Howard Dean, We Hardly Knew Ye

The New York Times reports that the new leadership of the Democratic Party wants to oust Howard Dean. Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel are taking all the credit for the Democratic victory, and James Carville wants to replace Dean with Harold Ford. Howard Dean wanted to build a national party for the Democrats. He wanted to make it possible for somebody driving a pickup with a confederate flag and rifle rack on the back to vote Democratic. Schumer and company want it to be the party of big city Jews and blacks, with a few gays and other assorted minorities thrown in.

I like the Howard Dean vision. When the Republicans went off the deep end, it meant there was somewhere else to go. In addition, during the last presidential primaries, Howard Dean boldly made the Iraq war an issue, while other Democrats dithered. He staked out the issue that won the 2006 election, but don't expect Schumer and Emanuel to admit that.

Ironically, the two Democratic leaders in the Congress are Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who look more like the old America than Schumer, Emanuel and Ford. San Francisco is not New York or Chicago; Nevada definitely is not, although both San Francisco and Las Vegas are in the running to be "Sin City, USA." Pelosi and Reid had better watch their backs.

New York Times on Honor

After I complained that no one was interested in honor, there appeared a New York Times op-ed on honor. Commenting on a new book about honor, John Tierney discussed the different concepts of honor in different societies,

In the West we’ve redefined “honorable” as being virtuous, fair, truthful and sincere, but that’s not the traditional meaning. Honor meant simply the respect of the local “honor group” — the family, the extended clan, the tribe, the religious sect. It meant maintaining a reputation for courage and loyalty, not being charitable to enemy civilians. Telling the truth was secondary to saving face.

But toward the end he said:

Eventually, with the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the bourgeoisie and democracy, the system evolved into what Bowman calls honor-by-merit, epitomized by the Victorian ideal of the gentleman who earns his reputation by working hard, playing fair, defending the weak and fighting for his country.

The problem today, as Bowman sees it, is that the whole concept of defending one’s honor has been devalued in the West — mocked as an archaic bit of male vanity or childish macho chest-thumping. But if you don’t create a civilized honor culture, you risk ending up with the primitive variety.

As he says, honor, at least as described by the recent, Christian, perhaps Victorian concept, is important to Western society. I am afraid that George Bush either never had it, or has lost sight of it. He does not work hard (except at cutting brush); he does not play fair (when he taxes the poor and gives government handouts to the rich); he does not defend the weak (by cutting welfare for the poor while increasing corporate welfare); and he did not fight for his country during the Vietnam War.

Richard Lovelace: To Lucasta

1Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
2 That from the nunnery
3Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
4 To war and arms I fly.
5True, a new mistress now I chase,
6 The first foe in the field;
7And with a stronger faith embrace
8 A sword, a horse, a shield.
9Yet this inconstancy is such
10 As you too shall adore;
11I could not love thee (Dear) so much,
12 Lov'd I not Honour more.

Honor

I miss the concept of honor, which used to be so important in the South. Today you hardly ever hear people talking about honor. Occasionally, you hear some mention of an honor code at the service academies, but usually in the context of its being violated. You hear more about rapes at the academies than about an honor code. And so we have Abu Ghraib, torture, and killing of innocent civilians. Such things happen in all wars, but they should be viewed with revulsion. Today they are just swept under the carpet, and life and death and the war just go on. Honor is an alien concept to this government, including to most of those elected from the South; certainly it is alien to those from Texas.

Russian Peasants

Tolstoy idealized Russian peasants, who perhaps had their American counterpart in slaves and blacks after the civil war and before the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Russia and the South produced great writers, who came from the upper class, but who somehow drew from the strength of character of the serfs and slaves who surrounded them. Perhaps life is too easy in most of the world today to produce great literature.

We know more or less what has happened to blacks in America. For most of them life is much better, but for those who remain marginalized, they are much less connected to the upper classes than in the old days when blacks and whites lived together, if in different castes, as masters and servants. I don't know what has happened to Russian peasants. Did collective farms eliminate them during Communist rule? One of the simple qualities that made them strong was endurance. In one edition of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, he says of Dilsey the maid, "They endured." The Russians defeated Napoleon by enduring the brutal Russian winter.

Now, rather than facing threats from Western Europe, Russia is threatened from the south, in Chechnya, and the new Islam republics that used to be part of the Soviet Union. How important now is Orthodox Christianity? Probably not too important, but that was an important part of the old Russia.

Philadelphia, October 8, 1858

Dear cousin,

I am so glad at receiving a letter from you at last. That I intended being very magnanimous and answer it immediately, but sadly let the ... slowly. I will just tell you have I have been occupied for the last six weeks. In the first place I did not get any letter from you before leaving home but was not very inspired at seeing the Georgia postmark as Uncle John. John by the way spent three or four weeks in Ohio this summer, told me you thought of going to Augusta. How do you like the city and the Southern life? Is your horror of shaving mollified any or did you have that holy horror generally attributed to the Ohioans? You must give me the benefit of your observations. Did the Southerners go off into ... upon the successful laying of Atlantic cable? Are Philadelphians, or not, generally noted for our demonstrative qualities, but I think we were a little bit too fast that time. The day was left as a holiday, stores were closed, and every one seemed to consider it his and her bounden duty to walk the streets to see and be seen. A meeting was held in Joyne's Hall (one of our public buildings) at which I was present. The Hall was beautifully decorated with flags. The stars and stripes were to be seen in every conceivable place. Speeches were given that should have been heard to be appreciated. I wish you could have been there. I am sure you would have enjoyed it. The illumination in the evening was confined mostly to stores and public buildings. One private house struck me as remarkably beautiful. It is I think the handsomest house in the city. Instead of the glazing, gaslight candlelabras were placed through the house, shedding a soft mellow light and under windows were placed the warmest plants that money and good taste could procure. The lights glimmered through the house like so many stars. The hall door was thrown open and one of the largest specimens of the Victoria Regia I ever saw was placed in the front hall. It was a beautiful light, and I thought at the time that I would never tire of seeing and living among flowers. Not two weeks after I had the opportunity of testing my desire, and I never wearied of anything as I did of that. I was attending a plant and floral fair for a week from morning until night. I was there and then resolved it would be my last attempt at any thing of the kind.

I hope your ... neighbors have quieted down, or if not, may I hope you are accustomed to it by this time? Do write soon and tell me all. You see I am a great question asker, a legacy I was left as ladies you know by our first Mother, and I have my full share of it. All wish to be remembered to you in your Patmos(?).

Rachel(?)

Lee and Jefferson Davis

In volume 1 of Freeman's biography, "R.E. Lee," Freeman writes about Robert E. Lee's relationship with Jefferson Davis when Lee was superintendent of West Point, and Davis was Secretary of War:

The incoming secretary was Jefferson Davis. From the very hour that Davis assumed office, reversals of the superintendent of the military academy virtually ceased. Himself a West Pointer, the secretary understood that discipline at the academy could be no stronger than the faith of the War Department in the discretion of the superintendent. Lee's troubles were accordingly reduced. On the foundation of old friendship, new confidence and respect between himself and Davis were built up so stoutly in two years that all the strains of the War between the States could not overthrow them.

Gibbon on the Military

In discussing the raising of Roman armies around the time of Constantine in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says:

In the various states of society armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy are animated by a sentiment of honour; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.

Unfortunately the last category seems to apply to the US military from Vietnam up to today in Iraq. Gibbon goes on to describe a situation not very different from today's America, trying to maintain a relatively small army in Iraq:

The resources of the Roman treasury were exhausted by the increase of pay, by the repetition of donatives, and by the invention of new emoluments and indulgences, which in the opinion of provincial youth, might compensate the hardships and dangers of a military life. Yet, although the stature was lowered, although slaves, at least by a tacit connivance, were indiscriminately received into the ranks, the insurmountable difficulty of procuring a regular and adequate supply of volunteers obliged the emperors to adopt more effectual and coercive methods.

Gibbon on Roman Lawyers

In the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says:

...[I]n the decline of Roman jurisprudence the ordinary promotion of lawyers was pregnant with mischief and disgrace. The noble art, which had once been preserved as the sacred inheritance of patricians, was fallen into the hands of freedmen and plebeians, who, with cunning rather than skill, exercised a sordid and pernicious trade. Some of the procured admittance into families for the purpose of fomenting differences, of encouraging suits, and of preparing a harvest of gain for themselves or their brethren. Others, recluse in their chambers, maintained the gravity of legal professors, by furnishing a rich client with subtleties to confound the plainest truth, and with arguments to colour the most unjustifiable pretensions. The splendid and popular class was composed of the advocates, who filled the Forum with the sound of their turgid and loquacious rhetoric. Careless of fame and of justice, they are described for the most part as ignorant and rapacious guides, who conducted their clients through a maze of expense, of delay, and of disappointment; from whence, after a tedious series of years, they were at length dismissed when their patience and fortune were almost exhausted.

Constantinople and America

From Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter 17):

A nation of legislators and conquerors might assert their claim to the harvests of Africa, which had been purchased with their blood; and it was artfully contrived by Augustus, that, in the enjoyment of plenty, the Romans should lose the memory of freedom. But the prodigality of Constantine could not be excused by any consideration either of public or private interest; and the annual tribute of corn imposed upon Egypt for the benefit of his new capital was applied to feed a lazy and insolent populace, at the expense of the husbandmen of an industrious province.

Lee Rejects Resigning Commission Because of US Investment

Freeman says that around 1849 then-Senator Jefferson Davis recommended Robert E. Lee to command troops for a Cuban revolutionary junta in New York that was planning to invade Cuba to re-establish themselves. (Can you say Bay of Pigs?) Freeman says in R.E. Lee (p. 307):

... [A] strong element in Congress favored the seizure of Cuba.... But before Lee could consider either the comity or the feasibility of the expedition, he balked on a consideration of personal honor: he had been educated as a soldier at public expense; he held a commission in the army of the United States; was it right that he should entertain a proposal from another government while in the service of America? He debated the question and virtually reached his conclusion, but he determined to consult with Davis before deciding whether he would permit the proposal to be opened in detail to him by the junta. He accordingly went to Washington and confidentially discussed the matter. The Mississippi senator was disposed to canvass the chances of military success, but Lee explained that he wanted the judgment of Davis on the ethics of entertaining any offer from a foreign power. Davis's answer is not recorded, but Lee took the strictest view of his duty and declined to consider a proposal.

How does this compare with George W. Bush? During the Vietnam War he was trained as a fighter pilot at a cost to the US of hundreds of thousands of dollars for flight time, etc. However, first he left Texas for the Alabama National Guard where he seldom, if ever, appeared for duty. Then he decided to go to the Harvard Business School, and just walked away from his entire military experience. He had no consideration for the money spent in training him by the government, just as he has no concept of the huge deficits he is running now. Money to Bush is nothing, because people just give it to him to win his favor and influence. Lee grew up in genteel poverty, and never ceased to be concerned about wasting money.

Lee Visits Mobile

Freeman says that Robert E. Lee visited Mobile, Alabama, where I grew up, in January 1849.

Robert E. Lee Forms Dislike of Politicians

In discussing lessons learned from Robert E. Lee's experience in the Mexican War, his biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman said in R. E. Lee:

... [H]e had the most monitory of object lessons in the "political generals" whom Scott had to endure. Perhaps Scott's difficulties with Pillow gave Lee the clue to the handling of Wise and Floyd in the campaign of 1861 in West Virginia, but his observation of Pillow's performances doubtless explains why Lee was so careful to keep politicians from holding important command in the Army of Northern Virginia. It is quite possible, indeed, that Pillow was in large measure responsible for the distrust of politicians that Lee exhibited later. From what he had seen of Pillow in Mexico and of Congress in Washington, he formed a poor opinion of the whole breed of politicians. (p.298)

Just imagine how disappointed Lee would be in politicians if he lived today!

Newburgh, NY, March 24, 1861

My Dear Sister,

I have been anxiously waiting to hear from you or Brother but you both seem to write a day or two after I mailed you last letter. I received one from you and that is the last time I have heard from you. Some six or eight weeks since I received an ambrotype which I presume is that of my Brother Mr. Williams. I thought it very strange that a letter did not accompany it. This leaves me in good health with the exception of a cold which you know northern people are subject to in the spring. Brother Willie has gone to Geneva in the western part of this state. He has gone with Messrs Maxwell and Brother who are in the nursery .... I had ha letter from him a day or two since he was well and likes his situation exceedingly well. Willie understands the ... and is working in the green houses all the time. The foreman in the green houses is from Dr. Grant's place so he is not quite a stranger. He would b e glad to have you write to him. I don't know but he has written to you since he went out there. I received a letter from Father a few days since. He and all the family are well. Dear Sister I assure your last gave me great pain when you wrote to me that you did not got to see Father before leaving Augusta. Do not be astonished when I tell you that I almost bathed my pillow in tears that night when I thought that you are his one daughter and probably will never meet again on this side of the grave and the more I think of it, the worse I feel. Think of being only 7 miles from them. I cannot imagine how you could leave poor Johnny with out even telling him. I think it would have been as little as you could have done to have told him that you were going away and kissed him good bye. But ... it may all come out right yet. I received a letter rom Uncle James McGuire a few weeks since. He and all the family are well. Cousin ... was married last September. Uncle ... has gone to Mobile....Pike County, Alabama. I hope you will write soon and often. Let me know how you like Mobile. How things are. Tell Brother I will be pleased to have him write.

Your loving Brother in haste,

J Rennison