[Peace-discuss] on Kucinich and Paul

[C. G. Estabrook]

You seem to agree with Ronald Reagan, acclaimed as a great president (he 
"did some pretty good things despite ... many flaws," perhaps?) even 
though 3/4 of the electorate didn't vote for him: at the 1988 Republican 
convention, he said "Facts are stupid things."

He was attempting to quote John Adams, who said, "Facts are stubborn 
things," which I think is closer to the truth.


John W. wrote:
> At 07:00 PM 11/13/2007, you wrote:
> 
>> Is there a German Chancellor whom you "like"?  How about a Premier of 
>> the Soviet Union? Or a Chairman of the PRC?  Are those questions as 
>> reasonable as which president you like?  If not, why not?
> 
> I was going to ask if any of the leaders you mention above is placed 
> into office through a process of democratic popular election.  But then 
> I realized how jejune and "pre-political" such a question would sound to 
> one of your erudition.
> 
> 
>> There is a sort of pre-political -- and even proto-fascist -- view 
>> (which I think Karen doesn't share) that if we could just elect a 
>> "good" president (= one we like) then everything would be OK.  (For 
>> people my age, the example is often that "good" John Kennedy...)
>>
>> I think this is dangerous and unhistorical nonsense.  For 
>> understandable historical reasons, the United States had to be said to 
>> be founded on laudable, even democratic principles: even then it was 
>> impossible to get the 1787 constitution ratified without adding more 
>> of those principles (the Bill of Rights).  But from its beginnings, as 
>> anyone who looks at the matter can see, the US too has been the sort 
>> of political society described by the protagonist of Thomas More's 
>> Utopia (1516):
>>
>> "When I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world, 
>> I can't, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the 
>> rich to advance their own interests under the pretext of organizing 
>> society."
> 
> I suppose it's equally dumb to point out that you and your family, Carl, 
> have participated in and benefited greatly from this precise arrangement 
> for literally centuries.  I don't see you renouncing all your worldly 
> goods and becoming a St. Francis of Assisi or Buddha or any such thing.
> 
> 
> 
>> When we recognize that that's who our leaders work for, we have 
>> several choices.  First, you can hope for the coming of good leader -- 
>> a president you like -- who will do the right things.
> 
> Which does happen once in a blue moon, even though you refuse to 
> acknowledge it.
> 
> 
>> This was a common view three generations ago, when the leaders of 
>> Germany, Russia, and the Untied States were each acclaimed as such a 
>> leader.  (The German term for the notion was "Fuehrerprinzip," and we 
>> make a mistake if we think it only an historical curio.)
>>
>> Or you can recall what has been frequently pointed out, notably by 
>> David Hume at the beginning of his First Principles of Government (1748):
>>
>> "Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs 
>> with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are 
>> governed by the few; and to observe the implicit submission with which 
>> men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. 
>> When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about, we shall 
>> find, that as force is always on the side of the governed, the 
>> governors have nothing to support them but opinion.
> 
> Huh?  Force is always on the side of the governed?  How is that 
> exactly?  (This is where, incidentally, I marvel at the naivete of 
> libertarians, who fervently believe that their individual "right to bear 
> arms" constitutes some amazing bulwark against government tyranny.)
> 
> 
>> 'Tis therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this 
>> maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as 
>> well as to the most free and most popular."
> 
> Is it permissible, out here in the Real World, to differ with such a 
> towering intellect as David Hume?  All over the globe, thousands of 
> peasants are giving their lives every day in futile struggles against 
> despotic regimes.  Sure, "the people" will triumph eventually, whatever 
> exactly that means, if only because an individual despot is not immortal 
> or invincible.  But said despot is quickly and easily replaced by 
> another.  Despots are just as fungible as the fellahin.
> 
> (Carl and David Hume remind me of why I rejected, for once and all, the 
> "Ivory Tower" back in 1971.)
> 
> 
>> That means that within all the high-sounding principles of (any) 
>> government, effort must be exerted to bring that opinion in line with 
>> the facts. And that of course means that you have to find out what the 
>> facts are. In the absence of an accurate analysis, the best will in 
>> the world can only err, or be correct by accident.  --CGE
> 
> Well, I still think that, on balance, Abraham Lincoln and FDR, and even 
> Eisenhower and JFK and LBJ, did some pretty good things despite their 
> many flaws.  They "rose to the occasion" of their times and took certain 
> actions that were genuinely beneficial to mankind as a whole, not merely 
> to the ruling class.
> 
> Incidentally, I almost hesitate to point out for the umpteenth time that 
> "the facts" are many and complex, and subject to more than one "correct" 
> interpretation.
> 
> 
> 
>> John W. wrote:
>>
>>> So what Carl is trying so very hard to say (or perhaps NOT to say) is 
>>> that there is NO President in the entirety of American history that 
>>> he likes.  :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> At 03:03 PM 11/13/2007, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>
>>>> Having been reared in Virginia, I've always been partial to Cyrus 
>>>> Griffin.  Of course, his office was undermined by the treasonous 
>>>> assembly in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.  They'd all sworn 
>>>> allegiance to the Articles of Confederation and were supposed to 
>>>> suggest only improvements, but instead made an executive power-grab 
>>>> because they were afraid that only a militarily strong executive 
>>>> could put down the movements toward social transformation underway 
>>>> at the time (e.g., Shays' Rebellion).
>>>>
>>>> The Philadelphia putschists were consciously trying to roll back the 
>>>> clock on democracy, in order to protect wealth: as their chronicler 
>>>> (James Madison) said, the coup they engineered that year was 
>>>> designed "to protect the minority of the opulent against the 
>>>> majority."  So poor Cyrus (named for the Persian king who allowed 
>>>> the Jews to return to Jerusalem) had to go.  (He then went off to 
>>>> negotiate personally for reconciliation with the Creek nation, as he 
>>>> had done in regard to Great Britain fifteen years before.)
>>>>
>>>> For more recent times, we have the lapidary judgment of Noam 
>>>> Chomsky, "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war 
>>>> American president would have been hanged."
>>>>
>>>> Before the war H. L. Mencken is supposed to have said, "One party 
>>>> always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other 
>>>> party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right..."
>>>>
>>>> I'd suggest, if you haven't read it, a recent edition of Howard 
>>>> Zinn's People's History of the Untied States, which tells the story 
>>>> with the politics left in. We usually get only the jingoist 
>>>> version.  --CGE
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Karen Medina wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Carl,
>>>>>
>>>>> I pick on you because you are a historian, is there a president that
>>>>> you did like? I'd be especially interested in comparing that person's
>>>>> campaign rhetoric and their deeds.
>>>>>
>>>>> -karen medina
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss