freedom and demonstrate their valor, whereas others contended that it was hypocritical for America to fight for freedom abroad while neglecting it at home; and how anti-war legislators sought to modify American entry into the war, by attempting to impose a heavy tax on wealthy industrialists to pay for it! Kazin also discusses the role of Helen Keller in opposing the war, and Henry Ford’s unsuccessful and derided attempt to negotiate a peace settlement.
In addition, Kazin provides a helpful timeline and list of books at the end.
In terms of critiques, Kazin perhaps could have been clearer about what specifically precipitated American intervention. Moreover, although Kazin effectively described the motivations of so many people, he also should have gone into more detail about German motivations: why were the Germans doing what they were doing?
Overall, though, this is an informative, interesting, and engaging book.
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and co-edits the publication Dissent. War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 is about the American anti-war movement during World War I. The book talks about who was involved in the anti-war movement and why, chronicles the events that led up to American intervention into the war, and discusses the attempts by the U.S. government to suppress anti-war dissent through such measures as the Espionage Act.
A book that was continually on my mind as I read Kazin’s book was William P. Hoar’s Architects of Conspiracy, which I read back when I was in the sixth grade. Hoar’s book was published by Western Islands, which was the publishing arm of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, and my understanding is that some of the chapters of Hoar’s book also appeared in the Bircher periodical American Opinion.
Why was Hoar’s book on my mind as I was reading Kazin’s book? In a sense, much of what I knew about World War I and the players involved came from Hoar’s book, and I have not read much about World War I since then. The school that I attended as a child covered the high points of World War I, such as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the Zimmermann telegram. But it did not talk much about the prominent personalities who had an opinion about the war: Woodrow Wilson, Charles Lindbergh, William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Jane Addams, Eugene Debs, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the list goes on. Hoar’s book covered a lot of those personalities.
But, in significant areas, the narrative in Hoar’s book was different from the narrative in Kazin’s book. Both clearly overlapped in that both were highly critical of American entry into World War I. But Hoar talks about World War I within the context of his sweeping narrative about how the rich Insiders were trying to create a one world government. In the course of Hoar’s narrative, there are heroes and villains. Woodrow Wilson was a villain because he broke his promise not to get America into war, and because he promoted the League of Nations after World War I. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was a hero because he valiantly opposed American entry into the war. Charles Lindbergh, Sr. (father of the famous pilot) was likewise a hero because he opposed American entry into the war (and also the Federal Reserve, which is another story). Henry Cabot Lodge was a hero because he stood against American entry into the League of Nations. Henry Ford was a heroic anti-Internationalist. Andrew Carnegie was a villain because he supported a one-world government. Jane Addams was a villain because of her left-leaning stances. The progressives were bad because they wanted socialism.
Kazin’s book presents a picture that is more complicated. Woodrow Wilson emerges as a figure who was trying to keep America out of war as long as he felt he could, and he had reservations even after the U.S. got into the war. William Jennings Bryan was largely critical of American intervention, yet, at the same time, like many in the anti-war movement, he supported a globalist system to keep the peace, the sort of system that many Birchers would find abhorrent! Charles Lindbergh was critical of American entry into the war, but he was one of the few Republicans to oppose it: in Kazin’s telling, many Republicans wanted a stronger military and supported the war because that would benefit their wealthy corporate backers. Henry Cabot Lodge supported American entry into the war. Henry Ford was against the war and sided with leftists who wanted a one-world government, or something like that. Andrew Carnegie and Jane Addams opposed American entry into the war, as did the progressive Robert La Follette. Hoar’s heroes were not entirely heroic, by Bircher standards, and his villains were not entirely villainous. At the same time, while Kazin talks a lot about the leftist opposition to American involvement in World War I, Kazin also tells the story of Southern conservative Democrats who were against the war.
(This is not to suggest that I had a Bircher view about World War I until I read Kazin’s book, but rather that Hoar’s book was on my mind when I was reading Kazin.)
Kazin is a compelling narrator and storyteller. He gives the background of many of the people who opposed World War I, and their reasons for opposing American entry. Among the criticisms of American entry was a sense that it would benefit wealthy capitalists rather than workers, a belief that negotiation could alleviate the international tension, a utopian desire for a globalist sort of system to maintain the peace, a recognition of the horrors of war, and a sense that America need not worry about foreign conflict because America was invulnerable to outside attack, since two oceans protected it. Moreover, for a while, President Woodrow Wilson was reluctant to create a standing army or to boost U.S. military spending because he preferred the Jeffersonian Democratic aversion to a strong military.
Kazin also talks about the rationale of Americans who supported the war. There was a sense that war brought out the best in people, giving them the opportunity to think beyond themselves and to exercise such virtues as courage. There was some fear that Germans could attack America’s cities, and the Zimmermann telegram confirmed in some minds that the Germans had hostile intentions towards the United States and could attack from Mexico. Germans were interfering with U.S. and British trade by sinking ships. Some American labor representatives thought the the war could boost the economy and help workers. There was a desire for the U.S. to be strong: Theodore Roosevelt especially articulated this, as he portrayed Wilson as a weakling. Among certain leftists, there was concern that Germany could threaten the newly emerging Soviet Union, which they saw as the beginnings of a model and just society.
In reading Kazin’s narrative, I had difficulty identifying a clear event that got America into the war. Even after the Germans sank the Lusitania, Wilson was still dragging his feet. There were anti-war people who considered the Zimmermann telegram a fake. But, as Germans continued being aggressive and rejected peace overtures, more and more Americans got tired and thought that the U.S. should enter the war. Wilson later targeted the anti-war activists whom he once embraced because he thought that they were undermining morale.
Kazin explores interesting historical topics: how women conducted the anti-war movement in a different manner from men; the different attitudes toward the war within the African-American community, as some championed the war as an opportunity for African-Americans to support freedom and demonstrate their valor, whereas others contended that it was hypocritical for America to fight for freedom abroad while neglecting it at home; and how anti-war legislators sought to modify American entry into the war, by attempting to impose a heavy tax on wealthy industrialists to pay for it! Kazin also discusses the role of Helen Keller in opposing the war, and Henry Ford’s unsuccessful and derided attempt to negotiate a peace settlement.
In addition, Kazin provides a helpful timeline and list of books at the end.
In terms of critiques, Kazin perhaps could have been clearer about what specifically precipitated American intervention. Moreover, although Kazin effectively described the motivations of so many people, he also should have gone into more detail about German motivations: why were the Germans doing what they were doing?
Overall, though, this is an informative, interesting, and engaging book.
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Monday, March 21, 2016
Book Write-Up: Wrapped in the Flag, by Claire Conner
Claire Conner. Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America's Radical Right. Boston: Beacon Press, 2013. See here to buy the book. See also here, which has a later edition of the book. One of the Amazon reviews there is by Claire's sister, Janet Conner.
Claire Conner's parents were dedicated and high-ranking members of the right-wing John Birch Society. They knew high-ranking people in the group, and also a number of high-ranking people in America's right-wing, in general.
In Wrapped in the Flag, Claire Conner talks about her experiences with the John Birch Society and others on the right. Her narrative goes from the 1940's through the 2000's. In part, the book seems to be a catharsis for her, as she comes to terms with her feelings about her parents, both positive and the negative. At the same time, she also believes that her experiences are relevant to America today. While the John Birch Society no longer has the prominence that it once had, its ideas live on, particularly in the ideas held by the Tea Party.
I have been wanting to read this book for a long time. I have long had an interest in the John Birch Society, so I was curious about what it would have been like being in that movement, or growing up in it. I grew up reading Birch literature and Birch-like literature. I enjoyed it because it presented an alternative version of history, and.spouting Birch-like views was also my personal way of rebelling against the establishment! I am more to the Left now than I was then, but I do not thoroughly dismiss what I read in Birch literature. Some of its tenets are still a part of my belief-system: a recognition that government often serves the interests of the rich and powerful, a belief that things are not always as they seem, an aversion to war (yet, JBS views on war were rather complicated), etc.
I grew up in an offshoot of Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, and I think that people who grew up in ultra-conservative versions of that movement will identify with Claire Conner's story. A lot of what Claire talked about was familiar to me----not because my experiences in Armstrongism were so bad, but because I know about people with worse experiences in it. Claire's parents had a rather pessimistic view about the future, for they were paranoid that socialism, Communism, or the new world order could come to America anytime soon. They expected their daughter to toe the right-wing line, and they often became outraged when she did not. When Claire received a scholarship to the University of Illinois and was recommended by the governor, they forbade Claire to go because she may be indoctrinated by liberals there, plus they disliked the governor because they thought that he was too liberal. They told her to go to the conservative Catholic University of Dallas instead (which today is widely-respected, but back then it was unaccredited and was finding its wings). They refused to pay for Claire's college because money was tight, but they continued giving money generously to right-wing causes. Survivors of Armstrongism may recognize the rigidity and the stance towards money in their own experiences. If there is a difference between the two, it may be that Armstrongites expected the end to come soon and believed that would be followed by the second coming of Jesus Christ; Birchers, by contrast, tried to stop the end through mass education and political activism.
In reading this book, I came to understand better the ruptures that occurred within the American right. After reading this book, I think that the rupture was primarily over what stance America should take towards Communism. I do not think that the rupture was primarily about racism: from what Conner says, Bill Buckley and Robert Welch tolerated racists such as Revilo Oliver (a holocaust denier) within their movement, and they only parted ways with them when the racists made them look bad. But there was a difference between the mainsteam right and the Birchers on how to handle Communism. My understanding is that the mainstream right believed in a strong national defense and aggressive foreign intervention to combat Communism. The Birchers sometimes echoed that, but there were also times when they were singing another tune. They believed that Communists were literally running the U.S. Government.
Consequently, they thought that any war America would enter, including the Vietnam War, would serve the interests of the Communists, so they spoke out against the Vietnam War. Many Birchers viewed the Cuban Missile Crisis as a ruse. Robert Welch even questioned whether the Soviets had a superior military: they had the U.S. military to serve their ends, after all! Why, then, would they need a superior military? And why should we be spending more money to build up our military, out of fear of Soviet military superiority? Welch differed from mainstream conservatives on that. I read somewhere that the difference between the John Birch Society and Phyllis Schlafly was that the Birchers viewed Communism primarily as an internal threat, whereas Schlafly saw it more as an external threat. That makes sense to me, after reading Conner's book.
The book was an interesting account of who was who in the American right. I recognized many names, while learning new ones. A new name that I learned was that of Revilo Oliver, who, according to Conner, was the one who introduced concern about the Illuminati into the Birch ideology. Conner also had informative asides about the history of the Catholic church's stance towards abortion. According to her, the Catholic church's rigid stance against abortion today was not always its stance. For this, she cites Peter De Rosa's Vicars of Christ, pages 365-377.
Conner respects her parents' strength, determination, and intellectual interests. But she also seems to have understandable resentments about the past. On some issues (i.e., Mao's brutality, opposition to the Iraq War), she can identify with her parents or the JBS. Overall, however, she seems to believe that their views are bizarre or short-sighted, and she would probably dismiss the views as eccentric if they did not have the influence that they have. Their influence definitely concerns her.
What started Claire Conner on the journey of questioning her parents? For one, she was comparing her parents before they became Birchers to how they were after joining. Before joining, they were nicer parents. And her Dad, a WWII veteran, at least saw American intervention in WWII as justifiable before he became a Bircher, whereas he starting questioning that the Holocaust even happened after becoming one! (Note: The John Birch Society itself has written against Hitler, and it has even been criticized by Holocaust revisionists. See here. But I am not surprised that racists and Holocaust deniers gravitated towards the JBS.) Second, Claire read books and had experiences that encouraged her to question. One of her teachers allowed her to borrow books from her library if she kept her grades up, and one book that Claire read was John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me, a critical look at racism in the American South. That led Claire to question what her parents and the JBS was saying about the American South and the Civil Rights Movement.
Claire Conner's parents were dedicated and high-ranking members of the right-wing John Birch Society. They knew high-ranking people in the group, and also a number of high-ranking people in America's right-wing, in general.
In Wrapped in the Flag, Claire Conner talks about her experiences with the John Birch Society and others on the right. Her narrative goes from the 1940's through the 2000's. In part, the book seems to be a catharsis for her, as she comes to terms with her feelings about her parents, both positive and the negative. At the same time, she also believes that her experiences are relevant to America today. While the John Birch Society no longer has the prominence that it once had, its ideas live on, particularly in the ideas held by the Tea Party.
I have been wanting to read this book for a long time. I have long had an interest in the John Birch Society, so I was curious about what it would have been like being in that movement, or growing up in it. I grew up reading Birch literature and Birch-like literature. I enjoyed it because it presented an alternative version of history, and.spouting Birch-like views was also my personal way of rebelling against the establishment! I am more to the Left now than I was then, but I do not thoroughly dismiss what I read in Birch literature. Some of its tenets are still a part of my belief-system: a recognition that government often serves the interests of the rich and powerful, a belief that things are not always as they seem, an aversion to war (yet, JBS views on war were rather complicated), etc.
I grew up in an offshoot of Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, and I think that people who grew up in ultra-conservative versions of that movement will identify with Claire Conner's story. A lot of what Claire talked about was familiar to me----not because my experiences in Armstrongism were so bad, but because I know about people with worse experiences in it. Claire's parents had a rather pessimistic view about the future, for they were paranoid that socialism, Communism, or the new world order could come to America anytime soon. They expected their daughter to toe the right-wing line, and they often became outraged when she did not. When Claire received a scholarship to the University of Illinois and was recommended by the governor, they forbade Claire to go because she may be indoctrinated by liberals there, plus they disliked the governor because they thought that he was too liberal. They told her to go to the conservative Catholic University of Dallas instead (which today is widely-respected, but back then it was unaccredited and was finding its wings). They refused to pay for Claire's college because money was tight, but they continued giving money generously to right-wing causes. Survivors of Armstrongism may recognize the rigidity and the stance towards money in their own experiences. If there is a difference between the two, it may be that Armstrongites expected the end to come soon and believed that would be followed by the second coming of Jesus Christ; Birchers, by contrast, tried to stop the end through mass education and political activism.
In reading this book, I came to understand better the ruptures that occurred within the American right. After reading this book, I think that the rupture was primarily over what stance America should take towards Communism. I do not think that the rupture was primarily about racism: from what Conner says, Bill Buckley and Robert Welch tolerated racists such as Revilo Oliver (a holocaust denier) within their movement, and they only parted ways with them when the racists made them look bad. But there was a difference between the mainsteam right and the Birchers on how to handle Communism. My understanding is that the mainstream right believed in a strong national defense and aggressive foreign intervention to combat Communism. The Birchers sometimes echoed that, but there were also times when they were singing another tune. They believed that Communists were literally running the U.S. Government.
Consequently, they thought that any war America would enter, including the Vietnam War, would serve the interests of the Communists, so they spoke out against the Vietnam War. Many Birchers viewed the Cuban Missile Crisis as a ruse. Robert Welch even questioned whether the Soviets had a superior military: they had the U.S. military to serve their ends, after all! Why, then, would they need a superior military? And why should we be spending more money to build up our military, out of fear of Soviet military superiority? Welch differed from mainstream conservatives on that. I read somewhere that the difference between the John Birch Society and Phyllis Schlafly was that the Birchers viewed Communism primarily as an internal threat, whereas Schlafly saw it more as an external threat. That makes sense to me, after reading Conner's book.
The book was an interesting account of who was who in the American right. I recognized many names, while learning new ones. A new name that I learned was that of Revilo Oliver, who, according to Conner, was the one who introduced concern about the Illuminati into the Birch ideology. Conner also had informative asides about the history of the Catholic church's stance towards abortion. According to her, the Catholic church's rigid stance against abortion today was not always its stance. For this, she cites Peter De Rosa's Vicars of Christ, pages 365-377.
Conner respects her parents' strength, determination, and intellectual interests. But she also seems to have understandable resentments about the past. On some issues (i.e., Mao's brutality, opposition to the Iraq War), she can identify with her parents or the JBS. Overall, however, she seems to believe that their views are bizarre or short-sighted, and she would probably dismiss the views as eccentric if they did not have the influence that they have. Their influence definitely concerns her.
What started Claire Conner on the journey of questioning her parents? For one, she was comparing her parents before they became Birchers to how they were after joining. Before joining, they were nicer parents. And her Dad, a WWII veteran, at least saw American intervention in WWII as justifiable before he became a Bircher, whereas he starting questioning that the Holocaust even happened after becoming one! (Note: The John Birch Society itself has written against Hitler, and it has even been criticized by Holocaust revisionists. See here. But I am not surprised that racists and Holocaust deniers gravitated towards the JBS.) Second, Claire read books and had experiences that encouraged her to question. One of her teachers allowed her to borrow books from her library if she kept her grades up, and one book that Claire read was John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me, a critical look at racism in the American South. That led Claire to question what her parents and the JBS was saying about the American South and the Civil Rights Movement.
I have read Birch and Birch-like literature as a hobby, or
as an intellectual interest. Some of it, I buy, and some of it I
don't. Claire Conner talks about what happened when people took those
ideas seriously. Ideas can have consequences!
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Remnants of Conservatism
Ronald Reagan used to say that he did not leave the Democratic Party,
but the Democratic Party left him. Many people who change political
parties say something similar. “Oh, I miss the days when the Republican
Party was much more reasonable. Now, it has been highjacked by a bunch
of radicals!”
I have departed from right-wing conservatism, in the sense that I am more open now to voting for Democratic and progressive candidates. Still, I wonder: has my ideology really changed that much?
I grew up reading literature of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society. It would criticize the marriage between big government and big business: big business looking to big government to suppress competitors and grant big business unfair advantages. Well, guess what? I still agree with the John Birchers that this is a problem! More than one progressive would, too. That's one reason for progressives' opposition to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision: it gives special interests more power to influence government decisions for their own benefit.
When I was a conservative, I believed in fiscal responsibility. The government should try to eliminate waste and inefficiency. Well, there are Democrats who say that, too! Both sides claim to care about the deficit. And both sides create their share of them! But there have been plenty of Democratic governors who have managed to balance their state budgets. There are also Democrats who propose new government spending programs, and I think that those should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis: rather than assuming that something is getting done because the government is spending more money, we should take a look at how the money is being spent. We also shouldn't have duplicate programs. And, rather than being too hasty to create new programs, we should consider whether there are already programs that are supposed to be doing a particular job.
I wouldn't say that the Republican Party left me. I'm just saying that my political change does not involve me repudiating everything I believed when I was a conservative. My problem is, though, that many Republican politicians seem pretty selective in applying their principles of the free market and fiscal responsibility. My impression is that, in many cases, their decisions on this are to the benefit of the rich, and to the detriment of the poor, or those not as well-connected. And I am not saying that the Democrats are perfect, not by a long shot.
ADDENDUM: I was thinking of turning off comments for this post, since I don't want to get into a debate with anyone, or be asked to provide examples of what I'm talking about. This post is my general reflections, not a comprehensive research paper. I'm leaving the comments on, though, because I can learn from comments, even ones that disagree with me. Feel free to comment and to disagree, and I will read the comments. But I most likely will not get into any debates.
I have departed from right-wing conservatism, in the sense that I am more open now to voting for Democratic and progressive candidates. Still, I wonder: has my ideology really changed that much?
I grew up reading literature of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society. It would criticize the marriage between big government and big business: big business looking to big government to suppress competitors and grant big business unfair advantages. Well, guess what? I still agree with the John Birchers that this is a problem! More than one progressive would, too. That's one reason for progressives' opposition to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision: it gives special interests more power to influence government decisions for their own benefit.
When I was a conservative, I believed in fiscal responsibility. The government should try to eliminate waste and inefficiency. Well, there are Democrats who say that, too! Both sides claim to care about the deficit. And both sides create their share of them! But there have been plenty of Democratic governors who have managed to balance their state budgets. There are also Democrats who propose new government spending programs, and I think that those should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis: rather than assuming that something is getting done because the government is spending more money, we should take a look at how the money is being spent. We also shouldn't have duplicate programs. And, rather than being too hasty to create new programs, we should consider whether there are already programs that are supposed to be doing a particular job.
I wouldn't say that the Republican Party left me. I'm just saying that my political change does not involve me repudiating everything I believed when I was a conservative. My problem is, though, that many Republican politicians seem pretty selective in applying their principles of the free market and fiscal responsibility. My impression is that, in many cases, their decisions on this are to the benefit of the rich, and to the detriment of the poor, or those not as well-connected. And I am not saying that the Democrats are perfect, not by a long shot.
ADDENDUM: I was thinking of turning off comments for this post, since I don't want to get into a debate with anyone, or be asked to provide examples of what I'm talking about. This post is my general reflections, not a comprehensive research paper. I'm leaving the comments on, though, because I can learn from comments, even ones that disagree with me. Feel free to comment and to disagree, and I will read the comments. But I most likely will not get into any debates.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Book Write-Up: Radicals for Capitalism, by Brian Doherty
Brian Doherty. Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. New York: PublicAffairs, 2007.
I saw this book several years ago in a public library. At least I think it was this book—-I know that I saw some history of libertarianism. I wanted to read it because the topic interested me, but I was not sure if I wanted to make a commitment to reading over 700 pages. Well, I finally read it. And I am glad that I read it.
The book primarily focuses on the history of American libertarianism from the New Deal period to the time that the book was written. The author sometimes discusses events before the New Deal, as when he goes into the backgrounds of the libertarian figures he profiles, or has a chapter detailing the history of support for limited government from Confucian and biblical times through the founding days of America. Because the book was published in 2007, there are significant aspects of libertarianism’s history that are not there. The Tea Party movement was not yet prominent, and Rand Paul had not yet become a Senator.
The book was excellent in detailing the diverse approaches and personalities within the libertarian movement. Libertarianism has been far from monolithic. It ranges from those who believe in complete anarchy, to those who want to confine the government’s role to defense and/or protection, and even to a few who support some social safety net (I think here of Hayek). Some are purists and lament that libertarianism’s growing popularity and access to power have diluted the libertarian message, whereas others are more realistic politically. Many libertarians liked Barry Goldwater in 1964 because Goldwater was popularizing the libertarian message of less government, but there were libertarians who felt that Goldwater did not go far enough and that some of the things that he supported actually coincided with more government power rather than less. One prominent libertarian criticized Goldwater’s support for right-to-work laws, for who is the government to step in and forbid businesses from setting up a closed shop if that is what the employers and employees want? This libertarian also criticized Goldwater’s hawkish Cold War stance and support for the military-industrial complex. While some libertarians (i.e., Ayn Rand) were supportive of the Cold War and military buildup, many were not. They questioned whether the Soviet Union indeed had an expansionist agenda, feared growing state power in America more than the Soviet Union, believed that war negatively augmented the power of the U.S. Government, and alienated the hawkish American right while building bridges with the anti-war Left.
You may have heard of Austrian economics and Milton Friedman’s Chicago school. They are different. Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian economist, focused on the decisions of consumers rather than macro-economics and math; he believed that state planning was unhelpful to the economy because it did not efficiently distribute resources to where they needed to be, whereas the free market would demonstrate what people wanted and were willing to buy. Hayek looked more at social trends. And Friedman’s focus was more on macro-economics and monetary supply. I should also mention that Friedman was instrumental in convincing President Richard Nixon to end the draft, and that there were libertarians who believed that Friedman was not libertarian enough (i.e., Friedman supported educational vouchers, whereas many libertarians did not believe that the government should give students money to attend the school of their choice).
The book also detailed the personalities within libertarianism. These include Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Rose Wilder Lane (the daughter of Little House author Laura Ingalls Wilder), the infamous Koch brothers, John Stossell, Neal Boortz, and the list goes on. I was not always clear as to why some of these people became libertarians, but Doherty was effective in describing how people saw them and what happened in their life story.
In terms of policy issues, the book did a good job in its discussion of libertarian stances on environmental issues. There are libertarians who question doomsday scenarios because they encourage a greater role for the government, but there are also libertarians who maintain that government promotes pollution and that the free market can reduce it. The government allows pollution in common areas (i.e., water) because it believes some of it is necessary for economic growth, but suppose we did not have that and people could sue polluting companies. (Of course, these libertarians support a court system, whereas some believe the court system should be private, and that people should pay to use it!) Would that encourage those companies to come up with cleaner technology? The book talked some about the issue of poverty and how libertarians tried to come up with a private social safety net, but I wish that the book addressed that more. The book also could have used a discussion of libertarian proposals regarding health care. I cringe when I read libertarians describe those who receive government assistance as takers or as moochers, but I am happy when they try to come up with ways to help society’s vulnerable.
The book also gave me background about other books I was wondering about. When I was in high school, I was doing a project with some students, and we went to someone’s uncle’s house. On his uncle’s bookshelf was John Bircher material, but also a book entitled The Roosevelt Myth, a book that was critical of President Franklin Roosevelt. Well, I learned from Radicals for Capitalism that The Roosevelt Myth was written by John Flynn. I found the book!
Doherty’s book talked some about the question of whether big industrialists finance the libertarian movement because libertarian policies would further their economic interests, albeit not as much as I liked. My impression is that Doherty was arguing that certain industrialists simply had an interest in libertarianism (as one might be interested in stamp collecting), even if their own interests (i.e., protective tariffs, crony capitalism) did not always coincide with libertarian ideology. There may be something to that, but could it be the case that they support libertarianism while expecting the parts of it that are conducive to their economic interests to become policy, while the more eccentric parts (or parts contrary to their interests) do not?
I myself am not a libertarian, for I am not absolutist in my beliefs regarding the government’s role. I support the social safety net, and I am open to national health insurance. I do not believe that government always does things poorly, or that the private sector always does things well. I do believe, however, that libertarianism raises important considerations: the importance of competition, the need to make sure the government does not infringe on personal liberty, areas in which government policies make matters worse rather than better, how crony capitalism is evil, etc.
Good book. I should also mention that the author had an ironic sense of humor, which is another factor that made the book worth reading.
I saw this book several years ago in a public library. At least I think it was this book—-I know that I saw some history of libertarianism. I wanted to read it because the topic interested me, but I was not sure if I wanted to make a commitment to reading over 700 pages. Well, I finally read it. And I am glad that I read it.
The book primarily focuses on the history of American libertarianism from the New Deal period to the time that the book was written. The author sometimes discusses events before the New Deal, as when he goes into the backgrounds of the libertarian figures he profiles, or has a chapter detailing the history of support for limited government from Confucian and biblical times through the founding days of America. Because the book was published in 2007, there are significant aspects of libertarianism’s history that are not there. The Tea Party movement was not yet prominent, and Rand Paul had not yet become a Senator.
The book was excellent in detailing the diverse approaches and personalities within the libertarian movement. Libertarianism has been far from monolithic. It ranges from those who believe in complete anarchy, to those who want to confine the government’s role to defense and/or protection, and even to a few who support some social safety net (I think here of Hayek). Some are purists and lament that libertarianism’s growing popularity and access to power have diluted the libertarian message, whereas others are more realistic politically. Many libertarians liked Barry Goldwater in 1964 because Goldwater was popularizing the libertarian message of less government, but there were libertarians who felt that Goldwater did not go far enough and that some of the things that he supported actually coincided with more government power rather than less. One prominent libertarian criticized Goldwater’s support for right-to-work laws, for who is the government to step in and forbid businesses from setting up a closed shop if that is what the employers and employees want? This libertarian also criticized Goldwater’s hawkish Cold War stance and support for the military-industrial complex. While some libertarians (i.e., Ayn Rand) were supportive of the Cold War and military buildup, many were not. They questioned whether the Soviet Union indeed had an expansionist agenda, feared growing state power in America more than the Soviet Union, believed that war negatively augmented the power of the U.S. Government, and alienated the hawkish American right while building bridges with the anti-war Left.
You may have heard of Austrian economics and Milton Friedman’s Chicago school. They are different. Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian economist, focused on the decisions of consumers rather than macro-economics and math; he believed that state planning was unhelpful to the economy because it did not efficiently distribute resources to where they needed to be, whereas the free market would demonstrate what people wanted and were willing to buy. Hayek looked more at social trends. And Friedman’s focus was more on macro-economics and monetary supply. I should also mention that Friedman was instrumental in convincing President Richard Nixon to end the draft, and that there were libertarians who believed that Friedman was not libertarian enough (i.e., Friedman supported educational vouchers, whereas many libertarians did not believe that the government should give students money to attend the school of their choice).
The book also detailed the personalities within libertarianism. These include Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Rose Wilder Lane (the daughter of Little House author Laura Ingalls Wilder), the infamous Koch brothers, John Stossell, Neal Boortz, and the list goes on. I was not always clear as to why some of these people became libertarians, but Doherty was effective in describing how people saw them and what happened in their life story.
In terms of policy issues, the book did a good job in its discussion of libertarian stances on environmental issues. There are libertarians who question doomsday scenarios because they encourage a greater role for the government, but there are also libertarians who maintain that government promotes pollution and that the free market can reduce it. The government allows pollution in common areas (i.e., water) because it believes some of it is necessary for economic growth, but suppose we did not have that and people could sue polluting companies. (Of course, these libertarians support a court system, whereas some believe the court system should be private, and that people should pay to use it!) Would that encourage those companies to come up with cleaner technology? The book talked some about the issue of poverty and how libertarians tried to come up with a private social safety net, but I wish that the book addressed that more. The book also could have used a discussion of libertarian proposals regarding health care. I cringe when I read libertarians describe those who receive government assistance as takers or as moochers, but I am happy when they try to come up with ways to help society’s vulnerable.
The book also gave me background about other books I was wondering about. When I was in high school, I was doing a project with some students, and we went to someone’s uncle’s house. On his uncle’s bookshelf was John Bircher material, but also a book entitled The Roosevelt Myth, a book that was critical of President Franklin Roosevelt. Well, I learned from Radicals for Capitalism that The Roosevelt Myth was written by John Flynn. I found the book!
Doherty’s book talked some about the question of whether big industrialists finance the libertarian movement because libertarian policies would further their economic interests, albeit not as much as I liked. My impression is that Doherty was arguing that certain industrialists simply had an interest in libertarianism (as one might be interested in stamp collecting), even if their own interests (i.e., protective tariffs, crony capitalism) did not always coincide with libertarian ideology. There may be something to that, but could it be the case that they support libertarianism while expecting the parts of it that are conducive to their economic interests to become policy, while the more eccentric parts (or parts contrary to their interests) do not?
I myself am not a libertarian, for I am not absolutist in my beliefs regarding the government’s role. I support the social safety net, and I am open to national health insurance. I do not believe that government always does things poorly, or that the private sector always does things well. I do believe, however, that libertarianism raises important considerations: the importance of competition, the need to make sure the government does not infringe on personal liberty, areas in which government policies make matters worse rather than better, how crony capitalism is evil, etc.
Good book. I should also mention that the author had an ironic sense of humor, which is another factor that made the book worth reading.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 5
On page 266 of Nixon: A Life, Jonathan Aitken relays a story
that Elliott Richardson told him about Vice-President Richard Nixon.
Richardson at the time was acting Secretary of Health, Education, and
Welfare (HEW). Richardson under President Nixon would serve as
Under-Secretary of State, HEW Secretary, Secretary of Defense, and
Attorney General. Richardson resigned from his Attorney General
position because he refused to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor
Archibald Cox, notwithstanding pressure from President Nixon to do so.
Richardson would still go on to serve in the Ford Administration, as
Ambassador to Great Britain and Secretary of Commerce. Because of the
variety of offices that he held, he was known as "The Man for All
Positions."
When Richardson was acting HEW Secretary in 1959, which was during Dwight Eisenhower's Presidency, there was an occasion when Nixon spoke up at a Cabinet meeting, and Richardson actually appreciated this. Ordinarily, Nixon would keep quiet at these meetings in 1959. I'm not entirely clear why, but Richardson says that Nixon felt agitated because the Eisenhower Administration was making decisions without considering their negative impact on Nixon's coming 1960 run for President. Aitken states on page 266:
"One occasion when Nixon did not keep his mouth shut at a Cabinet meeting in 1959 elicited the admiration and gratitude of Richardson, who was on the verge of resignation over the Administration's refusal to accept a bill which would provide certain federal guarantees and subsidies for bonds funding the expansion of higher education. The bill was brought back to the Cabinet for one last discussion. The HEW Secretary, Arthur Fleming, made his pitch and Eisenhower asked for views. 'Just about everyone was against it at first,' recalled Richardson. 'Ezra Taft Benson, the Agriculture Secretary, said it was an unwelcome intrusion of government. Bob Anderson, the Secretary of the Treasury, said it required an excessive commitment of federal funding. Our allies deserted us one by one. The bill looked completely lost, until the Vice President spoke up. In a series of well-timed interventions Nixon got Anderson to admit that the bill would have very little impact on the budget in the first year or two. Then he had everyone agreeing that there was no objection to the bill in principle since the Government was already giving all sorts of subsidies to higher education. Finally he gave his own interpretation of the HEW data of the need for higher educational institutions, ending up by asking, 'Can there be any doubt Mr President, that this bill meets an important national priority?' There was a tiny spluttering around the table but no one opposed it any more, so Ike looked rather grim nodded and said, 'All right----send it up.' It was a quite extraordinarily skillful performance by Nixon. He had won the bill almost single-handed, and I was extremely grateful to him since I was saved from the need to resign. Quite an irony, when you consider what happened to me in 1973.[']"
Ezra Taft Benson's opposition to the funding of higher education did not surprise me, since Benson was sympathetic towards the arch-conservative John Birch Society (whose founder, Robert Welch, argued that Eisenhower was an agent of the Communist conspiracy). Benson was one of the endorsements of Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy on the book's back cover. Just looking at some of the titles of his published works is eye-opening. I'm looking especially at the title Civil Rights, Tool of Communist Deception. See here.
Richardson's story is cool, for a variety of reasons. For one, this account is an example of why Aitken's book is so good. Richardson, who left the Nixon Administration in protest, was years later reflecting on something positive that Richard Nixon did as Eisenhower's Vice-President, and he was making this reflection to Jonathan Aitken. I've read a number of books about Nixon, and many of them rely (at least in part) on interviews, but the quality of the interviews in Aitken's book particularly impresses me. Second, I'm impressed by how Nixon was able to sway the atmosphere of the room from opposing federal funding for higher education to supporting it. While Nixon has long been characterized as socially-inept, he had to have talent to pull this off. He probably could do so because he had a commanding presence and was able to articulate his position in an intelligent, reasonable manner. Third, this passage highlights Nixon's centrist ideology, as Nixon supported a federal role for higher education, when conservatives within Eisenhower's Cabinet were against that. Perhaps Nixon's stance was rooted in the importance of higher education in his own life: it allowed a working-class youth like him to go into law and then politics.
When Richardson was acting HEW Secretary in 1959, which was during Dwight Eisenhower's Presidency, there was an occasion when Nixon spoke up at a Cabinet meeting, and Richardson actually appreciated this. Ordinarily, Nixon would keep quiet at these meetings in 1959. I'm not entirely clear why, but Richardson says that Nixon felt agitated because the Eisenhower Administration was making decisions without considering their negative impact on Nixon's coming 1960 run for President. Aitken states on page 266:
"One occasion when Nixon did not keep his mouth shut at a Cabinet meeting in 1959 elicited the admiration and gratitude of Richardson, who was on the verge of resignation over the Administration's refusal to accept a bill which would provide certain federal guarantees and subsidies for bonds funding the expansion of higher education. The bill was brought back to the Cabinet for one last discussion. The HEW Secretary, Arthur Fleming, made his pitch and Eisenhower asked for views. 'Just about everyone was against it at first,' recalled Richardson. 'Ezra Taft Benson, the Agriculture Secretary, said it was an unwelcome intrusion of government. Bob Anderson, the Secretary of the Treasury, said it required an excessive commitment of federal funding. Our allies deserted us one by one. The bill looked completely lost, until the Vice President spoke up. In a series of well-timed interventions Nixon got Anderson to admit that the bill would have very little impact on the budget in the first year or two. Then he had everyone agreeing that there was no objection to the bill in principle since the Government was already giving all sorts of subsidies to higher education. Finally he gave his own interpretation of the HEW data of the need for higher educational institutions, ending up by asking, 'Can there be any doubt Mr President, that this bill meets an important national priority?' There was a tiny spluttering around the table but no one opposed it any more, so Ike looked rather grim nodded and said, 'All right----send it up.' It was a quite extraordinarily skillful performance by Nixon. He had won the bill almost single-handed, and I was extremely grateful to him since I was saved from the need to resign. Quite an irony, when you consider what happened to me in 1973.[']"
Ezra Taft Benson's opposition to the funding of higher education did not surprise me, since Benson was sympathetic towards the arch-conservative John Birch Society (whose founder, Robert Welch, argued that Eisenhower was an agent of the Communist conspiracy). Benson was one of the endorsements of Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy on the book's back cover. Just looking at some of the titles of his published works is eye-opening. I'm looking especially at the title Civil Rights, Tool of Communist Deception. See here.
Richardson's story is cool, for a variety of reasons. For one, this account is an example of why Aitken's book is so good. Richardson, who left the Nixon Administration in protest, was years later reflecting on something positive that Richard Nixon did as Eisenhower's Vice-President, and he was making this reflection to Jonathan Aitken. I've read a number of books about Nixon, and many of them rely (at least in part) on interviews, but the quality of the interviews in Aitken's book particularly impresses me. Second, I'm impressed by how Nixon was able to sway the atmosphere of the room from opposing federal funding for higher education to supporting it. While Nixon has long been characterized as socially-inept, he had to have talent to pull this off. He probably could do so because he had a commanding presence and was able to articulate his position in an intelligent, reasonable manner. Third, this passage highlights Nixon's centrist ideology, as Nixon supported a federal role for higher education, when conservatives within Eisenhower's Cabinet were against that. Perhaps Nixon's stance was rooted in the importance of higher education in his own life: it allowed a working-class youth like him to go into law and then politics.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Julie Nixon Eisenhower's Pat Nixon: The Untold Story 8
On page 442 of Pat Nixon: The Untold Story, Julie Nixon
Eisenhower talks about the books that her mother, Pat Nixon, liked to
read after Richard Nixon's departure from the Presidency:
"Her favorite books were the historical novels by the prolific writer Taylor Caldwell, who crammed her stories with rich details on the eras she wrote about, be they Biblical times, ancient Greece, or nineteenth-century America. What my mother found intriguing was that Taylor Caldwell believed in international plots, and to this day my mother's perception of Watergate is that it was partly an international scheme, or, at the very least, that double agents were involved. Like many others, she had questioned from the beginning the suspicious circumstances surrounding the apprehension of the burglars. Was it a setup? Was the CIA involved? How deeply was Howard Hunt or his organization involved?"
I like this passage because it offers insights into Pat Nixon's views on Watergate. Julie goes on to say that Pat and Richard "avoided reading any of the books on the Nixon years, favorable, or unfavorable", which is not an absolute statement, since Julie later tells the story of how Pat had a stroke after reading parts of The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But I wonder what Pat thought of the controversial book Silent Coup, which (from what I have heard) has a somewhat conspiratorial tone when talking about Watergate, and which a number of Nixon defenders, and even Nixon himself, liked. (I don't know if Nixon actually read it, but he told Monica Crowley that he wished its thesis got more attention than it did.)
It's also interesting what Julie says about author Taylor Caldwell. Caldwell was linked with the John Bircher wing of conservatism (see here), the wing that gave Richard Nixon and even Tricia and Julie problems when Nixon was running for Governor of California in 1962. It's ironic, in my opinion, that Pat Nixon enjoyed Taylor Caldwell's books. That Caldwell talked about "international plots" in her book does not surprise me, since the John Birch Society believed in conspiracies----among international bankers, communists, socialists, leftists, etc.----to create a one world government. I don't know for sure how Caldwell portrayed the "international plots", since I have not read any of her books. (My Mom has one of them, however, and I have Caldwell's A Pillar of Iron, which is about Cicero.) But the wikipedia article about her states that "Many of Caldwell's books centered on the idea that a small cabal of rich, powerful men secretly control the world."
"Her favorite books were the historical novels by the prolific writer Taylor Caldwell, who crammed her stories with rich details on the eras she wrote about, be they Biblical times, ancient Greece, or nineteenth-century America. What my mother found intriguing was that Taylor Caldwell believed in international plots, and to this day my mother's perception of Watergate is that it was partly an international scheme, or, at the very least, that double agents were involved. Like many others, she had questioned from the beginning the suspicious circumstances surrounding the apprehension of the burglars. Was it a setup? Was the CIA involved? How deeply was Howard Hunt or his organization involved?"
I like this passage because it offers insights into Pat Nixon's views on Watergate. Julie goes on to say that Pat and Richard "avoided reading any of the books on the Nixon years, favorable, or unfavorable", which is not an absolute statement, since Julie later tells the story of how Pat had a stroke after reading parts of The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But I wonder what Pat thought of the controversial book Silent Coup, which (from what I have heard) has a somewhat conspiratorial tone when talking about Watergate, and which a number of Nixon defenders, and even Nixon himself, liked. (I don't know if Nixon actually read it, but he told Monica Crowley that he wished its thesis got more attention than it did.)
It's also interesting what Julie says about author Taylor Caldwell. Caldwell was linked with the John Bircher wing of conservatism (see here), the wing that gave Richard Nixon and even Tricia and Julie problems when Nixon was running for Governor of California in 1962. It's ironic, in my opinion, that Pat Nixon enjoyed Taylor Caldwell's books. That Caldwell talked about "international plots" in her book does not surprise me, since the John Birch Society believed in conspiracies----among international bankers, communists, socialists, leftists, etc.----to create a one world government. I don't know for sure how Caldwell portrayed the "international plots", since I have not read any of her books. (My Mom has one of them, however, and I have Caldwell's A Pillar of Iron, which is about Cicero.) But the wikipedia article about her states that "Many of Caldwell's books centered on the idea that a small cabal of rich, powerful men secretly control the world."
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Julie Nixon Eisenhower's Pat Nixon: The Untold Story 5
I have two items to share for my post today about Julie Nixon Eisenhower's Pat Nixon: The Untold Story.
1. One thought that occurred to me while reading Julie's book was "What exactly will it take to please some people?" Julie talks about her mother Pat's promotion of volunteerism as First Lady----community service, in essence. But, according to Julie, there were people who criticized that, arguing that volunteerism did not really solve social ills, and that it was mostly done by rich women with time on their hands. (Julie retorts that there are many volunteers who also work full time.) Volunteerism should be considered a good thing, I think: taking one's time to reach out and to help the poor, the elderly, and the disabled. I wouldn't say that volunteerism should be used as an excuse for the government to do nothing, for large-scale national ills may require attempted solutions by the national government. But I agree with Pat Nixon that volunteerism adds a personal touch, plus I believe that many people appreciate others showing them that they care. Why are there people who have to be so cynical and eager to express their pontifications and bloviations that they criticize volunteerism, of all things? Julie does note an Associated Press writer who praised her mother for visiting Peru and helping out there after Peru had been hit with an earthquake. At least some people will praise a praiseworthy act, an attempt to do good.
2. One topic that comes up throughout Julie's book is the schools that she and her sister, Tricia, attended. Both of them attended a public school in Washington, D.C., and Julie says this was because the school was racially-integrated: Richard Nixon did not want to give the impression that he was shunning racially-integrated schools. Apparently, there were other politicians who had the same idea, for Julie states that Adlai Stevenson's running mate in 1956, Democrat Estes Kefauver, sent his kids to the same public school that Julie and Tricia attended, and Julie narrates that she and the Kefauver kids were friendly with each other. Julie does not think that the public school was that good, however, for it was not sufficiently funded, and, when Richard and Pat moved their daughters to a racially-integrated Quaker school, Julie and Tricia struggled a bit to catch up to their classmates.
When Richard Nixon was running for Governor of California in 1962, Julie and Tricia attended a school where a lot of the children were wealthy. The Nixon daughters felt out of place there, and the reason was that many of the kids' parents were supporting the right-wing John Bircher against whom Nixon was running for the Republican nomination. Later, Julie would attend Smith College, and she felt rather out of place there because many of the students and professors were supporters of the anti-war Democratic candidate for President, Eugene McCarthy.
Julie found out about Smith College when her family was taking a drive through Massachusetts. Richard noted that Smith College was nearby, and they decided to check the campus out. I was hoping that Richard and Pat would really like Smith College in the story, since that would remind me of my Mom encouraging me to go to DePauw University, a small, liberal arts university, back when I was in high school. But it turned out that Julie liked Smith, whereas Richard and Pat wanted her to go to Stanford or Northwestern, which were larger and coeducational. (On a side note, check here to see all the famous people who went to Smith College!)
Tricia attended Finch College, which was an all-women's college. Her major was Modern European History. Julie narrated earlier in the book that Tricia was becoming interested in history, especially William Shirer's landmark tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I was not aware that Tricia had intellectual pursuits (not that I know her), but it turns out that she did!
1. One thought that occurred to me while reading Julie's book was "What exactly will it take to please some people?" Julie talks about her mother Pat's promotion of volunteerism as First Lady----community service, in essence. But, according to Julie, there were people who criticized that, arguing that volunteerism did not really solve social ills, and that it was mostly done by rich women with time on their hands. (Julie retorts that there are many volunteers who also work full time.) Volunteerism should be considered a good thing, I think: taking one's time to reach out and to help the poor, the elderly, and the disabled. I wouldn't say that volunteerism should be used as an excuse for the government to do nothing, for large-scale national ills may require attempted solutions by the national government. But I agree with Pat Nixon that volunteerism adds a personal touch, plus I believe that many people appreciate others showing them that they care. Why are there people who have to be so cynical and eager to express their pontifications and bloviations that they criticize volunteerism, of all things? Julie does note an Associated Press writer who praised her mother for visiting Peru and helping out there after Peru had been hit with an earthquake. At least some people will praise a praiseworthy act, an attempt to do good.
2. One topic that comes up throughout Julie's book is the schools that she and her sister, Tricia, attended. Both of them attended a public school in Washington, D.C., and Julie says this was because the school was racially-integrated: Richard Nixon did not want to give the impression that he was shunning racially-integrated schools. Apparently, there were other politicians who had the same idea, for Julie states that Adlai Stevenson's running mate in 1956, Democrat Estes Kefauver, sent his kids to the same public school that Julie and Tricia attended, and Julie narrates that she and the Kefauver kids were friendly with each other. Julie does not think that the public school was that good, however, for it was not sufficiently funded, and, when Richard and Pat moved their daughters to a racially-integrated Quaker school, Julie and Tricia struggled a bit to catch up to their classmates.
When Richard Nixon was running for Governor of California in 1962, Julie and Tricia attended a school where a lot of the children were wealthy. The Nixon daughters felt out of place there, and the reason was that many of the kids' parents were supporting the right-wing John Bircher against whom Nixon was running for the Republican nomination. Later, Julie would attend Smith College, and she felt rather out of place there because many of the students and professors were supporters of the anti-war Democratic candidate for President, Eugene McCarthy.
Julie found out about Smith College when her family was taking a drive through Massachusetts. Richard noted that Smith College was nearby, and they decided to check the campus out. I was hoping that Richard and Pat would really like Smith College in the story, since that would remind me of my Mom encouraging me to go to DePauw University, a small, liberal arts university, back when I was in high school. But it turned out that Julie liked Smith, whereas Richard and Pat wanted her to go to Stanford or Northwestern, which were larger and coeducational. (On a side note, check here to see all the famous people who went to Smith College!)
Tricia attended Finch College, which was an all-women's college. Her major was Modern European History. Julie narrated earlier in the book that Tricia was becoming interested in history, especially William Shirer's landmark tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I was not aware that Tricia had intellectual pursuits (not that I know her), but it turns out that she did!
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Nixon Reconsidered 1
I started Joan Hoff's Nixon Reconsidered. I first heard of
this book when I was in high school. I believe it was in 1994, when the
book came out. I had a subscription to the rather conservative Insight magazine (which someone bought for me for my birthday present), and it had an article about Nixon Reconsidered.
According to the article, Hoff's book was arguing that Nixon made
significant progressive accomplishments on the domestic front. I guess
that didn't surprise me that much. Back when I was in the sixth grade, I
read Peter Hannaford's book, The Reagans, and (if I recall
correctly) it discussed how Reagan was quite critical of President
Nixon's proposed Family Assistance Policy (FAP). In my mind, the fact
that Nixon even proposed such a policy told me that Nixon was open to
liberal ideas. Moreover, one of my relatives had a copy of John Bircher
Gary Allen's Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask, and I
read pieces of it when I visited his house. At the beginning of the
book, Allen quoted someone who complained that, under the Nixon
Presidency, liberals get the action, whereas conservatives get the
rhetoric. I knew that Nixon wasn't exactly a conservative, in the
Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater sense.
Still, the article in Insight about Hoff's book intrigued me. I hoped to read Hoff's book someday, and, nineteen years later, that is what I am doing. Why did Insight's description of the book intrigue me at the time? Well, although I was aware that Nixon was open to liberal ideas, I really didn't know anything about his accomplishments in the environment and civil rights. The notion that a Republican President would have a successful track record in making progressive accomplishments on issues of concern to liberal Democrats gave me a sense of glee. Moreover, I was intrigued by a historian stepping forward and arguing that Nixon was essentially a good President. My impression at the time was that not many people did that (though some praised his China policy). My perception (limited as it was) was that Nixon was widely considered to be a crook, a liar, and a villain, and those who thought otherwise were Republicans (like the fictional Alex Keaton) who were blinded by their own partisanship. But, with Hoff's book, here was someone who was proposing an alternative understanding, one who was arguing that we should reconsider Nixon.
As I said in my post here, I was worried that Hoff's book would be primarily a laundry list of President Nixon's domestic accomplishments, which I thought might get old and dull after a while. But, as I look at the book's Table of Contents, I see that Hoff discusses other issues as well, such as Nixon's foreign policy, and also Watergate. The book may be worth reading to get her take on a wide variety of issues pertaining to the Nixon Presidency.
So far, my reading of Hoff's book had not been dull. I have had to go back and reread sentences because I was mindlessly reading, and something told me that Hoff had just said something profound and so I needed to go back and reread what I just read. Hoff discusses such issues as Nixon being aprincipled (in her eyes), and also how the "modern industrialized state" and the media have been conducive to "the formation of the aprincipled megastate" (page 12), one that is repressive yet generous, and that justifies morally questionable activities using righteous-sounding terminology.
What particularly interested me in my latest reading, however, was Hoff's discussion of her historical methodology. She said that she did not want to rely solely on interviews with people "about events that took place a quarter of a century ago", since one cannot always trust people who are interviewed, people who have their own agenda and who may want to rehabilitate their own reputation "by telling researchers or reporters what they want to hear" (page xiv). Rather than just relying on interviews, Hoff also wanted to look at documents. The reason that this interested me was that I had just finished Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician. Morris does refer to documents, but he also relies a lot on interviews, or the testimony of eyewitnesses. I wondered if I could really trust what many of these eyewitnesses were saying, or if they had their own agenda, which either clouded their recollection or influenced them to distort the past deliberately. At the same time, I figured that if more than one eyewitness testified to something, there was greater likelihood that what they related actually happened. In addition, I wondered if we would have much of a history if we could not, on some level, trust the testimony of eyewitnesses. I recently watched a YouTube video of Pat Buchanan interviewing Gore Vidal in the 1980's about Vidal's book, Lincoln. Buchanan appeared to be taking issue with Vidal's claim that Lincoln had syphilis, and Vidal responded that he was basing this on the testimony of someone who knew Lincoln, someone who is actually one of the few sources we have about Lincoln's young adulthood. If one dismissed this source, Vidal seemed to be implying, we don't have much left about that particular time in Lincoln's life!
Still, the article in Insight about Hoff's book intrigued me. I hoped to read Hoff's book someday, and, nineteen years later, that is what I am doing. Why did Insight's description of the book intrigue me at the time? Well, although I was aware that Nixon was open to liberal ideas, I really didn't know anything about his accomplishments in the environment and civil rights. The notion that a Republican President would have a successful track record in making progressive accomplishments on issues of concern to liberal Democrats gave me a sense of glee. Moreover, I was intrigued by a historian stepping forward and arguing that Nixon was essentially a good President. My impression at the time was that not many people did that (though some praised his China policy). My perception (limited as it was) was that Nixon was widely considered to be a crook, a liar, and a villain, and those who thought otherwise were Republicans (like the fictional Alex Keaton) who were blinded by their own partisanship. But, with Hoff's book, here was someone who was proposing an alternative understanding, one who was arguing that we should reconsider Nixon.
As I said in my post here, I was worried that Hoff's book would be primarily a laundry list of President Nixon's domestic accomplishments, which I thought might get old and dull after a while. But, as I look at the book's Table of Contents, I see that Hoff discusses other issues as well, such as Nixon's foreign policy, and also Watergate. The book may be worth reading to get her take on a wide variety of issues pertaining to the Nixon Presidency.
So far, my reading of Hoff's book had not been dull. I have had to go back and reread sentences because I was mindlessly reading, and something told me that Hoff had just said something profound and so I needed to go back and reread what I just read. Hoff discusses such issues as Nixon being aprincipled (in her eyes), and also how the "modern industrialized state" and the media have been conducive to "the formation of the aprincipled megastate" (page 12), one that is repressive yet generous, and that justifies morally questionable activities using righteous-sounding terminology.
What particularly interested me in my latest reading, however, was Hoff's discussion of her historical methodology. She said that she did not want to rely solely on interviews with people "about events that took place a quarter of a century ago", since one cannot always trust people who are interviewed, people who have their own agenda and who may want to rehabilitate their own reputation "by telling researchers or reporters what they want to hear" (page xiv). Rather than just relying on interviews, Hoff also wanted to look at documents. The reason that this interested me was that I had just finished Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician. Morris does refer to documents, but he also relies a lot on interviews, or the testimony of eyewitnesses. I wondered if I could really trust what many of these eyewitnesses were saying, or if they had their own agenda, which either clouded their recollection or influenced them to distort the past deliberately. At the same time, I figured that if more than one eyewitness testified to something, there was greater likelihood that what they related actually happened. In addition, I wondered if we would have much of a history if we could not, on some level, trust the testimony of eyewitnesses. I recently watched a YouTube video of Pat Buchanan interviewing Gore Vidal in the 1980's about Vidal's book, Lincoln. Buchanan appeared to be taking issue with Vidal's claim that Lincoln had syphilis, and Vidal responded that he was basing this on the testimony of someone who knew Lincoln, someone who is actually one of the few sources we have about Lincoln's young adulthood. If one dismissed this source, Vidal seemed to be implying, we don't have much left about that particular time in Lincoln's life!
Monday, August 5, 2013
Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon 9
For my blog post today about Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician,
I'll use as my starting-point something that Morris says on page 309.
The context is Richard Nixon's run for Congress in 1946 against
Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis.
"From the outset, Richard Nixon was plainly conscious of a line between propriety and taint in such political contributions, even in an era of virtually no legal accountability. Roy Day told the story of a railroad industry lobbyist who had come up to him during the primary and pressed five hundred-dollar bills into the manager's hand. 'When I gave the money to Dick, he looked me straight in the eye for about twenty seconds----as if he were thinking hard about something,' Day recalled. Then Nixon had said, 'Roy, I want you to give the money back....If they want to give to my campaign, they know where my treasurer is. I won't take it this way.' Yet the campaign treasurer's reports to Sacramento were notoriously incomplete. And the candidate knew of these discrepancies, just as he knew, in careful, commanding detail, about other minutiae of the race. If he did not keep the bills Day handed him, he could reason, if the stream of cash did not appear in the books, it was all somehow not a political contribution. Most of the lavish 1946 financing was never acknowledged. Richard Nixon's furtive, mincing attitude toward public money, the gradual atrophy of ethics that ended so plainly thirty years later, began in the first campaign."
I have three items.
1. Overall, Morris portrays that particular 1946 Congressional race as an effort by well-off special interests to unseat Jerry Voorhis, a progressive Congressman who was not afraid to go against them. Morris actually opens his first chapter on the 1946 race by discussing an incident in 1943 in which Jerry Voorhis went to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and denounced a government contract that would give Standard Oil free and exclusive access to the coveted and "vast U.S. Navy petroleum reserve at Elks Hills in central California" (page 257). The deal got cancelled, and Voorhis received acclaim, both from The Washington Post and also a conservative colleague, Carl Vinson of Georgia. It's not surprising to me that a conservative would applaud what Voorhis did, since libertarians are quite critical of the government giving certain companies special favors, thereby hindering competition. I should also note (and I've noted this before in posts, but I just love noting this) that John Bircher Gary Allen, in Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask, actually praised Voorhis, even though I'm sure that Allen disagreed with many of Voorhis' ideas. I wouldn't be shocked if Voorhis' stand against Standard Oil was one reason that some of the John Birchers would like him, since Rockefeller was one of the John Birch Society's main boogeymen.
Morris narrates that this incident with Standard Oil would soon be forgotten due to World War II, and yet Morris talks about the other progressive ideas that Voorhis had: Voorhis fought to subject insurance companies to antitrust laws, he helped engineer a reform that would save billions of dollars for the taxpayers by mandating that the Federal Reserve hand over most of what it earned to the government, he planned public housing programs that scared real-estate industrialists, he supported motion picture artists and workers against Hollywood studios, and he alienated the liquor industry by proposing to temporarily divert grain from alcohol production to "humanitarian relief in the famines following World War II" (page 261). The list goes on. While Morris admits that Voorhis was often a lone idealist, it does seem that Voorhis had enough influence that he could upset the ambitions of certain special interests. Or, at the very least, special interests wished that they had a represenative from Voorhis' district who would represent their concerns in the U.S. Congress, not Voorhis. Signal Oil would donate to Nixon's campaign, and, according to Morris, this was because Voorhis was the main one pleading against giving offshore oil to petroleum companies, an idea that (to the companies' dismay) President Harry S. Truman would veto.
According to Morris, Republicans were looking for a candidate to defeat Voorhis for years, but the people they usually found were ineffective. And this was in a district that had been gerrymandered to favor Republicans (at least somewhat). One of them, Roy McLaughlin, an oilman, appealed to labor in front of the "more affluent audiences" of the district, and Roy Day (who would work for Nixon) said that McLaughlin "did everything he could to discourage anybody that had over fifteen cents in the bank" (Roy Day, quoted on page 272). I remember reading in Irwin Gellman's The Contender that Voorhis actually had to introduce his opponent to his audience one time because his opponent was so shy! In Nixon, however, Republicans found one who was a good speaker, who had enough political savvy to play to the audience, and who was a recent Navy man. Moreover, while Nixon was rather conservative, Morris acknowledges that Nixon even in 1946 would do what he did in subsequent races that he would run: Nixon appealed to moderates, not just conservatives.
2. That passage on page 309 that I quoted at the beginning of this post was about Nixon's ethics. According to Morris, Nixon would often play around on the "gray margin of propriety, and sometimes beyond" (page 275). On page 275, Morris gives an example: Nixon needed to get back to California from Baltimore so that he could meet with the committee that was asking him to run for Congress, and he used the air-travel card of a company "whose contract terminations he had negotiated" (page 275). Nixon paid the company back, and what he did was technically legal. But Morris believes that Nixon was on the "gray margin of propriety".
What's interesting about the passage on page 309 is that Nixon there appears to express moral qualms about accepting money informally. That's the Nixon whom I see in the books that Nixon wrote: one who was committed to moral propriety. While many would laugh this Nixon off as a far cry from the "real Nixon" (I mean, of course Nixon portrays himself as a good guy!), I wonder what one should say about Nixon's expression of his moral qualms to Roy Day. Was Roy Day making that story up to make Nixon look good? Did Day remember an event that did not happen? Or did Nixon express certain moral principles, only to fail to follow through on them consistently, out of a desire to win?
3. Morris makes the point that Nixon knew the minutiae of his campaign, in a number of areas. A question that comes up often in my reading of books about Nixon is this: How much did Nixon know about the shady activities of his underlings? This question is applicable to 1946, to his 1950 Senate race, and even to later races. For example, in 1968, was Nixon aware that someone claiming to speak on his behalf was promising General Thieu of South Vietnam that he could get a better deal under Nixon, and so Thieu had might as well postpone his participation in the Paris Peace Talks until Nixon got elected? Nixon said that he had nothing to do with that.
Nixon does strike me as one who was concerned about details of his campaign. In reading books by and about him, he strikes me as quite methodical in his discussion of issues. And yet, I do have to admit that there were times when he had a rather hands-off style of governing. He was surprised by the Watergate burglary, and he also tended to let his Cabinet do what it wanted in terms of domestic policy, since he wasn't particularly interested in that. Consequently, I don't know if Nixon was aware of every shady thing that went on in his campaigns. Maybe he was aware of some things, but not others.
"From the outset, Richard Nixon was plainly conscious of a line between propriety and taint in such political contributions, even in an era of virtually no legal accountability. Roy Day told the story of a railroad industry lobbyist who had come up to him during the primary and pressed five hundred-dollar bills into the manager's hand. 'When I gave the money to Dick, he looked me straight in the eye for about twenty seconds----as if he were thinking hard about something,' Day recalled. Then Nixon had said, 'Roy, I want you to give the money back....If they want to give to my campaign, they know where my treasurer is. I won't take it this way.' Yet the campaign treasurer's reports to Sacramento were notoriously incomplete. And the candidate knew of these discrepancies, just as he knew, in careful, commanding detail, about other minutiae of the race. If he did not keep the bills Day handed him, he could reason, if the stream of cash did not appear in the books, it was all somehow not a political contribution. Most of the lavish 1946 financing was never acknowledged. Richard Nixon's furtive, mincing attitude toward public money, the gradual atrophy of ethics that ended so plainly thirty years later, began in the first campaign."
I have three items.
1. Overall, Morris portrays that particular 1946 Congressional race as an effort by well-off special interests to unseat Jerry Voorhis, a progressive Congressman who was not afraid to go against them. Morris actually opens his first chapter on the 1946 race by discussing an incident in 1943 in which Jerry Voorhis went to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and denounced a government contract that would give Standard Oil free and exclusive access to the coveted and "vast U.S. Navy petroleum reserve at Elks Hills in central California" (page 257). The deal got cancelled, and Voorhis received acclaim, both from The Washington Post and also a conservative colleague, Carl Vinson of Georgia. It's not surprising to me that a conservative would applaud what Voorhis did, since libertarians are quite critical of the government giving certain companies special favors, thereby hindering competition. I should also note (and I've noted this before in posts, but I just love noting this) that John Bircher Gary Allen, in Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask, actually praised Voorhis, even though I'm sure that Allen disagreed with many of Voorhis' ideas. I wouldn't be shocked if Voorhis' stand against Standard Oil was one reason that some of the John Birchers would like him, since Rockefeller was one of the John Birch Society's main boogeymen.
Morris narrates that this incident with Standard Oil would soon be forgotten due to World War II, and yet Morris talks about the other progressive ideas that Voorhis had: Voorhis fought to subject insurance companies to antitrust laws, he helped engineer a reform that would save billions of dollars for the taxpayers by mandating that the Federal Reserve hand over most of what it earned to the government, he planned public housing programs that scared real-estate industrialists, he supported motion picture artists and workers against Hollywood studios, and he alienated the liquor industry by proposing to temporarily divert grain from alcohol production to "humanitarian relief in the famines following World War II" (page 261). The list goes on. While Morris admits that Voorhis was often a lone idealist, it does seem that Voorhis had enough influence that he could upset the ambitions of certain special interests. Or, at the very least, special interests wished that they had a represenative from Voorhis' district who would represent their concerns in the U.S. Congress, not Voorhis. Signal Oil would donate to Nixon's campaign, and, according to Morris, this was because Voorhis was the main one pleading against giving offshore oil to petroleum companies, an idea that (to the companies' dismay) President Harry S. Truman would veto.
According to Morris, Republicans were looking for a candidate to defeat Voorhis for years, but the people they usually found were ineffective. And this was in a district that had been gerrymandered to favor Republicans (at least somewhat). One of them, Roy McLaughlin, an oilman, appealed to labor in front of the "more affluent audiences" of the district, and Roy Day (who would work for Nixon) said that McLaughlin "did everything he could to discourage anybody that had over fifteen cents in the bank" (Roy Day, quoted on page 272). I remember reading in Irwin Gellman's The Contender that Voorhis actually had to introduce his opponent to his audience one time because his opponent was so shy! In Nixon, however, Republicans found one who was a good speaker, who had enough political savvy to play to the audience, and who was a recent Navy man. Moreover, while Nixon was rather conservative, Morris acknowledges that Nixon even in 1946 would do what he did in subsequent races that he would run: Nixon appealed to moderates, not just conservatives.
2. That passage on page 309 that I quoted at the beginning of this post was about Nixon's ethics. According to Morris, Nixon would often play around on the "gray margin of propriety, and sometimes beyond" (page 275). On page 275, Morris gives an example: Nixon needed to get back to California from Baltimore so that he could meet with the committee that was asking him to run for Congress, and he used the air-travel card of a company "whose contract terminations he had negotiated" (page 275). Nixon paid the company back, and what he did was technically legal. But Morris believes that Nixon was on the "gray margin of propriety".
What's interesting about the passage on page 309 is that Nixon there appears to express moral qualms about accepting money informally. That's the Nixon whom I see in the books that Nixon wrote: one who was committed to moral propriety. While many would laugh this Nixon off as a far cry from the "real Nixon" (I mean, of course Nixon portrays himself as a good guy!), I wonder what one should say about Nixon's expression of his moral qualms to Roy Day. Was Roy Day making that story up to make Nixon look good? Did Day remember an event that did not happen? Or did Nixon express certain moral principles, only to fail to follow through on them consistently, out of a desire to win?
3. Morris makes the point that Nixon knew the minutiae of his campaign, in a number of areas. A question that comes up often in my reading of books about Nixon is this: How much did Nixon know about the shady activities of his underlings? This question is applicable to 1946, to his 1950 Senate race, and even to later races. For example, in 1968, was Nixon aware that someone claiming to speak on his behalf was promising General Thieu of South Vietnam that he could get a better deal under Nixon, and so Thieu had might as well postpone his participation in the Paris Peace Talks until Nixon got elected? Nixon said that he had nothing to do with that.
Nixon does strike me as one who was concerned about details of his campaign. In reading books by and about him, he strikes me as quite methodical in his discussion of issues. And yet, I do have to admit that there were times when he had a rather hands-off style of governing. He was surprised by the Watergate burglary, and he also tended to let his Cabinet do what it wanted in terms of domestic policy, since he wasn't particularly interested in that. Consequently, I don't know if Nixon was aware of every shady thing that went on in his campaigns. Maybe he was aware of some things, but not others.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
In the Arena 7
I finished Richard Nixon's In the Arena. I have four items.
1. On page 325, Nixon talks about the use of linkage when negotiating with the Soviets:
"How we structure and approach talks with Moscow will largely determine our success in them. Gorbachev will take us to the cleaners in negotiations unless we use the tactic of linkage. The two sides do not have the same degree of interest in progress on all issues. Moscow has a greater interest in some areas, such as trade, and the United States has a greater interest in others, such as conventional arms control. If we let him do so, Gorbachev will gladly negotiate solely on the former. If we acquiesce to that unbalanced approach----if we fail to link the two sets of issues----he will dominate the negotiating agenda, conclude agreements on his top priorities, and defer resolution of our issues to the indefinite future."
This appears to be common sense: when you negotiate with people, you identify what they want and what you want, and you link the two, offering to do such-and-such for them if they do such-and-such for you. The reason that I am referring to this passage is that it exemplifies what strikes me as the topic of much of In the Arena: How do you play the political game? How do you persuade people to do what you want them to do? A while back, when I was blogging through Richard Nixon's Six Crises, blogger ConsiderAgain said that Six Crises "Sounds like a good book to think about if I ever run for office" (see here). Nixon would most likely heartily agree that ConsiderAgain should read Six Crises, since it was Nixon's favorite book that he wrote, and Nixon often recommended it to people and gave out copies! But, in terms of a book that addresses what politics is like----the good and the bad, how to negotiate, how to lead, the players involved, etc.----In the Arena is an excellent book to read, in my opinion.
But why would anyone consult Nixon on how to play the political game, with all of his blunders? Would Nixon be the person to consult on how to relate to the media, when he tended to alienate the media? Would he be the one to consult on how to deal with Congress, when he as President arguably did not work well with Congress, such that it went against his agenda and, ultimately, him? And Nixon himself complains that there were times when he had difficulty getting bureaucrats to do what he wanted! Maybe one could be edified by what he says about foreign policy, since he did achieve progress in that area.
That said, I still think that In the Arena is a good book to read. Nixon may have succeeded in areas, and he may have failed in areas. In addition, perhaps he magnified certain problems, such as the media (not that the media are a problem, but they can be, at times). But he still had decades of political experience, and he's a good source to read about the players and motivations that are part of the political game, as well as ways to navigate through that game.
2. On page 342, Nixon discusses civilian casualties in the Vietnam War:
"Those who opposed our involvement in Vietnam also argued that our tactics indiscriminately killed civilians. In fact, our forces operated under strict rules of engagement designed to prevent such casualties. Many American bomber pilots were shot down, ending up dead or as POWs, because their paths across North Vietnam were chosen to minimize the risk of civilian casualties. In the two weeks of intense bombing in December 1972, only 1,500 civilians----according to Hanoi's own count----were killed, compared with over 35,000 civilians killed in one night of fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II. Civilians accounted for a much smaller proportion of casualties in the Vietnam War than they did in either World War II or the Korean War."
I was thinking of not including this item in this blog post. I've already blogged about the topic of civilian casualties in the Vietnam War (see here, here, here, here, and here), and I'll come across the topic again in my future reading for My Year (or More) of Nixon, since Nixon discusses it in his book, No More Vietnams. But I decided to include this quote of what Nixon says on page 342 because it does strike me as a fairly reasonable argument, especially the part about how American bomber pilots were shot down because they were in areas where their bombing would not result in too many civilian casualties. At the same time, there is another side to the debate. At the library, I saw a book that I may read sometime in the future: Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. The title of this article in The Nation says what the book is about: "The US Military Regularly Killed Civilians in Vietnam."
3. On page 347, Nixon argues that world government will not bring about perfect peace:
"The second myth is the idea that establishing a world government would produce perfect peace...While the UN has played an important role in facilitating the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War, and the pullout of Cuban forces from Angola and the independence of Namibia, it has not settled the underlying conflicts in any of those disputes. Moreover, its contributions to these partial settlements were made possible only because the parties to those conflicts already reached the conclusion that they were better off engaging.
"As Winston Churchill pointed out to me the last time I saw him, in 1958, no nation will ever let an international organization make decisions affecting its vital interests. That is why the suggestion that the UN arbitrate the Arab-Israeli conflict is a non-starter. Given the UN's record of repeatedly trying to pass unbalanced resolutions condemning Israel while ignoring the aggressive actions of Arab states, we can hardly expect the Israelis to submit their fate to a stacked jury. Only after a settlement has been reached by negotiations between the two sides could the UN play a possible peacekeeping role."
This passage brought several things to my mind. First of all, I thought about Gary Allen's John Bircher-type narrative that Nixon wanted to create a one-world government (see here). Nixon in In the Arena appears to suggest otherwise. Second, Nixon seems to be rather critical of the United Nation's stance against Israel. This stood out to me because Nixon himself says critical things about Israel in some of his books. But Nixon may not have been gun-ho pro-Israel, per se, but rather one who could see both sides, and who recognized the importance of recognizing the desires of both sides in trying to effect negotiation. Third, Winston Churchill's skepticism about international organizations surprised me somewhat, since the Worldwide Church of God (I grew up in an offshoot of that) liked to quote Churchill's statements in favor of world government. (The WCG was arguing that the world needs Christ to rule it for there to be peace, and that Christ would do so after his second coming.) Maybe Churchill believed different things about world government in the course of his life. And fourth, this passage illustrates a point that Nixon makes in his chapter about peace: that peace does not mean utopianism. Nixon acknowledges that human nature is what it is, and that countries have their own self-interests. It may not be possible to get countries to like each other, Nixon argues, but we should try to encourage them to coexist peacefully.
4. On page 367, Nixon encourages young people to visit the elderly in retirement homes:
"I have visited several of the excellent retirement homes near our home in Saddle River. The facilities could not be better...The staffs are understanding and compassionate...They have everything----good food, good medical care, television, and good people to look after their every need. Everything, that is, except the one thing that matters most----love. Nothing can substitute for the love of family or friends. Only someone who is getting older can appreciate that. Younger people could enrich their lives immeasurably by visiting, calling, or writing someone in a retirement home, whether they know the person or not. Most such facilities will allow you to 'adopt' residents who have no friends or relatives to visit them."
Nixon's book offers advice to different kinds of people. He encourages people to travel when they are still young and have the physical mobility to enjoy what's in other countries. He provides guidelines about when older politicians should retire. Nixon's statement on page 367 stood out to me, though, for a couple of reasons. First, there are times when I fear being alone when I am elderly, since I'm not good at making friends. But, second, I have thought about visiting retirement homes while I am still young. I used to do so, either for an internship, or on my own time, and I think that the elderly people I visited appreciated that I took the time to keep them company. I may do so again. Of course, the challenge is talking to the right people within the bureaucracy so that I can arrange that, and also bringing theory into practice: not just having a thought to visit the elderly, but actually doing it.
1. On page 325, Nixon talks about the use of linkage when negotiating with the Soviets:
"How we structure and approach talks with Moscow will largely determine our success in them. Gorbachev will take us to the cleaners in negotiations unless we use the tactic of linkage. The two sides do not have the same degree of interest in progress on all issues. Moscow has a greater interest in some areas, such as trade, and the United States has a greater interest in others, such as conventional arms control. If we let him do so, Gorbachev will gladly negotiate solely on the former. If we acquiesce to that unbalanced approach----if we fail to link the two sets of issues----he will dominate the negotiating agenda, conclude agreements on his top priorities, and defer resolution of our issues to the indefinite future."
This appears to be common sense: when you negotiate with people, you identify what they want and what you want, and you link the two, offering to do such-and-such for them if they do such-and-such for you. The reason that I am referring to this passage is that it exemplifies what strikes me as the topic of much of In the Arena: How do you play the political game? How do you persuade people to do what you want them to do? A while back, when I was blogging through Richard Nixon's Six Crises, blogger ConsiderAgain said that Six Crises "Sounds like a good book to think about if I ever run for office" (see here). Nixon would most likely heartily agree that ConsiderAgain should read Six Crises, since it was Nixon's favorite book that he wrote, and Nixon often recommended it to people and gave out copies! But, in terms of a book that addresses what politics is like----the good and the bad, how to negotiate, how to lead, the players involved, etc.----In the Arena is an excellent book to read, in my opinion.
But why would anyone consult Nixon on how to play the political game, with all of his blunders? Would Nixon be the person to consult on how to relate to the media, when he tended to alienate the media? Would he be the one to consult on how to deal with Congress, when he as President arguably did not work well with Congress, such that it went against his agenda and, ultimately, him? And Nixon himself complains that there were times when he had difficulty getting bureaucrats to do what he wanted! Maybe one could be edified by what he says about foreign policy, since he did achieve progress in that area.
That said, I still think that In the Arena is a good book to read. Nixon may have succeeded in areas, and he may have failed in areas. In addition, perhaps he magnified certain problems, such as the media (not that the media are a problem, but they can be, at times). But he still had decades of political experience, and he's a good source to read about the players and motivations that are part of the political game, as well as ways to navigate through that game.
2. On page 342, Nixon discusses civilian casualties in the Vietnam War:
"Those who opposed our involvement in Vietnam also argued that our tactics indiscriminately killed civilians. In fact, our forces operated under strict rules of engagement designed to prevent such casualties. Many American bomber pilots were shot down, ending up dead or as POWs, because their paths across North Vietnam were chosen to minimize the risk of civilian casualties. In the two weeks of intense bombing in December 1972, only 1,500 civilians----according to Hanoi's own count----were killed, compared with over 35,000 civilians killed in one night of fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II. Civilians accounted for a much smaller proportion of casualties in the Vietnam War than they did in either World War II or the Korean War."
I was thinking of not including this item in this blog post. I've already blogged about the topic of civilian casualties in the Vietnam War (see here, here, here, here, and here), and I'll come across the topic again in my future reading for My Year (or More) of Nixon, since Nixon discusses it in his book, No More Vietnams. But I decided to include this quote of what Nixon says on page 342 because it does strike me as a fairly reasonable argument, especially the part about how American bomber pilots were shot down because they were in areas where their bombing would not result in too many civilian casualties. At the same time, there is another side to the debate. At the library, I saw a book that I may read sometime in the future: Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. The title of this article in The Nation says what the book is about: "The US Military Regularly Killed Civilians in Vietnam."
3. On page 347, Nixon argues that world government will not bring about perfect peace:
"The second myth is the idea that establishing a world government would produce perfect peace...While the UN has played an important role in facilitating the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War, and the pullout of Cuban forces from Angola and the independence of Namibia, it has not settled the underlying conflicts in any of those disputes. Moreover, its contributions to these partial settlements were made possible only because the parties to those conflicts already reached the conclusion that they were better off engaging.
"As Winston Churchill pointed out to me the last time I saw him, in 1958, no nation will ever let an international organization make decisions affecting its vital interests. That is why the suggestion that the UN arbitrate the Arab-Israeli conflict is a non-starter. Given the UN's record of repeatedly trying to pass unbalanced resolutions condemning Israel while ignoring the aggressive actions of Arab states, we can hardly expect the Israelis to submit their fate to a stacked jury. Only after a settlement has been reached by negotiations between the two sides could the UN play a possible peacekeeping role."
This passage brought several things to my mind. First of all, I thought about Gary Allen's John Bircher-type narrative that Nixon wanted to create a one-world government (see here). Nixon in In the Arena appears to suggest otherwise. Second, Nixon seems to be rather critical of the United Nation's stance against Israel. This stood out to me because Nixon himself says critical things about Israel in some of his books. But Nixon may not have been gun-ho pro-Israel, per se, but rather one who could see both sides, and who recognized the importance of recognizing the desires of both sides in trying to effect negotiation. Third, Winston Churchill's skepticism about international organizations surprised me somewhat, since the Worldwide Church of God (I grew up in an offshoot of that) liked to quote Churchill's statements in favor of world government. (The WCG was arguing that the world needs Christ to rule it for there to be peace, and that Christ would do so after his second coming.) Maybe Churchill believed different things about world government in the course of his life. And fourth, this passage illustrates a point that Nixon makes in his chapter about peace: that peace does not mean utopianism. Nixon acknowledges that human nature is what it is, and that countries have their own self-interests. It may not be possible to get countries to like each other, Nixon argues, but we should try to encourage them to coexist peacefully.
4. On page 367, Nixon encourages young people to visit the elderly in retirement homes:
"I have visited several of the excellent retirement homes near our home in Saddle River. The facilities could not be better...The staffs are understanding and compassionate...They have everything----good food, good medical care, television, and good people to look after their every need. Everything, that is, except the one thing that matters most----love. Nothing can substitute for the love of family or friends. Only someone who is getting older can appreciate that. Younger people could enrich their lives immeasurably by visiting, calling, or writing someone in a retirement home, whether they know the person or not. Most such facilities will allow you to 'adopt' residents who have no friends or relatives to visit them."
Nixon's book offers advice to different kinds of people. He encourages people to travel when they are still young and have the physical mobility to enjoy what's in other countries. He provides guidelines about when older politicians should retire. Nixon's statement on page 367 stood out to me, though, for a couple of reasons. First, there are times when I fear being alone when I am elderly, since I'm not good at making friends. But, second, I have thought about visiting retirement homes while I am still young. I used to do so, either for an internship, or on my own time, and I think that the elderly people I visited appreciated that I took the time to keep them company. I may do so again. Of course, the challenge is talking to the right people within the bureaucracy so that I can arrange that, and also bringing theory into practice: not just having a thought to visit the elderly, but actually doing it.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Leaders 4
In my post today about Richard Nixon's Leaders , I will
discuss things that Richard Nixon says about Chiang Kaishek. Chiang was
the leader of mainland China before it became a Communist country under
Mao Tse-Tung. Chiang would then go on to lead the country of Formosa,
or Taiwan.
What I often heard in junior high school and high school history classes was that Chiang Kaishek was a crook. We were told that Chiang took the aid that the U.S. gave him to fight the Communists and lined his own pockets and the pockets of his generals. My junior high school social studies teacher said that, when the Japanese were coming after China, Chiang did not lift a finger to fight them, whereas Mao did. This teacher also said that the popular designation of Taiwan as "Free China" was not entirely accurate, for there are many rights that people do not have in Taiwan. In the right-wing literature that I read, I encountered at least two perspectives. The first essentially acknowledged that Chiang was far from perfect, but it said that he was better than the bloodthirsty Communists (for both the Chinese and also for the rest of the world), and so the U.S. should have supported him more. The second portrayed Chiang as a great guy. Robert Welch of the John Birch Society, in his book Again, May God Forgive Us!, depicted Chiang as a devout Christian.
In my reading of Leaders, I didn't see anything about Chiang Kaishek's alleged corruption, but Nixon did have his share of criticisms of Chiang, or he mentioned criticisms that other people had. First, Nixon says on page 245 that Chiang was very "by the book" and rigid, and that this hindered him from coming up with innovative strategies. Nixon states that "history is made by those whose innovations exploited the opportunities of the moment", and that "It was Chiang's misfortune that Mao was among the latter." Nixon strikes me as someone who likes boldness in a leader. I wonder if he was a fan of Captain James T. Kirk!
Second, Nixon on pages 115-116 speculates that Chiang might have hindered the Communists from taking over mainland China had he pursued a policy of land reform. Chiang did precisely that as leader of Taiwan, as he "paid the landlords for their land and distributed it to their peasantry", and the "former landlords invested much of their money in industry while the government encouraged foreign investment" (pages 244-245). According to Nixon, that led to an economic boom in Taiwan. Had Chiang done that sort of thing as leader of mainland China, Nixon speculates, "Mao might not have been able to exploit the rural discontent that contributed to the success of the Chinese Communist revolution" (page 116).
And third, Nixon on pages 125-126 refers to the thoughts of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida about Chiang. Yoshida had his doubts that Chiang could still play a role in mainland China, for "Yoshida argued that although Chiang was himself a Confucian scholar, he had irreparably alienated the intellectuals, and...this was politically fatal." While this was a negative on Chiang's part, it interested me to learn that he was a Confucian scholar. He wasn't some unsophisticated despot.
I'd like to turn now to three issues that pertain to Chiang Kaishek: his revolutionary beliefs, his authoritarianism, and his Christian devotion.
Let's start with his revolutionary beliefs. Nixon says on page 241 that "Chiang revolted against the domestic corruption and international weakness of the Manchu dynasty..." Chiang was also against widespread opium addiction and foot-binding. In the 1920's, Chiang was with "Sun-Yatsen's revolutionary Kuomintang party", and he even fought alongside Communists. This was the case in World War II, as both factions united against the Japanese. But Chiang turned on the Communists in 1927, as he feared their increasing strength. Another consideration that Nixon raises is that Chiang and Mao had two approaches: that "Mao sought to erase the past while Chiang sought to build upon it" (page 241). According to Nixon on page 242, the Communists hated Chiang, yet they still "respected and even admired him"; Chiang, however, did not respect the Communists.
On Chiang's authoritarianism, Nixon says on page 244 that Chiang "was not a democrat, even though he did introduce constitutional government." Chiang thought that the Chinese had too much freedom and needed discipline. Nixon may have agreed with my junior high school teacher that Taiwan was not exactly "Free China." At the same time, I question whether Nixon would have seen that as necessarily a bad thing, for Nixon in more than one place says that democracy is not the best system for everyone. Nixon does laud Taiwan's free-market policies, though.
On Chiang's Christian devotion, Nixon tells the story of how this came to be on page 243. Chiang wanted to marry a woman named Mei-ling, whose father manufactured and distributed Bibles. But Mei-ling's family was hesitant to let this marriage happen, since Chiang was not a Christian. Chiang offered to become a Christian, but he also decided to do a serious study of the Bible, for he did not take his religion lightly. During Chiang's marriage to Mei-ling, the two of them would "often pray together for an hour in the morning."
I wonder how Chiang could have been the crook that my teachers and history books say he was, when he appeared to have so much substance. He opposed injustice in China. He cared about his country. He was a scholar. On many mornings, he and his wife would pray to God. Was he a mixture of good and bad? Did selfishness get in the way of his ideals?
What I often heard in junior high school and high school history classes was that Chiang Kaishek was a crook. We were told that Chiang took the aid that the U.S. gave him to fight the Communists and lined his own pockets and the pockets of his generals. My junior high school social studies teacher said that, when the Japanese were coming after China, Chiang did not lift a finger to fight them, whereas Mao did. This teacher also said that the popular designation of Taiwan as "Free China" was not entirely accurate, for there are many rights that people do not have in Taiwan. In the right-wing literature that I read, I encountered at least two perspectives. The first essentially acknowledged that Chiang was far from perfect, but it said that he was better than the bloodthirsty Communists (for both the Chinese and also for the rest of the world), and so the U.S. should have supported him more. The second portrayed Chiang as a great guy. Robert Welch of the John Birch Society, in his book Again, May God Forgive Us!, depicted Chiang as a devout Christian.
In my reading of Leaders, I didn't see anything about Chiang Kaishek's alleged corruption, but Nixon did have his share of criticisms of Chiang, or he mentioned criticisms that other people had. First, Nixon says on page 245 that Chiang was very "by the book" and rigid, and that this hindered him from coming up with innovative strategies. Nixon states that "history is made by those whose innovations exploited the opportunities of the moment", and that "It was Chiang's misfortune that Mao was among the latter." Nixon strikes me as someone who likes boldness in a leader. I wonder if he was a fan of Captain James T. Kirk!
Second, Nixon on pages 115-116 speculates that Chiang might have hindered the Communists from taking over mainland China had he pursued a policy of land reform. Chiang did precisely that as leader of Taiwan, as he "paid the landlords for their land and distributed it to their peasantry", and the "former landlords invested much of their money in industry while the government encouraged foreign investment" (pages 244-245). According to Nixon, that led to an economic boom in Taiwan. Had Chiang done that sort of thing as leader of mainland China, Nixon speculates, "Mao might not have been able to exploit the rural discontent that contributed to the success of the Chinese Communist revolution" (page 116).
And third, Nixon on pages 125-126 refers to the thoughts of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida about Chiang. Yoshida had his doubts that Chiang could still play a role in mainland China, for "Yoshida argued that although Chiang was himself a Confucian scholar, he had irreparably alienated the intellectuals, and...this was politically fatal." While this was a negative on Chiang's part, it interested me to learn that he was a Confucian scholar. He wasn't some unsophisticated despot.
I'd like to turn now to three issues that pertain to Chiang Kaishek: his revolutionary beliefs, his authoritarianism, and his Christian devotion.
Let's start with his revolutionary beliefs. Nixon says on page 241 that "Chiang revolted against the domestic corruption and international weakness of the Manchu dynasty..." Chiang was also against widespread opium addiction and foot-binding. In the 1920's, Chiang was with "Sun-Yatsen's revolutionary Kuomintang party", and he even fought alongside Communists. This was the case in World War II, as both factions united against the Japanese. But Chiang turned on the Communists in 1927, as he feared their increasing strength. Another consideration that Nixon raises is that Chiang and Mao had two approaches: that "Mao sought to erase the past while Chiang sought to build upon it" (page 241). According to Nixon on page 242, the Communists hated Chiang, yet they still "respected and even admired him"; Chiang, however, did not respect the Communists.
On Chiang's authoritarianism, Nixon says on page 244 that Chiang "was not a democrat, even though he did introduce constitutional government." Chiang thought that the Chinese had too much freedom and needed discipline. Nixon may have agreed with my junior high school teacher that Taiwan was not exactly "Free China." At the same time, I question whether Nixon would have seen that as necessarily a bad thing, for Nixon in more than one place says that democracy is not the best system for everyone. Nixon does laud Taiwan's free-market policies, though.
On Chiang's Christian devotion, Nixon tells the story of how this came to be on page 243. Chiang wanted to marry a woman named Mei-ling, whose father manufactured and distributed Bibles. But Mei-ling's family was hesitant to let this marriage happen, since Chiang was not a Christian. Chiang offered to become a Christian, but he also decided to do a serious study of the Bible, for he did not take his religion lightly. During Chiang's marriage to Mei-ling, the two of them would "often pray together for an hour in the morning."
I wonder how Chiang could have been the crook that my teachers and history books say he was, when he appeared to have so much substance. He opposed injustice in China. He cared about his country. He was a scholar. On many mornings, he and his wife would pray to God. Was he a mixture of good and bad? Did selfishness get in the way of his ideals?
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Nixon's Shadow 3
For my blog post today on Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image,
I'd like to highlight something that David Greenberg says on page 44.
The context is the aftermath of Richard Nixon's 1946 run for U.S.
Congress, in which Nixon unseated incumbent Democrat Jerry Voorhis.
"Voorhis alleged in 1947 that Nixon's minions had bullied shopkeepers, workers, and newspaper editors into suppressing their support for him. 'Merchants were warned that if they dared to sign newspaper statements in my support, as they had in previous campaigns, their line of credit would be cut off at the bank. One large banking institution sent the word 'down the line' that its employees were not to vote for Jerry Voorhis.' The sole editor in the district who had previously supported him, Voorhis added, 'was informed the next morning by his landlord that he had read the editorial and the editor would have to 'get out.'"
That reminded me of something that John Bircher Gary Allen wrote in his book, Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask. Allen referred to an article in the conservative publication Human Events that said that, during the 1952 Republican National Convention, wealthy bankers were trying to torpedo the candidacy of Republican Robert Taft by threatening to call in the loans of pro-Taft delegates; their aim, according to the article, was to preserve their cozy relationship with the government through the New Deal, which Taft would threaten, but which Dwight Eisenhower was open to keeping. Voorhis would probably narrate his own situation differently: he would most likely say that the wealthy bankers were against the New Deal, and so they preferred Republican Richard Nixon over Jerry Voorhis, who was himself an ardent New Dealer. Yet, assuming that what the Human Events article and Voorhis say is true, it's disturbing that private interests were using their control over the livelihoods of others to bully people into retreating from the political arena. I think of something that a poli-sci professor said more than once: that government is not the only source of coercion.
"Voorhis alleged in 1947 that Nixon's minions had bullied shopkeepers, workers, and newspaper editors into suppressing their support for him. 'Merchants were warned that if they dared to sign newspaper statements in my support, as they had in previous campaigns, their line of credit would be cut off at the bank. One large banking institution sent the word 'down the line' that its employees were not to vote for Jerry Voorhis.' The sole editor in the district who had previously supported him, Voorhis added, 'was informed the next morning by his landlord that he had read the editorial and the editor would have to 'get out.'"
That reminded me of something that John Bircher Gary Allen wrote in his book, Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask. Allen referred to an article in the conservative publication Human Events that said that, during the 1952 Republican National Convention, wealthy bankers were trying to torpedo the candidacy of Republican Robert Taft by threatening to call in the loans of pro-Taft delegates; their aim, according to the article, was to preserve their cozy relationship with the government through the New Deal, which Taft would threaten, but which Dwight Eisenhower was open to keeping. Voorhis would probably narrate his own situation differently: he would most likely say that the wealthy bankers were against the New Deal, and so they preferred Republican Richard Nixon over Jerry Voorhis, who was himself an ardent New Dealer. Yet, assuming that what the Human Events article and Voorhis say is true, it's disturbing that private interests were using their control over the livelihoods of others to bully people into retreating from the political arena. I think of something that a poli-sci professor said more than once: that government is not the only source of coercion.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 9
Dean Acheson was President Harry S. Truman's Secretary of State in
the years 1949-1953. He was attacked by elements of the right-wing,
which accused him of surrounding himself with Communist spies and of
contributing to the fall of China to the Communists. And, after Alger
Hiss (who was accused of being a spy for the Soviets) was convicted of
perjury, Dean Acheson's statement that he would not turn his back on
Hiss invited further criticisms from the right. Richard Nixon himself
was a critic of Acheson. In the 1952 Presidential election campaign,
Nixon as Dwight Eisenhower's running-mate called Democratic Presidential
candidate Adlai Stevenson a "graduate of Dean Acheson's Cowardly
College of Communist Containment" (Nixon's words).
But when Nixon was President and was conducting U.S. policy for the war in Vietnam, Acheson was one of Nixon's most vocal supporters, and Nixon turned to Acheson for advice. Stephen Ambrose talks about a March 19, 1969 meeting that Nixon had with Acheson on pages 259-260 of Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972. What intrigued me was Ambrose's portrayal of Acheson as one who had a tough-on-Communism attitude. On page 260, Ambrose characterizes Acheson's advice to Nixon on Vietnam as follows:
"Acheson's advice, as always, was to keep the powder dry, make no concessions, enter into no negotiations, and dig in for the long haul."
After narrating that Acheson, like Nixon, initially supported President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 decision to send a substantial number of troops to Vietnam, only to later confess to Nixon that this decision was wrong, Ambrose discusses Acheson's negative views on negotiating with the Soviets:
"These confessions of converted Cold Warriors were of course completely private. Neither [Acheson nor Nixon] would have dreamed of admitting in public that he had been wrong, nor did the realization lead Acheson to wonder if perhaps he had been wrong in his consistent refusal to ever negotiate with the Soviets (from the time of Potsdam, July 1945, until he left office in January, 1953, Truman had not had one meeting with the Soviet leader)."
When Nixon asked Acheson if it was "a good time to initiate discussions with the Russians" (Nixon's words), Acheson said no. Ambrose dryly narrates: "Indeed, in Acheson's view, it was never a good time." Ambrose says that Nixon valued Acheson's support on such issues as missile defense, but that Nixon never again sought Acheson's advice on dealing with the Russians. Ambrose seems to imply that Acheson was frozen in a stock anti-Soviet ideology.
So Acheson was firmly anti-Communist! That's not what the right-wing literature that I used to read had to say about him! Recently, I read the book on Richard Nixon by John Bircher Gary Allen, entitled Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask. Allen in that book is quite critical of Acheson. Allen presents the usual right-wing criticisms, such as the accusation that Acheson surrounded himself with Communists in the State Department, and the criticism of Acheson for refusing to turn his back on Alger Hiss. But Allen makes another accusation on page 162: "...Joseph Stalin had hired Acheson to be the Soviet Union's personal attorney in the United States prior to the official recognition of the Soviets by FDR...During Acheson's tenure as their legal representative, the Communists made tremendous advances throughout the world."
I don't know if Acheson was ever the personal attorney for the Soviet Union. I checked the wikipedia article about Acheson, and it did not mention that. It did say, however, that Acheson in 1945-1946 favored detente with the Soviet Union, a plan for "international control of atomic energy", and conciliation towards Stalin. But the article then goes on to narrate that Acheson became concerned about the "Soviet Union's attempts at regional hegemony in Eastern Europe and in Southwest Asia", and thus Acheson came to be an architect of Truman's Cold War policy against Soviet expansionism. In short, Acheson changed his mind and became more anti-Soviet, according to the wikipedia article. The thing is, that did not seem to be enough for many of Acheson's right-wing critics. You will recall that Nixon associated Acheson with containment. That was a debate at the time: Should the U.S. only seek to contain Communism by stopping its expansion, or should the U.S. pursue the liberation of countries already under Communist control?
I have one book that I have not yet read, How the Far East Was Lost: American Policy and the Creation of Communist China, 1941-1949, by Anthony Kubek, who was a Professor of History at the University of Dallas. You can find a brief biography of Kubek on this site, which talks a lot about non-conformist historians, or revisionists. While Kubek is a non-conformist, his book is praised on the back cover by David Nelson Rowe of Yale University. Just thumbing through the book, I get the impression that Kubek argues for standard right-wing points about the fall of China to the Communists----that the U.S. contributed to it. When I looked up Acheson's name in the index, I saw Kubek's reference to his argument in the book that Acheson pressured the Nationalist Chinese to negotiate with the Communists. Was this an exception to Acheson's usual aversion to negotiating with Communists?
I enjoyed this Amazon review of Dean Acheson's Present at Creation: My Years at the State Department. The reviewer is Stan Vernooy. Vernooy says that Acheson has been accused by some of being too tough on Stalin, and by others of being overly "accommodating and naive" about Communism. But what Vernooy says is that he (meaning Vernooy) learned more humility as he read Acheson's book, for Acheson highlighted the complex considerations that were involved in arriving at decisions. That makes me wonder if Acheson truly was as knee-jerk anti-Soviet as Ambrose seems to portray. Perhaps there was complexity in Acheson's approach to foreign policy. I don't know enough about Acheson to say, but there's plenty out there for me to read about him!
But when Nixon was President and was conducting U.S. policy for the war in Vietnam, Acheson was one of Nixon's most vocal supporters, and Nixon turned to Acheson for advice. Stephen Ambrose talks about a March 19, 1969 meeting that Nixon had with Acheson on pages 259-260 of Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972. What intrigued me was Ambrose's portrayal of Acheson as one who had a tough-on-Communism attitude. On page 260, Ambrose characterizes Acheson's advice to Nixon on Vietnam as follows:
"Acheson's advice, as always, was to keep the powder dry, make no concessions, enter into no negotiations, and dig in for the long haul."
After narrating that Acheson, like Nixon, initially supported President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 decision to send a substantial number of troops to Vietnam, only to later confess to Nixon that this decision was wrong, Ambrose discusses Acheson's negative views on negotiating with the Soviets:
"These confessions of converted Cold Warriors were of course completely private. Neither [Acheson nor Nixon] would have dreamed of admitting in public that he had been wrong, nor did the realization lead Acheson to wonder if perhaps he had been wrong in his consistent refusal to ever negotiate with the Soviets (from the time of Potsdam, July 1945, until he left office in January, 1953, Truman had not had one meeting with the Soviet leader)."
When Nixon asked Acheson if it was "a good time to initiate discussions with the Russians" (Nixon's words), Acheson said no. Ambrose dryly narrates: "Indeed, in Acheson's view, it was never a good time." Ambrose says that Nixon valued Acheson's support on such issues as missile defense, but that Nixon never again sought Acheson's advice on dealing with the Russians. Ambrose seems to imply that Acheson was frozen in a stock anti-Soviet ideology.
So Acheson was firmly anti-Communist! That's not what the right-wing literature that I used to read had to say about him! Recently, I read the book on Richard Nixon by John Bircher Gary Allen, entitled Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask. Allen in that book is quite critical of Acheson. Allen presents the usual right-wing criticisms, such as the accusation that Acheson surrounded himself with Communists in the State Department, and the criticism of Acheson for refusing to turn his back on Alger Hiss. But Allen makes another accusation on page 162: "...Joseph Stalin had hired Acheson to be the Soviet Union's personal attorney in the United States prior to the official recognition of the Soviets by FDR...During Acheson's tenure as their legal representative, the Communists made tremendous advances throughout the world."
I don't know if Acheson was ever the personal attorney for the Soviet Union. I checked the wikipedia article about Acheson, and it did not mention that. It did say, however, that Acheson in 1945-1946 favored detente with the Soviet Union, a plan for "international control of atomic energy", and conciliation towards Stalin. But the article then goes on to narrate that Acheson became concerned about the "Soviet Union's attempts at regional hegemony in Eastern Europe and in Southwest Asia", and thus Acheson came to be an architect of Truman's Cold War policy against Soviet expansionism. In short, Acheson changed his mind and became more anti-Soviet, according to the wikipedia article. The thing is, that did not seem to be enough for many of Acheson's right-wing critics. You will recall that Nixon associated Acheson with containment. That was a debate at the time: Should the U.S. only seek to contain Communism by stopping its expansion, or should the U.S. pursue the liberation of countries already under Communist control?
I have one book that I have not yet read, How the Far East Was Lost: American Policy and the Creation of Communist China, 1941-1949, by Anthony Kubek, who was a Professor of History at the University of Dallas. You can find a brief biography of Kubek on this site, which talks a lot about non-conformist historians, or revisionists. While Kubek is a non-conformist, his book is praised on the back cover by David Nelson Rowe of Yale University. Just thumbing through the book, I get the impression that Kubek argues for standard right-wing points about the fall of China to the Communists----that the U.S. contributed to it. When I looked up Acheson's name in the index, I saw Kubek's reference to his argument in the book that Acheson pressured the Nationalist Chinese to negotiate with the Communists. Was this an exception to Acheson's usual aversion to negotiating with Communists?
I enjoyed this Amazon review of Dean Acheson's Present at Creation: My Years at the State Department. The reviewer is Stan Vernooy. Vernooy says that Acheson has been accused by some of being too tough on Stalin, and by others of being overly "accommodating and naive" about Communism. But what Vernooy says is that he (meaning Vernooy) learned more humility as he read Acheson's book, for Acheson highlighted the complex considerations that were involved in arriving at decisions. That makes me wonder if Acheson truly was as knee-jerk anti-Soviet as Ambrose seems to portray. Perhaps there was complexity in Acheson's approach to foreign policy. I don't know enough about Acheson to say, but there's plenty out there for me to read about him!
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