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George Rogers Clark National Historical Park, Vincennes, Indiana

October 19, 2010 by Barky

Right Place, Right Time, Right Action

In 2002,  I decided to stage my escapade through Kentucy and Indiana from Louisville. From there, I would take day trips to Lexington, Abe Lincoln’s birthplace,  Mammoth Cave, and George Rogers Clark National Historical Park.Most times when I take my park excursions, I plan at the last minute and don’t do a ton of research. And most times I find myself disappointed by the uninspired mundanity of my accommodations, and the realization I may have missed something grand or at least interesting.  However, for once, my lack of foresight had good consequences. I figured Louisville would be a typical, decaying, Middle American city, with typically craptastic restaurants and nothing much to see or do. Well, as occasionally happens during my ill-planned sorties,  I was shocked and pleasantly surprised. Louisville actually has a hoppin’ Bohemian district!

This place was great. Lots of restaurants, high-end shopping (which meant cadres of good looking women), used book & music stores, antique shops, and great clubs & brewpubs. It had head shops, tie-dye stores,  acupuncturists, and even a Church of Scientology (located in some sort of run-down, drive-through bank building). I couldn’t believe it. Here — lying in stark contrast to the decidedly Christian backwater that comprises the rest of Kentucky — is this little nook of cultural strangeness. Hard to believe this section of Louisville is in the same state as the Creationism Museum with its displays of man peacefully co-existing with dinosaurs….

Of course, it is only a couple square miles. One can’t expect more in this part of the country. Heading northwest from the city, it doesn’t take long to get back to what one would expect:  a traditionally decaying mill town; surrounded by smallish, uninteresting suburbs; dropping into Indiana corn country.  It’s not a bad ride to Vincennes, really. Yeah, it’s a bit boring, but the countryside is moderately unspoiled and you do pass through the Hoosier National Forest. There are worse 2-hour drives in the country, I’ve been on some :coughwesttexascough:

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Poor, forgotten George Rogers Clark. A Revolutionary War general, he’s sadly missing from the text-book lists of American founders. That’s a big list: Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lee, Lafayette, Kosciuszko, Hancock, Adams. Yet Clark’s vision ensured the westward expansion of a post-revolutionary, fledgling United States of America. It’s actually a funny story (in a geeky, history-buff kinda way).

It all started with the settlement of interior North America. The French got their first and got busy. By the mid-18th century they had settlements from modern-day Quebec down the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to New Orleans. They also had spots on the Ohio River and other tributaries. They were in a pretty good position actually, but their settlers were more concerned with fur trapping and trade than continental domination. The Seven Years’ War with England (called the French and Indian War by us Yanks) came along, the French got beat pretty badly and, in the Treaty of Paris, England gained possession of all those forts. Of course, the Brits being the Brits, they figured they could just plop some redcoats in the forts and claim lordship over the lands. The French settlers still worked their farms, collected fur pelts, and paddled up & down the river in trade like they had for a generation, while theoretically under British “control”.

Then along came the American Revolution. The thirteen colonies wanted their independence, and badly. Unfortunately, the colonists also knew the British would be a problem even if they won. The Brits would control almost all the fledgling country’s borders: their territories to the north (modern-day Canada) and all these forts along the lakes and rivers to the west. So even if the colonies gained independence, the new nation would still be bottled in, and likely harassed in perpetuity, by Great Britain. Kinda like living in your mother-in-law’s house after the divorce. Awkward!!

George Rogers Clark saw this problem. He beseeched the Virginia militia commanders, who saw the brilliance of his proposal and lent him a band of raiders to harass these forts. Up they marched to the Ohio River, and then down to the first fort … which they took without much of a fight. Then they  marched to the next fort, and … took it, too, without much of a fight. Why? Well, the French settlers kinda didn’t give a crap for the British, and basically told the militia “well, go ahead and take it, we don’t care. We just want to kill some fluffy little animals.” The two or three Redcoats manning those forts, realizing they had no logistical support, high-tailed it out of there or just sat drinking their tea and said “meh”. Result: the colonial powers now owned the Northwest Territories, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi down to Louisiana. Hardly any casualties (other than long marches in the wilderness would claim).

This was met with great “huzzahs!” by the Continental Congress and Washington’s army, and deservedly so. Now the country had a chance to not only be independent, but have the breathing room it needed to keep it safe and sound for the foreseeable future. Clark was heralded and promoted and eventually fought in actual combat situations. But he’s honored at a humble little shrine in Vincennes, Indiana for basically ensuring the Brits wouldn’t be on our flank for all time.

If there’s a story to take away from Clark, it’s this: it’s not only about being in the right place at the right time, but taking the right action. And it helps if the French don’t give a crap.

[Sadly, I didn’t own a digital camera when I visited GRC NHP. All pics are public domain from Wikipedia or the links referenced below. Some also came from www.earlyamerica.com, a nice, simple site on American history I thought worthy of blogrolling to the right.]

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Links:

George Rogers Clark National Historical Park

The Highlands of Louisville

Creationism Museum

Neat Kentucky history link

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Book Review: The Wind is My Mother

August 19, 2010 by Barky

I am a full-fledged agnostic, have been for most if not all of my life. I may even be called “atheist” in practice, but I do wish I could be more spiritual, and have the inner peace earned through a spiritual life. That is the theory of it, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, theory and reality often conflict. The current crop of religions and spiritual movements proves this out. At best, they’re social clubs no more “spiritual” than a college fraternity, a place to be with your neighbors and try to get laid. Some are no more than line items on a personal resume, like a gaggle of IT certifications. Some are inertial organizations where folks belong simply because they’ve always belonged, like their fathers before them. Some are escapist fantasies, allowing the cowardly to retreat into blissfully ignorant “happy places”, occasionally assisted by various mind-altering substances. At the very worst, religions and movements are controlling forces, wielded by the wicked for their own benefit or profit, to the detriment of the adherents. Somewhere along the line, I think Mankind has lost the true meaning of spirituality.

In my view, the true meaning of spirituality is the understanding we’re all self-aware cogs in a greater machine known as The Universe, and if we understand, obey and serve the laws of The Universe, then we’ll have a decent existence. Fight the laws of The Universe and you’ll be a miserable SOB. Like it or not, we’re part of something greater than ourselves. Everything is connected, and the failure of one equals the failure of all. Spirituality is only valid when it ties one to the practical universe, the real world of life, nature, human interrelationships, etc. It’s only valid when it helps all of us survive and thrive. That’s why I enjoyed “The Wind is My Mother: The Life and Teachings of a Native American Shaman” by Bear Heart.

Bear Heart is a member of the Muskogee Nation , a father, a husband, a psychologist, a writer, and, above all, a shaman. He was selected to be a medicine man by other shamans of his tribe, men who saw he had the responsibility, courage, and compassion to be a medicine man. The story of how that came to pass is one of the prime tales in his memoir, “The Wind is My Mother”. But “Wind” is not wholly a memoir. Yes, there are plenty of autobiographical stories in the book, written in that simple, but powerful, spoken-word narrative style indicative of Native American writings. More potently, “Wind” is a collection of anecdotes illustrating basic tribal beliefs. Bear Heart explains concepts such as the significance of each of the four compass points, each of the four seasons, and of the sun, and the moon, and the earth, and the sky. This is all very fascinating, and I’m sure many readers will become enthralled by this. But it’s not really what’s important about the book.

Bear Heart doesn’t just talk about the Wind Spirits. The book is also peppered with philosophies on life and living. Again through anecdotes, Bear Heart talks about happiness, and pain, and loss, and joy, and redemption, and death. He talks about the harm of an unbalanced life, the trouble caused by arrogance, the damage caused by materialism, and the pain brought about by drug and alcohol abuse. He tells all these tales, straight from his life and experiences as a Muskogee medicine man, in this tremendously humble, non-accusatory, parable manner. “The Wind is My Mother” is a good, uplifting read, and I recommend it as a respite from heavier fare (like the tomes on history I usually read).

I think Native American beliefs, as described by Bear Heart, were closer to the truth than any other religion out there. I’m not talking about the beliefs in the Wind Spirits or any of that (and I know all about the recent, scary “sweat lodge” incidents), but theirs was a belief structured around the concept that Nature is actually the Great Spirit, that we’re all interrelated, and that we all need to obey and serve natural laws in order to live well. Theirs was a belief rooted in the fact that you defy Nature at your own peril, and it’s far better (and easier) to let her guide your path down the road of life. Pay attention to the world around you, both the natural world and the voices of the people around you. Listen, act accordingly, respect others, and be the best cog in that universal machine you can be.

Of course, in a society dictated by the philosophy of “me me me me me me me!”, that’s not that easy.

http://www.bearheart.info/index.html

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Friendship Hill National Historic Site, Point Marion, Pennsylvania

July 24, 2010 by Barky

Money Matters

Who is Albert Gallatin? And why does he have so many places named after him?

  • Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University
  • Gallatin Hall at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts
  • Gallatin Hall at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • USCGC Gallatin, a Coast Guard cutter
  • Gallatin River, Montana
  • Gallatin Range, Montana
  • Gallatin County, Illinois
  • Gallatin County, Kentucky
  • Gallatin County, Montana
  • Albert Gallatin Area School District
  • Gallatin, Missouri
  • Gallatin Gateway, Montana
  • Gallatin, Tennessee
  • Gallatin Street in Washington, D.C.
  • Gallatin Street in Pico Rivera, California
  • Gallatin Street in Downey, California

Albert Gallatin was a statesman in the early years of this country. Born in Switzerland, he was an accomplished linguist, politician, diplomat, and educator. He was a Congressman, House Majority Leader, devoted anti-Federalist, and a sensible foe of an arrogant Alexander Hamilton. Personally ineffective as a businessman, he was nevertheless a sharp and shrewd operator in the ways of governance and policy. He became a Pennsylvania icon, and his home at Friendship Hill is regularly visited by schoolchildren and history buffs alike.

What made him famous, what keeps him known, what keeps him revered by fiscal conservatives, and what should make him revered by Teabaggers (if they stopped their fascination with unremarkable, fluffy windbags), was his leadership in fiscal matters for a fledgling government.

Albert Gallatin was our longest-serving Treasury Secretary, serving from 1801 to 1813 under Presidents Jefferson and Madison. During his term, he did something truly remarkable: he cut the national debt almost in half while at the same time financing the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the country.  This is still regarded as an outstanding achievement, and he is still regarded as our greatest Cabinet secretary. No other Secretary of any department has a site in their name in the National Park Service without having gone on to bigger things (like being elected President). And with a few exceptions (George Marshall, perhaps), I don’t think there are any Cabinet secretaries in our history who are more deserving of accolades than Albert Gallatin. [I’m interested in any reader thoughts on this question, feel free to post your own nominees in the comments.]


In Gallatin’s day, there was a completely different view on debt, especially amongst Jeffersonians. TJ himself wrote “there [is a measure] which if not taken we are undone…[It is] to cease borrowing money and to pay off the national debt.” This notion came from a very strong work ethic of colonial and founding generations of Americans, but also came from an understanding that monetary freedom = personal freedom. This is straight from pre-revolutionary experience: taxes were a form of tyranny, as was debt. Debt was an insidious instrument wielded by aristocrats to abuse the poor. Debtors prisons were very real and very dangerous, as were most lenders. The colonists knew that, in fact lots of colonists escaped to the New World to escape their debts. These colonial experiences translated directly into the thought processes of our early leaders.

Today, we don’t have that work ethic anymore. We began to believe that prosperity can be gained by financial legerdemain and borrowing. Thus,  we have a huge federal budget problem, and until recently, most people didn’t care, because they, too, live under tremendous debt.  Of course, the carpet got pulled out from under all of us starting in 2007, and we’ve paid a terrible price. Now we’re paying attention, and if you are truly paying attention, you realize we still have even more problems looming on the horizon, and one key part of those problems is our national debt.

Federally, 30% of the budget isn’t funded by anything, it’s paid for by borrowing. Who lives like that? I recently dug myself out of a debt I considered intolerable. Looking back on it, at my worst my total unsecured debt equaled about 40% of my annual income, and that was the result of about 15-20 years of irresponsibility. That’s only a few percent a year compounded, and I considered it very dangerous. No person can live at a 30% annual borrowing level for very long before receiving their comeuppance, and it’s not possible for a country to do that, either. The national comeuppance will be coming soon, of that there is no doubt. As it is, there are plenty of quite plausible conspiracy theories that China can one day metaphorically conquer the United States by simply calling in all our markers and bankrupting us. Of course, the likelihood of this is quite small because of other factors, but still, this debt burden is a major problem.

But here’s the bigger problem: today, the general public does not understand how debt works, how the federal budget works, and what the impact would be of the austerity program required to pay down this debt to a reasonable level. There is a great deal of fundamental, blatant stupidity on the part of the general public of all parties and independents. Organizations like the Tea Party and others are being dishonest when they say “slash and burn the federal government and pay it down”. “Cut our taxes” is equally stupid.

I say it’s stupid because it’s simplistic and understates the problem. It’s not just “tax & spend”. If one could simplify the real core of the problem right now, IMHO it would be honestly stated as follows:

Our government is completely entangled in, and nearly inseparable from, our very economy. The American people like it that way, our leaders are more than happy to enable that thinking, and we’re too stupid to realize we have to pay for it.

Take a good, honest look around. How much of our economy is based on federal spending? Roads, bridges, waterways, power generation, power transmission, water treatment, currency exchange, education, social welfare, health care — all of these things have some reliance on the federal government, either through direct spending and subsidy or through a regulatory structure required to keep every factory from turning in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company or every neighborhood from turning into Love Canal. We can’t simply “cut spending”, or “cut regulation”. Again, take a look: this is manifested in a lot of ways.

  • Manufacturing has moved overseas in tremendous numbers. So what’s left? Well, defense and pseudo-defense manufacturing. This stuff is still here because export laws prohibit companies from moving this stuff overseas. You cut defense spending (necessary for any honest austerity program), you effectively kill a significant quantity of remaining manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs are great jobs, for over 100 years entire families have risen themselves out of poverty thanks to manufacturing jobs. You kill them, you kill that rise and mangle our economy.
  • Farm subsidies provide significant portions of farmer incomes. Lots of farmers in this country use either farming subsidies directly, or rely on federal insurance programs to keep their livelihoods going. We kill those programs, we kill family farms.
  • About 20% of American adults don’t enough income to live. This is that wonderfully crappy 10% unemployment rate + social welfare programs + social security. These programs are a huge part of federal and state budgets. You cut that, you have millions of folks living on the beveled edge of survivability. We’ll have our own tin villages akin to those shown on late-night Save the Children infomercials.
  • People love pork projects. Oh sure, we all get upset when we hear about Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere. But let’s be honest: no one loves their pork like the voters who get it spent in their districts. We are being bribed by our own Congress and we love it.
  • Then there’s the chain-o’subsidies across all government entities. The feds subsidize state governments, states subsidize local governments, and local governments provide the things we need (fire, police, schools, snowplows, etc.). You start slashing the feds then the states go bankrupt, you start slashing the states and towns go bankrupt. It’s the domino effect of governance.
  • When something happens, Americans instantly start screaming “what is the government doing about it?” Listen to it, even the right-wing, supposedly “small government” folks cry out “where’s the government” when things happen. This is because, for generations, we’ve expected government to “do something”. We’ve simply lost our ability to help ourselves.
  • But then we have a situation where almost every government effort to “help” fails in some way. Katrina recovery was a disaster, the financial system bailout was wasteful and resulted in massive bonuses to bank managers, even our post-9/11 wars failed to catch or kill the folks responsible. Well, why do they fail? Incompetence? Probably, but let’s be honest: we get what we pay for and when it comes to governments, we don’t want to pay much. So we get crappy service, and then we complain and want to pay less so we get even crappier service. We are a world superpower but want a Wal-Mart government.

Albert Gallatin had it easy. In its youth, the federal government wasn’t intertwined in everything. He could easily chop out 1/3 of federal employees and not really hurt much of anything. He could slash-and-burn other spending and only irritate early 19th century lobbyists. The general welfare of the populace, which wasn’t very pretty back then (hard labor, tough living conditions, etc.), was effectively unchanged by those austerity programs. He also had huge tracts of cheap land he could chop up and sell at a profit to raise money for the treasury without raising taxes (he and TJ actually cut taxes during this time).

We don’t have any of that. We have a federal government intertwined in damn near everything, like some sort of symbiotic parasite from a Star Trek episode. You start cutting whole tendrils and the host body (our economy) will crash and die. We have to understand this reality and make smart, intelligent, responsible choices. We have first got to understand there are some functions that can only be accomplished by a sound, effective federal government, and then understand that government is ineffective in everything else. Then, bit-by-bit, we have to chop out those ineffective things in a manner that doesn’t bring everything crashing down. And we have to honestly allow this to happen even if it risks our own personal wealth or well-being, and we have to pay the amount of taxes required to make those necessary functions effective and actually helpful.

Gallatin lived in risky times, and if one can make any criticism of his work, it’s that he actually weakened the country and made us vulnerable for the War of 1812. We live in risky times of a different source, and the criticism I make of the “slash-and-burn” Tea Bagger mentality is that, too, can weaken the country and make us vulnerable to the next big crisis. Thomas Jefferson and Albert Gallatin were smart folks, we need their counterparts of today to step forward and act similarly smart.

And we, the American citizenry, must support responsibility, sensibility, and intelligence in our leaders.

[The daguerreotype photo of Gallatin is in the public domain. Photos are mine and copyrighted thusly. ]

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Links (lots of statistical & policy ones this time :yawn:)

Charts on US Government Spending

Congressional Budget Office report on manufacturing jobs

Illogic of farming subsidies

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Social Security Facts & Figures

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Independence Day 2010

July 1, 2010 by Barky

In preparation for our secular High Holy Day, I watched Ken Burns’ documentary on Thomas Jefferson. Recently, Jefferson’s importance as an American Founding Father was debased by the Texas Board of Education and members of the Christian Right. I, in contrast, maintain that Jefferson was our most important Founder and if anyone deserves to be remembered for All Time, it is Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson was the preeminent American philosopher. He, practically single-handedly, crafted (as George Will said) “the catechism” for our country’s “civil religion”. He stated clearly, unequivocally, and absolutely what it means to be an American. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” There are no greater words ever written, prior or since, that so succinctly, accurately, and magnificently state our core values. Go ahead, I dare you to take any other quote written from colonial times to the present, and weigh it up against that singular sentence from the Declaration of Independence, and claim it a better statement of American values. You can’t do it, and if you can, I will weigh it. Most likely, I will tell you that you have missed the ruddy point of our entire existence from Plymouth Rock to today.

What is remarkable about Jefferson the Philosopher is that America doesn’t really have any other philosophers. We really don’t. We’ve had poets and statesmen and authors and capitalists, but we haven’t really had philosophers. We haven’t had philosophers because we don’t really need them. We don’t need anyone to examine and decipher the soul of America. We know what the soul of America is: it’s what Jefferson stated back in 1776. No further national introspection is needed. Those words are encoded in our DNA, and we know they are there, and we’re all glad for it.

What we have needed since that fated day, now celebrated as Independence Day, isn’t philosophers but pragmatists. Thanks to Jefferson, we have the core value, the goal of our existence as a nation and as a society, but we’ve needed direction on how to attain that goal. That’s where our other great orators, thinkers. artists and musicians  come in: trying to figure out how to get there, gain freedom and equality for all, and remove the bonds of tyranny without simply adding more under another guise.

That’s the journey we’ve been on ever since: not to find out who we are, but how do we get where we’re destined to be. And that’s the journey that seems hopelessly stalled. Today, we are as divided as a society as we’ve ever been since the end of the War Between the States. Reasoned discourse has failed, the two-party system is gridlocked in contests of pointless rage, and our government certainly appears to be an impediment to, not an enabler of, liberty. We are under tremendous strain: a faltering economy, a failed energy policy, a lackluster educational system, three branches of government withered and cracked, and a social safety net that could very well be the anchor pulling us under. Toss in environmental catastrophe and the threats of global terrorism and you’ve got quite the fecal stew. No wonder 55% of Americans think we’re on the wrong path.

I think we’ve simply lost our way. The guiding star, Jefferson’s writings, are still out there. We need to train our binoculars and find it again. Find it, and study it, and accept it as our own. Honestly look at how we’re going down the right path, and reinforce that. Honestly look at where we’re going wrong, and stop that. Then we can get back on the path and travel to that grand destination.

Happy Independence Day to all Americans, and to all across the world who’ve been inspired to act in the cause of liberty by the words of Thomas Jefferson put forth 234 years ago on July 4th, 1776.

And here’s to hoping that, in our 235th year, we figure out how to get back on the right track.

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My 2009 Independence Day essay

My 2008 Independence Day essay

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