Winston Churchill: Born On This Day 150 Years Ago

Today is 150th anniversary of the birth of the great British statesman, Winston Churchill. The 19th century American literary icon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said "there is properly no history, only biography." You'll get some argument about that statement these days. On the other hand, in the last century and a half there is Churchill. I think we would be hard-pressed to find a better illustration of history as biography in that time frame.

Churchill with his son and grandson in 1953

From his Wikipedia entry:

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill KG OM CH TD DLFRS RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a superb writer (as Winston S. Churchill), and an artist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

The Lion at 10 Downing Street in London, 1940

Churchill in 1895

For more on information on Winston Churchill go here. And, thanks to Steven Hayward at Powerline, here is a teachable moment from the renowned political philosopher, Leo Strauss, on hearing of Churchill's death in 1965. In addition, we cannot forget Churchill as a historian. He was both an extraordinary observer and compelling writer. New readers should start their journey with My Early Life: A Roving Commission, first published in 1930. I have a feeling it will not be their last volume by Churchill.

Churchill was a master of the English language but even he struggled for the right words to both describe the reality his countrymen faced at the hands of Luftwaffe bombers during the the Blitz of 1940 and 1941 as well as rally them to endure what he knew would be their darkest hour:

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

For seventy years, he served the people of Great Britain and the colonies from the role of soldier to that of statesman. Aside from the monarchy, especially the reign of Elizabeth II, there is arguably no other indivudual in the modern era who personifies England and its people more than Winston Churchill.

Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
public domain photos, Imperial War Museums

A Day of Deaths Remembered And Forgotten

On November 22, 1963, C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, and John F. Kennedy died in the span of seventy minutes. It is common knowledge that Kennedy died on this day but his death and funeral will forever overshadow the passing of two internationally famous and influential personalities of the 20th century. Although they could hardly come from three more distinct and disparate perspectives, all three of them shared deep concerns about the future of the planet and its inhabitants.

Clive Staples (C. S.) Lewis was one of the last century's leading scholars, novelists, and Christian apologists. Most readers likely know his name, but many may not be familiar with the depth and breadth of his literary accomplishments. From my perspective, if you cannot enjoy a Lewis book you simply haven't read enough of his work. I was introduced to the author through a gift. My best friend gave me a copy of The Four Loves (1960) as medication for some perplexing developments in a relationship with Marti, the girl of my dreams at the time. Eventually, Marti moved on with a professor of English at UNC Chapel Hill. I was left with a life-long literary relationship with Lewis. I trust Marti found the stars in a life of happiness with the prof.

Although Lewis was far from reclusive, he appreciated his privacy. For that reason, we have few interviews and recordings of the man. Fortunately, we do have a portrayal that gives some insight into what made him a beloved writer:

Aldous Huxley shared the life of the mind with Lewis but little else outside of his English background and writing skills. A humanist and lifelong pacifist, Huxley was a prolific writer best known for his novels and essays. Among the novels is Brave New World, a dystopic world view written in 1931 as a parody of utopian novels popular earlier in the century. From a spiritual perspective he was an agnostic who maintained a strong interest in mysticism, universalism. and Vedanta. Later in his life, Huxley would be remembered for his experiments with hallucinogenic drugs and his accounts thereof including, The Door of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956). Here he is in a 1958 television interview discussing threats to freedom in the United States:

Both Lewis and Huxley cast long intellectual shadows across the globe while Kennedy's thousand days left us with "a fleeting wisp of glory" that follows us to this day. A random day in November brought them together in death, each worthy of remembrance of who they were, what they did and, in one case, what they could have become.

Lest we forget Lewis, Huxley, and Kennedy.  

 

How To Be An Election Combat Prepper: First Of All Believe Nothing

We are now 101 days from November 5, 2024, and the presidential election. Regardless of the outcome it's promising to be a vicious campaign as the Democrats struggle to win the House and retain control of the Senate and install a far left Californian as our president. Another significant ingredient will be the collective anger among tens of millions of voters on the right and left who remain upset with the embattled 2020 election process. And finally there is the issue of Democrats reconciling the fact that their presumed nominee lied not only to her fellow Democrats but also to the American people about the mental health of her boss  while he was tottering through almost four years of mid and late stage dementia. It's not our best choice either way as I see it but I'm quite sure the disillusionment and anger will easily translate into plenty of confrontational election tactics.

Around 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a guidebook advising those in power on how to keep it. Four and a half centuries later, Saul Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals advising those out of power on how to take it from those in charge. It's all about keeping and holding power. We have a huge struggle for that power coming in the next one hundred days. You'll have to read Machiavelli for yourself. It can be a challenge. On the other hand, Alinsky's book is nicely structured, very readable as a playbook, and an aid to the critical thinking you'll need to navigate the campaign battlefield.

In preparation for the desperate and emotional battle that's coming, I thought it would be the perfect time to give readers a booster shot of the political tactics we're likely to encounter from our politicians and their organizations. They won't be new to readers here because they've become the subject of an OTR post in presidential election years. Many of the tactics have been a feature of American elections for well over a century. It took the mind and experience of Saul Alinsky, long recognized as the founding father of community organizing, to best articulated them in his 1971 book. He was after all a Chicago native trained at the University of Chicago and a veteran organizer and political activist in the city's neighborhoods. His experience taught him early that politics was a very dirty game. That's one reason he dedicated the book to Lucifer.

My copy purchased in 1971 during my revolutionary days

Democrats, especially those from the party's "progressive" wing, were well aware of the value of the tactics described herein and used them effectively during their convention in Chicago in 1968. They used them successfully against a naive Republican Party until late in the last century. By then American politics had become a vicious game of win or lose instead of compromise. Eventually GOP campaign strategists recognized political reality required them to fight fire with fire. That said here are the twelve rules or tactics we'll see at work every day until the election and beyond. My condensation of supporting information from the book is in brackets.


1. Power is not only what you have, it's what the enemy thinks you have. [Power is derived from two main sources - money and people.]

2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. [It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.]

3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. [Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.]

4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. [You can kill them with this because nobody can possibly obey all of their own rules.]

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. [There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating.]

6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long become a drag. [Don't become old news. Even radical activists get bored.]

8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. [Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, recover, regroup or re-strategize.]

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. [Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.]

10. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. [Violence from the other side can become a positive because the public sympathizes with the underdog.]

11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. [Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.]

12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions, people hurt faster than institutions.]


Look carefully at these words. Any way you look at them, there is rough play, play for keeps. We've read and heard them daily and watched their consequences unfold on our national stage especially since 2008. Time and experience have taught me well and today I see it as an unsettling and potentially dangerous book now that it has become mainstream. I trust readers will benefit from this information as we face what may well be the most significant national election in our time.

Some readers may be curious how I came to own a first edition of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals [1971]. First, the political events of the 1960's were not good to me. After President Kennedy's murder in 1963,  Barry Goldwater's loss to Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election of 1964, and the physical and mental slaughter in Vietnam and the US, I became an anarchist in the classical sense of the word. That's when I encountered Rules for Radicals. My copy's been read many, many times, it's a bit yellow here and there, and the dust jacket has a few small tears and scuffs; otherwise, it's in excellent condition.

As a husband and father, and student of the American experience, I have moved right of center in politics and economics over the years, but always maintained a fiercely liberal position on many social issues. In essence I'm now a Jeffersonian Democrat - somewhat conservative, somewhat libertarian, somewhat classical Republican - and that makes it difficult to place me in context in today's polarized political environment. Regardless, most folks smile and take on a puzzled look, but  many of them break out in laughter when they learn I never never once liked Richard Nixon. Not even when I was six years old.

Charlie Chaplin: The Consumate Comedian

If you took a photograph of the "Little Tramp" to almost any corner of the world touched by Western culture, chances are, someone would recognize it. That's a powerful statement given that the character hasn't appeared in a film for over seventy years. Greatness persists. And so it is with Charlie Chaplin, born on this date in London in 1889.

In his 88 years, he graced the world of entertainment as a performer, director, producer, businessman, and composer. His concern for everyday people and their often difficult lives was a common theme in virtually all his films as well as his private life. Such humanitarian sympathies led him to ally with well-known leftist in the U.S. and eventually leave the country in the early 1950s'. Through it all, his endearing, bumbling yet refined tramp brought laughter and awareness to millions.


Take some time today to visit Chaplin's official site. The biography page is especially useful, providing information about nine "masterpiece features" and a complete filmography. Chaplin has three films on the American Film Institute's Greatest Films of All Time list. They are: City Lights (1931) at #11, The Gold Rush (1925) at #58, and Modern Times (1936) at #78. It's important to keep in mind that Chaplin was the director, producer, writer, star, composer, and editor for all of these films except Modern Times, edited by Willard Nico.

My personal favorite among all of his films is The Great Dictator (1940). Interestingly, this film was Chaplin's first "talkie." In it Chaplin portrays two characters, the "Little Tramp" variation of a Jewish veteran of World War I attempting to reestablish his life as a barber, and Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomainia. Any resemblance between Adenoid Hynkel and Adolph Hitler is completely intentional. The film is a masterful piece of political satire made as an appeal to Americans and their leadership to wake up to the threat of Nazi Germany. It's often cited as the finest example of the use of ridicule in film in the twentieth century.

Here are two clips from The Great Dictator. First is the famous "globe scene," and second, "Benzino Napaloni - played to ridiculous perfection by Jack Oakie - meets Adenoid Hynkel at the train station." These clips are restricted and can be viewed by clicking on the YouTube link provided. 

 

Happy birthday, Little Tramp. Thank you for being the comedian you were and for helping shape the comedy we enjoy today.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

                    Charlie Chaplin

Some Advice On Prepping For The Coming Election Season

 

We are now fifteen months away from November 2024 and the presidential election. Regardless of the outcome it's promising to be a vicious campaign as the Socialist Democrats struggle to win the House and retain control of the Senate and the future of the Biden presidency. Another significant ingredient will be the collective anger among tens of millions of voters on the right and left who remain upset with an embattled candidate consumed by his 2020 loss and a sitting president tottering through a now rapid descent into late stage dementia. It's not a good choice either way and the chorus for change grows louder week by week. I believe the anger translates easily to motivation and in turn to more confrontational election tactics.

Around 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a guidebook advising those in power on how to keep it. Four and a half centuries later, Saul Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals advising those out of power on how to take it from those in charge. It's all about keeping and holding power. We have a struggle for that power coming next year. You'll have to read Machiavelli for yourself. It can be a challenge. On the other hand, Alinsky's book is nicely structured, very readable as a playbook, and an aid to the critical thinking you'll need to navigate the campaign battlefield.

In preparation for the desperate and emotional battle that's coming, I thought it would be the perfect time to give readers a booster shot of the political tactics we're likely to encounter from our politicians and their organizations. They won't be new to readers here because they've become the subject of an OTR post in presidential election years. Many of the tactics have been a feature of American elections for well over a century. It took the mind and experience of Saul Alinsky, long recognized as the founding father of community organizing, to best articulated them in his 1971 book. He was after all a Chicago native trained at the University of Chicago and a veteran organizer and political activist in the city's neighborhoods. His experience taught him early that politics was a very dirty game. That's one reason he dedicated the book to Lucifer.

My copy purchased in 1971 during my revolutionary days

Democrats, especially those from the party's "progressive" wing, were well aware of the value of the tactics described herein and used them effectively during their convention in Chicago in 1968. They used them successfully against a naive Republican Party until late in the last century. By then American politics had become a vicious game of win or lose instead of compromise. Eventually GOP campaign strategists recognized political reality required them to fight fire with fire. That said here are the twelve rules or tactics we'll see at work every day until the election and beyond. My condensation of supporting information from the book is in brackets.


1. Power is not only what you have, it's what the enemy thinks you have. [Power is derived from two main sources - money and people.]

2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. [It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.]

3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. [Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.]

4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. [You can kill them with this because nobody can possibly obey all of their own rules.]

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. [There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating.]

6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long become a drag. [Don't become old news. Even radical activists get bored.]

8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. [Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, recover, regroup or re-strategize.]

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. [Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.]

10. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. [Violence from the other side can become a positive because the public sympathizes with the underdog.]

11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. [Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.]

12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions, people hurt faster than institutions.]


Look carefully at these words. Any way you look at them, there is rough play, play for keeps. We've read and heard them daily and watched their consequences unfold on our national stage especially since 2008. Time and experience have taught me well and today I see it as an unsettling and potentially dangerous book now that it has become mainstream. I trust readers will benefit from this information as we face what may well be the most significant national election in our time.

In closing, some readers may be curious how I came to own a first edition of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals [1971]. First, the political events of the 1960's were not good to me. After President Kennedy's murder in 1963 , Barry Goldwater's loss to Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election of 1964, and the physical and mental slaughter in Vietnam and the US, I became an anarchist in the classical sense of the word. That's when I encountered Rules for Radicals. It's been read many, many times, it's a bit yellow here and there, and the dust jacket has a few small tears and scuffs; otherwise, it's in excellent condition. 

As a husband and father, and student of the American experience, I moved right of center in politics and economics over the years, but always maintained a fiercely liberal position on many social issues. In essence I'm now a Jeffersonian Democrat and that makes it difficult to place me in context in today's polarized political environment. On the other hand, most folks smile and laugh and many are happy to know I never once liked Richard Nixon. Not even when I was six years old.

The Little Tramp: Charlie Chaplin So Very Much Remembered

If you took a photograph of the "Little Tramp" to almost any corner of the world touched by Western culture, chances are, someone would recognize it. That's a powerful statement given that the character hasn't appeared in a film for over seventy years. Greatness persists. And so it is with Charlie Chaplin, born on this date in London in 1889.

In his 88 years, he graced the world of entertainment as a performer, director, producer, businessman, and composer. His concern for everyday people and their often difficult lives was a common theme in virtually all his films as well as his private life. Such humanitarian sympathies led him to ally with well-known leftist in the U.S. and eventually leave the country in the early 1950s'. Through it all, his endearing, bumbling yet refined tramp brought laughter and awareness to millions.

Take some time today to visit Chaplin's official site. The biography page is especially useful, providing information about nine "masterpiece features" and a complete filmography. Chaplin has three films on the American Film Institute's Greatest Films of All Time list. They are: City Lights (1931) at #11, The Gold Rush (1925) at #58, and Modern Times (1936) at #78. It's important to keep in mind that Chaplin was the director, producer, writer, star, composer, and editor for all of these films except Modern Times, edited by Willard Nico.

My personal favorite among all of his films is The Great Dictator (1940). Interestingly, this film was Chaplin's first "talkie." In it Chaplin portrays two characters, the "Little Tramp" variation of a Jewish veteran of World War I attempting to reestablish his life as a barber, and Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomainia. Any resemblance between Adenoid Hynkel and Adolph Hitler is completely intentional. The film is a masterful piece of political satire made as an appeal to Americans and their leadership to wake up to the threat of Nazi Germany. It's often cited as the finest example of the use of ridicule in film in the twentieth century.

Here are two clips from The Great Dictator. First is the famous "globe scene," and second, "Benzino Napaloni - played to ridiculous perfection by Jack Oakie - meets Adenoid Hynkel at the train station."

  A day without laughter is a day wasted.

                                                                               Charlie Chaplin

Paul Robeson: A Ground-Breaking Star Lost To Activism

One of the finest natural singing talents of the last century was the American bass baritone, Paul Robeson, born April 8, 1898. Robeson had an extraordinary voice and in my opinion the finest diction of any male performer in the 20th century. He was also a scholar, athlete, actor, and a graduate of Rutgers University and Columbia Law School. You can read more about his biography here.

Paul Robeson                              Gordon Parks, 1942

By 1928 he was already known in the US and UK as a successful singer and actor on stage and film, Later that year his role in the London production of the musical, Showboat, and the song, "Ol' Man River," made him a star. In the next decade he achieved even more success as a singer and actor and broadened his concern with discrimination affecting his fellow black Americans and Africans world-wide. A 1934 visit to the Soviet Union where he met Joseph Stalin and was treated like royalty helped turn him from art to Marxist activism. Sadly for the next 25 years his role as a Soviet propagandist completely derailed his arts career. Opposition to Robeson's political stance softened by 1960 and he attempted to restore his place as a singer. Unfortunately, ill health intervened and he returned to the United States where he lived a near reclusive life until his death in 1976.

Although Robeson always denied Communist Party membership, in 1998 during the centennial celebration of his birth, Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, revealed that he was indeed a secret member of the party for several decades. More telling perhaps was Robeson's Stalinist dedication. This is what he wrote in tribute on news of Stalin's death in 1953:

Today in Korea -- in Southeast Asia -- in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East, in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage -- what sacrifice -- what determination never to rest until victory!

Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics. They see how under the great Stalin millions like themselves have found a new life. They see that aided and guided by the example of the Soviet Union, led by their Mao Tse-tung, a new China adds its mighty power to the true and expanding socialist way of life. They see formerly semi-colonial Eastern European nations building new People's Democracies, based upon the people's power with the people shaping their own destinies. So much of this progress stems from the magnificent leadership, theoretical and practical, given by their friend Joseph Stalin.

They have sung -- sing now and will sing his praise -- in song and story. Slava - slava - slava - Stalin, Glory to Stalin. Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands.

In all spheres of modern life the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin - the shapers of humanity's richest present and future.

It may be difficult for some to understand how in 1934 Robeson as a scholar could be driven by the social ills of his native country into the welcoming arms of a dictatorship actively murdering millions of its own people. At least three factors were at work: the social and political devastation of World War I, a capitalist economy in depression, and in the case of the United States, an activist federal executive backed by a sympathetic national press. Had Robeson used his gifted voice rather than political ideology as the basis for his activism, I have no doubt he would have become a well-known, widely respected civil rights leader as well as a beloved American entertainer with a historic, lifetime career in opera, popular song, and jazz.

Here's why I hold that opinion:

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Gordon Parks, Office of War Information photo, 1942, Library of Congress, Prints and Photos Division, Farm Security Administration

Text:
wikipedia.com
Robeson, Paul (1978). Sheldon, Philip; Foner, Henry, eds. Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews, A Centennial Celebration, Citadel Press

Saul Alinsky's Rules Of Politics And Power You Should Know

 

We are now approaching 100 days away from November 8 and the mid-term elections. Regardless of the outcome it's promising to be a vicious campaign as the Socialist Democrats struggle to retain control of the House and Senate and the future of the Biden presidency. Another significant ingredient will be the collective anger among tens of millions of voters on the right who remain upset with the presidential election process and outcome in 2020. Regardless of the validity of their claims, the anger translates easily to motivation and I think that in turn translates to more confrontational election tactics.

Around 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a guidebook advising those in power on how to keep it. Four and a half centuries later, Saul Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals advising those out of power on how to take it from those in charge. It's all about keeping and holding power. We have a struggle for that power coming next year. You'll have to read Machiavelli for yourself. It can be a challenge. On the other hand, Alinsky's book is nicely structured, very readable as a playbook, and an aid to the critical thinking you'll need to navigate the campaign battlefield.

In preparation for the desperate and emotional battle that's coming, I thought it would be the perfect time to give readers a booster shot of the political tactics we're likely to encounter from our politicians and their organizations. They won't be new to readers here because they've become the subject of an OTR post in presidential election years. Many of the tactics have been a feature of American elections for well over a century. It took the mind and experience of Saul Alinsky, long recognized as the founding father of community organizing, to best articulated them in his 1971 book. He was after all a Chicago native trained at the University of Chicago and a veteran organizer and political activist in the city's neighborhoods. His experience taught him early that politics was a very dirty game. That's one reason he dedicated the book to Lucifer.  

My copy purchased in 1971 during my revolutionary days

Democrats, especially those from the party's left wing, were well aware of the value of the tactics described herein and used them effectively during their convention in Chicago in 1968. They used them successfully against a naive Republican Party until late in the last century. By then American politics had become a vicious game of win or lose instead of compromise. Eventually GOP campaign strategists recognized political reality required them to fight fire with fire. That said here are the twelve rules or tactics we'll see at work every day until the election and beyond. My condensation of supporting information from the book is in brackets.



1. Power is not only what you have, it's what the enemy thinks you have. [Power is derived from two main sources - money and people.]

2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. [It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.]

3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. [Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.]

4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. [You can kill them with this because nobody can possibly obey all of their own rules.]

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. [There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating.]

6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long become a drag. [Don't become old news. Even radical activists get bored.]

8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. [Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, recover, regroup or re-strategize.]

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. [Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.]

10. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. [Violence from the other side can become a positive because the public sympathizes with the underdog.]

11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. [Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.]

12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions, people hurt faster than institutions.]



Look carefully at these words. Any way you look at them, there is rough play, play for keeps. We've read and heard them daily and watched their consequences unfold on our national stage especially since 2016. Time and experience have taught me well and today I see it as an unsettling and potentially dangerous book now that it has become mainstream. I trust readers will benefit from this information as we face what may well be the most significant national election in our time.

In closing, some readers may be curious how I came to own a first edition of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals [1971]. First, the political events of the 1960's were not good to me. After President Kennedy's murder in 1963 , Barry Goldwater's loss to Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election of 1964, and the physical and mental slaughter in Vietnam, I became an anarchist in the classical sense of the word. That's when I encountered Rules for Radicals. It's been read many, many times, it's a bit yellow here and there, and the dust jacket has a few small tears and scuffs; otherwise, it's in excellent condition. As a husband, father, and student of the American experience I've moved right of center in politics and economics but maintain a fiercely liberal position on many social issues. In other words it's hard to define me politically. On the other hand, many of you will be happy to know I never once liked Richard Nixon. Even when I was six years old.

Remembering The Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplin, On His Birthday

 \

If you took a photograph of the "Little Tramp" to almost any corner of the world touched by Western culture, chances are, someone would recognize it. That's a powerful statement given that the character hasn't appeared in a film for over seventy years. Greatness persists. And so it is with Charlie Chaplin, born on this date in London in 1889.

In his 88 years, he graced the world of entertainment as a performer, director, producer, businessman, and composer. His concern for everyday people and their often difficult lives was a common theme in virtually all his films as well as his private life. Such humanitarian sympathies led him to ally with well-known leftist in the U.S. and eventually leave the country in the early 1950s'. Through it all, his endearing, bumbling yet refined tramp brought laughter and awareness to millions.

Take some time today to visit Chaplin's official site. The biography page is especially useful, providing information about nine "masterpiece features" and a complete filmography. Chaplin has three films on the American Film Institute's Greatest Films of All Time list. They are: City Lights (1931) at #11, The Gold Rush (1925) at #58, and Modern Times (1936) at #78. It's important to keep in mind that Chaplin was the director, producer, writer, star, composer, and editor for all of these films except Modern Times, edited by Willard Nico.

My personal favorite among all of his films is The Great Dictator (1940). Interestingly, this film was Chaplin's first "talkie." In it Chaplin portrays two characters, the "Little Tramp" variation of a Jewish veteran of World War I attempting to reestablish his life as a barber, and Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomainia. Any resemblance between Adenoid Hynkel and Adolph Hitler is completely intentional. The film is a masterful piece of political satire made as an appeal to Americans and their leadership to wake up to the threat of Nazi Germany. It's often cited as the finest example of the use of ridicule in film in the twentieth century.

Here are two clips from The Great Dictator. First is the famous "globe scene," and second, "Benzino Napaloni - played to ridiculous perfection by Jack Oakie - meets Adenoid Hynkel at the train station."

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

                                                                                                   Charlie Chaplin

The First Black American To Achieve International Stardom Was Paul Robeson

 

One of the finest natural singing talents of the last century was the American bass baritone, Paul Robeson, born April 8, 1898. Robeson had an extraordinary voice and in my opinion the finest diction of any male performer in the 20th century. He was also a scholar, athlete, actor, and a graduate of Rutgers University and Columbia Law School. You can read more about his biography here.

Paul Robeson                 Gordon Parks, 1942

By 1928 he was already known in the US and UK as a successful singer and actor on stage and film, Later that year his role in the London production of the musical, Showboat, and the song, "Ol' Man River," made him a star. In the next decade he achieved even more success as a singer and actor and broadened his concern with discrimination affecting his fellow black Americans and Africans world-wide. A 1934 visit to the Soviet Union where he met Joseph Stalin and was treated like royalty helped turn him from art to Marxist activism. Sadly for the next 25 years his role as a Soviet propagandist completely derailed his arts career. Opposition to Robeson's political stance softened by 1960 and he attempted to restore his place as a singer. Unfortunately, ill health intervened and he returned to the United States where he lived a near reclusive life until his death in 1976.

Although Robeson always denied Communist Party membership, in 1998 during the centennial celebration of his birth, Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, revealed that he was indeed a secret member of the party for several decades. More telling perhaps was Robeson's Stalinist dedication. This is what he wrote in tribute on news of Stalin's death in 1953:

Today in Korea -- in Southeast Asia -- in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East, in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage -- what sacrifice -- what determination never to rest until victory!

Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics. They see how under the great Stalin millions like themselves have found a new life. They see that aided and guided by the example of the Soviet Union, led by their Mao Tse-tung, a new China adds its mighty power to the true and expanding socialist way of life. They see formerly semi-colonial Eastern European nations building new People's Democracies, based upon the people's power with the people shaping their own destinies. So much of this progress stems from the magnificent leadership, theoretical and practical, given by their friend Joseph Stalin.

They have sung -- sing now and will sing his praise -- in song and story. Slava - slava - slava - Stalin, Glory to Stalin. Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands.

In all spheres of modern life the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin - the shapers of humanity's richest present and future.

It may be difficult for some to understand how in 1934 Robeson as a scholar could be driven by the social ills of his native country into the welcoming arms of a dictatorship actively murdering millions of its own people. At least three factors were at work: the social and political devastation of World War I, a capitalist economy in depression, and in the case of the United States, an activist federal executive backed by a sympathetic national press. Had Robeson used his gifted voice rather than political ideology as the basis for his activism, I have no doubt he would have become a well-known, widely respected civil rights leader as well as a beloved American entertainer with a historic, lifetime career in opera, popular song, and jazz.

Here's why I hold that opinion:

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Gordon Parks, Office of War Information photo, 1942, Library of Congress, Prints and Photos Division, Farm Security Administration

Text:
wikipedia.com
Robeson, Paul (1978). Sheldon, Philip; Foner, Henry, eds. Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews, A Centennial Celebration, Citadel Press

Rules For Our Election Merry-Go-Round 2022

I noticed something different about You Tube last night. The political ads are back. They're brief, repetitive. and best described as ten second lies. Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda for the National Socialist Party during the Hitler years, would be proud. In Georgia we're facing several contentious campaigns over the next seven months. I don't look forward to it because the nation's collective anger and unrest translates easily into more confrontational election tactics. For a long time leftist democrats had the edge because they had a modern day playbook for such contests. It wasn't until the last decade of the last century that conservatives took serious notice. Today the playbook, Rules For Radicals, is required reading for any candidate at any government and corporate executive level. 

Around 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a guidebook advising those in power on how to keep it. Four and a half centuries later, Saul Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals advising those out of power on how to take it from those in charge. It's all about keeping and holding power. We have a struggle for that power coming in November. You'll have to read Machiavelli for yourself. It can be a challenge. On the other hand, Alinsky's book is nicely structured, very readable as a playbook, and an aid to the critical thinking you'll need to navigate the battlefield.

If you read this blog frequently you've likely encountered similar posts but regardless of how many times you read the rules a quick refresher can only make you better prepared. Many of the tactics have been a feature of American elections for well over a century. It took the experience and mind of Alinsky, long recognized as the founding father of community organizing, to best articulated them in his 1971 book. As a Chicago native trained at the University of Chicago and a veteran organizer and political activist in the city's neighborhoods he was well prepared for the task.

My copy purchased in 1971 during my revolutionary days

Here are the twelve rules or tactics we'll see at work every day until the election and beyond. My condensation of supporting information from the book is in brackets.



1. Power is not only what you have, it's what the enemy thinks you have. [Power is derived from two main sources - money and people.]

2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. [It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.]

3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. [Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.]

4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. [You can kill them with this because nobody can possibly obey all of their own rules.]

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. [There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating.]

6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long become a drag. [Don't become old news. Even radical activists get bored.]

8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. [Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, recover, regroup or re-strategize.]

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. [Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.]

10. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. [Violence from the other side can become a positive because the public sympathizes with the underdog.]

11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. [Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.]

12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions, people hurt faster than institutions.]




Any way you look at these words there is rough play, play for keeps. We've read and heard them daily and watched their consequences unfold on our national stage especially since 2016. Time and experience have taught me well and today I see it as an unsettling and potentially dangerous book now that it has become mainstream. I trust readers will benefit from this information as we face what may well be one of the most significant national elections in our time.

All You Need Is A Maybach GLS 600

 

Readers usually find lots of birthdays in my posts. Today is no exception; however, the center of our attention is a thing rather than a person. It's the "Peace Sign," introduced this week in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a British artist who developed it as a logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The antiwar movements of the 1960's readily adopted it as an international peace symbol.

The design was quite simple. The vertical line was derived from the British semaphore code symbol for "N" - standing for "Nuclear." The arms came from the symbol for "D." - standing for "Disarmament." Both were set in a circle symbolizing the world.

We've come fifty years and two generations from those early demonstrations and its new symbol. That's plenty of time for symbology to change but in this case most contemporary demonstrators still get it right. Most demonstrators but not all.

Perhaps this phenomenon is little more than a common oversight. On the other hand I suspect that the huge growth in American prosperity, marketing, and wokism coupled with a decline in educational standards over those decades may be a greater influence. It is a comfortable journey from the houses most boomers experienced as children to the bourgeoisie dwellings we own - perhaps "finance" is a better term - in today's world. Add trust fund babes and legacy admissions to elite schools to the mix and one can see where there may be some confusion with historic symbols and the branding going on in Mom and Dad's three- bay detached garage. If they only knew.

Gerald Holtom earned nothing directly from designing the peace symbol, an image that cannot be copyrighted or trademarked. Commercial users have made billions off the symbol now ubiquitous in our culture 64 years following its introduction.

Sources:

Wikipedia, Gerald Holton
Center for Nuclear Disarmament
The Peace Symbol Celebrates Its 57th Birthday, But Still No Peace, truth-out.org

Interpreting The Dirt: Some Preparation For The 2022 Political Campaign

This post appeared a few times over the last six years or so during election campaign seasons. In a few months we'll be entering the 2022 season which I expect to be especially contentious given that control of the House and Senate - the future of the Biden presidency - hangs in the balance. Another significant ingredient in the coming election will be the collective anger among tens of millions of voters on the right who remain upset with the presidential election process and outcome in 2020. Regardless of the validity of their claims, the anger translates easily to motivation and I think that in turn translates to more confrontational election tactics. 

Around 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a guidebook advising those in power on how to keep it. Four and a half centuries later, Saul Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals advising those out of power on how to take it from those in charge. It's all about keeping and holding power. We have a struggle for that power coming next year. You'll have to read Machiavelli for yourself. It can be a challenge. On the other hand, Alinsky's book is nicely structured, very readable as a playbook, and an aid to the critical thinking you'll need to navigate the battlefield.   

On the eve of the 2022 election campaigns, I thought it would be the perfect time to give readers a booster shot of the political tactics we're likely to encounter from our politicians and their organizations.  They won't be new to readers here because they've become the subject of an OTR post in presidential election years.  Many of the tactics have been a feature of American elections for well over a century. It took the mind of Saul Alinsky, long recognized as the founding father of community organizing, to best articulated them in his 1971 book, Rules for Radicals. Alinsky was a Chicago native trained at the University of Chicago and a veteran organizer and political activist in the city's neighborhoods.

My copy purchased in 1971 during my revolutionary days

Democrats, especially those from the party's left wing, were well aware of the value of the tactics described herein and used them effectively during their convention in Chicago in 1968. They used them successfully against a naive Republican Party until late in the last century. By then American politics had become a vicious game of win or lose instead of compromise. Eventually GOP campaign strategists recognized political reality required them to fight fire with fire. That said here are the twelve rules or tactics we'll see at work every day until the election and beyond. My condensation of supporting information from the book is in brackets.

1. Power is not only what you have, it's what the enemy thinks you have. [Power is derived from two main sources - money and people.]

2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. [It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.]

3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. [Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.]

4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. [You can kill them with this because nobody can possibly obey all of their own rules.]

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. [There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating.]

6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long become a drag. [Don't become old news. Even radical activists get bored.]

8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. [Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, recover, regroup or re-strategize.]

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. [Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.]

10. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. [Violence from the other side can become a positive because the public sympathizes with the underdog.]

11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. [Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.]

12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions, people hurt faster than institutions.]

Look carefully at these words. Any way to look at them, there is rough play, play for keeps.  We've read and heard them daily and watched their consequences unfold on our national stage especially since 2016. Time and experience have taught me well and today I see it as an unsettling and potentially dangerous book now that it has become mainstream. I trust readers will benefit from this information as we face what may well be the most significant national election in our time.

In closing, some readers may be curious how I came to own a first edition of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals [1971].  First, the political events of the 1960's were not good to me. After President Kennedy's murder in 1963 , Barry Goldwater's loss to Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election of 1964, and the physical and mental slaughter in Vietnam, I became an anarchist in the classical sense of the word.  That's when I encountered Rules for Radicals.  It's been read many, many times, it's a bit yellow here and there, and the dust jacket has a few small tears and scuffs; otherwise, it's in excellent condition.  As a husband, father, and student of the American experience I've moved right of center in politics and economics but maintain a fiercely liberal position on many social issues. In other words it's hard to define me politically. On the other hand, many of you will be happy to know I never once liked Richard Nixon. Even when I was six years old.

Tactics For Our Time

With 100 or so days remaining until the November election, I thought it would be the perfect time to give readers a booster shot of the political tactics we're likely to encounter from our politicians and their organizations.  They won't be new to readers here because they've become the subject of an OTR post in presidential election years.  Many of the tactics have been a feature of American elections for well over a century. It took the mind of Saul Alinsky, long recognized as the founding father of community organizing, to best articulated them in his 1971 book, Rules for Radicals. Alinsky was a Chicago native trained at the University of Chicago and a veteran organizer and political activist in the city's neighborhoods.

My copy 

Democrats, especially those from the party's left wing, were well aware of the value of the tactics described herein and used them effectively during their convention in Chicago in 1968. They used them successfully against a naive Republican Party until late in the last century. By then American politics had become a vicious game of win or lose instead of compromise. Eventually GOP campaign strategists recognized political reality required them to fight fire with fire. That said here are the twelve rules or tactics we'll see at work every day until the election and beyond. My condensation of supporting information from the book is in brackets.

1. Power is not only what you have, it's what the enemy thinks you have. [Power is derived from two main sources - money and people.]

2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. [It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.]

3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. [Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.]

4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. [You can kill them with this because nobody can possibly obey all of their own rules.]

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. [There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating.]

6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long become a drag. [Don't become old news. Even radical activists get bored.]

8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. [Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, recover, regroup or re-strategize.]

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. [Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.]

10. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. [Violence from the other side can become a positive because the public sympathizes with the underdog.]

11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. [Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.]

12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions, people hurt faster than institutions.]

Look carefully at these words. Any way to look at them, there is rough play, play for keeps.  We've read and heard them daily and watched their consequences unfold on our national stage especially since 2016. Time and experience have taught me well and today I see it as an unsettling and potentially dangerous book now that it has become mainstream. I trust readers will benefit from this information as we face what may well be the most significant national election in our time.

In closing, some readers may be curious how I came to own a first edition of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals [1971].  First, the political events of the 1960's were not good to me. After President Kennedy's murder in 1963 , Barry Goldwater's loss to Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election of 1964, and the physical and mental slaughter in Vietnam, I became a leftist radical by 1971.  That's when I encountered Rules for Radicals.  It's been read many, many times, it's a bit yellow here and there, and the dust jacket has a few small tears and scuffs; otherwise, it's in excellent condition.  As a husband, father, and student of the American experience I've moved right of center in politics and economics but maintain a fiercely liberal position on most social issues. In other words it's hard to define me politically. On the other hand, many of you will be happy to know I never once liked Richard Nixon. Even when I was six years old.

A Commencement In Troubled Times: June 8, 1968

Fifty years ago today I received my B.A. (American History) from the University of Maryland in College Park. There were several thousand degrees conferred that day in the sober atmosphere of Cole Field House. Robert F. Kennedy had been murdered in Los Angeles two days earlier. Martin Luther King Jr. died at the hands of an assassin in early April. Our commencement speaker, James B. Reston, Executive Editor of The New York Times, delivered an address for hope couched in terms of the difficulty and challenge facing the American experience and its response to the war in Vietnam, its most serious internal struggle since the Civil War a century earlier.

In 1968 I had not yet formed a strong opposition to our nation's war against communist influence in Vietnam. My focus that summer targeted a new and narrow direction in behavioral studies involving geography, cartography and psychology. It was a full and exciting challenge for any first-year grad student. By early 1969 with no end in sight for what appeared to be a hopeless war many friends immersed themselves in  radical politics. I watched from the sidelines until my closest friend, a brilliant mathematician, elected to leave the country rather than face the increasingly troubling national crisis unfolding on the home front. The day before he left he asked if I could drive him to his family home in the idyllic farm country near Emmitsburg. He wanted to say "good-bye". For an hour I sat alone and quiet in an overstuffed chair in a comfortable, dimly lit parlor straight out of 1910. On the return to Washington not a word was shared between us. It remains one of my strangest and darkest days. It was also the last day of my support for a military solution in Vietnam. The following day, Dave and his girlfriend left for Canada. I never heard from them again. 

Much happened to the American - and our personal -  experience in the decades since as economic, political, and social waves passed over the nation. It's nothing new among civilizations as history tells us. The cycle of growth, maturity and decline among nation-states has always been with us. Only the scale changes. It's a matter of managing the process through the anchors of Western civilization that really matters. And we are still seeking the restoration of some of those anchors displaced in the Vietnam era.

Today is very much like June 8, 1968 when James B. Reston explored the expression of hope in the face of adversity across 4000 years. So it remains for us to see how we manage our national maturity and our nation's place in the great chain of being.