Edelweiss

Chuno/The Slave Hunters: Review & Summary (with spoilers)

2010-06-04T13:58:00.019-07:00

Chuno is a 24 episode historical drama set in Joseon Korea, in the year 1648. It is about Lee Dae Gil, a former noble who became an embittered slave hunter, and his quest to track down the runaway slave woman he had sworn to marry.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Dae Gil’s life had been shattered the night his father discovered that he was in love with one of their slaves, a woman named Un Nyun. Marriage with a slave was impossible, and Dae Gil’s father immediately put the girl in restraints and threatened to starve her to death. Un Nyun’s brother, also a slave, burned down the house in desperation, and ran off with his sister. Both of Dae Gil’s parents died in the fire. In that one awful night, Dae Gil lost his parents, his home, his status as a nobleman, and the woman he loved.

Chuno’s theme is the inhumanity of the institution of slavery. It dramatizes the impossibility of a truly human life in slavery, and the evil repercussions it has throughout society, not just among the slaves, but among the nobles and other free classes, as well.

The drama opens with Dae Gil and his two companions, General Choi and Wang Son, on the hunt for escaped slaves. They find the slaves in a tavern, and quickly subdue them. Outside, Dae Gil offers any one of them a chance to go free – if they can tell him anything about Un Nyun’s whereabouts, after he shows them a drawing of her that he carries with him at all times. This quickly shows us Dae Gil’s true purpose in life, which is not slave hunting, but finding his lost love.

None of them have any information, however, and Dae Gil and his companions therefore herd them along the road to the capital, where they will be turned over to an official for the reward money.

On the way, a female slave begs for pity from Dae Gil, and he asks if she has ever heard of a slave hunter named Lee Dae Gil. She affirms that she has, and proceeds to describe him: “His eyes are crimson red, his teeth black as a beast. He looks like he’s been starving for ten days, and is the kind of lowbred who would gorge the night away in a gisaeng’s embrace, on the same day his parents died. But sir, you couldn’t possibly compare with such vulgar beasts.” Dae Gil answers: “That’d be me – that vulgar beast you heard about.” With that revelation, the slaves give up all hope of escape or release, or any kind of pity or compassion from their captor.

This is the barbaric, merciless image that is Dae Gil’s public persona, and he works hard to make people believe it. But it isn’t his real self, as we soon find out. Among the slaves, there is a mother and daughter. When Dae Gil learns that the daughter, who appears to be about 12 years old, is to be made her master’s bedmate, he breaks into the man’s home, knocks him out, and rescues the child and her mother. He then advises them to go to a certain mountain, where there is a man who takes in and protects escaped slaves. Over the course of the drama, we learn that he has been sending a steady stream of slaves to this refuge since becoming a slave hunter.

This shows there is some kind of war going on in Dae Gil’s soul. Clearly, he could have saved the mother and daughter all this trouble by not having captured them to begin with. And what of the other slaves? He did nothing to help them, after turning them over to the law. Nevertheless, we see that he is not all he appears to be on the surface.

Dae Gil’s next assignment is to recapture a runaway slave named Song Tae Ha, who we learn had been a General in the military, and the most skilled fighter in all Joseon. Tae Ha was well known for his integrity, as well. But none of this matters when a powerful government official decides he wants you out of his way. So Tae Ha is framed for theft, and made a slave.

Tae Ha is an interesting contrast to Dae Gil. Where Dae Gil is disillusioned with the class system of masters and slaves in Joseon, Tae Ha looks upon it as the natural order of things, and simply refuses to consider himself a slave, even though he is one, and has the word for slave branded on his forehead, like any other slave. Once Tae Ha escapes he covers the slave brand with a bandana, and looks upon himself as a noble, in spite of everything. And whereas Dae Gil wanted to marry a slave, but was not allowed to, Song Tae Ha did marry a slave, without realizing it. The two have this conversation late in the drama:

LDG: “So tell me, have you enjoyed your life as a slave?”

STH: “I have never been a slave.”

LDG: “Even with that mark on your forehead, you still flaunt your nobility.”

STH: “I might have spoken and behaved like a slave, but my soul never knelt before anyone.”

LDG: “That is why you shall never judge a book by its cover. Hey, if you do manage to change this world, give it a try. Making a world where no people will be forced by distress to run away, and there will be no need for people like me, spending their lives trailing them. This world where people cannot even experience that damned love as they wish. Is it not a wretched nuisance?”

"My soul never knelt before anyone." A magnificent statement. The problem with Song Tae Ha, however, is that he does not recognize that no one deserves to be a slave, any more than he does. But he begins to understand this as the drama unfolds. Dae Gil, in this scene from later in the drama, speaks sardonically, like he doesn't really care, one way or the other. On the inside, though, he is simply heartbroken. The sardonic attitude is simply his way of hiding it.

When Dae Gil accepts the assignment to capture Tae Ha, the Minister stipulates that if he doesn’t succeed in 30 days, his life will be forfeit. If he succeeds, a very large reward will be his and his companions, enough to quit the slave hunting business and buy some land and houses to live on and farm.

Matters soon become complicated when the Minister also sends another man out to bring back Tae Ha. So we meet Hwang Chulwong, who had been Song Tae Ha’s fellow officer, and who also happens to be the Minister’s son-in-law. Chulwong is another bitter man, a parvenu perhaps, whose bitterness stems from his belief that Tae Ha, and others, look down on him, and never showed him proper respect. His marriage to the Minister’s daughter also seems to have embittered him, since the woman is afflicted with some severely debilitating disease (possibly muscular dystrophy?), and Chulwong seems to despise her. From the outset, he acts like a man who wants revenge on the world, and he also is a tremendously skilled fighter. He is after power, and doesn’t care who he has to kill to get it. Finally, he is a cynic, who believes anyone who attains high position will use it for his own power and aggrandizement, even seemingly honorable characters like Song Tae Ha. This is perhaps the reason that Chulwong is so determined to crush Song Tae Ha, since his honor and integrity give the lie to Chulwong’s cynical philosophy.

So the plot follows the cat and mouse games of these three opposing forces, Song Tae Ha on a mission to save a disinherited child-Prince, with Dae Gil and his fellow slave hunters coming at him from one direction, and Chulwong and his minions coming at him from another.

Then the last big complication is added to the main plot: Dae Gil’s lost love, Un Nyun, who has assumed a new name, Kim Hye Won. She and her brother had managed to buy their way out of slavery, and she was set to be married to a well-to-do noble. At the last moment, however, she runs away from her marriage, unable to forget the “Young Master” she had loved, Lee Dae Gil. On her own, Hye Won runs into trouble from ruffians, but is rescued by Song Tae Ha, who happened along at just the right moment. As she clearly was alone and in need of protection, Song Tae Ha, being a gentleman, offered to let her travel under his protection for as long as they were travelling in the same direction, and she gratefully accepted.

Meanwhile a major subplot is developing. A group of slaves, given help and direction from a mysterious source, are plotting rebellion. They acquire a firearm (a matchlock?), and begin assassinating selected nobles (selected for them by their mysterious helper). Gradually they acquire more firearms, and become more effective. It is in this subplot, among the slaves, that we are shown the impossibility of a human existence as a slave. Daughters are sold from their parents, or forced to cohabit with the master. Total submission to the whims of the master is mandatory. Forming relationships is almost impossible, since one’s fellow slaves can be sold off to some other master at any time. They are clothed in rags, fed poorly, worked mercilessly, and branded like cattle. It is little wonder that slaves are fertile ground for rebellion.

As Dae Gil continues his pursuit of Song Tae Ha, it becomes apparent that he is travelling with a woman. At one point Dae Gil catches sight of her from behind, as she and Tae Ha are riding away on horseback. Dae Gil has the uneasy feeling that it looked like Un Nyun, but his two friends convince him he is just imagining it, as he has imagined seeing her many times before. Unfortunately for Dae Gil, this time it was not his imagination. It is Un Nyun/Hye Won, and as she and Tae Ha have travelled together, a friendship has formed between them, that is blossoming into love.

Tae Ha had been married before, with a child, but his wife and child had both been killed by the enemy in a war against the Qing. Hye Won, for her part, believes she has found a man who will enable her finally to get over her loss of the “Young Master,” who she has always believed died in the fire that killed both of his parents. At this point it has been ten years since that catastrophe. She has been thinking of him ever since, and Dae Gil has been searching for her all this time.

When the longed-for moment finally does happen, and Dae Gil sees Un Nyun before his eyes – it is just as she is performing the marriage ceremony with Song Tae Ha. And so the woman he wanted desperately to spend the rest of his life with, and whose happiness means more to him than anything else in the world, is not only married, but married to the man Dae Gil must capture and enslave, or face his own death for failing to do so. That is a value conflict, a life changing dilemma.

Whenever anyone asked him, Dae Gil always claimed he was hunting Un Nyun as an escaped slave. Now the moment of truth has come, and his actions are not in keeping with his words. Un Nyun is right in front of him for the taking, as is Song Tae Ha. But Dae Gil suddenly tells his fellow slave hunters he’s done slave hunting, it’s time to retire and enjoy a quiet life in the countryside. As he admits to General Choi, he has found Un Nyun, and she is happy with Song Tae Ha. He will not upset her happiness, even though it means he can never get back together with the woman he loves. It also means his life is in jeopardy from the Minister who paid him to capture Song Tae Ha.

How did this happen? Why did a man and woman who loved each other get torn asunder, leading to so much pain for both of them? The institution of slavery was the cause of all their suffering, for killing the love and happiness they should have enjoyed together. A master is forbidden to marry a slave; a slave has no right to love a master. Slavery ruins the lives and happiness of both slaves and masters.

Parallel to this ruined relationship is one among two slaves in the subplot of the slave rebellion. Eop Bok, a former tiger hunter who was enslaved for unpaid debts, had fallen in love with Chobok, a bright, intelligent young slave woman. Both of them were almost afraid to fall in love, because they both knew one of them could be sold off at any moment, and they’d never see each other again. But they were fiercely determined not to be separated. Then one day it happened. Chobok’s master decided to trade her for a cow. When Eop Bok found out, it was the last straw in his existence as a slave. He burst in on Chobok’s master, demanded to know who he had sold her to, and then he killed the man. None of this would have happened absent the institution of slavery. Their happiness would not have been broken up, and Eop Bok would not have committed a murder.

Dae Gil’s troubles did not end with his acceptance of Un Nyun’s happiness with another man. Her husband, Song Tae Ha, was still the object of a nationwide manhunt, led by the implacable Hwang Chulwong. When Chulwong found Dae Gil’s friend, Wang Son, still trying to capture Song Tae Ha, he viewed Wang Son as a competitor, and so he eliminated the competition – with his sword. When General Choi came out looking for Wang Son, he too was eliminated by Chulwong. He then set it up to convince Dae Gil that Song Tae Ha had killed his friends. This was more than Dae Gil could bear, and he set out to capture or kill Tae Ha, regardless of how it might affect Un Nyun.

Dae Gil rushes to the home where Song Tae Ha and Un Nyun had been staying, and finds only Un Nyun there. In his anguish for his lost friends, and his fury at the man he thinks killed them, Dae Gil cannot bring himself to show his love for Un Nyun. He pretends he has simply been hunting her, like any other slave. This scene is crucial to the story, and their conversation brings to the surface the theme that has been underlying the whole story. It begins with Un Nyun turning to find Dae Gil standing behind her. Dae Gil stands there silently, staring at the ground, as if to say: ”Take a good look at what I have become, compared to what I was –before your brother destroyed my home and family, and you ran away from me.”

Then he turns to her and speaks:

LDG: “Thought a runaway slave like you could have it so easy?”

UN: “Were you looking for me?”

LDG: “Slaves like you have no right to ask their keeper any questions.”

UN: “Did you, even if just for once, think about me?”

Dae Gil laughs, and says:

LDG: “What deranged fool would ever have feelings for a lowly slattern like you? Now I shall ask the questions. You couldn’t be incognizant of the tenets ruling us all, so how could you forsake our guiding principles and betray your keeper?”

UN: “Who created those tenets? And where did those principles originate? Isn’t trying to live life as decent human beings what our guiding principles should be?”

LDG: “And you even consider yourselves human beings? You know what you are? You are . . . nothing but slaves.”

. . . . . .

UN: “How could a paltry runaway slave implore for survival? Now . . . may you slay me. Seeing you alive itself brings me happiness.”

At this, Dae Gil is genuinely shocked, and indignant.

LDG: “Happiness? And what would you be happy about? Happy that I’m living this way? Or that we met in this manner? A single day feeling like endless moons: is that happiness? What the hell are you happy about?. . . Stop talking about happiness. Survival alone does not grant happiness to everyone.”

Dae Gil is unable to speak honestly with Un Nyun about his love for her. What he says to her is virtually the opposite of what he really feels. He says “What deranged fool would have feelings for a lowly slattern like you?” The truth is that Dae Gil is just such a ”fool.” He loved her long ago, has loved her for the ten years he has searched for her, and he loves her still.

When he asks how she could betray her keeper, he is betraying his own confessed desire to live with her forever in a changed world. He is pretending to believe in the master-slave system that has destroyed his life, simply so that Un Nyun will not see his anguish at having lost her.

Finally he does speak honestly, when Un Nyun says she is happy he is alive. This genuinely shocks Dae Gil, and he lashes out at her unfairly. Can you not see, he asks her, that I’m living like an animal, hunting slaves? Our meeting as enemies, instead of reunited lovers, makes you happy? What’s wrong with you?

This causes Un Nyun to break down in tears, for this is certainly not what she meant about happiness. But this meeting with Dae Gil had come about suddenly, and she had not had time to consider what Dae Gil’s life had become, and what he had suffered.

At this point, Song Tae Ha shows up. He and Dae Gil march off to a deserted spot to settle their grievances against one another, once and for all. They fight each other ferociously, each one thinking the other had killed his closest friends. In fact, Hwang Chulwong had killed all of them. As they fight, Dae Gil taunts Tae Ha with marrying a slave. Tae Ha had no idea Un Nyun, whom he knew as Kim Hye Won, had been a slave, and this shocks him profoundly. He refuses to believe it, and they renew their assault upon one another.

The fight results in Dae Gil capturing Tae Ha, and heading back to the capital to turn him over to the authorities. Before they get there, however, they have a revealing conversation about their differing world-views:

STH: “Was my spouse – truly a slave?”

LDG: “And so what? Slave or noble, what difference would it make? If you have feelings for each other, that is all that matters.”

STH: “Be that as it may, people’s roots are unalterable.”

LDG: “It’s because people like you are in power that we live in such a wretched world. If people like you didn’t exist, then there would be no need for people like me, either.”

*****************

LDG: “I don’t know what brought you to Jeju, but all you want is returning to your past, nothing more than that. You must be eager to return to all that luxury which surrounded your life.”

STH: “Do you have any right to say so? You spuriously parade the streets on the pretext of restoring public order, but it is likely that all you do is torment innocent people, and demean yourself with the vile haughtiness of a vandal.”

LDG: “That’s natural, for only that way can we survive. For creating a world where only that grants you survival is what people like you have done.”

Leading him back to the capital proves to be a mistake, because the government wants Dae Gil just as much as it wants Tae Ha. Both of them are taken to be tortured, and Hwang Chulwong is in charge of the proceedings. Both of them defy his attempts to make them talk about the whereabouts of the Prince that Song Tae Ha was protecting, and finally it is decided to simply hang them both. During the torture they learned that Chulwong had killed their friends, and so their hatred for each other abated substantially.

After being rescued from execution by allies, Tae Ha and Dae Gil search for Un Nyun, who is now being hunted because she is shielding the Prince. When they find her, it is the first time Tae Ha has seen her since learning she had been a slave. Un Nyun says she will leave him, because she deceived him about being a slave. Tae Ha finally asks her to stay, and give him time to overcome the prejudices that he had learned over a lifetime. Un Nyun/Hye Won agrees to stay with him.

All three of them then go to the mountain where runaway slaves have a sanctuary, until they can decide how to proceed. There, Dae Gil finds his two comrades, alive but nursing severe injuries. Tae Ha decides his only course of action is to contact the Crown Prince, and ask him to intercede on behalf of the young Prince, to allow him to live. Dae Gil considers this foolish and suicidal, but determines to accompany him. He will not allow Un Nyun’s husband to come to harm.

Their meeting with the Crown Prince did not prove fruitful, and after it Hwang Chulwong sprung an ambush on them. They fought their way out of it, however, and Tae Ha decides the only option left is to leave the Kingdom entirely, and take refuge with the Qing.

They get a message to Un Nyun, and she meets them on the way to a port from which they plan to make their escape. Dae Gil will accompany them to the port, and then bid them farewell.

But Hwang Chulwong has other plans. He and his men intercept them on their way, and a melee ensues. Song Tae Ha is severely injured, Un Nyun is injured, Chulwong is injured, Dae Gil is injured. Tae Ha can barely stand, but still wants to fight. Dae Gil tells him to go, to live for Un Nyun, or Dae Gil would be dying for nothing. He orders Un Nyun to take Tae Ha away, and she tearfully complies.

Dae Gil and Chulwong resume fighting. Chulwong cannot understand why Dae Gil is fighting, giving up his life, for Tae Ha. Dae Gil tells him Tae Ha saved his life once. And of course he is also doing it for Un Nyun. As they continue savagely beating each other to a pulp, Dae Gil says:

LDG: “Even if we only rid this world of people like you and me [slave hunters and brutal public officials], I’m sure it will be a better place.”

Somehow this love for which a man will give the last full measure of devotion – laying down his life – finally reaches some spark of decency buried in Chulwong’s soul, and he is changed. He stops fighting. Dae Gil prepares to fight another group of soldiers that has just arrived on the scene. As he summons his last reserve of strength, his thoughts turn to Un Nyun:

LDG: “Un Nyun, Un Nyun, live in happiness. Spend endless moons with that man of yours, and that child, until the day we shall once again meet, and you will tell me how your life was. My Un Nyun, my . . . beloved.”

And with that, Dae Gil charged full speed into his final battle.

Some of the soldiers come to Chulwong and ask him which way Song Tae Ha went, and Chulwong tells them to forget about it. It’s over, let’s go home. And he throws down his sword. When Chulwong gets home, he collapses in his wife’s lap, crying in regret for the terrible life he has led, and the way he has treated his wife.

As Song Tae Ha and Un Nyun stagger off into the distance, Tae Ha stumbles to his knees, and he speaks to Un Nyun.

STH: “My dear, will you follow my wishes?”

UN: “Yes.”

STH: “I shall not leave with you for Qing territory.”

UN: “As you wish.”

STH: “I am too indebted to this land of mine, so I don’t believe I could ever leave it.”

UN: “I’m grateful to hear you say that.”

STH: “Thank you, my dear, for saying that. I shall recover in no time. Once I have recovered, we must make a better world. Hye Won. Un Nyun! I shall make sure you will never have to use two names.”

[Subtitles and translations by WithS2, Written in the Heavens Subbing Squad. Screen captures from DramaFever.com.]

Chronicles of America

2010-04-22T23:10:00.004-07:00

There is a 56 volume series of books on American history called Chronicles of America, published by Yale University circa 1920. Many years ago I read one of the volumes, The Old Merchant Marine A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, by Ralph Delahaye Paine. It's in the public domain, and it's a great chapter in American history. Here is one of the best chapters from the book:

CHAPTER IV. THE FAMOUS DAYS OF SALEM PORT

In such compelling circumstances as these, necessity became the mother of achievement. There is nothing finer in American history than the dogged fortitude and high-hearted endeavor with which the merchant seamen returned to their work after the Revolution and sought and found new markets for their wares. It was then that Salem played that conspicuous part which was, for a generation, to overshadow the activities of all other American seaports. Six thousand privateersmen had signed articles in her taverns, as many as the total population of the town, and they filled it with a spirit of enterprise and daring. Not for them the stupid monotony of voyages coastwise if more hazardous ventures beckoned and there were havens and islands unvexed by trade where bold men might win profit and perhaps fight for life and cargo.

Now there dwelt in Salem one of the great men of his time, Elias Hasket Derby, the first American millionaire, and very much more than this. He was a shipping merchant with a vision and with the hard-headed sagacity to make his dreams come true. His was a notable seafaring family, to begin with. His father, Captain Richard Derby, born in 1712, had dispatched his small vessels to the West Indies and Virginia and with the returns from these voyages he had loaded assorted cargoes for Spain and Madeira and had the proceeds remitted in bills of exchange to London or in wine, salt, fruit, oil, lead, and handkerchiefs to America. Richard Derby's vessels had eluded or banged away at the privateers during the French War from 1756 to 1763, mounting from eight to twelve guns, "with four cannon below decks for close quarters." Of such a temper was this old sea-dog who led the militia and defiantly halted General Gage's regulars at the North River bridge in Salem, two full months before the skirmish at Lexington. Eight of the nineteen cannon which it was proposed to seize from the patriots had been taken from the ships of Captain Richard Derby and stored in his warehouse for the use of the Provincial Congress.

It was Richard's son, Captain John Derby, who carried to England in the swift schooner Quero the first news of the affair at Lexington, ahead of the King's messenger. A sensational arrival, if ever there was one! This Salem shipmaster, cracking on sail like a proper son of his sire, making the passage in twenty-nine days and handsomely beating the lubberly Royal Express Packet Sukey which left Boston four days sooner, and startling the British nation with the tidings which meant the loss of an American empire! A singular coincidence was that this same Captain John Derby should have been the first mariner to inform the United States
that peace had come, when he arrived from France in 1783 with the message that a treaty had been signed.

Elias Hasket Derby was another son of Richard. When his manifold energies were crippled by the war, he diverted his ability and abundant resources into privateering. He was interested in at least eighty of the privateers out of Salem, invariably subscribing for such shares as might not be taken up by his fellow-townsmen. He soon perceived that many of these craft were wretchedly unfit for the purpose and were easily captured or wrecked. It was characteristic of his genius that he should establish shipyards of his own, turn his attention to naval architecture, and begin to build a class of vessels vastly superior in size, model, and speed to any previously launched in the colonies. They were designed to meet the small cruiser of the British Navy on even terms and were remarkably successful, both in enriching their owner and in defying the enemy.

At the end of the war Elias Hasket Derby discovered that these fine ships were too large and costly to ply up and down the coast. Instead of bewailing his hard lot, he resolved to send them to the other side of the globe. At a time when the British and the Dutch East India companies insolently claimed a monopoly of the trade of the Orient, when American merchant seamen had never ventured beyond the two Atlantics, this was a conception which made of commerce a surpassing romance and heralded the golden era of the nation's life upon the sea.

His Grand Turk of three hundred tons was promptly fitted out for a pioneering voyage as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Salem knew her as "the great ship" and yet her hull was not quite one hundred feet long. Safely Captain Jonathan Ingersoll took her out over the long road, his navigating equipment consisting of a few erroneous maps and charts, a sextant, and Guthrie's Geographical Grammar. In Table Bay he sold his cargo of provisions and then visited the coast of Guinea to dispose of his rum for ivory and gold dust but brought not a single slave back, Mr. Derby having declared that "he would rather sink the whole capital employed than directly or indirectly be concerned in so infamous a trade"--an unusual point of view for a shipping merchant of New England in 1784!

Derby ships were first to go to Mauritius, then called the Isle of France, first at Calcutta, and among the earliest to swing at anchor off Canton. When Elias Hasket Derby decided to invade this rich East India commerce, he sent his eldest son, Elias Hasket, Jr., to England and the Continent after a course at Harvard. The young man became a linguist and made a thorough study of English and French methods of trade. Having laid this foundation for the venture, the son was now sent to India, where he lived for three years in the interests of his house, building up a trade almost fabulously profitable.

How fortunes were won in those stirring days may be discerned from the record of young Derby's ventures while in the Orient. In 1788 the proceeds of one cargo enabled him to buy a ship and a brigantine in the Isle of France. These two vessels he sent to Bombay to load with cotton. Two other ships of his fleet, the Astrea and Light Horse, were filled at Calcutta and Rangoon and ordered to Salem. It was found, when the profits of these transactions were reckoned, that the little squadron had earned $100,000 above all outlay.

To carry on such a business as this enlisted many men and industries. While the larger ships were making their distant voyages, the brigs and schooners were gathering cargoes for them, crossing to Gothenburg and St. Petersburg for iron, duck, and hemp, to France, Spain, and Madeira for wine and lead, to the French West Indies for molasses to be turned into rum, to New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond for flour, provisions, and tobacco. These shipments were assembled in the warehouses on Derby Wharf and paid for the teas, coffees, pepper, muslin, silks, and ivory which the ships from the Far East were fetching home. In fourteen years the Derby ships made one hundred and twenty-five voyages to Europe and far eastern ports and out of the thirty-five vessels engaged only one was lost at sea.

It was in 1785 when the Grand Turk, on a second voyage, brought back a cargo of silks, teas, and nankeens from Batavia and China, that "The Independent Chronicle" of London, unconsciously humorous, was moved to affirm that "the Americans have given up all thought of a China trade which can never be carried on to advantage without some settlement in the East Indies."

As soon as these new sea-trails had been furrowed by the keels of Elias Hasket Derby, other Salem merchants were quick to follow in a rivalry which left no sea unexplored for virgin markets and which ransacked every nook and corner of barbarism which had a shore. Vessels slipped their cables and sailed away by night for some secret destination with whose savage potentate trade relations had been established. It might be Captain Jonathan Carnes who, while at the port of Bencoolen in 1793, heard that pepper grew wild on the northern coast of Sumatra. He whispered the word to the Salem owner, who sent him back in the schooner Rajah with only four guns and ten men. Eighteen months later, Jonathan Carnes returned to Salem with a cargo of pepper in bulk, the first direct importation, and cleared seven hundred per cent on the voyage. When he made ready to go again, keeping his business strictly to himself, other owners tracked him clear to Bencoolen, but there he vanished in the Rajah, and his secret with him, until he reappeared with another precious cargo of pepper. When, at length, he shared this trade with other vessels, it meant that Salem controlled the pepper market of Sumatra and for many years supplied a large part of the world's demand.

And so it happened that in the spicy warehouses that overlooked Salem Harbor there came to be stored hemp from Luzon, gum copal from Zanzibar, palm oil from Africa, coffee from Arabia, tallow from Madagascar, whale oil from the Antarctic, hides and wool from the Rio de la Plata, nutmeg and cloves from Malaysia. Such merchandise had been bought or bartered for by shipmasters who were much more than mere navigators. They had to be shrewd merchants on their own accounts, for the success or failure of a voyage was mostly in their hands. Carefully trained and highly intelligent men, they attained command in the early twenties and were able to retire, after a few years more afloat, to own ships and exchange the quarterdeck for the counting-room, and the cabin for the solid mansion and lawn on Derby Street. Every opportunity, indeed, was offered them to advance their own fortunes. They sailed not for wages but for handsome commissions and privileges--in the Derby ships, five per cent of a cargo outward bound, two and a half per cent of the freightage home, five per cent profit on goods bought and sold between foreign ports, and five per cent of the cargo space for their own use.

Such was the system which persuaded the pick and flower of young American manhood to choose the sea as the most advantageous career possible. There was the Crowninshield family, for example, with five brothers all in command of ships before they were old enough to vote and at one time all five away from Salem, each in his own vessel and three of them in the East India trade. "When little boys," to quote from the memoirs of Benjamin Crowninshield, "they were all sent to a common school and about their eleventh year began their first particular study which should develop them as sailors and ship captains. These boys studied their navigation as little chaps of twelve years old and were required to thoroughly master the subject before being sent to sea.... As soon as the art of navigation was mastered, the youngsters were sent to sea, sometimes as common sailors but commonly as ship's clerks, in which position they were able to learn everything about the management of a ship without actually being a common sailor."

This was the practice in families of solid station and social rank, for to be a shipmaster was to follow the profession of a gentleman. Yet the bright lad who entered by way of the forecastle also played for high stakes. Soon promoted to the berth of mate, he was granted cargo space for his own adventures in merchandise and a share of the profits. In these days the youth of twenty-one is likely to be a college undergraduate, rated too callow and unfit to be intrusted with the smallest business responsibilities and tolerantly regarded as unable to take care of himself. It provokes both a smile and a glow of pride, therefore, to recall those seasoned striplings and what they did.

No unusual instance was that of Nathaniel Silsbee, later United States Senator from Massachusetts, who took command of the new ship Benjamin in the year 1792, laden with a costly cargo from Salem for the Cape of Good Hope and India, "with such instructions," says he, "as left the management of the voyage very much to my own discretion. Neither myself nor the chief mate, Mr. Charles Derby, had attained the age of twenty-one years when we left home. I was not then twenty." This reminded him to speak of his own family. Of the three Silsbee brothers, "each of us obtained the command of vessels and the consignment of their cargoes before attaining the age of twenty years, viz., myself at the age of eighteen and a half, my brother William at nineteen and a half, and my brother Zachariah before he was twenty years old. Each and all of us left off going to sea before reaching the age of twenty-nine years."

How resourcefully these children of the sea could handle affairs was shown in this voyage of the Benjamin. While in the Indian Ocean young Silsbee fell in with a frigate which gave him news of the beginning of war between England and France. He shifted his course for Mauritius and there sold the cargo for a dazzling price in paper dollars, which he turned into Spanish silver. An embargo detained him for six months, during which this currency increased to three times the value of the paper money. He gave up the voyage to Calcutta, sold the Spanish dollars and loaded with coffee and spices for Salem. At the Cape of Good Hope, however, he discovered that he could earn a pretty penny by sending his cargo home in other ships and loading the Benjamin again for Mauritius. When, at length, he arrived in Salem harbor, after nineteen months away, his enterprises had reaped a hundred per cent for Elias Hasket Derby and his own share was the snug little fortune of four thousand dollars. Part of this he, of course, invested at sea, and at twenty-two he was part owner of the Betsy, East Indiaman, and on the road to independence.

As second mate in the Benjamin had sailed Richard Cleveland, another matured mariner of nineteen, who crowded into one life an Odyssey of adventure noteworthy even in that era and who had the knack of writing about it with rare skill and spirit. In 1797, when twenty-three years old, he was master of the bark Enterprise bound from Salem to Mocha for coffee. The voyage was abandoned at Havre and he sent the mate home with the ship, deciding to remain abroad and gamble for himself with the chances of the sea. In France he bought on credit a "cutter-sloop" of forty-three tons, no larger than the yachts whose owners think it venturesome to take them off soundings in summer cruises. In this little box of a craft he planned to carry a cargo of merchandise to the Cape of Good Hope and thence to Mauritius.

His crew included two men, a black cook, and a brace of boys who were hastily shipped at Havre. "Fortunately they were all so much in debt as not to want any time to spend their advance, but were ready at the instant, and with this motley crew, (who, for aught I knew, were robbers or pirates) I put to sea." The only sailor of the lot was a Nantucket lad who was made mate and had to be taught the rudiments of navigation while at sea. Of the others he had this to say, in his lighthearted
manner:

"The first of my fore-mast hands is a great, surly, crabbed, raw-boned, ignorant Prussian who is so timid aloft that the mate has frequently been obliged to do his duty there. I believe him to be more of a soldier than a sailor, though he has often assured me that he has been a boatswain's mate of a Dutch Indiaman, which I do not believe as he hardly knows how to put two ends of a rope together.... My cook... a good-natured negro and a tolerable cook, so unused to a vessel that in the smoothest weather he cannot walk fore and aft without holding onto something with both hands. This fear proceeds from the fact that he is so tall and slim that if he should get a cant it might be fatal to him. I did not think America could furnish such a specimen of the negro race... nor did I ever see such a simpleton. It is impossible to teach him anything and... he can hardly tell the main-halliards from the mainstay.

"Next is an English boy of seventeen years old, who from having lately had the small-pox is feeble and almost blind, a miserable object, but pity for his misfortunes induces me to make his duty as easy as possible. Finally I have a little ugly French boy, the very image of a baboon, who from having served for some time on different privateers has all the tricks of a veteran man-of-war's man, though only thirteen years old, and by having been in an English prison, has learned enough of the language to be a proficient in swearing."

With these human scrapings for a ship's company, the cutter Caroline was three months on her solitary way as far as the Cape of Good Hope, where the inhabitants "could not disguise their astonishment at the size of the vessel, the boyish appearance of the master and mate, and the queer and unique characters of the two men and boy who composed the crew." The English officials thought it strange indeed, suspecting some scheme of French spies or smuggled dispatches, but Richard Cleveland's petition to the Governor, Lord McCartney, ingenuously patterned after certain letters addressed to noblemen as found in an old magazine aboard his vessel, won the day for him and he was permitted to sell the cutter and her cargo, having changed his mind about proceeding farther.

Taking passage to Batavia, he looked about for another venture but found nothing to his liking and wandered on to Canton, where he was attracted by the prospect of a voyage to the northwest coast of America to buy furs from the Indians. In a cutter no larger than the Caroline he risked all his cash and credit, stocking her with $20,000 worth of assorted merchandise for barter, and put out across the Pacific, "having on board twenty-one persons, consisting, except two Americans, of English, Irish, Swedes and French, but principally the first, who were runaways from the men-of-war and Indiamen, and two from a Botany Bay ship who had made their escape, for we were obliged to take such as we could get, served to complete a list of as accomplished villains as ever disgraced any country."

After a month of weary, drenching hardship off the China coast, this crew of cutthroats mutinied. With a loyal handful, including the black cook, Cleveland locked up the provisions, mounted two four-pounders on the quarterdeck, rammed them full of grape-shot, and fetched up the flint-lock muskets and pistols from the cabin. The mutineers were then informed that if they poked their heads above the hatches he would blow them overboard. Losing enthusiasm and weakened by hunger, they asked to be set ashore; so the skipper marooned the lot. For two days the cutter lay offshore while a truce was argued, the upshot being that four of the rascals gave in and the others were left behind.

Fifty days more of it and, washed by icy seas, racked and storm-beaten, the vessel made Norfolk Sound. So small was the crew, so imminent the danger that the Indians might take her by boarding, that screens of hides were rigged along the bulwarks to hide the deck from view. Stranded and getting clear, warding off attacks, Captain Richard Cleveland stayed two months on the wilderness coast of Oregon, trading one musket for eight prime sea-otter skins until there was no more room below. Sixty thousand dollars was the value of the venture when he sailed for China by way of the Sandwich Islands, forty thousand of profit, and he was twenty-five years old with the zest for roving undiminished.

He next appeared in Calcutta, buying a twenty-five-ton pilot boat under the Danish flag for a fling at Mauritius and a speculation in prizes brought in by French privateers. Finding none in port, he loaded seven thousand bags of coffee in a ship for Copenhagen and conveyed as a passenger a kindred spirit, young Nathaniel Shaler, whom he took into partnership. At Hamburg these two bought a fast brig, the Lelia Byrd, to try their fortune on the west coast of South America, and recruited a third partner, a boyish Polish nobleman, Count de Rousillon, who had been an aide to Kosciusko. Three seafaring musketeers, true gentlemen rovers, all under thirty, sailing out to beard the viceroys of Spain!

From Valparaiso, where other American ships were detained and robbed, they adroitly escaped and steered north to Mexico and California. At San Diego they fought their way out of the harbor, silencing the Spanish fort with their six guns. Then to Canton with furs, and Richard Cleveland went home at thirty years of age after seven years' absence and voyaging twice around the world, having wrested success from almost every imaginable danger and obstacle, with $70,000 to make him a rich man in his own town. He was neither more nor less than an American sailor of the kind that made the old merchant marine magnificent.

It was true romance, also, when the first American shipmasters set foot in mysterious Japan, a half century before Perry's squadron shattered the immemorial isolation of the land of the Shoguns and the Samurai. Only the Dutch had been permitted to hold any foreign intercourse whatever with this hermit nation and for two centuries they had maintained their singular commercial monopoly at a price measured in terms of the deepest degradation of dignity and respect. The few Dutch merchants suffered to reside in Japan were restricted to a small island in Nagasaki harbor, leaving it only once in four years when the Resident, or chief agent, journeyed to Yeddo to offer gifts and most humble obeisance to the Shogun, "creeping forward on his hands and feet, and falling on his knees, bowed his head to the ground, and retired again in absolute silence, crawling exactly like a crab," said one of these pilgrims who added: "We may not keep Sundays or fast days, or allow our spiritual hymns or prayers to be heard; never mention the name of Christ. Besides these things, we have to submit to other insulting imputations which are always painful to a noble heart. The reason which impels the Dutch to bear all these sufferings so patiently is simply the love of gain."

In return for these humiliations the Dutch East India Company was permitted to send one or two ships a year from Batavia to Japan and to export copper, silk, gold, camphor, porcelain, bronze, and rare woods. The American ship Franklin arrived at Batavia in 1799 and Captain James Devereux of Salem learned that a charter was offered for one of these annual voyages. After a deal of Yankee dickering with the hard-headed Dutchmen, a bargain was struck and the Franklin sailed for Nagasaki with cloves, chintz, sugar, tin, black pepper, sapan wood, and elephants' teeth. The instructions were elaborate and punctilious, salutes to be fired right and left, nine guns for the Emperor's guard while passing in, thirteen guns at the anchorage; all books on board to be sealed up in a cask, Bibles in particular, and turned over to the Japanese officials, all firearms sent ashore, ship dressed with colors whenever the "Commissaries of the Chief" graciously came aboard, and a carpet on deck for them to sit upon.

Two years later, the Margaret of Salem made the same sort of a voyage, and in both instances the supercargoes, one of whom happened to be a younger brother of Captain Richard Cleveland, wrote journals of the extraordinary episode. For these mariners alone was the curtain lifted which concealed the feudal Japan from the eyes of the civilized world. Alert and curious, these Yankee traders explored the narrow streets of Nagasaki, visited temples, were handsomely entertained by officers and merchants, and exchanged their wares in the marketplace. They were as much at home, no doubt, as when buying piculs of pepper from a rajah of Qualah Battoo, or dining with an elderly mandarin of Cochin China. It was not too much to say that "the profuse stores of knowledge brought by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness of
intellect."

It was a Salem bark, the Lydia, that first displayed the American flag to the natives of Guam in 1801. She was chartered by the Spanish government of Manila to carry to the Marianne Islands, as those dots on the chart of the Pacific were then called, the new Governor, his family, his suite, and his luggage. First Mate William Haswell kept a diary in a most conscientious fashion, and here and there one gleans an item with a humor of its own. "Now having to pass through dangerous straits," he observes, "we went to work to make boarding nettings and to get our arms in the best order, but had we been attacked we should have been taken with ease. Between Panay and Negros all the passengers were in the greatest confusion for fear of being taken and put to death in the dark and not have time to say their prayers."

The decks were in confusion most of the time, what with the Governor, his lady, three children, two servant girls and twelve men servants, a friar and his servant, a judge and two servants, not to mention some small hogs, two sheep, an ox, and a goat to feed the passengers who were too dainty for sea provender. The friar was an interesting character. A great pity that the worthy mate of the Lydia should not have been more explicit! It intrigues the reader of his manuscript diary to be told that "the Friar was praying night and day but it would not bring a fair wind. His behavior was so bad that we were forced to send him to Coventry, or in other words, no one would speak to him."

The Spanish governors of Guam had in operation an economic system which compelled the admiration of this thrifty Yankee mate. The natives wore very few clothes, he concluded, because the Governor was the only shopkeeper and he insisted on a profit of at least eight hundred per cent. There was a native militia regiment of a thousand men who were paid ten dollars a year. With this cash they bought Bengal goods, cottons, Chinese pans, pots, knives, and hoes at the Governor's store, so that "all this money never left the Governor's hands. It was fetched to him by the galleons in passing, and when he was relieved he carried it with him to Manila, often to the amount of eighty or ninety thousand dollars." A glimpse of high finance without a flaw!

There is pathos, simple and moving, in the stories of shipwreck and stranding on hostile or desert coasts. These disasters were far more frequent then than now, because navigation was partly guesswork and ships were very small. Among these tragedies was that of the Commerce, bound from Boston to Bombay in 1793. The captain lost his bearings and thought he was off Malabar when the ship piled up on the beach in the night. The nearest port was Muscat and the crew took to the boats in the hope of reaching it. Stormy weather drove them ashore where armed Arabs on camels stripped them of clothes and stores and left them to die among the sand dunes.

On foot they trudged day after day in the direction of Muscat, and how they suffered and what they endured was told by one of the survivors, young Daniel Saunders. Soon they began to drop out and die in their tracks in the manner of "Benjamin Williams, William Leghorn, and Thomas Barnard whose bodies were exposed naked to the scorching sun and finding their strength and spirits quite exhausted they lay down expecting nothing but death for relief." The next to be left behind was Mr. Robert Williams, merchant and part owner, "and we therefore with reluctance abandoned him to the mercy of God, suffering ourselves all the horrors that fill the mind at the approach of death." Near the beach and a forlorn little oasis, they stumbled across Charles Lapham, who had become separated from them. He had been without water for five days "and after many efforts he got upon his feet and endeavored to walk. Seeing him in so wretched a condition I could not but sympathize enough with him in his torments to go back with him" toward water two miles away, "which both my other companions refused to do. Accordingly they walked forward while I went back a considerable distance with Lapham until, his strength failing him, he suddenly fell on the ground, nor was he able to rise again or even speak to me. Finding it vain to stay with him, I covered him with sprays and leaves which I tore from an adjacent tree, it being the last friendly office I could do him."

Eight living skeletons left of eighteen strong seamen tottered into Muscat and were cared for by the English consul. Daniel Saunders worked his passage to England, was picked up by a press-gang, escaped, and so returned to Salem. It was the fate of Juba Hill, the black cook from Boston, to be detained among the Arabs as a slave. It is worth noting that a black sea-cook figured in many of these tales of daring and disaster, and among them was the heroic and amazing figure of one Peter Jackson who belonged in the brig Ceres. While running down the river from Calcutta she was thrown on her beam ends and Peter, perhaps dumping garbage over the rail, took a header. Among the things tossed to him as he floated away was a sail-boom on which he was swiftly carried out of sight by the turbid current. All on board concluded that Peter Jackson had been eaten by sharks or crocodiles and it was so reported when they arrived home. An administrator was appointed for his goods and chattels and he was officially deceased in the eyes of the law. A year or so later this unconquerable sea-cook appeared in the streets of Salem, grinning a welcome to former shipmates who fled from him in terror as a ghostly visitation. He had floated twelve hours on his sail-boom, it seemed, fighting off the sharks with his feet; and finally drifting ashore. "He had hard work to do away with the impressions of being dead," runs the old account, "but succeeded and was allowed the rights and privileges of the living."

The community of interests in these voyages of long ago included not only the ship's company but also the townspeople, even the boys and girls, who entrusted their little private speculations or "adventures" to the captain. It was a custom which flourished well into the nineteenth century. These memoranda are sprinkled through the account books of the East Indiamen out of Salem and Boston. It might be Miss Harriet Elkins who requested the master of the Messenger "please to purchase at Calcutta two net beads with draperies; if at Batavia or any spice market, nutmegs or mace; or if at Canton, two Canton shawls of the enclosed colors at $5 per shawl. Enclosed is $10."

Again, it might be Mr. John R. Tucker who ventured in the same ship one hundred Spanish dollars to be invested in coffee and sugar, or Captain Nathaniel West who risked in the Astrea fifteen boxes of spermaceti candles and a pipe of Teneriffe wine. It is interesting to discover what was done with Mr. Tucker's hundred Spanish dollars, as invested for him by the skipper of the Messenger at Batavia and duly accounted for. Ten bags of coffee were bought for $83.30, the extra expenses of duty, boat-hire, and sacking bringing the total outlay to $90.19. The coffee was sold at Antwerp on the way home for $183.75, and Mr. Tucker's handsome profit on the adventure was therefore $93.56, or more than one hundred per cent.

It was all a grand adventure, in fact, and the word was aptly chosen to fit this ocean trade. The merchant freighted his ship and sent her out to vanish from his ken for months and months of waiting, with the greater part of his savings, perhaps, in goods and specie beneath her hatches. No cable messages kept him in touch with her nor were there frequent letters from the master. Not until her signal was displayed by the fluttering flags of the headland station at the harbor mouth could he know whether he had gained or lost a fortune. The spirit of such merchants was admirably typified in the last venture of Elias Hasket Derby in 1798, when unofficial war existed between the United States and France.

American ships were everywhere seeking refuge from the privateers under the tricolor, which fairly ran amuck in the routes of trade. For this reason it meant a rich reward to land a cargo abroad. The ship Mount Vernon, commanded by Captain Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., was laden with sugar and coffee for Mediterranean ports, and was prepared for trouble, with twenty guns mounted and fifty men to handle them. A smart ship and a powerful one, she raced across to Cape Saint Vincent in sixteen days, which was clipper speed. She ran into a French fleet of sixty sail, exchanged broadsides with the nearest, and showed her stern to the others.

"We arrived at 12 o'clock [wrote Captain Derby from Gibraltar] popping at Frenchmen all the forenoon. At 10 A.M. off Algeciras Point we were seriously attacked by a large latineer who had on board more than one hundred men. He came so near our broadside as to allow our six-pound grape to do execution handsomely. We then bore away and gave him our stern guns in a cool and deliberate manner, doing apparently great execution. Our bars having cut his sails considerably, he was thrown into confusion, struck both his ensign and his pennant. I was then puzzled to know what to do with so many men; our ship was running large with all her steering sails out, so that we could not immediately bring her to the wind, and we were directly off Algeciras Point from whence I had reason to fear she might receive assistance, and my port Gibraltar in full view. These were circumstances that induced me to give up the gratification of bringing him in. It was, however, a satisfaction to flog the rascal in full view of the English fleet who were to leeward."

The Long View

2010-04-07T22:31:00.002-07:00

Although it is depressing to see America descending into socialism, and away from the rugged individualism that was its glory for so long, it doesn't affect my view of Man. It's just another wrong path that will lead to a dead end, and then we will return to the path of reason and individualism and their result, the Ascent of Man.

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than Man--
Man who makes the winds of winter bear him,
Through the trough of waves that tower about him,
Across grey wastes of sea;
Man who wearies the Untiring, the Immortal--
Earth, eldest of the Gods, as year by year,
His plough-teams come and go.
The care-free bands of birds,
Beasts of the wild, tribes of the sea,
In netted toils he takes,
The Subtle One.
Creatures that haunt the hills, the desert-dwellers,
His cunning snares; he lays his mastering yoke
On the horse's shaggy mane,
On the tireless mountain-bull.
Speech, too, and wind-swift thought
And the soul of the ruler of cities
He hath learned, untaught of any.
To shun the bitter arrows of the roofless frost,
The bitter shafts of rain,
He knows, the all-deviser; for without device
No morrow finds him. Only against Death
He shall call for help in vain,
Yet many a mortal sickness he hath mastered.
(Chorus, lines 332-375, Antigone, Sophocles)

Light Bulb Moment

2010-04-06T21:02:00.006-07:00

While watching episode 13 of Dae Jang Geum, I noticed another of the seemingly countless Romantic moments of the drama. I mean those moments that show a character, usually, but not always, Jang Geum, demonstrating her intelligence and goal directed behavior. Jang Geum and Lady Han are investigating the reason why the bean paste (one of the basic ingredients of Korean dishes at the time) in the palace has gone bad.

Earlier in the day, Jang Geum had run into her foster parents, and they had offered her a special type of wine in thanks for something she had done for them. They said the wine had a very good taste because it fermented well. A seemingly small plot point, but it served more than one purpose---the writer of this drama is very clever in her plotting ability.

So, Jang Geum and Lady Han go to a place where the common people make bean paste, and try to figure out why theirs still tastes good, while the paste in the palace is bad. They are told that it tastes well when it is stored in three specific locations in the village, and nowhere else. The villagers attributed this to the village gods, who were worshipped in one of these locations. As they stand at one of these places, Jang Geum looks about, and then flashes back to her foster mother's earlier comment about the wine tasting good because it fermented well. Then she had the "light bulb moment," or Eureka moment, when she realized the solution to their problem.

It turned out the bean paste was stored, in big ceramic jars, underneath chestnut and pine trees, from which pollen fell into the jars and aided the fermentation process. This had also been the case in the palace, until some of these trees were cut down. That changed the taste. Jang Geum looked at all the facts, and came up with the solution.

This is the hero of the story, admired and valued by all fellow people of good will in the drama, precisely because of her intelligence, independence, self-confidence, and benevolence. She is intrepid, and a risk taker. Just another Romantic episode in the drama of Jang Geum.

In the same episode, one of the evil characters, the Head Lady, was speaking of the Highest Kitchen Lady, Lady Jung, who is one of the good characters. The Head Lady hated Lady Jung, but admitted that she was a woman of upright character---and this was her weakness! Because, said the Head Lady, such people never make allowance for the deviousness of other people, assuming everyone is as upright as themselves. I forget what Ayn Rand called that attitude, where the evil take advantage of the good, by counting on their goodness. Anyway, it is yet another example of this writer's brilliance, and her psychological understanding of the good, and the evil.

Stragglers

2010-04-06T18:43:00.003-07:00

For some reason the word stragglers came into my mind today. In my teenage years I used to read a lot of military history, and especially a lot of books on Napoleon and his campaigns. In such books, you become acquainted with the term stragglers. The majority of all armies at the time were infantry, and they marched great distances, day after day. Sometimes there were forced marches, meaning at increased speed or duration, to get to some location before the enemy expected you to get there. Stragglers are those soldiers who cannot keep up with the main body of the army. They stop to rest, or just walk more slowly. They may be physically weaker, or they may be deliberately malingering, planning to desert. If the march is a retreat, and in poor conditions---for example, the retreat of Napoleon's Grande Armée in the Russian Campaign---most of the stragglers will become casualties: deserters, killed by the pursuing enemy, or simply die of exposure.

When the word came to mind today, I realized it must be a dying word, because even the infantry in modern armies is mechanized, and do very little marching, except as physical training. Our army flies to places of conflict, or gets there by naval transport. So I looked up stragglers in my Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. It didn't even get its own entry, but was reduced to being appended to the verb straggle, as its noun form. The definition made no mention of armies:

straggle vi straggled: straggling 1. to wander from the direct course or way: ROVE, STRAY 2. to trail off from others of its kind (little cabins straggling off into the woods) straggler n

Next I looked in a more comprehensive dictionary, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, where straggler still had its own entry:

straggler noun 1. A person who straggles; spec. (a) a person who strays away from or trails behind a main body, esp. on a line of march; . . . . .

So ordinary dictionaries have relegated the word to obsolescence, and only the extraordinary dictionaries keep this barbarous relic of the past in their repertoire. It's not a bad thing that stragglers are a relic of the past, of course. But for those of us who like to learn from history, it's good to know the OED is still there to define the terms the modern world has left behind.

Postscript: To give some idea of the numbers of stragglers a failed campaign can have, here is Wikipedia's description of Napoleon's retreat from Russia:

It [the Grande Armée] reached its maximum size of 600,000 men at the start of the invasion of Russia in 1812. All contingents were commanded by French generals, except for a Polish and an Austrian corps. The huge multinational army marched slowly eastwards, with the Russians falling back before it. After the capture of Smolensk and victory in the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon and a large part of the Grande Armée reached Moscow on 14 September 1812; however, the army was already drastically reduced in numbers due to bloody battles with Russians, disease (principally typhus) and long communication lines. The army spent a month in Moscow, but was ultimately forced to march back westwards. Assailed by cold, starvation and disease, and constantly harassed by Cossacks and Russian irregulars, the retreat utterly destroyed the Grande Armée as a fighting force. As many as 400,000 died in the adventure and only a few tens of thousands of ravaged troops returned.

What Is Art?

2010-04-05T18:39:00.003-07:00

Greek Poets had their own notion of the kind of truth which their art demanded. In the fourth century Aristotle faced the issue candidly and squarely and, in discussing the difference between history and poetry, came to a clear conclusion: 'It really lies in this: the one describes what has happened, the other what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and more serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.' No Greek poets would have used precisely this language, and most of them would have been surprised to hear their work called philosophical, but they would certainly have thought it serious. But Aristotle is right to call it philosophical, because in its own way it is concerned with the revelation of truth. The truth in question, as he saw, is not of particular facts, but of universal principles or tendencies or characteristics. Even if, as is perfectly possible, there was once a historical Achilles, the importance of Homer's presentation of him is irrelevant to his existence. The Achilles whom we know is indeed universal in the sense that he embodies in a convincing and satisfying form qualities which are to be found in many men, but seldom so clearly or so forcibly as in him. To find this universal element the poet must make a severe selection from reality and present it with decisive discrimination. Just as sculptors emphasized what they thought to be the essential characteristics of their subjects at the expense of the incidental and the accidental, so poets emphasized what they thought to be the essential characteristics of human beings and showed how these led to certain kinds of result in action and suffering. They saw too that behind the infinite variety of human behaviour and fortune there must be forces at work which could to some degree be understood and presented in a concrete form. Their idea of truth was to find out these principles and forces, which were indeed at work in individuals but could best be grasped if they were abstracted from the particular case and displayed through situations which manifested more clearly their significance and their reality. (p. 134-135, emphasis added)

If you take away the Greeks' unfortunate belief in the Gods influencing man's behavior and fate, this is very similar to Objectivist aesthetics. And, as is well known, Ayn Rand subscribed to Aristotle's view that art portrays man as he "might be."

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. (The Ayn Rand Lexicon, p. 37)

By a selective re-creation, art isolates and integrates those aspects of reality which represent man's fundamental view of himself and of existence. Out of the countless number of concretes---of single, disorganized and (seemingly) contradictory attributes, actions and entities---an artist isolates the things which he regards as metaphysically essential and integrates them into a single new concrete that represents an embodied abstraction.

For instance, consider two statues of man: one as a Greek god, the other as a deformed medieval monstrosity. Both are metaphysical estimates of man; both are projections of the artist's view of man's nature; both are concretized representations of the philosophy of their respective cultures. (The Ayn Rand Lexicon, p. 37)

The Romanticists did not present a hero as a statistical average, but as an abstraction of man's best and highest potentiality, applicable to and achievable by all men, in various degrees, according to their individual choices. (The Ayn Rand Lexicon, p. 425)

Ayn Rand's aesthetic theory is more fully developed than these brief statements, of course. I am simply pointing to a possible source of inspiration, not only the Greeks and Aristotle, but C. M. Bowra's description of Greek art.

Postscript: With appropriate modifications, Bowra's description of Homer's Achilles fits a modern Romantic heroine of mine:

Even if, as is perfectly possible, there was once a historical Dae Jang Geum, the importance of Kim Yeong-hyeon's presentation of her is irrelevant to her existence. The Dae Jang Geum whom we know is indeed universal in the sense that she embodies in a convincing and satisfying form qualities which are to be found in many men, but seldom so clearly or so forcibly as in her.

Shining Inheritance #3

2009-11-13T20:43:00.003-07:00

I don't think there's ever been a better statement of rugged individualism than this. This was the American sense of life, back when America was great.

I don't know what to make of the line, "I grant him a white man's room on earth." It is shortly followed by "all clean men are as good as I," which does not exclude anyone on the basis of race. If the first statement is racist, I condemn it. At any rate, the rest of the poem is magnificent.

The Westerner,
by Badger Clark, 1947

My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains,
And each one sleeps alone.
Their trails may dim to the grass and rains,
For I choose to make my own.
I lay proud claim to their blood and name,
But I lean on no dead kin;
My name is mine for the praise or scorn,
And the world began when I was born
And the world is mine to win.

They built high towns on their old log sills,
Where the great, slow rivers gleamed,
But with new, live rock from the savage hills
I’ll build as they only dreamed.
The smoke scarce dies where the trail camp lies,
Till rails glint down the pass;
The desert springs into fruit and wheat
And I lay the stones of a solid street
Over yesterday’s untrod grass.

I waste no thought on my neighbor’s birth
Or the way he makes his prayer.
I grant him a white man’s room on earth
If his game is only square.
While he plays it straight I’ll call him mate;
If he cheats I drop him flat.
Old class and rank are a worn-out lie,
For all clean men are as good as I,
And a king is only that.

I dream no dreams of a nursemaid State
That will spoon me out my food.
A stout heart sings in the fray with fate
And the shock and sweat are good.
From noon to noon all the earthly boon
That I ask my God to spare
Is a little daily bread in store,
With the room to fight the strong for more,
And the weak shall get their share.

The sunrise plains are a tender haze
And the sunset seas are gray,
But I stand here, where the bright skies blaze
Over me and the big today.
What good to me is a vague “maybe”
Or a mournful “might have been,”
For the sun wheels swift from morn to morn
And the world began when I was born
And the world is mine to win.

Shining Inheritance, #2

2009-10-29T21:32:00.008-07:00

Under this title, I'm going to post continuing tributes to the great artists, intellectuals, and heroes of the past.

A young girl's thoughts at Christmas time:

Santa Claus has come once more,
Though not quite as he came before,
We can't celebrate his day
In last year's fine and pleasant way.
For then our hopes were high and bright,
All the optimists seemed right,
None supposing that this year
We would welcome Santa here.
Still, we'll make his spirit live,
And since we've nothing left to give,
We've thought of something else to do
Each please look inside his shoe.

As each owner took his shoe from the basket there was a resounding peal of laughter. A little paper package lay in each shoe with the address of the shoe's owner on it.

From The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, an entry from December, 1943.

Shining Inheritance

2009-10-26T21:51:00.004-07:00

There is a Korean drama called Shining Inheritance. I haven't seen it, but I like the title. It applies nicely to our intellectual and cultural inheritance from the Aristotle's and Michelangelo's of the past. One shining example, one of my favorite scenes from Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac:

Roxane:
And I - I have done
This to you! All my fault - mine!

Cyrano:
You? Why, no.
On the contrary! I had never known
Womanhood and its sweetness but for you.
My mother did not love to look at me--
I never had a sister-- Later on,
I feared the mistress with a mockery
Behind her smile. But you - because of you
I have had one friend not quite all a friend--
Across my life, one whispering silken gown!

A Separation That Couldn't Start

2009-09-12T07:45:00.003-07:00

A beautifully lyrical performance of a touching Korean song from the OST of My Lovely Sam Soon. The song is Ibyol Mothan Ibyol (A Separation That Couldn't Start) by Loveholic, sung by Ji Sun.

**Ibyol Mothan Ibyol**

Idji anhassuni hemalgun usum
bitnadon uri yennaldurul
imi jiwossuni sumgappun nunmul
kamahge byongdun ne moyangun

Gude goun ne saranga sonul jabada oh
dashi negero waso gobdigoun kotnorechorom

Gadugkin monjirul toro on goul
hurin dalbiche shisobone
sewore giphun jam pusoghan olgul
sebyogisullo danjanghago

Gude goun ne saranga sonul jabada oh
dashi negero waso gobdigoun kotnorechorom

Sarang ajig gu jarie
hanbondo ibyol mothan ibyol sogeso
dashi doraonun gunal
gutte ne norega i sesangul da gajilteni

Gude goun ne saranga sonul jabada oh
dashi negero waso gobdigoun kotnorechorom
udne

**A Separation That Couldn't Start**

I haven't forgotten your bright smile
Our youthful past
I've already let go
The tears from my heart turned me into a dark figure

You, my delicate love, hold my hand
Come back to me like delicate flower song

I wiped the dusty mirror
The moonlight shines upon it
Plenty of deep sleeps comfort our face
A midnight slowly approaches

You, my delicate love, hold my hand
Come back to me like delicate flower song

Love is still at that place
Where separation couldn't start
When that day returns
This song will take the world

You, my delicate love, hold my hand
Come back to me like delicate flower song
And smile

Glamour Photography: Hedy Lamarr

2009-07-17T21:32:00.009-07:00

In the old days Hollywood photographed actors and actresses in ways that made them look stunningly beautiful. The stylish clothes, the hats, the lighting, whatever techniques they used, the result was a Romantic style of photography, showing people as they could be and ought to be, at their best. It was most effective in black and white photographs. Modern color photography just doesn't have the same glamourous look as black and white.

This photograph of Hedy Lamarr (downloaded from the website Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans) is a perfect example of the old glamour photography. Thin, arched eyebrows and long, curved eyelashes draw attention to and enhance the beauty of her eyes. The round, very wide brimmed, black hat acts as a virtual picture frame for her face. The hat is rakishly slanted to one side to throw a dramatic shadow across her face, one eye in shadow, the other in light. Her shining black hair has enough light focused on it to make it stand out, even against a black background. She wears a strapless dress that exposes her soft, fragile shoulders, and a black velvet choker that circles her slender white neck. A pair of black lace evening gloves extend above her elbows, for added feminine delicacy and allure. There are three pieces of jewelry: two large, pendant pearl earrings contrast with her black hair; a thick bracelet (I can't tell if it is silver or gold, in this black and white photograph), adorns her left wrist; and what appears to be a diamond encrusted ring sparkles on one of her fingers. Her hands are clasped gracefully together in front of her right shoulder, putting her slender lace-gloved arms and the bracelet prominently on display.

The overall impression is of a woman of great beauty, with an elegant and alluring sense of style, a bit of mystery, and the confidence to display herself to the world. And that is the way glamour photographers tried, generally speaking, to make all of their subjects appear. Which is why I like old Hollywood glamour photography so much.

Beethoven Virus

2009-07-12T19:30:00.003-07:00

Beethoven Virus is a Korean Drama that aired in 2008, and consisted of 18 hour-long episodes. It tells the story of an unlikely group of people trying to form an orchestra, and the world-famous conductor they enlisted to help them achieve their goal.

There are several interesting aspects to Beethoven Virus. It is a story about the art of leadership, in which a leader, in this case a conductor, molds a less than promising group of individuals into a cohesive and skilled team. In this respect, it has similarites with a favorite Western of mine, Only the Valiant. But the conductor, Maestro Kang, is also pushing these people to "seize the day," to try to achieve their own goals, instead of always sacrificing their own goals to those of everyone else in their life. Listen to him exhorting them, from Episode 4:

Conductor: Mr. Kim Gab Yong.

Mr. Kim: Yes.

Conductor: You had worked before in Shin Hyan Ri, right? Why did you retire?

Mr. Kim: My age.

Conductor: Did you leave because they told you to leave? And still at your prime of 57?

Mr. Kim: It’s the rule.

Conductor: Then why didn’t you join another Orchestra after that?

Mr. Kim: My age.

Conductor: That’s an excuse.

Conductor: Why didn’t you[to the Contrabass player] go into the Orchestra after graduating college?

Contrabass: There was no place that wanted me.

Conductor: Excuse.

Conductor: Why didn’t you[to the 2nd trumpeter] go to the music college?

2nd Trumpeter: I had to work because my father was ill.

Conductor: What about your mother? Your siblings as well?

2nd Trumpeter: I’m the only child of a three generation family and my mother just knows how to dance. My father was lying in bed.

Conductor: He can’t work just because he was sick? He can’t cook noodles because he had to rest in bed?

2nd trumpeter: But my father is already lying in bed like a child---

Conductor: Why must all these be your concerns? Children, parents, we don’t need all of these. You can only think of yourselves! And you [turning to the 1st trumpeter, a self-taught genius], why didn’t you go to college? That’s right, what can I expect of such an arrogant fellow like you?

You must be selfish, all of you are too kind-hearted. No, it’s not kindness, but foolishness. You sacrificed because of your parents and kids. These are illusions. In the end, look at what you have become. You couldn’t do what you wanted and were unable to make a living. You only grew an inferior heart because you sacrificed for them. This is not kindness, not even foolishness, but inferiority. You all merely set your hearts on making 100 kinds of excuses and ran away!

From now on, there are no more places to escape to. As you can see, this is the roof top, on the edge of a cliff [they were meeting on top of the church where they rehearsed]. But then, if there is anyone who feels that they can’t do it all . . . I will not hold you back, just leave. This is your last chance to run away . . . [one begins to leave] But, I’ve already locked the door over there. You will have to jump down from here if you want to escape. I’ll give you all three seconds. One . . . two . . . three . . . No one? Good, it’s the choice of everyone, there are no objections, right?

He is actually exhorting them to be selfish. When's the last time you saw that in a modern story? One of the musicians in particular, a trumpeter named Kang Gun Woo (which happens to be exactly the same name as the conductor), also wants to be a conductor. But like many of the other musicians, he has not committed himself fully to this goal, and when the job from which he had been suspended (traffic cop) calls him back, he reluctantly goes back to it, and withdraws from the orchestra. Maestro Kang sees something special in this young man, however, and goes out of his way to find him and try to change his mind (from Episode 5):

Conductor: Your form looks great [he's "conducting" traffic]. Are you incorporating the baton technique that I taught you here? To tell you, for the idiot who can’t even keep track of the concert date. The concert starts at 6 o’clock and your solo’s the first song in the second act.

Are you happy? Are you happy to squirm and struggle in the heat, directing traffic in place of a faulty traffic light and breathing in all the exhaust? Ah, of course, I accept it. There are many different types of people. The people who think money’s the best in the world. The people who are ok with eating rice with just a piece of kimchi. The people who save up all their money to send to the destitute in Ethiopia, so that they can sleep with peace of mind. They are all different. There’s no right or wrong. Just living by your values.

So, you, Kang Gun Woo, by your values at this moment, are you happy? Let me ask you one thing. What about your wanting to learn how to conduct?

Kang Gun Woo: I wanted to learn.

Conductor: So, then?

Kang Gun Woo: I’m just going to leave it as a dream.

Conductor: A dream? How’s that your dream? It’s immovable. That’s a star, in the sky, something that you can’t have, something that you can’t even strive for, something you can only stare at---a star. Look who’s talking about some ridiculous and absurd story about stars now. You need to do something. You need to, even for a little, struggle, try hard, or at the very least, make plans to make a change . . . a change as small as your smell or color. By doing all that, you can call it your “dream.” Do you think it’s your “dream” if you just use the word to describe any idea? If it was that easy, then why don’t you make being a doctor, professor, lawyer, and prosecutor---everything---your dream? Why not? I’m not telling you to achieve your dreams. I’m telling you to at least dream the dream by trying.

Actually, all this talk is useless. What should I have to care about? The one who’s going to regret it the rest of his life is you. “I’m nothing more than this.” “I don’t have any dreams.” “I couldn’t even dream anything.” “I’ve been eaten up by life.” Live the rest of your life while tormenting yourself. By the time you die, maybe you’ll die with your last word being “Conducting?” and a scream.

As you can see from these excerpts, Mastro Kang is depicted as not only selfish, but very harsh and blunt in his language and communication with others. In some degree, he embodies Ayn Rand's injunction: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.

At one point in the story, the mayor of the town where the orchestra plays is trying to get the Maestro to apologize to the musicians for some rude remark or other, and he wheedles and cajoles him:

Mayor: There's a saying that "losing is winning."

Conductor: That's just something the losers came up with to feel better.

Later, when a new mayor is elected and orders an unwilling Maestro Kang to celebrate his election with a concert of music of the new mayor's choosing, the Maestro agrees to do it. But what he plays at the concert is not what the mayor was expecting . . .

The other main character is a young woman named Du Ru Mi, a violinist whose idea it was to form the orchestra, and to get Maestro Kang as its conductor. She, Maestro Kang, and the young trumpeter/conductor, Kang Gun Woo, form a love triangle. This exposes another aspect of Maestro Kang's personality. He is ruthlessly wedded to his music, and doesn't have time for personal relationships. He even denigrates love as a purely "hormonal" aspect of man's nature. This is where the story lets me down, as if a selfish, rational man has to be some Spock-like character without emotions.

In the end, Maestro Kang does undergo some changes to his personality, and the writers soften his image to make it more palatable to the public at large. This reminds me of Ayn Rand's one criticism of Calumet "K", that Bannon is shown being kind to one of his workers in a hospital, simply to make his love interest admire him---as if his magnificent achievements were not reason enough to admire him! The same appplies to Maestro Kang, and the way the writers soften him through the course of the story.

But I don't want to make it sound worse than it is. He is still Maestro Kang, brilliant and blunt in his judgments, at the end.

In sharp contrast to the Maestro, young Kang Gun Woo wants to be a conductor, but he wants to do it without being mean and blunt with people, but just by being a nice guy as he is in his normal life. This contrasting style is emphasized throughout the story.

So, although I have reservations about the story's portrayal of a selfish man, I still recommend this excellent drama. The Beethoven Virus is catching the passion to pursue one's dreams, and make them real.

A Musical Interlude

2009-06-29T21:18:00.001-07:00

Under the Water, by Merril Bainbridge

The Dead End of Appeasement

2009-05-28T14:55:00.005-07:00

I've been watching a Korean drama called Jumong. It does not compare with Dae Jang Geum, because Jumong is filled with fatalism, and there are Sorceresses who can predict the future, heal injuries with some sort of faith-healing, etc. However, it does have an interesting plot, and many interesting characters, in spite of the flaws.

Episode 41 is of interest for its examination of the idea of appeasement, something relevant to our situation in America today, with regard to our relations with Iran and North Korea. The scene involves the deposed King of Puyo (a Korean kingdom), named Kumwa, lecturing his son, Taeso, who had forcibly taken over from him. Taeso has refrained from killing the King, evidently, because the people would revolt if he committed regicide. So he is ruling under the fiction that the King is incapacitated from a wound received in a recent war against the Han (China), in which Kumwa was attempting to recover lands taken from Korea by the Han in an earlier conflict.

Kumwa: I heard the Han demanded a hostage. Is that true?
Taeso: Yes.
Kumwa: You might be my representative, but shouldn't you have told me earlier?
Taeso: I was going to, after giving it enough thought.
Kumwa: So, are you done thinking?
Taeso: Yes.
Kumwa: What will you do?
Taeso: I'm going to send a hostage.
Kumwa: Don't you have any pride?
Taeso: Why wouldn't I have any?
Kumwa: Yet you're going to send a hostage and accept that we're a tributary state?
Taeso: We can't afford to talk about pride. The Han is just waiting for a chance to make us pay for the war. I had to marry a woman I don't love just to put an end to it. If one hostage will save thousands of lives, why not? Your Majesty, pride won't stop a war. I'll reap the benefits of not starting one.
Kumwa: Give up one thing to avoid a war and the Han will demand something else. You'll use Puyo's peace as an excuse to back out again and again until you're at a dead end. What will you give them then? Will you let them conquer us if they want to? Will you die for them if they ask you to? Can't you see the reality hidden behind the so-called benefits?

This is indeed the fruits of appeasement. Bush did it too often, and for Obama, it is the only option he considers. How long before we reach the dead end?

The Road Builders

2009-04-07T20:34:00.008-07:00

As Ayn Rand said about Calumet "K," this novel could be subtitled: This Was America.

Samuel Merwin, with Henry Kitchell Webster, was the co-author of Calumet "K," (1901) Ayn Rand's favorite novel. Merwin and Webster collaborated on two other novels, The Short Line War, (1899) about the struggle for the ownership of a railroad, and Comrade John, (1907) about a religious huckster. Both men also wrote novels individually, and I will summarize and review one of Merwin's best here, The Road Builders,(1905).

As with Calumet "K," a few years earlier, The Road Builders was originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, under the title A Link in the Girdle. (As a sidenote, Frank Spearman's Daughter of a Magnate was also serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. It must have been a wonderful magazine back at the turn of the last century.)

The Road Builders is about the construction of an extension of the Sherman & Western railroad to the town of Red Hills, set in Texas circa 1875. The man in charge of the construction project is Paul Carhart, who accepted the job because "it promised to be pretty work, in which a man could use his imagination." The "prettiness" of the work was due to a number of complicating factors. First, the line had to be finished at breakneck speed, however shoddy the construction, in order to defeat another railroad company with designs on the same territory. The quality of the work could be improved at a later date. Second, the territory through which it was to be laid was a largely uninhabited stretch of Texas desert. All supplies, including water, would have to be carried along with the construction crew, and the line of supply would get longer and less reliable as the work progressed. Third, a strong river would have to be bridged near the end of the extension. And finally, the rival railroad company was expected to do everything in its power to stop the construction by legal injunctions, board room intrigue, Wall Street manipulations, or outright sabotage and force of arms. Carhart was given a "free hand" as to methods and expenses for the project. So commenced an epic battle of man against nature, company against company, laborers against employers, and even brother against brother.

The main theme of the novel is the art of leadership. Carhart is the standard against whom others are compared. He is literally "the spirit of the enterprise." His energy and confidence, his fairness to the men and mastery of the art of railroad construction inspires everyone else. When he leaves the site for a few days, the life seems to drain out of the laborers, and work slows to a crawl. Railroads are his passion, and while he is among them, all the laborers are infected with the same enthusiasm.

Ayn Rand's comments on Charlie Bannon, protagonist of Calumet "K," apply equally well to Paul Carhart:

"It is interesting to note that Bannon is not an industrial tycoon, but merely an employee of a building contractor; he is presented, not as a rare exception, but as an average man. I doubt that a man of Bannon's stature could be average in any society; and, in a free one, he would not remain an employee for long. But he represents, in its purest form, the characteristic which a free society demands of all men, on all levels of ability: competence.

"The story demonstrates in many skillfully subtle ways that that characteristic runs through the whole social pyramid. On the lower levels, it depends on the quality of the leadership involved in a large, cooperative undertaking. Bannon's leadership is the decisive factor in the issue of morale or lethargic indifference on the part of all the workers on the job. His self-confidence, his demanding standards and his strict fairness bring out the best in them: pride in their work, conscientiousness, energy, enthusiasm . . . . . Their potential virtue is like an inert, responsive mechanism that can swing either way; Bannon is the spark plug. They respond when they know that their best will be appreciated." (From Ayn Rand's Introduction to Calumet "K.")

Like Calumet "K," The Road Builders is light fiction. Paul Carhart has no inner conflict, he does not grow morally or intellectually through the novel--but the railroad grows under his sure guidance. All his conflicts are external, and designed to show his admirable qualities. For instance, when the superintendent in charge of forwarding supplies to the construction crew sends forward more excuses than supplies, Carhart journeys back to their supply depot, investigates the situation, and finds the superintendent is diverting trains and supplies to the rival railroad. He sends the man a note: "I am sure you will agree with me that I can spare none of these [railroad] cars, least of all to supply a rival line. And in consideration of your future hearty cooperation with me in advancing this construction work, I will gladly take pains to see that my present knowledge of the use that has been made of these cars shall not interfere in any way with your continued enjoyment of your position with the Sherman & Western." He shows good humor, even in trying and desperate circumstances.

When the rival railroad company cuts Carhart's line of supply by occupying one of the stations behind them, he is left without the rails and ties he needs to go on with the construction. What to do? He literally tears up a branch line of the Sherman & Western that is little used, and uses it for the new line. These and other events demonstrate his resourcefulness.

There is a subplot that does evidence some inner conflict in one of Carhart's lieutenants, Gus Vandervelt. Young Van, as he is called, is Carhart's aide-de-camp. Gus's older brother, "Old Van," is one of Carhart's construction chiefs. Old Van is "old school," and believes in one form of leadership: the whip. While Carhart is no pushover himself, he is a reasonable man. He is not the slave driver Old Van is. Young Van must wean himself from his older brother's familial influence to become the kind of leader Carhart is--because he knows Carhart's way is better. The subplot documents his struggle between these two strong influences.

A line from the novel, when the construction expedition was about to begin, sums it up very nicely: "There was about the scene a sense of enterprise, of buoyant freedom, of deeds to be done."

The book is of course out of print. However it can generally be found on any of the better used book sites on the internet. It is probably the most available of Merwin's novels.

The Great Jang Geum

2009-03-22T20:10:00.011-07:00

This lovely drawing, by Singapore artist Shirley Png, is from a video capture of the drama, Dae Jang Geum. It is a portrait of the hero of the story, Jang Geum. Although it is of a fictional character, it has universal appeal such that anyone, whether they have seen the drama or not, can understand and admire the portrait.

The portrait captures Jang Geum at a moment of drama, in which her character and virtues shine through. There are tears beneath her eyes. Clearly, she has suffered some recent emotional pain or sadness. But she does not break down completely, in spite of her tears. She does not throw herself on the ground, or a bed, and give way to a flood of tears, or beat her breast in fruitless anguish and frustration. Instead, she holds her head up, facing the painful emotion, but not giving in to it. Something has hurt her, but her face shows a serenity that comes from the knowledge that life is a wonderful gift to anyone willing to make the most of it, as she is. Pain, physical or emotional, is only a temporary setback, to be overcome in the course of living and pursuing one’s happiness and one’s goals. She is stronger than the pain inflicted upon her.

Courage, determination, benevolence---all these and more are virtues of Jang Geum on display in this portrait. It hangs on my wall, an endless source of beauty and inspiration.

It happens that one of my favorite songs, Hold Your Head Up, by Argent, is an almost perfect description of this beautiful work of art:

And if it's bad
Don't let it get you down, you can take it.
And if it hurts
Don't let them see you cry, you can make it.

Hold your head up, woman,
Hold your head up, woman,
Hold your head up, woman,
Hold your head high.

And if they stare
Just let them burn their eyes on you moving.
And if they shout
Don't let it change a thing that you're doing.

Hold your head up, woman,
Hold your head up, woman,
Hold your head up, woman,
Hold your head high.

The Romantic Screen: Dae Jang Geum (2003)

2009-01-24T18:01:00.021-07:00

“I’ll tell you this: no one can ever persuade me to give up. I’ll never give up!”
Dae Jang Geum, also known as Jewel in the Palace, is a Korean television drama of 54 one hour episodes that originally aired in 2003 and 2004. It tells the story of Jang Geum, a young orphan girl, who is an outcast even among the lower classes of Korean society, and her remarkable rise to become the personal physician of the King. It is a work of Romantic art of the top rank, well worth the attention of anyone who values Romantic art.

The screenplay was written by Kim Yeong-hyeon, and it was directed by Lee Byoung-hoon. The main characters are: the child Jang Geum, who becomes the adult Jang Geum after episode 5; Keum Young, Jang Geum’s greatest rival in the palace; Lady Han, Jang Geum’s mentor in the palace, and her mother in all but name; Sir Min Jeong-ho, Jang Geum’s love interest and versatile defender of the realm; Lady Choi, Keum Young’s aunt and enemy of Jang Geum; and Lady Jung, the Highest Kitchen Lady, who is not the puppet the Choi clan had hoped she would be.

Korean television dramas are not like American drama series, in which one episode generally has little connection with the one that came before, or the one that comes after, and which only end when the ratings get too low. Korean dramas are a single story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and every episode builds upon the one before. The producers of the drama know ahead of time how many episodes the story will be, and there it ends. The closest comparison on American television would be a mini-series, such as Roots. But Korean dramas are much longer and more in depth. They are what a novel would be like, if it were fully dramatized on film.

When I say Dae Jang Geum is Romanticism of the top rank, I am referring to Ayn Rand’s standard for that ranking:

“The distinguishing characteristic of this top rank . . . is their full commitment to the premise of volition in both of its fundamental areas: in regard to consciousness and to existence, in regard to man’s character and to his actions in the physical world. Maintaining a perfect integration of these two aspects, unmatched in the brilliant ingenuity of their plot structures, these writers are enormously concerned with man’s soul (i.e., his consciousness). They are moralists in the most profound sense of the word; their concern is not merely with values, but specifically with moral values and with the power of moral values in shaping human character. Their characters are ‘larger than life,’ i.e., they are abstract projections in terms of essentials . . . In their stories, one will never find action for action’s sake, unrelated to moral values. The events of their plots are shaped, determined and motivated by the characters’ values (or treason to values), by their struggle in pursuit of spiritual goals and by profound value-conflicts. Their themes are fundamental, universal, timeless issues of man’s existence---and they are the only consistent creators of the rarest attribute of literature: the perfect integration of theme and plot, which they achieve with superlative virtuosity.” [“What Is Romanticism?” p. 91-92, The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand]

Dae Jang Geum meets all of these criteria, and is therefore in a class with the works of Hugo, Rostand, and Dostoyevsky, and above the lesser Romanticists. There is not a trace of bootleg romanticism in the story, no cynicism, no mock-heroism, no apologizing for portraying heroic characters. The protagonists take themselves, their goals and ideas, seriously, and never laugh at themselves.

To begin, the title of the story is Dae Jang Geum, which means “The Great Jang Geum.” Clearly, it is not a story about the folks next door, but about a hero of Korean history. Little is known of the actual historical person, Jang Geum, which makes it easy for the author, Kim Yeong-hyeon, to make her into a heroine of her own devising. Jang Geum and the other major characters that are her allies all live life as it could be, and ought to be lived, in the context of sixteenth century Korea. When faced with moral dilemmas, each of them looks to their own hierarchy of values to determine what to do, then takes the proper action, regardless of risk.

Dae Jang Geum has been described as the story of Jang Geum’s persistence and curiosity. While she certainly exhibits both of those traits, a more accurate description of the theme of Dae Jang Geum is the same as Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three: man’s loyalty to values. Just as in Ninety-Three, this theme is dramatized in the subplots as well as the main plot, in the minor characters as well as the major characters.

One of Jang Geum’s values is using the scientific method to discover new knowledge, and she does this over and over again in the story. When this comes into conflict with the authorities, such as when she is trying to heal a member of the royal family, she insists on following her own methods, in spite of all threats or ridicule about not following the “accepted methods.” She has an independent mind.

When her mentor, Lady Han, is put under house arrest for serving plain, healthy food to a Chinese epicure whose preference for more lavish fare is notorious, Jang Geum takes her place – and serves exactly the same plain, healthy food, at tremendous risk to herself. They both are determined to serve the envoy healthy food because he has diabetes, and needs the healthy food. Their principle is that one should only serve food that is appropriate to the one who will consume it, and they stick to that principle no matter who wants it done differently.

In another typical example, one of the minor characters, a seamstress, displays the same loyalty to values. She is assigned the task of making a new dress for Jang Geum, who is in the final cooking competition to become a court lady of the kitchen, or be sent out of the palace if she fails. Out of the blue, the seamstress steals the flour from the ingredients set aside for Jang Geum’s use in her competition, which cannot be replaced.

Jang Geum is dumbfounded by this seemingly inexplicable act. But we soon learn the reason for it. The seamstress intends to use the flour to make dumplings as part of a beau geste toward her mother, who she has just learned is leaving the palace the next day, never to return. She wants to serve a ceremonial dinner to her mother before she leaves to show her love. She only has this one chance to do so. This act is of such value to her that she is willing to ruin Jang Geum’s chances of becoming a court lady, and accept any consequence to herself, to carry it out. The seamstress is a very timid girl, but when her highest values are at stake, she becomes uncommonly bold and extraordinarily courageous. The author does a marvelous job of showing how the seemingly improper things the seamstress does are actually the proper things for her to do, given her hierarchy of values. And Jang Geum, once she understands the girl’s motivation for her act, actually helps the girl make the dumplings and present them to her mother.

A Romantic story, above all, requires a plot: “a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax,” (“What Is Romanticism? p. 82, The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand). Such a series of events, in a Romantic work, must be set in motion by the protagonist choosing a goal (final causation), and then taking the steps required to achieve it (efficient causation). Jang Geum does exactly that.

Early in the story, Jang Geum is an adorable, radiant young girl – Shirley Temple on the outside, an incipient Madame Curie on the inside. She sneaks off to school with her “betters” against her mother’s explicit orders. She is simply too eager to learn, for anything to hold her back. Then her parents’ past catches up with them, and Jang Geum is left alone to face the world as an eight year old orphan. She makes the conscious decision to vindicate her mother’s honor, which has been wrongly maligned. This is the goal toward which she directs herself. Then she methodically takes all the steps necessary to achieve it. It is a purposeful progression of logically connected events, which leads to the resolution of a climax.

Similarly, the subplots have various characters working purposefully toward their own goals. Lady Jung, for example, initially wanted to be a court lady because it seemed like a beautiful and glamorous life from outside the palace. Once inside, however, she realized that many people used their positions as court ladies of the kitchen to advance their political causes and to gain power. For example, some of them would poison the food of certain royals to help other royals gain power, thereby gaining a powerful ally. Lady Jung believed it was wrong to use food for such purposes, so she dedicated herself to eradicating the practice. Then she took the steps necessary to achieve that purpose.

Finally, as if to emphasize the purposeful nature of Jang Geum and her story, one of the episodes specifically dramatizes the value of purpose in man’s life. In the episode, Jang Geum has been exiled to the herb garden, in the farthest corner of the palace complex, for some alleged transgression. It is a place to which loafers, miscreants, drunks and criminals are sent, and no one expects to return to the palace proper from the herb garden. It is essentially a place of exile and abandonment.

At the herb garden, the workers are supposed to be growing herbs. But none of them do any gardening, or in fact any kind of work, at all. When Jang Geum arrives, she finds the workers - and even their supervisor - lying in the fields, asleep. When she asks them what she is supposed to do, the supervisor tells her not to do anything, unless she wants to drink. No one expects any work to be done in the herb garden, and all the people there are content to do nothing, wasting away their existence drinking, eating, and sleeping, without purpose. These men are clearly going to pot, their minds and bodies atrophying from lack of use. It is against this background that we are able to contrast the behavior of Jang Geum.

Jang Geum finds their behavior incomprehensible. She literally goes to bed weeping at the apparent purposelessness of life in the herb garden. Finally, she tells the supervisor she cannot "do nothing," as it would drive her crazy. So she begins collecting all the assorted herb seeds she can find in the storehouse, none of which have any identifying labels attached to them. Those she recognizes, she labels accordingly. For those she cannot identify, she bothers the supervisor until he identifies them for her. Soon she has them all identified, and she begins clearing some of the weed infested field and planting some of the herbs.

The other workers, and the supervisor, watch her and laugh at the "futility" of her actions. They begin taking bets on how soon she will give up - or worse. The last court lady sent to the herb garden had committed suicide. But Jang Geum persists in her methodical categorizing and gardening.One day she comes to the workers and asks them for better gardening techniques. One of them mentions a particular herb that no one has succeeded in growing, though they had been trying for 20 years. Immediately, Jang Geum's face brightens, and she says: "Good! I will use that!" When they ask what she means, she explains that she will use that as her goal, as a purpose toward which to strive while in the herb garden. But why that particular goal? "Because you said it was hard!"

After a methodical trial and error period, Jang Geum succeeds in growing the rare herb - and finally the other workers, and the supervisor, begin to admire Jang Geum, and to want to bring some purpose back into their own lives, as well. They all recognize, once they have seen it again, the ennobling, uplifting value of purpose.Jang Geum taught them that, though it was not her intention. She simply wanted purpose in her own life. But her good example had a salutary effect on all those around her.

And not coincidentally, Jang Geum's success in growing the rare herb brings about a longer range goal: she is allowed to return to the palace as a court lady in training, her status fully restored. Thus did the writer of Dae Jang Geum - Kim Yeong-hyeon - dramatize the value of purpose in man's life.

The author’s characterization skills are everywhere apparent. The characters are constantly shown deliberating with themselves on what course of action to take, consciously weighing the alternatives, completely in focus. When they do something immoral according to their own values, they know it, and suffer a blow to their self-esteem as a consequence.

In one scene, for example, Keum Young sets in motion an evil plot, knowing it is immoral – but doing it anyway. Then in a voiceover, she says to herself:

“So this is how I’m going to live. I’m going to console myself like this . . . “

Lady Han is a character in whom love for her friends is extremely important, as well as integrity in her profession. In her early years at the palace, she saw her best friend forced to take poison after being falsely accused of some transgression. It left her alone and friendless in the palace, until Jang Geum came along and was like a daughter to her.

(Lady Han comforting Jang Geum.)

Then a situation arises in which Lady Jung has a chance to expose some of the wrongdoers among the court ladies of the kitchen. Due to complicated circumstances, however, it would also lead to the execution of Jang Geum, despite her complete innocence. Lady Han supports Lady Jung in her efforts to drive the vipers out of the kitchen. But she simply cannot accept losing Jang Geum into the bargain. She goes to plead with Lady Jung – who also does not want to lose Jang Geum, but sees no way around it – in a scene of amazing emotional intensity. Lady Han reiterates her support for Lady Jung’s policies, but begs desperately for her to use some other occasion to carry it out. Not this time, when it will take Jang Geum away from her: “Next time! Next time!” It is perfectly in character for Lady Han to act this way, given her love for Jang Geum, and her fear of losing her best friend to an unjust death - twice.

And in a scene remarkable for its moral clarity, Jang Geum forces Keum Young to examine herself more deeply than ever before:

Jang Geum: Keum Young, please turn yourself in. Please, help me forgive you. For you, self-respect is more important than the safety of your family.
Keum Young: What do you think you know about me that you speak of me like this?
JG: No? Am I wrong then? Then why are you teaching all the ladies in the same way that Lady Han taught me? Please put into action what you feel in your heart. Keum Young, I don’t like hating you. Because hating someone is as difficult as loving someone.
KY: I had to both hate and love, which was so difficult. Because of you, because of Sir Min . . . You’re the one who has hurt my self-respect.
JG: That’s just an excuse . . .
KY: Get out.
JG: Self-respect isn’t hurt by someone else but only by oneself.
KY: Get out, get out!

If there are flaws in the story, they are few and minor. The very first episode has characters who are fatalists, and these are Jang Geum’s own parents. But this is simply a character flaw in these people, and Jang Geum herself exhibits no belief in that doctrine.

Later in the story, Keum Young explicitly rejects fatalism. Her aunt, Lady Choi, exerts enormous pressure on Keum Young to perform some criminal act as part of her “training” to continue the family’s power by hook or by crook. Lady Choi says it is their family’s fate to have to do these things. Keum Young strives mightily to refuse this act, but finally the pressure gets to her, and she agrees to do it. At the same time, however, she rebukes Lady Choi and rejects the idea of fatalism:

“I’m doing this because you say it’s our fate. But this kind of fate shall end in my generation. I’ll certainly make it so.”

And in any case, all of the main characters act on the premise of volition, from first to last.

Although Jang Geum strives to achieve her own goals, there is certainly an undercurrent of altruism throughout the story. But this is common to most Romantic literature outside of Ayn Rand. While we may not have the same values, we can say, as Ayn Rand said about Hugo:

“The emphasis he projects is not: ‘What great values men are fighting for!’ but: ‘What greatness men are capable of, when they fight for their values!’” (Introduction to Ninety-Three, p. xii).

There is not a lot of Romantic art in the modern world. Nevertheless, we all need the inspirational fuel that Romantic art provides. Dae Jang Geum is a new and magnificent addition to the world’s library of Romantic art.

The New Clarion

2008-12-22T19:30:00.002-07:00

I accepted an invitation to join a group of Objectivist bloggers, at The New Clarion (link in the sidebar). So my political and cultural observations will be found there in future.

Edelweiss will continue to be the home of my more personal interests, such as music and sports.

'Tis the Season

2008-12-19T21:13:00.004-07:00

Merry Christmas in Love
by Marrow & Renis

Things that tremble tingle like a bubble full of rainbows . . . then crack
Sizzle, sing and whisper, when the shadows lace the moonlight with black
Things with silver linings, sparkling tinsel, twinkle shining with . . .
Waving wispy willow wings that breathe a song of Christmastime dreams . . .

Things that glow and glisten, eyes of children when they listen . . . then burst
Things that touch the wistful wish of watching someone else succeed first
Days that dingle dangle with a million parts untangle to
Satin stars that spangle and those Christmas bells that clangle out . . . dreams . .

I'm dreaming of Christmas
To you, Merry Christmas

Dreaming . . . of a Merry Christmas
To you, Merry Christmas

Galloping and gliding, Santa Claus' sleigh we're riding and
Bringing joyful tidings to the dreamers who are lying below . . .

I'm talking of daydreams
Wishes and moonbeams

Then I tremble tingle like a bubble full of rainbows and light
When you came to wake me and to wish me Merry Christmas in love . . .

Christmas in love . . .

I can tremble tingle like a bubble full of rainbows and light
When you came to wake me and to wish me Merry Christmas in love . . .

Merry Christmas in love . . .

Until You Come Back to Me

2008-12-16T19:59:00.004-07:00

I've always loved this old Motown tune by Stevie Wonder. I especially like this lively version by Miki Howard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNteVAoSSkg

It is the joie de vivre that makes this version so magnificent, in spite of several mistakes (or deliberate changes?) in the lyrics. You wouldn't expect such an ebullient joy of living to be expressed in a song about having lost someone's love. But, the emphasis is not on the losing, but on the confidence and determination to get it back. I absolutely love the joy expressed not only by the lead singer, Miki Howard, but by the two joyous background singers, as well. A very uplifting performance, a great way to start the day.

Until You Come Back to Me

Though you don't call anymore
I sit and wait in vain
I guess I'll rap on your door
Tap on your window pane
I want to tell you Baby
The changes I've been going through
Missing you.
Listen you

'till you come back to me
That's what I'm gonna do

Why did you have to decide
You had to set me free
I'm gonna swallow my pride
I'm gonna beg you to (please
baby please) see me
I'm gonna walk by myself
Just to prove that my love is true
Oh, for you baby

'till you come back to me
That's what I'm gonna do

Living for you my dear
Is like living in a world
of constant fear
Hear my plea, I've got to make you see
That our love is dying

Although your phone you ignore
Somehow I must explain
I'm gonna rap on your door
Tap on your window pane
I'm gonna camp on your step
Until I get through to you
I've got to change your view baby
'till you come back to me
That's what I'm gonna do

We Want You Big Brother

2008-12-13T15:48:00.004-07:00

Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

Pink Floyd

This seems to be the choice Americans are making in droves today. It is evidently going to take a cataclysmic event to shake them out of their willingness to live as wards of the state. Will a great depression do it? Or, like the last depression, will it only make them more susceptible to some brave Apollo?

Please saviour, saviour show us
Hear me, I'm graphically yours
Someone to claim us, someone to follow
Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo
Someone to fool us, someone like you
We want you Obama, Obama.

David Bowie (With a slight change in the last line.)

Economics in One Lesson, or That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen

2008-12-06T14:04:00.004-07:00

In the economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause---it is seen. The others unfold in succession---they are not seen: it is well for us if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference---the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil. (from That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, by Frederic Bastiat, published in 1850)

. . . the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. (from chapter one of Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt, published in 1946)

This basic lesson has never been more obviously ignored than in President Elect Obama's plan to begin a massive new public works program. According to a New York times article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/politics/07radio.html?ref=us :

President-elect Barack Obama committed Saturday to the largest public works construction program since the creation of the interstate highway system a half-century ago as he seeks to put together a plan to resuscitate the reeling economy.

Applying Bastiat's lesson, as supplemented by Hazlitt,

Alan D. Viard, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, told Congress recently that public works spending should not be authorized out of “the illusory hope of job gains or economic stabilization.”

“If more money is spent on infrastructure, more workers will be employed in that sector,” Mr. Viard told the House Ways and Means Committee. “In the long run, however, an increase in infrastructure spending requires a reduction in public or private spending for other goods and services. As a result, fewer workers are employed in other sectors of the economy.”

Is this lesson too difficult for liberals to understand? Are they really that short sighted? Or are they simply too weak to stand short term pain for long term health?

Or, as seems most likely, is it simply a matter of power lust? They want to stay in power, and giving away money to those who vote for them is the best way of retaining their support. Call it cynical, but this observation seems to describe the Democrats - and, increasingly, the Republicans - very well:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

· From bondage to spiritual faith;

· From spiritual faith to great courage;

· From courage to liberty;

· From liberty to abundance;

· From abundance to complacency;

· From complacency to apathy;

· From apathy to dependence;

· From dependence back into bondage."

- Lord Woodhouselee (Alexander Fraser Tytler) 1747-1813

Scottish-born, British lawyer and writer

This Is America? These Are Americans?

2008-12-05T20:04:00.004-07:00

obsequious: marked by or exhibiting a fawning attentiveness syn see SUBSERVIENT (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition)

I caught a portion of the testimony of the Big Three CEO's before Congress yesterday. In a previous appearance, the CEO's had been criticized for travelling to Washington DC in private jets, thereby showing that they "don't get it," according to their Congressional critics. They were simultaneously asking for a financial bailout, and spending money on "luxuries," like private jets.

In the portion of testimony I witnessed, this same issue was being discussed. This time the CEO's, in their most ingratiating voices, fell all over themselves to say they had driven to Washington in cars. And not just any cars, but the politically correct type of cars, hybrid, electric, green vehicles. For this is what Congress, the central planning authority, has opined is the way to go.

And when Congress is holding the purse strings, it gets what it wants.

It is so embarrassing to see American businessmen reduced to grovelling for money from the government. How they can bring themselves to do such a thing is difficult to understand. If their business model has failed, they should admit it and take their medicine: bankruptcy. If Congressional interference has caused their problems, they should state that and demand all such interference cease immediately.

The one thing they should not do is get down on their knees and beg Congress to take taxpayer money to bail them out, when no one, evidently, is willing to lend it to them of their own free will.

And yet that is what they have chosen to do, to their everlasting shame.

Would their bankruptcies cause a great depression, as they have darkly hinted? I don't know. I doubt it. But even if it did, does that excuse theft on a grand scale? It does not. If we, as a society, have been running on a failed business model - namely, the welfare state (for both individuals and corporations) - then perhaps the chickens have finally come home to roost. Are we going to take our medicine, a possible depression?

Or are we simply going to pass the buck, and let someone else suffer the consequences for our own mistakes?

There was a time when Americans were proud enough to do the right thing, no matter how dire the risks involved. Those were the Americans of the Revolutionary Era.

Now we have the revolting spectacle of Americans begging shamelessly, and putting off the reckoning for someone else to finally resolve.

Shame on America.

Spend and Spend, Then Cry for Help

2008-11-14T15:15:00.006-07:00

This AP story http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94EQHOG0&show_article=1 today informs us that several cities, including Phoenix, where I live, are bellying up to the taxpayer feed trough for handouts:

Three big city mayors asked the federal government Friday to use a portion of the $700 billion financial bailout to assist struggling cities.

The mayors sought help with their pension costs, infrastructure investment and cash-flow problems stemming from the global financial crisis.

The mayors—Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Shirley Franklin of Atlanta and Phil Gordon of Phoenix—made their request in a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

[Emphasis added.]

Perhaps if these cities restricted themselves to their only legitimate role, that of securing our rights from violation, they wouldn't need any bailouts. Instead, they pay hordes of public bus drivers $20+ per hour, and here in Phoenix, build a shiny new Light Rail system, for a cool $1.4 billion - so far. There are extensions planned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METRO_Light_Rail_(Phoenix) That's why they've gone begging to Uncle Sam, who will gladly steal it from the taxpayers across the country to pay for Phoenix's unjustified extravagances.

The solution is a return to a legitimate form of government, which has no role beyond the protection of individual rights. Not more bailouts and stealing from taxpayers.

A Quote That Should Live in Infamy

2008-11-07T18:37:00.006-07:00

Little Green Footballs linked to a website called Change.gov Office of the President-Elect. This is presumably an official website of Barack Obama. The page is titled "America Serves," and begins with this quotation:

"When you choose to serve -- whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood -- you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream."

http://change.gov/americaserves/

The quote is not attributed to anyone, but my assumption is that it is from the President-Elect, Barack Obama. And I have never seen a more disgraceful statement from an American President in my life. He takes perhaps the most heralded statement of the American political ideal, that man has certain inalienable rights, and among these are the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and he turns it on its head.

According to this statement, life, liberty, and happiness are no longer inalienable rights, they are simply something we "want." And instead of pursuing our own happiness, we are now to live for "everyone's" happiness. That he calls the American dream. So the Declaration of Independence's statement of unabashed rational self-interest is transformed by Obama into a call to serve others. A complete perversion of the American dream. And if you think I misinterpret this quote, the rest of that webpage will show that I understand it all too well:

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

[Emphasis added.]

Here, again, we have the infamous double speak statement of "mandatory voluntarism." Obama wants to require community service of high school students and college students. Note in the original quotation about the American dream, he began with "When you choose to serve . . . " When you are required to serve, choice doesn't enter the equation.

It is Obama's intention to bind all Americans over into involuntary servitude, thus undoing the XIII Amendment to the Constitution, which states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Calling involuntary servitude "voluntary" doesn't make it so. As I stated in my previous blog entry, public education is merely a propaganda arm of the government. And the government is flexing that arm's muscle.

Update: 11-08-08

The Change.Gov website has changed the original statement I quoted yesterday (again, hat tip to Little Green Footballs). Where yesterday it said it would require community service of high school and college students, today it says:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

[Emphasis added]

So he has changed from involuntary servitude to paying students for community service. By my calculations, that's $40 per hour, of taxpayers money, to pay students to pick up trash or whatever make work they devise for these students. And of course there will be tremendous peer pressure on all students to participate in such programs. Will teachers grade students who don't participate differently than those who do?

Reason number 10,001 to abolish public education.

The Election

2008-11-07T13:45:00.004-07:00

There was no good candidate for President this year, as there hasn't been for many years. Not surprisingly, the candidates get worse with every passing year. There are many causes for this, but the one that sticks out for me is public education.

Public schools are a propaganda arm of the government. They teach the "virtues" of statism, of the welfare state, of political correctness, and of environmentalism, while they demonize capitalism and Western Civilization. Is it any wonder that the products of this so-called education elect statists and environmentalists, and become such candidates themselves?

This gradual decay from freedom to the paternalistic state would be an interesting phenomenon to study in historic archives, or in some other nation. Unfortunately, it is happening here, in the United States, and we have to live through it. We have to watch freedom being tossed overboard, in favor of the all-encompassing state as daddy and mommy, since we poor, helpless children cannot take care of ourselves. We cannot be trusted with freedom. We aren't strong enough, we aren't intelligent enough. We are simply pathetic morons who need to be cared for by our betters.

There have been a few periods of American history with sudden plunges down the road to serfdom. FDR's New Deal, LBJ's Great Society, were two of them. George Bush's addition of prescription coverage to medicare, and his colossal bailout of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the other hundreds of billions he is throwing to private financial institutions, with government strings attached, is a third.

Now we will see what Obama's contribution will be. Having a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress will surely pave the way for further erosions of freedom. Will he inflict socialized medicine on us? We're already more than half way there.

Maybe the Republicans, having been trounced in the elections, will learn to support laissez-faire capitalism, and will obstruct all of Obama's attempts to further undermine American freedom.

But I doubt it. They're too far gone. They don't even know what capitalism is anymore, or individual rights. And they are undercut by their religious morality, which sees altruism as the ideal, and selfishness as evil. No such people can ever support capitalism morally. Until they learn the necessity of the separation of church and state, they will remain hopelessly unable to defend capitalism.

The moral of the story? Public education must be abolished, razed to the ground, the earth underneath it salted, so that it is never allowed to blight the land - and the minds of American children - again.

Once Upon a Time in America

2008-10-24T15:39:00.006-07:00

Continuing to read Garret's The People's Pottage, and found this gem of how Americans used to think, used to be.

[Americans] were deeply imbued with the traditions and maxims of individual resourcefulness---a people who grimly treasured in their anthology of political wisdom the words of Grover Cleveland, who vetoed a Federal loan of only ten thousand dollars for drought relief in Texas, saying: "I do not believe that the power and duty of the general Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering . . . A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people. . . . Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our National character."

Which was only one more way of saying a hard truth that was implicit in the American way of thinking, namely, that when people support the government they control government, but when the government supports the people it will control them.

(The People's Pottage, p. 55)

Americans used to take pride in supporting themselves, in freedom. Today, they can't give away their freedom fast enough, and crave the paternalistic protection of the government. Just compare America's embarrassing reaction to Hurricane Katrina, in which many shamelessly demanded Federal aid.

We have become a nation of beggars. And self-righteous beggars, at that.

The People's Pottage

2008-10-22T22:21:00.003-07:00

The People's Pottage is a book by Garet Garrett, about what the New Deal meant for America. I'm just starting to read it, and if the Forward is any indication, it is going to be an outstanding book. From the Forward:

A time came when the only people who had ever been free began to ask: What is freedom?

Who wrote its articles---the strong or the weak?

Could there be such a thing as unconditional freedom, short of anarchy?

Given the answer to be no, then was freedom an eternal truth or a political formula?

Since it was clear to reason that freedom must be conditioned, as by self-discipline, individual responsibility and many necessary laws of restraint; and since there was never in the world an absolute good, why should people not be free to say they would have less freedom in order to have more of some other good?

What other good?

Security.

What else?

Stability.

And beyond that?

Beyond that the sympathies of we, and all men as brothers, instead of the willful I, as if each man were a sovereign, self-regarding individual?

Well, where there is freedom doubt itself must be free. You shall not be forbidden to interrogate the faith of your fathers. Better that, indeed, than to take it entirely for granted.

So long as doubts such as these were wildish pebbles in the petulant waves that gnaw ceaselessly at any foundation, perhaps only because it is a foundation, no great damage was done. But when they began to be massed as a creed, then they became sharp cutting tools, wickedly set in the jaws of the flood. That was the work of a disaffected intellectual cult, mysteriously rising in the academic world; and from the same source came the violent winds of Marxian propaganda that raised the waves higher and made them angry.

Even so, the damage to the foundations might have been much slower and not beyond simple repair if it had not happened that in 1932 a bund of intellectual revolutionaries, hiding behind the conservative planks of the Democratic party, seized control of government.

After that it was the voice of government saying to the people there had been too much freedom. That was their trouble. Freedom was for the strong. The few had used it to exploit the many. Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, boom and bust, depression and unemployment, economic insecurity, want in the midst of plenty, property rights above human rights, taking it always out of the hide of labor in bad times---all of that was what came of rugged individualism, of free prices, free markets, free enterprise and freedom of contract. Let that be the price of freedom, and who would not say it was too dear?

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it? The same excuses are being used to sell further curtailments of freedom today, by both parties now.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

2008-10-19T20:29:00.004-07:00

The lovely, wonderful actress, Irene Dunne, with a magnificent performance of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, followed by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, from the movie Roberta. This is how movies used to be.

When the Government Intervenes in the Economy: Unmerciful Disaster Follows Fast and Follows Faster

2008-10-15T20:03:00.007-07:00

Until now I haven't written about the sudden, precipitous descent into socialism that America is undergoing. But with every failed attempt to "stabilize" the economy, the government has pushed further and further into the mire of socialism, until one day I woke up and found the financial system--which was already strangled by regulations--nationalized. These actions are to be "limited and temporary." Naturally. If there is one thing government is good at, it is maintaining power, once it has acquired it.

According to an article on WashingtonPost.com
http://tinyurl.com/4oawvg
banks are being coerced into accepting the government's "limited and temporary" assistance:

The opposition [to the plan] suggested that the government may have to continue to press banks to participate in the plan. The first $125 billion will be divided among nine of the largest U.S. banks, which were forced to accept the investment to help destigmatize the program in the eyes of other institutions.

[Emphasis added.]

Here we see the government openly admitting the immorality of this scheme, such that they must force banks to pretend to like it, in order to get other banks to like it. Faking reality, in broad daylight.

"We will encourage institutions to apply," said John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, who oversees most of the nation's largest banks.

In return for its investments, Treasury will receive preferred shares of bank stock that pay 5 percent interest for up to five years. After that, if the companies haven't repaid the government's initial investment, the interest rate goes up to 9 percent.

Participating banks cannot increase the dividends they pay to shareholders without federal permission, they must accept some limitations on compensation for their executives, and Paulson said the government would press companies to limit mortgage foreclosures.

[Emphasis added.]

As if government interference with the mortgage process hadn't been disastrous enough, already. And the friendly element of government "encouragement." How does the government encourage anything? Persuasion? Or force? Telling banks what dividends to pay, what salaries to pay, not to foreclose mortgages: it all adds up to socialism, of the fascist variety.

Also yesterday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it will create, essentially, two new insurance programs.

The basic insurance program still guarantees all bank deposits up to $250,000. A new supplemental program guarantees all deposits above $250,000 in accounts that don't pay interest. The program basically covers accounts used by small businesses.

Some European governments had already guaranteed deposits, creating a competitive advantage for banks in those countries. Banking regulators also were concerned that small businesses were transferring deposits from community banks to larger institutions perceived as less likely to fail. Finally, small businesses contributed to the failure of Washington Mutual and the collapse of Wachovia by pulling uninsured deposits from those banks.

[Emphasis added.]

This is a textbook example of the government causing problems, and then blaming them on the free market. What caused the failure of Washingtonn Mutual and Wachovia was not small businesses pulling out their deposits. It was the government's decision to insure other banks that ruined the uninsured banks. How can any business compete with the limitless power and money (the printing press) of the federal government? Either toe the party line, i.e., take government protection (kind of how the mafia works, isn't it?), or try to compete with the omnipotent state. It can't be done.

If this trend continues, how will America be better than any other country? How can I support any military action the US might take, when we aren't any better than whatever country we might do battle with? That is how desperately bad these measures are, if they stick.

If they don't stick, they will merely have been a colossal injustice to all the taxpayers who were forced to bailout all the banks and other companies that failed due partly to their own incompetence, but mainly due to government interventions in the economy.

Dae Jang Geum on the Value of Purpose

2008-10-12T19:10:00.009-07:00

Episode Seven of Dae Jang Geum addresses the value of purpose in man's life, and the awful state of men without purpose. Having decided to dramatize this issue, how to proceed?

The wonderful writer of DJG solved the problem in this way. First, Jang Geum got into trouble for going outside of the palace, which was strictly forbidden without special permission. The Head Lady decided to expel her from the palace, the standard punishment for that transgression. Everyone is appalled, knowing as they do that Jang Geum is one of the best among them, if not in fact the best. Finally, the Head Kitchen Lady, named Lady Jung, and Jang Geum's mentor, Lady Han, offer to forgo three year's worth of their salary if the Head Lady will allow Jang Geum to stay in the palace. This shows how highly the best and the brightest of the palace women value Jang Geum. The Head Lady greedily accepts their offer, but still banishes Jang Geum to the lowliest section of the palace grounds - the herb garden. It is a place to which loafers, miscreants, drunks and criminals are sent, and no one expects to return to the palace proper from the herb garden. It is essentially a place of exile and abandonment.

At the herb garden, the workers are supposed to be growing herbs. But none of them do any gardening, or in fact any kind of work, at all. When Jang Geum arrives, she finds the workers - and even their supervisor - lying in the fields, asleep. When she asks them what she is supposed to do, the supervisor tells her not to do anything, unless she wants to drink. No one expects any work to be done in the herb garden, and all the people there are content to do nothing, wasting away their existence drinking, eating, and sleeping, without purpose. These men are clearly going to pot, their minds and bodies atrophying from lack of use. It is against this background that we are able to contrast the behavior of Jang Geum.

Jang Geum finds their behavior incomprehensible. She literally goes to bed weeping at the apparent purposelessness of life in the herb garden. Finally, she tells the supervisor she cannot "do nothing," as it would drive her crazy. So she begins collecting all the assorted herb seeds she can find in the storehouse, none of which have any identifying lables attached to them. Those she recognizes, she labels accordingly, for those she cannot identify she bothers the supervisor until he identifies them for her. Soon she has them all identified, and she begins clearing some of the weed infested field and planting some of the herbs.

The other workers, and the supervisor, watch her and laugh at the "futility" of her actions. They begin taking bets on how soon she will give up - or worse. The last court lady sent to the herb garden had committed suicide. But Jang Geum persists in her methodical categorizing and gardening.

One day she comes to the workers and asks them for better gardening techniques. One of them mentions a particular herb that no one has succeeded in growing, though they had been trying for 20 years. Immediately, Jang Geum's face brightens, and she says: "Good! I will use that!" When they ask what she means, she explains that she will use that as her goal, as a purpose toward which to strive while in the herb garden. But why that particular goal? "Because you said it was hard!"

After a methodical trial and error period, Jang Geum succeeds in growing the rare herb - and finally the other workers, and the supervisor, begin to admire Jang Geum, and to want to bring some purpose back into their own lives, as well. They all recognize, once they have seen it again, the ennobling, uplifting value of purpose.

Jang Geum taught them that, though it was not her intention. She simply wanted purpose in her own life. But her good example had a salutary effect on all those around her.

And not coincidentally, Jang Geum's success in growing the rare herb brings about the thing she most desires at the moment: she is allowed to return to the palace as a court lady in training, her status fully restored.

Thus did the writer of Dae Jang Geum - Kim Yeong-hyeon - dramatize the value of purpose in man's life. This is but one wonderful episode in a magnificent, 54 episode series called Dae Jang Geum.

I paid more than $200 for the full three volumes of this series and it was worth every penny - and would still have been worth it at ten times the cost. It's that good.

Men of Harlech, Lie Ye Dreaming?

2008-10-09T21:38:00.007-07:00

Men of Harlech is a traditional Welsh song, which has many different versions of its lyrics. It tells the story of a Saxon invasion of Wales, and the Welsh defending their land and freedom. It's a rousing song to hear performed. If only the West still exhibited the spirit immortalized in this song. Unfortunately, we still lie dreaming.

In this Charlotte Church rendition, the first part is sung in Welsh, but it switches to English when the male choirs joins in. Here is the English portion of the lyrics:

Hark, I hear the foe advancing
Barbed steeds are proudly prancing
Helmets in the sunbeams glancing
Cymru fo am byth
Men of Harlech, lie ye dreaming
See ye not their falchions gleaming
While their pennons gaily streaming
Cymru fo am byth.
From the rocks resounding
Let the war cry sounding
Summon all at Cambria's call
The haughty foe surrounding
Men of Harlech, on to glory
See your banner famed in story
Waves these burning words before ye,
Cymru fo am byth!

That line in Welsh, Cymru fo am byth, means something like "Cambria ne'er can yield!"

And here are two other versions of the song, which I like even better. The first one, I think, has the best poetry. The second one is the best philosophically.

Men of Harlech, lyrics by John Oxenford

Men of Harlech! In the Hollow,
Do ye hear like rushing billow
Wave on wave that surging follow
Battle's distant sound?
Tis the tramp of Saxon foemen,
Saxon spearmen, Saxon bowmen,
Be they knights or hinds or yeomen,
They shall bite the ground!
Loose the folds asunder,
Flag we conquer under!
The placid sky now bright on high,
Shall launch its bolts in thunder!
Onward! 'tis the country needs us,
He is bravest, he who leads us
Honor's self now proudly heads us,
Freedom, God and Right!

Rocky Steeps and passes narrow,
Flash with spear and flight of arrow
Who would think of death or sorrow?
Death is glory now!
Hurl the reeling horsemen over,
Let the earth dead foemen cover
Fate of friend, of wife, of lover,
Trembles on a blow!
Strands of life are riven!
Blow for blow is given
In deadly lock, or battle shock,
And mercy shrieks to heaven!
Men of Harlech! young or hoary,
Would you win a name in story?
Strike for home, for life, for glory!
Freedom, God and Right!

Version 2

Men of Harlech, march to glory, Victory is hov'ring o'er ye,
Bright eyed freedom stands before ye, Hear ye not her call?
At your sloth she seems to wonder, Rend the sluggish bonds asunder,
Let the war cry's deaf'ning thunder, Ev'ry foe appal.

Echoes loudly waking, Hill and valley shaking;
'Till the sound spreads wide around, The Saxon's courage breaking;
Your foes on ev'ry side assailing, Forward press with heart unfailing,
Till invaders learn with quailing, Cambria ne'er can yield.

Thou who noble Cambria wrongest, Know that freedom's cause is strongest
Freedom's courage lasts the longest, Ending but with death!
Freedom countless hosts can scatter, Freedom stoutest mail can shatter,
Freedom thickest walls can batter, Fate is in her breath.

See they now are flying! Dead are heaped with dying!
Over might has triumphed right, Our land to foes denying;
Upon their soil we never sought them, Love of conquest hither brought them,
But this lesson we have taught them, Cambria ne'er can yield.

Great Movie Lines

2008-10-07T19:52:00.014-07:00

Some memorable lines or short scenes from movies I like.

John Russel: "If it's all right with you, lady, I just didn't feel like bleeding for him. And even if it isn't all right with you." Hombre

Sgt. Murdoch: "I'm going to miss Lt. Holloway."
Cpl. Gilchrist: "Ah, that's a lot of talk, Murdoch. If the truth were known, you're probably glad that Holloway got killed. It just gives you another chance to apply for a commission."
Sgt. Murdoch: "Huh. I'll never get a commission as long as Lance is around."
Cpl. Gilchrist: "And would you say that was his fault -- or your fault?" Only the Valiant

Lady Bracknell "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness." The Importance of Being Earnest

Cpl. Miller: "I'm not anxious to kill anyone. You see, I'm not a born soldier. I was trapped . . . No, I prefer to leave the killing to someone like you, an officer and a gentleman, a leader of men."
Cpt. Mallory: "If you think I wanted this, any of this, you're out of your mind, I was trapped like you, just like anyone who put on the uniform!"
Cpl. Miller: "Of course you wanted it, you're an officer, aren't you? I never let them make me an officer! I don't want the responsibility!"
Cpt. Mallory: "So you've had a free ride, all this time! Someone's got to take responsibility if the job's going to get done! You think that's easy?" The Guns of Navarone

[the boys watch the burning model ship in the "Viking funeral"]
Beau at age 12: "There. That's what I want when my turn comes. I'd give anything to have a Viking's funeral... with a dog at my feet and 'last post' blown for me. If it weren't too much trouble."
Digby at age 12: "Beau, it isn't too much trouble. I'll give you one whenever you like." Beau Geste

[after she reads the letter Beau had written to explain what happened to the jewel - he has signed the letter with his name - she reads... ]
Lady Patricia Brandon: "Beau Geste"
Lady Patricia Brandon: [to John] "Beau Geste... gallant gesture. We didn't name him wrong, did we?" Beau Geste

Rick: "I congratulate you."
Victor Laszlo: "What for?"
Rick: "Your work."
Laszlo: "I try."
Rick: "We all try; You succeed!" Casablanca

Cyrano: "I had never known
Womanhood and its sweetness but for you.
My mother did not love to look at me--
I never had a sister-- Later on,
I feared the mistress with a mockery
Behind her smile. But you--because of you
I have had one friend not quite all a friend--
Across my life, one whispering silken gown!"
Cyrano de Bergerac

Mu Bai:"Shu Lien."
Shu Lien: "Save your strength."
Mu Bai: "My life is departing. I've only one breath left."
Shu Lien: "Use it to meditate. Free yourself from this world . . . as you have been taught. Let your soul rise to eternity . . . with your last breath. Don't waste it for me."
Mu Bai: "I've already wasted my whole life. I want to tell you with my last breath . . . I have always loved you. I would rather be a ghost, drifting by your side . . . as a condemned soul . . . than enter heaven without you. Because of your love . . . I will never be a lonely spirit." Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Summertime

2008-09-17T21:20:00.004-07:00

What can I say about Harriet Wheeler, singer/songwriter of The Sundays. Beautiful girl, beautiful voice, beautiful sense of life. Here is a YouTube video of her singing Summertime:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcN5Vaqd9sg

Summertime

Do some people wind up with the one that they adore
in a heart-shaped hotel room it's what a heart is for
the bubble floats so madly will it stay sky-high?
Hello partner, kiss your name bye-bye

ooh sometimes...

romantic piscean seeks angel in disguise
chinese-speaking girlfriend big brown eyes
liverpudlian lady, sophisticated male
hello partner, tell me love can't fail

& it's you and me in the summertime
we'll be hand in hand down in the park
with a squeeze & a sigh & that twinkle in your eye
& all the sunshine banishes the dark

do some people wind up with the one that they abhor
in a distant hell-hole room, the third world war
but all I see is films where colourless despair
meant angry young men with immaculate hair

ooh sometimes...

Get up a voice inside says there's no time for looking down
only a pound a word & you're talking to the town
but how do you coin the phrase though
that will set your soul apart
just to touch a lonely heart

& it's you & me in the summertime
we'll be hand in hand down in the park
with a squeeze & a sigh & that twinkle in your eye
& all the sunshine banishes the dark
& it's you I need in the summertime
as I turn my white skin red
two peas from the same pod yes we are
or have I read too much fiction?
Is this how it happens?
How does it happen?
Is this how it happens?
Now, right now

The Silver Lining

2008-09-17T05:22:00.004-07:00

One good thing the worldwide economic slowdown is achieving is the reduction in the price of oil - and the consequent trouble this causes for the governments of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of dictators.

9-11

2008-09-11T13:38:00.002-07:00

No Apologies

2008-09-10T12:40:00.012-07:00

(Russian RT-2PM Topol ICBM, on display at the 2008 Victory Parade in Moscow)

The Bush Administration insists that the missile defense systems being stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic are

"designed to protect against what it says are threats from rogue countries, such as Iran"

They make these claims in order not to "provoke" Russia. If the missile defense system isn't designed to protect against Russian missiles, it ought to be.

Russia is as unstable and rogue a nation as Iran or North Korea. There is no rule of law under Putin, no property rights, no free speech. There is only the law of Putin, ex of the KGB. As Russia's recent invasion of Georgia and virtual annexation of two of Georgia's provinces demonstrates, the country is hungry to reassemble its broken empire, even if it has to do it one little piece at a time.

Russia has potential conflicts brewing all over the place, from the Baltic Republics ( http://tinyurl.com/59vv3z ) to the naval port of Sevastopol in the Crimean peninsula ( http://tinyurl.com/5ndwuq ). Putin is a loose canon who knows only one law: the lust for power.

If we aren't taking active measures to protect ourselves from this lunatic, there's something wrong with us. Putin's Russia is helping the Iranian theocracy develop nuclear technology, and strengthening Iran's air defense system
( http://tinyurl.com/5pj22c ).

Putin's Russia has resumed long range bomber patrols over the Atlantic, their bombers are buzzing our aircraft carriers, and their joint naval and air exercises are targeting NATO countries
( http://tinyurl.com/2ogv73 and http://tinyurl.com/5el6vk ).

Now Putin's Russia is scheduling joint naval exercises with Venezuela, the country headed by the militantly anti-American Hugo Chavez ( http://tinyurl.com/6x3h5v ).

Why aren't we deploying a missile shield against Putin's Russia? We should do so asap, with apologies to no one.

Ulysses

2008-09-08T20:07:00.005-07:00

Ulysses

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Analysis of this great poem would be superfluous. It is not complicated, merely beautiful, heroic, and inspirational. They don't write them like this anymore.

Another Nail in the Coffin of Free Speech

2008-09-05T11:23:00.003-07:00

Europe can always be counted on to provide leadership - on the road to the nanny state. In an article ( http://tinyurl.com/5ugdge ) today, Telegraph.co.uk reported that

MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects or reinforce gender stereotypes.

And furthermore:

Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson . . . said: "Gender stereotyping in advertising straitjackets women, men, girls and boys by restricting individuals to predetermined and artificial roles that are often degrading, humiliating and dumbed down for both sexes."

These assertions are obviously false. Advertising is incapable of restricting anyone from doing anything. Only the government has the power to restrict people's actions. Advertisers can only try to persuade.

How does an advertisement of a woman wearing lingerie, for example, restrict any woman from becoming an engineer? It doesn't. Eva-Britt Svensson and her fellow EU busybodies simply don't like what some women do, and therefore wants to restrict them by law from doing such things. It is the government, as always, that is "restricting" women and men alike by curtailing their right to decide for themselves what to do with their own lives.

It's been said before, and it bears repeating: the road to totalitarianism is paved with good intentions.

Black and White Movies

2008-09-03T20:17:00.006-07:00

This is a still frame, or a publicity photo, from the movie Laura, starring Gene Tierney and Vincent Price, among others. I love this photograph because it exemplifies the elegance and stylishness of black and white movies of the 1940s.

Also the photograph tells a story in itself, with these two beautiful people sizing each other up, the man looking suave and a little too relaxed, the woman, Laura, sure of herself but still unsure of the man she's with, trying to penetrate the facade he seems to present to the world.

At least the photograph suggests all of this to someone who has seen the movie.

A Word and Its Meaning

2008-08-30T20:05:00.010-07:00

I recently purchased the booklet called Glossary of Objectivist Definitions, which includes definitions by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, and Harry Binswanger. Having a solid grasp of the meaning of the words one uses is obviously important. I thought it would be a good exercise to occasionally take one of the definitions, and then give an example of it in action, either in the real world or the world of art.

Here is the Glossary's definiton of integrity:

"Integrity" is loyalty in action to one's convictions and
values. (Glossary of Objectivist Definitions, p. 25.)

As given, this definition is open to misinterpretation. It leaves open the question of whether one's convictions and values are rational. Being loyal in action to irrational values is not an example of integrity. And as I suspected, when I turned to the original passage from which this definition was taken, the chapter on Virtues in Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, he does indeed qualify integrity to mean loyalty to rational values:

Like independence, integrity is a derivative of rationality and precludes any form of emotionalism. It does not mean loyalty to arbitrary notions, however strongly one feels they are true. Adolf Hitler acting faithfully to carry out his hatred of the Jews is not an example of virtue. Integrity means loyalty not to a whim or delusion, but to one's knowledge, to the conclusions one can prove logically. Like every other virtue, therefore, integrity presupposes a mind that seeks knowledge, a mind that accepts and follows reason. (Leonard Peikoff, OPAR, p. 261, paperback edition.)

There are countless good examples of integrity in the Korean drama, Dae Jang Geum. Integrity is one of Jang Geum's distinguishing characteristics, which separates her from most other people of that time, or any other.

A good example that comes immediately to mind is an episode in which a high ranking Chinese envoy comes to visit the Korean King, and Lady Han and Jang Geum are chosen to cook for him. At first, they begin preparing the tastiest dishes a healthy man could wish for. The Head Eunuch had told them that: "We can't allow even a hint of fault in formalities or food. The senior envoy is a well known epicure in China. If it's not the best of delicacies, he won't even touch it. So show your best talent."

But then they learn that the Chinese envoy has diabetes, and is in poor health after his long journey. So Lady Han instead prepares the healthy foods, mostly vegetables, that are best for a diabetic, without telling the Head Eunuch.

When this food is served to the envoy, the Korean dignitaries are horrified, and so is the Chinese envoy. Lady Han tries to explain. Both she and Jang Geum believe that a cook's purpose is to prepare food that is both palatable, and proper for the person who will be consuming it. A diabetic must be served healthy food, even if he is too shortsighted to choose to eat it himself. "I dare to say the greasy food of Ming is very detrimental to his health."

The result of this conflict is that Lady Han is arrested and put in confinement until a decision is made on her ultimate punishment. In the meantime, Jang Geum steps in for Lady Han. Here she could, as most people would do, simply substitute some tastier, less healthy food for the Chinese envoy, which is exactly what he and the Korean dignitaries specifically order her to do. But she refuses. "We cannot possibly bring food that is harmful for the person."

In the face of threats of her own arrest, and very possibly being executed, Jang Geum insists on serving the same healthy food that Lady Han had planned to serve. The Chinese envoy is struck by her courage, but still does not want the healthy food. Jang Geum reasons with him, explaining that within as few as five days he will begin to feel better if he only eats the healthy food she plans to serve. Finally, the envoy agrees to eat it. But he does so with this proviso: "Will you receive any punishment I order - even if it means your life [if I am not satisfied with the food]?"

Jang Geum accepts the terms. She has confidence in her knowledge of food and its effect on a person's health, and more importantly, she refuses to go against her conviction that a cook must serve food proper to the person consuming it, in this case a diabetic.

Meanwhile, the Head Eunuch, who is generally a good person, but not as courageous as he might be, goes to Lady Han and asks her "How could you prepare such a meal?" He knows the envoy has diabetes, but is only concerned with giving him what he wants. Lady Han responds perfectly, by saying: "Then are you telling me to do the same thing to the King as well?" In other words, is he telling her that she should serve the King unhealthy food also, even if it kills him? The Head Eunuch is unable to respond to this point, because he knows Lady Han is right.

In stark contrast to the integrity of Jang Geum and Lady Han, their arch enemies, Lady Choi and Keum Young, begin preparing a feast of royal proportions for the Chinese envoy, confident that he will not be satisfied with the plain, healthy food Jang Geum will be serving. The meals Lady Choi prepares are the very greasy Ming dishes that are worst for a person with diabetes, but they are exactly the kind of foods that the Chinese envoy enjoys eating.

After the five days of eating Jang Geum's healthy food are up, Lady Choi immediately serves the envoy her lavish meal of tasty - but unhealthy - dishes. The envoy samples several of the dishes and is obviously delighted with their taste. Lady Choi smiles, anticipating a decisive victory over Lady Han and Jang Geum. But then the envoy stops eating her food, and says that although it is very tasty, he now realizes the healthy food is the better choice. He does indeed feel better after five days of Jang Geum's healthy food, which she managed to make tasty enough to satisfy the finicky envoy.

So Lady Han is realeased from confinement, Jang Geum is praised for doing the right thing (by all the same people who would have condemned her, if she had not satisfied the envoy), and Lady Choi is mortified by her loss of face. The actions of Lady Han and Jang Geum are a perfect example of loyalty in action to one's convictions and values, a perfect example of integrity.

And that example could be multiplied by anyone who watches Dae Jang Geum, for Jang Geum, along with Lady Han, Lady Jung, and Min Jeong Ho, are all heroic characters distinguished for their integrity throughout their entire lives.

[Edited 09-01-2008]

Watching, Listening

2008-08-30T11:14:00.005-07:00

The movie reviews will contain spoilers.

Last night I watched Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. It was Audrey Hepburn's first starring role in a movie, and she was already - perfect. What a lovely, perfectly feminine woman. Watching and listening to her is such a pleasure that she can make even a movie with a boring plot worth watching, just to see her. The story is about a princess who breaks away from her handlers for a day to live like a normal human being. Gregory Peck is the reporter who is fortunate to be the one she falls in with for the day. The movie ends with the princess going back to her royal duties, wiser and more self-confident, but also sad for having to give up her budding relationship with the American reporter. She sacrificed her happiness to her duty.

I suppose if she considered being the princess of her country a higher value, this would not be a sacrifice. But through most of the movie it was made clear that she considered her duties as princess to be boring and unimportant. So I see her decision as sacrificial. The movie was based on a story by Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted writer. Perhaps he considered sacrifice a good thing. I don't. The princess should have pursued her own happiness, and abdicated her title in favor of living for herself.

Recently I watched The Deceivers (Merchant Ivory, 1988), a movie set in India during the period of British rule. It is about the attempts of the British to eradicate the criminal Thuggee sect that committed ritualistic murders by strangulation of travellers, and then robbed them of all valuables. Supposedly this was done in the name of the Goddess Kali, the four armed goddess of death and destruction. The movie stars Pierce Brosnan as a British officer who disguises himself as a native to infiltrate the group to gather evidence against them. While he succeeds in getting the evidence, the movie ends with Brosnan throwing away a cross, the symbol of his own faith, and repeating a Thuggee mantra about worshipping Kali. In other words, he seems to have succumbed to the "ecstasy" of strangling people for Kali. Which makes this a very stupid movie.

A few weeks ago I watched a better movie on the same subject, called The Stranglers of Bombay, from Hammer Studios, 1960. Hammer is known mostly for horror movies, but they also produced some straight adventure films, of which this is one. It is basically the same story as The Decievers, except that the British officer does not succumb to mysticism, and upholds rational justice. Which makes it a vastly superior story.

I've been listening to a lot of WWII era music, especially Helen Forrest singing for Harry James and His Orchestra. Easily my favorite is I've Heard That Song Before. She has a very personal way of singing that makes the song seem like it is about her own life (even though she didn't write the song), and she means what she's saying. I Had the Craziest Dream and It's Been a Long, Long Time are also beautiful songs she sings perfectly.

Sull'aria

2008-08-28T20:20:00.007-07:00

My favorite duet from my favorite opera. Sull'aria, from The Marriage of Figaro, by Mozart. The ladies are Kiri Te Kanawa and Ileana Cotrubas.

Sull'aria . . .
On the breeze . . .
Che soave zeffiretto . . .
What a gentle zephyr . . .
Zeffiretto . . .
Zephyr . . .
Questa sera spirera!
Will sigh this evening!
Questa sera spirera . . .
Will sigh this evening . . .
Sotto i pini del boschetto.
Beneath the pine grove.
Sotto i pini?
Beneath the pines?
Sotto i pini del boschetto . . .
Beneath the pine grove . . .
Ei gia il resto capira.
He will understand the rest.
Certo, certo il capira.
Certainly, he'll understand.
Ei gia il resto capira.
He will understand the rest.
Canzonetta sull'aria . . . etc.
Little tune on the breeze . . . etc.

The Democratic National Convention

2008-08-28T19:09:00.005-07:00

I confess I am unable to watch the Democratic National Convention. I am not a glutton for punishment. I know exactly the kind of anti-American poison they will be preaching. I see it every day of my life in Congress, and in the left wing media. I refuse to watch this disgusting gathering of collectivists congratulating each other and smiling in gleeful anticipation of more statism to come.

I cannot see these people for an instant without being reminded of Shakespeare's line: "A man can smile and smile - and be a villain." The only thing that separates American Democrats from Hugo Chavez is that they don't have the power, yet, to do what Chavez is doing to Venezuela. They are simply constrained to go about it with more devious methods, by regulating the free enterprise system to death. They are more than half way there, already.

I literally would not vote for a Democrat if you held a gun to my head. To do so would be a betrayal of everything the Foundning Fathers fought for - and everything I believe in. I would rather be dead than assist in the victory of the worms of the Democratic party over the giants who founded our nation.

None of which is meant to imply any endorsement of Republicans. They are awful, too, especially with regard to the mixing of religion and government. Which means I probably will have to abstain from voting altogether. When you are offered a choice between the party of Torquemada and the party of Stalin, you sign your own death warrant, and that of your nation, by voting for either one.

Escapism aka Fantasy

2008-08-03T18:50:00.005-07:00

Some remnants of Romanticism may still be found in the popular media---but in such a mangled, disfigured form that they achieve the opposite of Romanticism's original purpose . . .

Under the pressure of conformity . . . today's Romanticists are escaping, not into the past but into the supernatural---explicitly giving up reality and this earth. The exciting, the dramatic, the unusual---their policy is declaring, in effect---do not exist; please don't take us seriously, what we're offering is only a spooky daydream. (Ayn Rand, What Is Romanticism?)

I use the above quote not to suggest that Ayn Rand would agree with my assessment of modern fantasy, but to show that she saw the perils inherent in the genre, to which some had already succumbed. My view is that virtually all modern fantasy has descended into escapism.

And I am sick to death of it. In literature, in tv shows, and in movies, fantasy is flooding the marketplace. In modern history fantasy was little more than a blip on the radar screen, until Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was published. After that, the deluge.

First it wormed its way into the science fiction section of book stores and grew like a weed until there was little if any science fiction left that was worthy of the name. Just a lot of fantasy masquerading as science fiction.

I'm not sure what started the craze for fantasy shows on television. There were a few mild ones in the 60s, such as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Now they are everywhere. And instead of it being something to laugh at, as it was with the two aforementioned shows, we are expected to take it seriously in shows like Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, The X-Files, Lost, etc.

What makes a blockbuster movie these days? Fantasy and comic book heroes. The Lord of the Rings. The Chronicles of Narnia. The Golden Compass. Spiderman. Batman. Harry Potter. The Mummy. Hellboy. Ironman. Etc., ad nauseum.

Now the big seller among fiction books, after the fantasy Harry Potter phenomena has died down a bit, is what? A series about vampires, The Twilight Saga, by Stephenie Meyer. It's selling like hotcakes.

Why do authors want to set their stories in unreal worlds? Anti-rational worlds? Why do they want their characters to have magical powers? What is it about real life that so bores them, that they have to imagine a different world where A is not A. In order to be heroic, why must a man have unreal superpowers? Why do readers want to read this stuff, instead of stories about heroes in the real world, who have only their human mind and human body to use in dealing with the problems that beset them? Why do people want to escape the real world, and run away into fantasy?

The impression all this escape into fantasy worlds leaves is that heroism isn't possible in the real world. Heroes are only possible in some other, fantasy world. In this sad vale of tears we actually inhabit, we must simply accept that there are no heroes.

Is the real world perfect? Far from it. But heroes don't run away and hide in little fantasy worlds. They fight to make their world better with what they have: their rational mind, their physical courage, their integrity. Wherein is there any need for fantasy here? There is nothing magical about it. It's not superhuman, it is simply man, the paragon of animals, man the hero, living up to his potential.

If you want to see what real literature can and should be like, watch Dae Jang Geum. Thank goodness someone is still creating great, realist art.

[Edited 8-13-08]

The Music Man

2008-07-25T20:48:00.004-07:00

Till There Was You

There were bells on the hill
But I never heard them ringing,
No, I never heard them at all
Till there was you.

There were birds in the sky
But I never saw them winging,
No, I never saw them at all
Till there was you.

And there was music,
And there were wonderful roses,
They tell me,
In sweet fragrant meadows of dawn, and dew.

There was love all around
But I never heard it singing
No, I never heard it at all
Till there was you!

This is one of the best songs from one of the best musicals ever, The Music Man, lyrics and music by Meredith Willson. The scene in which this song appears, below, is the key to the whole story. Taken literally, Robert Preston's music man character is a charlatan. He says he can teach children to play music, and the citizens of the town pay him to do so. But he cannot actually teach music at all. The people do not get what they paid for.

But they get something else, at least as valuable. For the Music Man brings the town and its people to life. He makes them happy and excited, he makes them sing and dance, he even brings love, if only fleetingly, to one who had never known it before. He instills in them the courage to do what they never dared to do before. He makes their lives worth living. And that is an enormous gift to bring to anyone, let alone a whole town.

Only one person, the mayor, is so dour as to take the Music Man literally, and see him as simply the charlatan that he appears to be on the surface. He suggests the people tar and feather the Music Man. But everyone else in town - even the mayor's wife - supports the Music Man against the mayor. In spite of having been conned about his music teaching ability.

In addition to Till There Was You, there are several other wonderful songs in The Music Man. Lida Rose, Marian the Librarian, Seventy-Six Trombones, just to name a few. Robert Preston and the lovely Shirley Jones give magnificent performances, and the Buffalo Bills quartet will make you understand the beauty of the barbarshop quartet.

Watch the YouTube clip below for a taste, then buy or rent the DVD and enjoy the whole wonderful story. We need more Music Men in the world.

Till There Was You

2008-07-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

Renee Olstead - Merry Christmas In Love

2008-07-17T22:31:00.003-07:00

Merry Christmas in Love

Lyrics by Marva Jan Marrow, music by Tony Renis, performed by Rene Olstead

Things that tremble tingle like a bubble full of rainbows . . . then crack
Sizzle, sing and whisper, when the shadows lace the moonlight with black
Things with silver linings, sparkling tinsel, twinkle shining with . . .
Waving wispy willow wings that breathe a song of Christmastime dreams . . .

Things that glow and glisten, eyes of children when they listen . . . then burst
Things that touch the wistful wish of watching someone else succeed first
Days that dingle dangle with a million parts untangle to
Satin stars that spangle and those Christmas bells that clangle out . . . dreams . .

I'm dreaming of Christmas
To you, Merry Christmas

Dreaming . . . of a Merry Christmas
To you, Merry Christmas

Galloping and gliding, Santa Claus' sleigh we're riding and
Bringing joyful tidings to the dreamers who are lying below . . .

I'm talking of daydreams
Wishes and moonbeams

Then I tremble tingle like a bubble full of rainbows and light
When you came to wake me and to wish me Merry Christmas in love . . .

Christmas in love . . .

I can tremble tingle like a bubble full of rainbows and light
When you came to wake me and to wish me Merry Christmas in love . . .

Merry Christmas in love . . .

Sound of Music - Edelweiss

2008-07-05T12:00:00.001-07:00

It's a Good Life

2008-07-04T20:41:00.010-07:00

Over the Fourth of July weekend the Sci Fi channel was having one of their periodic Twilight Zone marathons. One of the episodes I watched was "It's a Good Life," (season 3, episode 8 of that season) starring the child actor Bill Mumy, who plays Anthony Fremont, a boy with the power to turn people into anything he wanted, or send them "to the cornfield," meaning kill them off. He could do pretty much anything he wanted, and could read people's minds.

So everyone had to think happy thoughts, especially about Anthony himself, or it was off to the cornfield with them. Anthony didn't like singing, so no one could sing, or play any records with singing. Once Anthony decided to make it snow, thereby ruining much of that season's crops, it being the growing season. Anthony's father was initially horrified, but quickly recovered his senses, and admitted that it was good that Anthony made it snow. "That's a good thing you did, Anthony."

Anthony had turned the little town of Peaksville, Ohio into his own little kingdom, of which he was the absolute monarch and God. No one could leave the town, no one else could come in. The rest of the world had, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist. The population was shrinking, since he occasionally got angry with some of the residents and sent them to the cornfield, whence no one returned. The crops suffered from his whims, as did the livestock and other domestic animals, like dogs.

I've seen this episode before. But this time it struck me as an excellent description of life under an absolute ruler, whether a modern dictator, or a traditional monarch. Historically, such rulers had, and the modern ones continue to have, absolute power, including the power of life and death over all of his or her subjects, which could be, and often was, exercised at whim. So the subjects must all live in fear of the ruler, and pretend to be happy and agree with any whim of the ruler, lest they be sent to the cornfield.

So, for example, if a King wanted to levy a huge new tax on "his" people, in order to build a colossal new luxury palace, what could the hapless subject say? "That's a good thing you did, your Majesty."

And if a dictator wants his farmers to stop farming and melt their "extra" pots and pans, and anything else they can find that is made of iron, to increase the country's steel production statistics? And this will cause thousands to die of starvation, since the crops are being neglected? Students, too, and their teachers, must spend all their time searching for scrap metal to melt down, and forget about classes? "That's a good thing you did, Chairman Mao. I'm very happy!"

That last example was something that actually happened in China under Mao, circa 1957. In describing it, Chinese author Jung Chang wrote:

This absurd situation reflected not only Mao's ignorance of how an economy worked, but also an almost metaphysical disregard for reality, which might have been interesting in a poet, but in a political leader with absolute power was quite another matter. One of its main components was a deep-seated contempt for human life. (from Wild Swans, by Jung Chang)

That's a perfect description of Anthony, absolute ruler of Peaksville, Ohio. And also of Kim Jong-il. And it represents everything Hugo Chavez aspires to be, as well.

The episode also shows one character who refuses to submit to this pathetic slave existence. He starts singing in Anthony's face, and telling him exactly what a monster he is. Anthony begins threatening him with the cornfield. The rebel then pleads with the other victims to take advantage of Anthony while he is distracted by this rebellion, and attack him. But no one else does, and the rebel is sent to the cornfield. This also is similar to life under a dictatorship. The bravest ones are the first to die, or end up in prison, because they agree with Patrick Henry. But most people simply submit like sheep, and go on living as slaves.

Democracy: The Modern Idol

2008-06-25T21:16:00.005-07:00

The Stimulus:

In a post ( http://www.icahnreport.com/report/2008/06/corporate-democ.html ) to his blog on June 18, Carl Icahn wrote about "the myth" of corporate democracy. He complains that "many corporate boards and managers are doing an abysmal job." He believes this is a result of poor corporate governance, and claims that "the average shareholder can do nothing about it." Further, "It is the board’s responsibility to hold a CEO accountable, and remove the CEO if he or she is not producing results," but this often does not happen, writes Icahn, because "boards are often too lazy and/or passive to rock the boat, especially since the company will continue to pay and pamper and even indemnify them under almost any circumstances."

"Worst of all," he writes, "the board itself is not made accountable because corporate board elections are generally a joke." This is because " . . . in corporate America there are no true elections. It is tyranny parading as democracy . . . Perhaps, with enough public support, the lawmakers and regulators will take note." (Emphasis added.)

Icahn also quoted Winston Churchill, implying that political governance and corporate governance are one and the same: "To paraphrase Winston Churchill, 'democracy might not be the greatest system there is but it is the greatest system mankind has invented so far.' "

And the Response:

In politics, democratic elections allow the citizens to choose representatives to run the day to day business of the government. What those representatives may do, however, is strictly limited by the US Constitution. We live in a Republic, not a Democracy. In a Democracy, a majority could vote to do anything under the sun. It is mob rule. In a Republic, the rights of the individual are protected from violation by majorities. Thank the Founding Fathers we live in a Republic, and not a Democracy.

A corporation, however, is not the same as a political government. It does not exist to protect individual rights. It exists to make a profit. It draws up a business plan to do so, and anyone who wants in can buy shares of the company's stock, assuming there are shares for sale, at a price they can afford. In buying the company's stock, the investor agrees to abide by the company's rules. Including any rules about electing boards of directors. There is no guarantee he will make money on his investment.

No doubt there are CEOs and boards of directors that do abysmal jobs. But Icahn's claim that the average shareholder can do nothing about it is not true. At the very least, if a shareholder does not like what the board or CEO are doing, he can sell his shares in the company. If he prefers not to sell, he can vote (either in person, or by proxy) for directors he thinks will do a better job. The fewer shares he has, the less voice he has in such elections. Which is what he agreed to when he bought the shares in the first place. That is contractual justice.

Evidently Icahn is not satisfied with contractual justice, but instead wants government interference in the economy, like any statist. Odd, for a man whose blog is headed by a statement about fighting tyranny.

It is not clear exactly what Icahn wants the government to do in this particular intervention. His statement that "in corporate America there are no true elections. It is tyranny parading as democracy," suggests that he doesn't like how boards are elected. If that is so, he should either not have bought stock in those companies in the first place, or he should sell his shares, or he should work, in accordance with the company's rules, to get the rules changed. The one thing he should not do is appeal to the government to interfere in a business enterprise. That is not within a government's rightful sphere of influence. It is a common tactic, though, of people who can't get what they want legitimately, to try to get it illegitimately - through the government.

At the end of his post on corporate democracy, Icahn wrote "I will discuss in future entries how simple it [removing terrible management] can be and what has constrained us from taking action." Perhaps in these future entries he will suggest legitimate ways, and leave the government out of the equation. Let us hope so, at any rate.

Secretariat: A Hero of a Horse

2008-06-14T08:09:00.014-07:00

In the late '60s and early '70s, America was embroiled in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Quoting Ayn Rand's paean to Apollo 11: "For thirty years or longer, the newspapers had featured nothing but disaster, catastrophes, betrayals, the shrinking stature of men, the sordid mess of a collapsing civilzation; their voice had become a long, sustained whine, the megaphone of failure . . . Now, for once, the newspapers were announcing a human achievement, were reporting on a human triumph, were reminding us that man still exists and functions as man," (from Apollo 11, in The Voice of Reason, page 167).

I was a seven year old child at the time of Apollo 11. It is still one of the earliest and fondest memories of my youth. A less pleasant memory was the televised hearings about the Watergate scandal, some years later.

Then, in 1973, along came Secretariat. I knew nothing of horse racing. I was unaware there hadn't been a Triple Crown winner in a quarter of a century. But there was a buzz about this horse that was impossible to ignore. In 1972 he had won "Horse of the Year" as a two year old, a highly unusual feat. As a three year old in 1973, he would be competing for the Triple Crown, awarded to a horse that wins the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes.

And what a beautiful horse. Chestnut hued, dubbed Big Red, he was admired as often for his beauty as for his strength, speed, spirit, and endurance.

Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness by two or three lengths each. He would generally start slow out of the gate, and then blow past the other horses with a burst of speed that made it look like the other horses were standing still.

But the Belmont Stakes is the test of champions. It is longer than the other two legs of the Triple Crown, and calls for speed and endurance, as well as an intelligent strategy. Secretariat, as usual, was slow out of the gate. But he quickly recovered, and was galloping neck and neck with the leader, Sham, the horse that had come in second place in both the Kentucky Derby, and the Preakness. After jockeying back and forth for a while, Secretariat finally left Sham behind, and continued stretching his lead until, by the end of the race, he was fully 31 lengths ahead of the next horse- a feat immortalized in the photograph at the head of this post.

America had its first Triple Crown winner in a quarter of a century. Before the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat appeared on the cover of Time magazine, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated, all in the same week. Everyone loved Secretariat. Once again, the media were filled with stories of a glorious achievement, pushing the doom and gloom stories off the front page, if only for a while.

Secretariat was the product of careful breeding, and was trained, groomed, managed, and ridden to be the best that he could be. He was a magnificent animal, and his greatness was guided and enhanced by human intelligence. We admired him for his achievements, his desire to excel, to be the "first among equals," to be the best.

No one ever suggested he should slow down so as not to embarass his brothers. We were free to admire his superiority over his peers. For those of us who love a hero, Secretariat was living proof that they could exist, and glory in their own existence.

http://tinyurl.com/4djwhv

Suicide by Environmentalism

2008-06-13T07:45:00.003-07:00

Our dependence on Middle East oil is a common object of ridicule. The critics of this dependence are generally the same people who caused the dependence in the first place - environmentalists. They have placed so many areas of America off limits to drilling - ANWAR, coastal waters, etc. - that we are left with no choice but to import oil from elsewhere.

But logic was never a strong suit among environmentalists. Consider the recent vote to continue restrictions on off shore drilling. The Democrats trotted out one of their standard excuses for not allowing more drilling:

"We are kidding ourselves if we think we can drill our way out of these problems," said [House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis], noting that no matter how U.S. oil sources are pursued “we still have a tiny portion of the world (oil) supply.” http://www.mgwashington.com/index.php/news/article/house-panel-defeats-coastal-drilling-expansion/1233/

Suppose for a moment that everyone, everywhere, took that attitude. Then no one would ever drill for oil except Saudi Arabia, and everyone would be 100% dependent upon them for their oil. That is the "logic" underlying the Democrat/environmentalist restrictions on drilling for oil. By that twisted logic, Americans should never have extracted any oil in this country at all, since we were never going to have more than a small percentage of the world supply.

But even that is giving the Democrats too much credit. There are enormous amounts of oil available from oil shale in this country, over and above all the oil waiting to be tapped off shore.

But environmentalists would rather fantasize about alternative energy sources like wind and solar - when they are not obstructing even those sources of energy, as eyesores. Last I heard, no one is stopping them from developing those energy sources themselves.

The free market could provide us with all the energy we need. If we had a free market.

Red Wings in Action

2008-06-07T06:59:00.012-07:00

Just a few pictures of the current group of Red Wings on the ice, plus one of Vlad for auld lang syne . . .

Zetterberg:

Filppula:

Datsyuk:

Datsyuk and Zetterberg:

Lidstrom:

Vladimir Konstantinov, the warrior:

Detroit Red Wings

2008-06-06T20:16:00.003-07:00

For the fourth time in the last eleven years, the Detroit Red Wings have won the Stanley Cup, awarded to the champion of the National Hockey League. Since 1990, when Sergei Fedorov joined a lineup that already included Steve Yzerman, the Red Wings have been among the most skilled teams in the NHL.

Although Fedorov is no longer a Red Wing, he is indicative of the success of the franchise. The draft that netted Feodorov for the Red Wings is one of the greatest drafts in NHL history. That same draft for the Red Wings included Center Mike Sillinger and Defenseman Bob Boughner, who both went on to solid NHL careers. It included Winger Dallas Drake, who started with the Red Wings, was traded, and finally returned to the Wings as a free agent this season. It included Vladimir Konstantinov, a magnificent Defenseman who helped the Wings win the Stanley Cup in 1997, alongside his defense partner, Nicklas Lidstrom, who was also part of that same 1989 draft. Lidstrom and Fedorov will be in the Hall of Fame. Konstantinov almost certainly would have been too, had his career not been cut short by a tragic car accident, right after the Wings won the Stanley Cup in 1997. Picking three Hall of Famers in one draft is a good way to rejuvenate a franchise.

Eventually the Wings added three more skilled Russians to their lineup: Slava Kozlov, a skilled young Winger; Slava Fetisov, an aging but skilled defenseman, and Center Igor Larionov, a puck control specialist, as so many Russians were. Coach Scotty Bowman put these five together as a unit, the Russian Five, and they were amazing to watch. They played the same puck control game of the old Soviet national teams.

Eventually, all five of the Russian Five were lost to the Wings, to free agency, retirement, or career ending injury. But the Wings continued to play a puck control, or puck possession game, unlike any other team in the NHL. Because the Wings were so consistently good, they always ended up in poor drafting position. They haven't had a top ten pick since about 1991. Normally they pick at the very bottom of the round, about 20th or lower. So they never have the opportunity to draft the "can't miss" prospects like the Crosby's, the Malkin's, the Ovechkin's, etc.

That doesn't mean they don't draft great players, however. They do. They just have to look harder and smarter to find them. But find them they do. Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Tomas Holmstrom, Johan Franzen, Valtteri Filppula, all selected in the third round or later, all star players in the NHL. Datsyuk and Zetterberg, in my opinion, are the two most complete forwards in the NHL. And Nicklas Lidstrom is the best defenseman.

There are now seven Swedes on the Red Wings roster, with more on the way. The Wings are a heavily European weighted team. This is one of the results of having to pick lower in the draft, when all the best North American prospects are already gone. But it is also a result of a deliberate policy of favoring skill over size, which is the opposite of how most teams draft.

The results speak for themselves. Four Stanley Cups in eleven years. People used to accuse the Wings of buying the Stanley Cup, since they had one of the highest payrolls in the league. But when the salary cap was put in place, and the Wings' payroll was cut in half, they continued to be the class of the NHL, consistently finishing first in their division, and advancing well into the playoffs. And now, winning the Stanley Cup again.

The Red Wings are the model franchise of the NHL.

The Volga Boatman

2008-06-03T20:45:00.006-07:00

In her movie diary for 1926, Ayn Rand gave the Cecil B. De Mille silent movie The Volga Boatman a rating of 5+, the highest rating on her scale. The story is set during the Russian Revolution, and revolves around a love triangle. The woman is a Princess, who is loved by a Russian noble, and by a revolutionary leader. On that level, the plot is similar to AR's We the Living, and no doubt to many other novels.

As in We the Living, the revolutionary, named Feodor, is idealistic, although not nearly as intellectual as Andrei Taganov. The Russian noble, named Dmitri, is brave and arrogant, like Leo. The Princess, named Vera, does not resemble Kira particularly, but does have similarities with another Ayn Rand creation - Dominique Francon.

One scene that emphasizes this connection occurs near the beginning of the movie. Princess Vera hears some Volga boatmen singing as they pass near her home. The Volga boatmen are peasant laborers who pull boats against the current, up the Volga river, by means of ropes harnessed to their bodies. One of the singers in particular catches her ear, and she goes down with Dmitri to investigate who it is that sounds like "the soul of Russia."

So the wealthy young woman goes to look at the laborers, and sees the man she had heard singing, as he and the other boatmen are taking a rest break and a drink of water. She stares at the man, Feodor, in open admiration - and he stares right back, as openly as she. This recalled to my mind the scene in The Fountainhead in which Dominique went to her father's quarry and stared at Roark, who stopped working and stared back.

Then Dmitri intervened, and ended up giving Feodor two lashes across the face with his whip, leaving nasty cuts each time. Feodor took the blows without flinching. This too recalls the same sequence in The Fountainhead, although there it was Dominique who wielded the whip, and not a rival lover.

I don't know, of course, but it seems likely to me that AR wrote that scene as something of an homage to the similar scene in The Volga Boatman.

The movie itself claims to take no side in the conflict of the Russian Revolution, although it pretty clearly does favor the revolutionary side. Still, the heroes all run afoul of the revolution at one point or another.

I recommend the movie, which is available now on DVD.

Silent Movies

2008-05-30T19:04:00.005-07:00

Silent movies seem to be an acquired taste. I usually have a hard time watching them. They seem hopelessly archaic compared to modern movies. But while the technology of silent films certainly is archaic, the stories themselves are not. And since these movies were made in the early twentieth century, they are less infected with all the maladies of the modern intellectual and literary world. Silent movies are closer in time to the era of Romantic art - Cyrano de Bergerac was published in 1897 - and so some of that spirit exists in them which no longer survives in the modern world.

Among the silent movies that were enjoyed by the arch-romanticist, Ayn Rand, were The Indian Tomb (Part 1: The Mission of the Yogi; Part 2: The Tiger of Bengal), The Nibelungen (Part 1: Siegfried; Part 2: Kriemhild's Revenge), The Thief of Baghdad, The Mark of Zorro (and many other silent films starring Douglas Fairbanks), The Oyster Princess, and The Volga Boatman. All of the above movies are availabe on DVD now, and more seem to be coming on the market all the time.

One I recently watched is The Winning of Barbara Worth, starring Ronald Colman, Vilma Banky, and Gary Cooper. This movie still has something of the heroic spirit of nineteenth century America in it, when American businessmen and engineers were taming the vast expanses of the West. Colman is an Eastern engineer who comes out West to build a dam to bring water to a desert wilderness and bring it to fruitful life. Gary Cooper is a native Westerner who is initially unimpressed with the soft Easterner. Vilma Banky is the woman they both adore.

The financier who funds the building of the dam is a villain who is willing to rob and kill to defeat his competitors. When this becomes clear, Colman switches sides, and convinces another Eastern financier to rescue the project (which suffered through a natural disaster), by appealing to his self interest, as well as his good will.

Colman is the hero of the story, who transforms the desert into farmland, against the natural obstacles, and against the man made interference. Cooper is a rugged Westerner who helped him achieve that goal, in spite of their rivalry over Vilma Banky.

It's a benevolent silent movie I can recommend. It's not a bad starting place if you want to begin exploring the world of silent movies.

Dae Jang Geum

2008-04-05T22:15:00.018-07:00

This review contains some spoilers.

I recently finished watching a wonderful Korean television drama called Dae Jang Geum, aka Jewel in the Palace. It is available on DVD, in the original Korean with English subtitles. In briefest summary, the drama tells the story of Jang Geum, an orphaned girl who rises from the lowest classes of Korean society to become the personal physician of the King.

The struggles Jang Geum faces along the way are enough to crush the spirit of a normal man or woman. But Jang Geum is an extraordinary woman. No opponent can overcome her indomitable spirit, no obstacle or setback can impede her progress for long. She sets her sights on the goals she wants to achieve, and she moves toward them with determination, intelligence, and passion, without ever compromising her integrity or honor. She is a true Heroine of Romantic art.

The series starts out with several episodes showing Jang Geum as a young girl, around 8 years old. From her first appearance on the screen, she conquers the viewer’s heart completely. Never have I seen such an adorable little girl. Her smile outshines the sun. But then she wins the viewer’s mind as well, when she displays her passionate intellectual curiosity, her stubborn determination, her courage and integrity.

With episode six, the story moves ahead in time. Jang Geum is a young woman of 20 or so. Under the tutelage of Lady Han, Jang Geum has become one of the most promising kitchen ladies of the palace. Her only rival is Keum Young, whose family has produced the last five Head Kitchen Ladies of the palace. One of Jang Geum’s goals is to become the Head Kitchen Lady. But Keum Young’s aunt, Lady Choi, will stop at nothing to keep that office in her family’s possession.

And so Jang Geum and Lady Han are subjected to repeated attempts by the Choi clan to discredit and defeat them, by fair means or foul. Neither Lady Han nor Jang Geum ever stoop to their level, regardless of consequence. Several times their lives hang in the balance. But they will achieve their goals with honor, or not at all.

One of the things which sets Jang Geum apart from all others is her intellectual curiosity. While others are content to follow whatever was done in the past, as passed down in books or by word of mouth, Jang Geum insists on determining for herself what is best through experimentation and logical thought, even if this goes against what others are doing, or have done in the past, or against the book authorities. Both in her cooking, and later in her medical practice, she uses the scientific method of testing ideas with experiments, and of gathering evidence out in the field, whether that meant studying all the herbs in the vicinity, or testing the water, or examining patients and their symptoms and observing their reactions to various medical prescriptions.

Another strand of the story involves a Royal Guard of the scholar-official class, Min Jeong Ho, who falls in love with Jang Geum. Like Jang Geum and Lady Han, Min Jeong Ho is a man of honor and integrity. His love for Jang Geum is a virtually hopeless romance, because court ladies such as Jang Geum are forbidden romantic relationships with anyone other than the King. If the King never shows any interest in them, then they will have to live their entire life without the love of a man. Jang Geum, however, does fall in love with Min Jeong Ho, and their struggle to resolve this dilemma is one of the major value conflicts of the story.

Complicating their relationship further, Jang Geum’s rival, Keum Young, is also in love with Min Jeong Ho. It is no light infatuation, but a love which will change the entire course of Keum Young’s life in ways that are heartbreaking to see unfold.

When Jang Geum transforms herself into a physician, she begins to have regular contact with the King. To the King’s credit, he too falls in love with Jang Geum. But to make Jang Geum his concubine - the King already has a Queen - would ruin her happiness, and the King discovers this. This is another of the dramatic value conflicts that must somehow be resolved.

Dae Jang Geum is so full of dramatic value conflicts I can’t begin to touch on them all. The contrast between Jang Geum’s way of resolving her conflicts, and the way others do, highlights her larger than life, heroic spirit and integrity. Some of the characters run away from conflicts; some are not strong enough and give in, and are weighed down with guilt; some resort to dishonorable methods to get their way; only Jang Geum and Min Jeong Ho never compromise their principles.

The antagonists of the story, especially Lady Choi and Keum Young, serve an important purpose by providing a contrast to Jang Geum’s heroism. Keum Young began as a highly skilled and precocious young lady, generous to her only rival in the kitchen, Jang Geum. But when her supreme value proved to be out of her reach, her spirit was broken, and she sadly became vindictive and dishonorable. Her aunt, Lady Choi, also started out as an innocent child with benevolent goals and dreams. Both of them could remember the time in their youth when so much had been possible. Their downfall is the all-too-common human tragedy of a great potential, given up on, never fulfilled.

Like the heroes of Victor Hugo’s Romantic novels, the heroes of Dae Jang Geum remain loyal to their values to the end, no matter the struggles they must endure to achieve them. In contemplating the lives of Jang Geum and Min Jeong Ho, of Lady Han and Lady Jung, we see life being lived as it could be, and ought to be. Their values may not be the same as ours, just as the values of Lantenac and Cimourdain (two of the central characters of Hugo's novel, Ninety-three) are not ours. But, as Ayn Rand wrote, referring to those characters: “What greatness men are capable of, when they fight for their values!”

It is such a sad, stark contrast to the flippancy, the vulgarity, the cynicism, the mock-heroism of contemporary American drama, whether on television or in movies. Seeing heroic characters who take their lives, their loves, their goals seriously, who do not laugh at themselves, is an inspiration not to be missed. I urge you to take a chance on this foreign production, an unexpected gift from a talented Korean writer to the world.

There is a website, aznVtv - The Best in Asian TV, at which you can watch every episode of Dae Jang Geum. You may need to download the Winamp player, which is free on the website. Here is the url: http://aznv.tv/en/

For a brief sample of the show, you can view many clips on YouTube.

The "Disproportionate Use of Force"

2008-03-02T09:44:00.009-07:00

Palestinian terrorists have been launching rockets into Israel on a daily basis for months. Occasionally, Israel responds by air assaults on the rocket launchers, or on the leadership responsible for the offensive. Recently the rocket attacks have become more frequent and are reaching further into Israel.

Belatedly, Israel decided to respond more forcibly, with an incursion into Gaza by its ground forces. This is still inadequate. They have evidently only gone two or three miles inside Gaza, while the rocket launchers can operate from at least 15 miles deep in Gaza.

Nevertheless, even this inadequate response has drawn howls of outrage from the Palestinians, and the United Nations, as usual, weighed in on the side of the Palestinians, accusing Israel of responding with a "disproportionate use of force."

There is no such thing as a "disproportionate use of force" in defense against an aggressor. As the United States properly used all weapons at its disposal - including nuclear weapons - against the Japanese in WWII, so Israel can and should use all the force at its disposal to crush the Palestinian aggression until they cease to be aggressors.

How convenient the world would be for aggressors if their victims adhered to this insane doctrine of "proportionate use of force" in response to being attacked. Imagine hordes of Chinese attacking Taiwan in a maritime invasion, using only spears and rocks against the island's defenders. Adhering to the "proportionate use of force" doctrine, the Taiwanese use only spears and rocks in response. What happens? The Chinese easily defeat the moronic defenders, because there are more Chinese than Taiwanese. In short, the Taiwanese defeated themselves.

This is exactly what the Palestinians, and all the other countries in the Middle East that are hostile to Israel, want Israel to do. It is a recipe for national suicide. Yet the UN supports it, and so do many individual countries, including the United States.

No wonder aggressors are so emboldened in this era of moral grayness and moral "neutrality."

Coddling Dictators

2008-02-28T17:40:00.006-07:00

Barack Obama has said that if he is elected President, he will pay a visit to Cuba to talk with its current ruler, Raul Castro. Castro, of course, is a dictator, just as his brother Fidel was. In any case, it is a shameful idea. As Ayn Rand correctly pointed out long ago (from Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged):

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

A Republic - If You Can Keep It

2008-02-23T08:16:00.006-07:00

The Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a glorious Republic based on the inalienable rights of Man. We squandered that bequest long ago. How do we get it back?

The course of human events is moved by philosophy. When a rational philosophy (such as Aristotelianism) is dominant, freedom expands. When an irrational philosophy (such as Platonism) is dominant, freedom contracts. As an Objectivist, I am working toward the re-establishment of a dominant rational philosophy - namely, Objectivism. How long will this take?

In discussing this with me, a friend and fellow Objectivist wrote "when I think about how much effort is required to grasp Objectivism, I am less than confident about the future of our society."

I think that is the key. Objectivists sometimes talk about how quickly Marxism became a worldwide phenomenon. The implication being that Objectivism might duplicate that feat. But the point is, Marxism wasn't intellectual at all. It was just a call to rob the rich and give to the poor. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." That's all people took away from Marxism and that's why they - the poor, the lazy, the envious - flocked to its standard. And why they still do, under different names, like modern liberalism, environmentalism, compassionate conservatism, and the anything-goes catch all, "democracy."

Objectivism is exactly the opposite. People, if they understand it, are more likely to run away screaming, than flock to it. They don't want to have to think, they don't want to have to work, they don't want to have to be responsible for their own welfare. Establishing and maintaining a Republic is damned hard work. To quote Benjamin Franklin, in answer to someone who asked him what kind of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had come up with: "A Republic - if you can keep it."

We failed to keep it. We will have to duplicate the efforts of the Founding Fathers and their generation - the genuine "greatest generation" - to regain a Republic based on individual rights. It will not happen quickly, or easily. There is no royal road to a just society.

Philosophy: Who Needs It

2008-02-21T18:51:00.006-07:00

Everyone needs philosophy, was Ayn Rand's answer to that question, which she gave in an address to the graduating class at West Point in 1974. Everyone lives according to some philosophy, whether they realize it or not.

As Ayn Rand said in her address:

. . . the principles you accept (consciously or subconsciously) may clash with or contradict one another; they, too, have to be integrated. What integrates them? Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation - or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.

So if you want to know yourself better, if you want to gain conscious control of your life, your decisions, your judgments, if you want to understand what causes your emotions, you must learn to engage in introspection.

Do you, for example, hate profit-chasing Big Oil executives? Your answer to that question, whether negative or affirmative, reveals a part of your implicit philosophy. If you dislike the desire for profit, ask yourself why. Perhaps you believe profits are immoral. Dig down another step: why do you hold that profits are immoral? Some will answer: because the desire for profit is selfish. For these people, this answer reveals that altruism is their moral philosophy, their ethics. Altruism is the moral code which holds that service to others -selflessness - is the good, and selfishness is the evil. Think Mother Teresa, the most well known altruist in recent times.

Anything opposed to altruism, such as the pursuit of profit, is immoral to an altruist. Dig further into your philosophy and ask yourself why altruism is your moral philosophy. In pursuing these elusive answers, you will be getting at your philosophical premises.

The purpose of this exercise in self-examination is to become aware of the philosophical premises that have been guiding your life subconsciously - without your authorization, so to speak. Most people will find some of the premises they have adopted, somewhere along the way, are not supportable upon close examination. Then discard them, and replace them with premises you can support.

After a lifetime of persistent self-examination, and of pestering others to do the same, the Greek philosopher, Socrates, was convicted of corrupting the minds of the young. He faced the death penalty, but it was suggested he might be allowed to live if he would accept exile, and cease to be the annoying philosophical gadfly he admitted to being. He refused the offer. The unexamined life, he said, is not worth living.

Ragtime: A Musical Interlude

2008-02-17T11:29:00.003-07:00

An example of the benevolent spirit of ragtime music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGyQmKmIMp4

I generally prefer solo piano ragtime, but this is an excellent banjo version of Dill Pickles Rag, by Charles Johnson.

Poetic Interlude

2008-02-17T11:04:00.001-07:00

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

Edgar Allan Poe

Ecce Homo

2008-02-13T18:17:00.006-07:00

Howard Roark, intransigent architect hero of Ayn Rand's novel, The Fountainhead, is one of the most inspiring creations in the history of literature. He had his own ideas about what and how to build, and he turned them into reality in spite of all the obstacles a timid and envious society could hurl against him.

Much more inspiring, though, is an intransigent hero who actually existed. Behold the man, Wilbur Wright. The oldest dream of man was to fly. Icarus, Bellerophon on Pegasus, flying carpets, and countless other myths and fables show the dream realized in fiction. Leonardo Da Vinci, a hero of the Renaissance, worked on making the dream a reality, but it was too early. Technology was not yet advanced enough.

When the technology was ready, Wilbur Wright (and to a lesser extent, Orville Wright) stepped forward and engineered the marvel of powered flight. From the dauntless self-confidence needed to believe he could achieve this "impossible dream," through long hours of research, countless brilliant experiments, successes and setbacks - all funded from the Wrights' own savings - to the epoch making first flight at Kill Devil Hills (near Kitty Hawk), Wilbur Wright overcame every obstacle.

He conquered the sky.

Wilbur Wright is man, the hero. Next time someone moans that he is "only human," remind him of what heroes men can be, by pointing to Wilbur Wright.

Once Upon a Time in America

2008-02-11T18:13:00.002-07:00

With a population of some three million, colonial America produced more Statesmen than modern America can produce with her 300 million. How can that be, when we have the advantage of public education?

America still produces brilliant and ambitious men. But none of them yearn to be part of our Government, as they did in our Revolutionary days. Those were days of ferment when great things were being accomplished in government, namely the enshrinement of man's inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and the establishment of a Republic - a nation of laws, and not of men.

What is government doing today? The long train of abuses and usurpations one could list would put those of King George III to shame. Nobody with any honor or self-respect would agree to be part of such a government, except with the express purpose of annihilating the work of the last century of misgovernment.

There are no such Statesmen today, anywhere upon the landscape.

To Whom It May Concern

2008-02-10T19:13:00.001-07:00

The title of my blog refers to the song from The Sound of Music. I admire the song for its dedication to freedom in the face of advancing totalitarian forces. The alpine flower, edelweiss, is used in the song to symbolize freedom.

" . . . blossom of snow

may you bloom and grow,

bloom and grow forever.

Edelweiss, edelweiss,

bless my homeland forever."

From Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music.