Deceptive Appearances

   Yesterday's top story should have actually been the story that General Michael Flynn apparently met with Pennsylvania Islamofascist Fethullah Gülen.  The entire reason that Flynn was popular with the Trump people was his tough talk against radical Islam.  So it was shocking that in actuality, Flynn was meeting with the person most responsible for the desecularization of Turkey.  Gülen was originally part of the clique surrounding the military government of Turkey in the 1980s.  Back then, radical Islam was seen as an antidote to Marxist impulses in Turkish society.  (Kinda like Afghanistan?)
    Appearances are deceiving, and the supporters of O.B. are often not what they claim to be.  In his column from today, Jonah Goldberg diagnoses the paranoid everymanism of the Orange Blatherskite supporters.  Goldberg writes:
          On the right, a new version of prolier than thou is the new hotness.  Steve 
           Bannon is a multimillionaire former Goldman Sachs globalist who made 
           much of his fortune in Hollywood.  But his new racket--no less of a 
            racket for bein sincere--is to make himself the Joan of Arc to the 
           Trumpen proletariat.  He sells people--many no doubt decent--on
           the idea that there is a Great and Powerful Oz behind the curtain
            keeping them down, thwarting their dreams and denying them their
            destiny.  The Republican Establishment is whatever Bannon or 
            Sean Hannity (another multimillionaire who wears his 
            Budweiser on his sleeve) needs it to be.  It is simeotaneously oppressively
             powerful, blocking Donald Trump's "agenda" at every turn, and out-
             rageously weak, full of Quislings refusing to fight the cultural Marxists
             and George Soros's army of social-justice ninjas.  And because so many 
             people believe this tripe, everyone in the Establishment pretends they
             are against it.  They are like aristocrats of the old order donning
             workman's clothes to avoid the revolutionary mobs.  All of this only
              makes Bannon's life easier and the Establishment more pathetic. When
              no one will defend or deny the existence of your strawman, it's easy
              to win a debate.  Nothing proves the need for intensifying the witch 
              hunt more than the witches' ability to evade capture.
      Estase used to talk about the Primrose League.  He once thought that the average Republican politician was a squishy moderate who avoided social issues like the plague.  In comparison to the ethnically-obsessed Trumpsters and the alt-Right scumbags, the Primrose League looks damn good right now.

The Disease of 2017

       There is a very real problem in America today.  People are starting to mistake feeling for thinking, and it is a part of a controversy burning up the internet today.  There was some millennial science fiction writer who created an analogy about abortion that most liberals are treating like the best philosophical argument ever.  It goes like this:  you have several hundred fertilized embryos, as you would in a fertility clinic, and one baby in a burning building.  You can only save the embryos or the baby.  The conclusion is that obviously you would save the baby, ergo, the embryos aren't human;  thus, no one really thinks life begins at conception.
       There are several things wrong with this analogy.  First, the people who think life begins at conception aren't also people who think it's fine to create frozen embryos by the hundred.  Being Halloween, Estase would refer the reader to the movie or book Frankenstein.  Second, it's an artificial dichotomy when you suggest that only the embryos or the baby can be saved.  Logically speaking, the argument would be just as confusing if one substituted an eighty-nine year old man for the embryos;  or a cancer patient for the embryos;  or a convicted murderer for the embryos.  The problem is that all these substitutes for the embryos are obviously human--all the same, you could make perfectly reasonable arguments for why they shouldn't be saved in favor of the baby.  So this argument basically comes down to emotion.  A person feels a baby can feel pain.  A person feels a baby counts as a human being.  Any philosopher who evaluates arguments on feelings alone should move to a field like womens' studies.
       There is a lesson learned from this other than that science fiction writers don't make good philosophers.  If this gentleman was the only person who mistook feeling for thinking, we would have an entirely different world.   Contemporary political arguments have the unerring tendency to be based on emotion, and not logic.  The common ingredient for Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the Alt-Right is anger.  Anger is not conducive to compromise.  Anger is not conducive to discussion.  Anger is not helpful in reaching mutually beneficial arrangements.  Estase thinks every presidential election from 2008 on was an emotive decision.  Slogans like "Hope and Change" and "Make America Great Again" are emotional appeals, not logical ones.  It is very discouraging that people have spent the last week debating whether or not they feel embryos are people.  No better example exists of how much America feels the lack of a philosophical spirit in its public life.

Disclaimers in Journalism, Part Two

       While Estase eschews the O.B. term "fake news," it remains clear that journalists seek an agenda other than the truth.  On last night's CBS Evening News, a segment entitled "Sexual Misconduct Alllegations" telescoped the cases of Bill O'Reilly, Harvey Weinstein, and a third man into one story.  The segment only actually discussed O'Reilly.  So the point of the segment was nothing other than an attempt to malign Fox News.
      So what about the fans of Peace & Love Inc., who claimed that Monica Lewinsky and suborning perjury was at bottom "just sex?"  So why is "just sex" a problem for Bill O'Reilly, but not Bill Clinton?
      What is even more outrageous is the fact that CBS presented the O'Reilly segment before their story on the Tampa serial killer!  Since when is sexual harassment a higher priority than an active serial killer?
       Another example is the difference in treatment between environmentalists and pro-lifers.  Unabomber Ted Kacynski was never described as an environmentalist.  Earth Liberation Force and its acts of eco-terrorism are never mentioned.  In contrast, journalists make sure to try to associate abortion clinic bombers with the millions of peaceful pro-lifers.
      These are prime examples of how settling scores with ideological enemies is the top priority for broadcast journalists.  Much overheated rhetoric has suggested Orange Blatherskite is an enemy of the free press.  O.B. may have a poor way of communicating it, but the problem of political advocacy in journalism is real, a problem journalists created themselves and refuse to address.

No Accounting for Taste

       Estase is currently reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser.  It strikes me that even an English professor, writing about good writing, finds it impossible to disentangle content from quality of writing.  Zinsser actually says that Mario Cuomo was more eloquent than Ronald Reagan!  He actually thinks hippie burnout Gary Trudeau is funny!  It's really hard to take such a person seriously as an authority on good writing.  Estase just hopes to use the Twelve Step saying, "Take what you want and leave the rest."
       Looking at the stats page of my blog, it seems that Mother Russia is hanging on every word.  I'm not sure why topics like Killinois' sci-fi Bruce Rauner are interesting to Vlad Putin, or why our slavic friends would like Q.E.D., when its most popular post of all time is Kant's Dictum.  No accounting for taste.

Does H-> Remind Anyone Else of Norma Desmond?

      The 1950 film noir classic Sunset Boulevard told the story of a young, penniless writer who ends up trapped writing a script for meglomaniacal has-been Norma Desmond.  Desmond lives in a fantasy world where people long to see the silent star on the big screen again.  Her decaying mansion becomes the place where the young writer dies, murdered by the delusional Desmond.
       One starts to assume that Hillary Clinton actually thinks Peace & Love Inc. will make a comeback, and that her rapist husband and repellent self will one day occupy the White House again.  Hey H->, everybody is getting really sick of your pity party, your endless litany of people other than yourself who are supposedly responsible for Orange Blatherskite's victory.  We thought you were a pandering old fool, claiming to carry hot sauce in your purse, and speaking pidgin English on the campaign trail.  You're as popular as the plague.  Go away, while you still have some scintilla of dignity.

Hypocritical Ass Alert

      Sci-Fi Bruce Rauner, a few days after vetoing a bill that would have mandated the teaching of cursive writing, due to ostensible concerns about the cost to local school districts, chose to sign H.B. 40, the dreadful Democratic bill forcing Killinoisans to fund abortion.  This is yet another example of the confusion and hypocrisy of modern American politics.  Why didn't we elect Pat Quinn for another term, if what we wanted was sanctuary state status, and a whole new entitlement (albeit one involving death).  And the whole crazy contradiction of being worried about the cost of teaching cursive writing, and then not caring about spending millions on abortion when Killinois already can't pay its bills.

Disclaimers in Journalism

      Don't you ever wish journalism came with disclaimers?  Especially broadcast journalism, which is pretty much a parasitic craft depending mainly on original research done by newspapers.  Warning:  CNN spends most of the workday getting story ideas from the newspapers and reading public figures' Twitter postings.  This sort of thing would clear up the misconception that the TV news game is anything other than the blind leading the blind.
      Sometimes even history is warped by bad journalism.  The false narrative of a one-sided slaughter fest in Bosnia is repeated as gospel truth, by people who should know better.  The reality is that most of the press pool got no further than the swankiest hotels in Sarajevo, and the information they received came from media-savvy Bosnian Muslims.  The fact that UN peacekeepers under General MacKenzie contradicted the narrative sold by the media and Peace &Love Inc. was swept under the rug.  Historians are as gullible as anyone else;  tell a historian something was said on The Most Trusted Name in Cable News, and they will dutifully report it as an historical fact twenty-five years later.  Of course historians would go out of business if they were forced to use disclaimers.  Warning:  Ken Burns tells only the liberal side of history--one in which Woodrow Wilson is a god among men, and Richard Nixon was a psychopath.

Memetastic Sunday VI

Memetastic Sunday V

Three Odious Phrases

       Broken records are never fun to listen to.  The supporters of Orange Blatherskite sound like broken records all the time.  Here are some of their greatest hits.

1)  Snowflakes A term that is used indiscriminately against everyone who doesn't like O.B.  The implication is that snowflakes are lazy, spoiled, etc.  Of course, you are supposed to ignore all the times that O.B. supporters act lazy, spoiled, etc., or the way that O.B. himself seems to have an affinity for blaming everybody for his problems except himself.  It must suck to be Jeff Sessions.

2) Drain the Swamp Trump supporters sure have a short memory.  This dreamy little phrase was coined by Bela Pelosi when she became speaker during George W. Bush's second term.  The implication was that Hastert's reign as speaker was marked by an unusual amount of corruption.  It beggars the mind how Paul Ryan (a Republican) and Mitch McConnell (also a Republican) deserve to be abused for their supposed corruption by a man with no political experience who made his money off of strip clubs and casinos.  Orange Blatherskite is the swamp!

3) Would you like Hillary better?  Now this one is just stupid.  It's like saying that a sucking chest wound is better than liver cancer.  The primary season of 2016 had many alternatives to O.B.  The idea that because Hillary Clinton is a dishonest harridan, literally anything is better is an insult to our intelligence.  The Republican primary voter was either unspeakably stupid, or starstruck by a TV celebrity.  Estase wonders whether the fact that two alternatives to O.B. had Hispanic names, and a third was married to a Hispanic woman was the real reason people fell for O.B.

  Perhaps it's asking too much for the apologists for Trump to ask if they would come up with some new catch-phrases.  These three have really worn out their welcome.

Kasab Taburu (Butcher Brigade), Part Twenty

      

Akcam, Taner.  The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity:  The Armenian Genocide and 
          Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire Princeton:  Princeton University Press,
           2012.

         "The purpose of sending away certain people is to safeguard the welfare of our fatherland for the future, for wherever they may live they will never abandon their seditious ideas, so we must try to reduce their numbers as much as possible." Ottoman Interior Ministry, quoted in Aram Andonian, Memoirs of Naim Bey, (Akcam, p. 254)

       The typical Turkish historian will claim that World War I, and its struggle between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, made the mass killing of the Armenians an unfortunate exigency.  The Armenians were all Dashnaks and revolutionaries--too dangerous to merit anything but extermination.
       The real reality is that the Ottoman Empire entered World War I when it did not need to, specifically so that it had a pretext to enforce its racial homogeneity notions.  The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), also known as the "Young Turks," were liberal young Ottoman Muslims, who were usually educated in France.  The Young Turks wished to create a modern European-style state.  While democratic, capitalist and secular, this new Turkish state would be Islamic in character.
       TemessÜl, or "assimilation," was the buzz-word for the Young Turks.  Even non-Turkish Muslims, such as the Arabs and Kurds, were seen as backwards.  As such, they needed to be molded into the form of westernized Turks (Akcam, p. 45-47).
       The background that led the CUP to crave entry into World War I is important to understand.  In the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, the Ottoman Empire lost eighty percent of its European territory (Akcam, xiv).  Enver Pasha blamed Ottoman Christians for this calamity, which led to hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Albania and Bosnia needing resettlement in Anatolia.
       In addition, a constellation of pressures from France and Russia made the CUP fear the encroachment on Anatolian territory.  The Baghdad Treaty (March 1914) saw the Ottomans agree with Russia, France, Britain and Italy to create zones that were superintended by these powers;  France wished to create Syrian, Armenian and Arabian states (Akcam, p. 130).  The Yeniköy Accord with Russia in February 1914 endangered seven provinces (Erzurum, Van, ManÜretülaziz,Diyarbkir, Sivas, Bitlis and Trebizond) by creating inspectors from abroad with authority to enforce reform benefiting Armenians, or, again, even create an Armenian state!  This mirrors the way the Sick Man of Europe lost the Balkans (Akcam, p. 131).  The Armenian Reform Agreement explains why Cemal Pasha and the CUP were eager to join the Austrians and Germans in World War I (Akcam, p. xvii).  The war would be the means for ending the Armenian issue (Akcam, p. 132).  Enver, Cemal and the rest of the CUP Central Committee were anxious that the presence of Armenians in these seven provinces would enable the creation of an Armenian state (Akcam, p. 132).  The systematic use of claims of Armenian disloyalty and rebellion were how Enver, Cemal and the rest of the CUP Central Committe would avoid this (Akcam, p. 133).
       Lastly, the Young Turk desire was to replace the successful Armenian businessmen with Muslim businessmen.  Thus, when Armenians were deported (which was the legal phase of Ottoman action), all their possessions were accounted for.  The three characteristics that show the intention of Enver Pasha was plunder are that 1) Armenians had no legal right for recovery; 2) Armenians could not use, purchase, or sell their abandoned property, and; 3) Trusts were not accessible to Armenians (Akcam, p. 343).  Thus, reallocation to Muslims or the Army/government was the intention;  perversely, the value of Armenian property was often used to fund their destruction (Akcam, pgs. 344, 354-56).
       Official Turkish history suggests justice was meted out to the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.  Most executions after the war were for stealing Armenian property, not acts of murder against Armenians (Akcam, p. 384).  Others were killed for anti-CUP politics, or to destroy potential witnesses (e.g. Cerkez Ahmed, Yakup Cemil) (Akcam, p. 396-97).
      The methods by which the CUP executed the Armenian Genocide were a mixture of official and unofficial acts.  The official acts were done by government bodies like the Interior Ministry or Army.  These consisted of population exchanges, deportation, and the reallocation of Armenian property.
       The unofficial acts relied on the Special Organization, also known as bashi-bazouks.  Created by Dr. Bahaeddin Sakir Bey, bashi-bazouks were Kurdish tribesmen of released prisoners.  The command structure for bashi-bazouks bypassed the Ottoman government;  many orders came from Talat Pasha's telegraph in his home, while others passed to regional CUP functionaries.  Secrecy and deniability were key characteristics of these unofficial acts.  Orders were either oral or came with instructions to burn after reading.  Necati Bey showed the order of annihilation to Cemet Bey, but would not give him a copy (Akcam, p. 195).  An emphasis was placed upon hiding Armenian corpses, especially from foreigners (Akcam, p. 200).  
       The mathematics of dilution mandated the number of Armenians who needed to die.  For example, the Aleppo area was home to two million Muslims.  To adhere to the CUP policy that Armenians could only constitute 5% of the population, out of 1.3 million Armenians deported from Anatolia, 1.1 million Armenians had to be exterminated.  This would be accomplished through violence, disease, or dehydration/hunger (Akcam, p. 258)  After military setbacks like Galipoli and the Battle of Sarikamis (Jan. 1915), the CUP accelerated its efforts to punish Armenians for the success of the Entente powers (Akcam, pgs. 157-58).  Armenians in the Ottoman Army were disarmed and murdered (Akcam, p. 96, p. 155).  The Turkish government still adheres to the story that Armenians were acting as chetes on behalf of Russia--a testament to the Ottoman government's official arm to its extermination efforts.  It is remarkable how the same government that preserves records of Armenian guerrillas cannot produce any evidence of compensation to transported Armenians for abandoned property (Akcam, pgs. 354-56).
       The earlier process of removing Ottoman Greeks used this same combination of official acts and unofficial violence.  The main difference was that expulsion rather than extermination was the aim, to be achieved by boycotts and punitive taxation as well as bashi-bazouk violence (Akcam, p. 83).  The Greeks had the advantage of a neighboring state that could punish CUP killing with war or similar abuse of Muslims living in Greece (Akcam, p. 86, p. 100).  In both the Greek expulsion and the Armenian Genocide, Bahaeddin Sakir was the common architect (Akcam, p. 183).
      The Armenian Genocide was the inspiration for the Shoah.  It also was the template for the Yugoslav Civil Wars of the 40s and 90s.  Why cooperate with other ethnic groups when you can just get rid of them?

Oh Blah Blah Retrospective

       Today one of my friends shared a story about how anyone who didn't think Oh Blah Blah was a great president only felt that way because he was black.  Oh brother.  Estase wishes to outline some reasons he thought Oh Blah Blah was a crappy president.  And none of them have anything to do with race.
                 I.  He was the most pro-abortion president ever.  Obama promoted abortion every way conceivable (no pun intended).  He created Obamacare with the sole aim of finding a way to sidestep the Hyde Amendment.  Before Oh Blah Blah, Clinton was the most pro-abortion president ever (partially to hide the ugly fact that he used women like Kleenex).  But even Peace &Love Inc. pretended to wish abortion was rare!  The crowning touch was forcing religious organizations to buy abortion drugs for their employees.

               II.  Coddling radical Muslims and Communists was second nature to Obama.  He turned NASA into a pro-Muslim propaganda organization.  He removed sanctions on the Castro brothers in Cuba.  His appointees went on record praising Hugo Chavez.  (And we all know what great things Communism has done for Venezuela!)

              III.  The IRS scandal.  Obama shamelessly used the IRS as an attack dog against right of center organizations.  People vilify Nixon's use of an Enemies List, but Obama did the same thing, and CNN never devoted a minute of airtime to the scandal.

               IV.  The officer purge within the U.S. military was an unprecedented attack on our military readiness.  The end result is an incompetent Navy, where boats inexplicably end up in Iranian custody, and warships collide with other vessels.

      Lots of politicians end up on Estase's dishonor roll.  Seeing this article made me feel the need to give an accounting of why I didn't like Obama.  Being accused of racism is not something Estase takes lightly.   At the same time, this was the evil genius of leftists:  to make their standard-bearer a person of color, so that anyone questioning their actions could be dismissed as a racist.  If only the right were so cognizant of appearances!  Instead, most conservatives were convinced of the wisdom of making someone who used racial and national scapegoating on a regular basis their standard-bearer.   But perhaps Estase is some kind of racist for not backing Orange Blatherskite?

Historic Newspaper Extracts

     "So they did; but they {outrages} occurred because nerveless boobies denounced every attempt to suppress them by the strong arm;  because you and your followers sent up a howl of military usurpation every time a federal bayonet was interposed between a helpless victim and his persecutors;  because the bloody massacres in the South were sneered at as fictions of the 'bloody-shirt organs,' and because a constant appeal was made the relief of the poor, down-trodden {southern--ed.} natives, who were exasperated by Republican carpet-baggers."  Inter-Ocean 1878

      "Some Chicago man once said of Jo. Medill, 'that he was too much afraid of street-car talk and corner-grocery criticism.  He everlastingly runs away from the fight just before knocking-down begins;  and so, though he never gets whaled, he never whales anybody.'  Perhaps this is the reason the {Chicago-ed.} Tribune is so little to be relied upon, politically."  Macomb {IL} Journal, 4 APR 1878

      "To I.N. Beaver, Dr. Creel, and Postmaster Cordell, all as good Republicans as are to be found anywhere in the states, we are much indebted for the enjoyment of our visit. . . . We also met with John Downen, 'Pope John,' we once called him, not by way of derision, but because we were led to believe that he held the grangers of McDonough in the hollow of his hand."  Macomb Journal 11 JUL 1878

Unibrow Party Fun in Killinois

       The main disincentive to voting in the present circumstances is the inane similarity between the two parties.  When the Republican Speaker of the House says he is on the side of Communist Antifa, and the Republican Governor of Illinois signs a bill making the entire State of Killinois a sanctuary for illegal aliens, remind me again how these clowns are better than the Democrats?  The latter, Sci-Fi Bruce Rauner, is the exemplar of the Unibrow Party (h/t Shannon Joy).  Despite a history of having chums like Disturbin' Dick Durbin and Rahm "The Borg" Emmanuel, Mr. Rauner managed to wrest the nomination for governor from people with actual, conservative records.

     Just like the adorable little alien tykes in Village of the Damned, Rauner insinuated himself into a party that wasn't his own.  And now, when he did the same kind of crap the people of Killinois bounced Pat Quinn for doing, we're all surprised and stuff.  Note to Republican voters:  try nominating people who have been Republicans for longer than five minutes!   Or maybe it's expecting too much, wanting competent politicians who actually believe in something other than their own ego?  But enough about Donald Trump.   

Memetastic Sunday IV

What in Hell Do I Entitle This?

   
       Der Sturmer, the namesake of this website was the newspaper of the SS.  I literally don't know how to express the shame that Orange Blatherskite should feel right now.  Between this and O.B.'s bromance with Steve Bannon, it seems that the alt-Right has shown its true colors.  The terrorist attacks by Neo-Nazis and the Klan should have been immediately denounced.  Trump should have gone on TV to address the nation Saturday night.  This garbage needs to stop forthwith.  I don't know how stupid O.B. is that he didn't realize that Daily Stormer is pro-Nazi.  If he knows history this little, I tremble for the fate of our nation.  The alt-Right needs to be exorcised from both our nation, and from the Republican Party.  Charles Sumner is spinning in his grave right now.

Stating the Obvious

America's Henry VIII

Folsom Jr., Burton.  New Deal Or Raw Deal? New York:  Threshold Editions, 2008.

Schlaes, Amity.  The Forgotten Man:  A New History of the Great Depression. New York:  
       Harper Collins, 2007.

       Just as how Henry VIII was the greatest revolutionary in British history, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the greatest revolutionary in American history.  Henry VIII dispossessed both the Catholic Church and individual Catholics.  He then used the ill-gotten gains to enrich a new British aristocracy.  In a similar way, FDR picked economic winners and losers.  Those who blocked or failed to cooperate with the NRA and other New Deal programs were targeted for destruction.  For example, Henry Ford refused to sign the NRA code.  The NRA was intended to keep prices artificially high, on the dubious economic theory that this would keep wages high (apparently unaware that even if this happened, it would increase unemployment).  The Roosevelt Administration refused to buy vehicles from Ford, even though it meant spending more (Folsom, 53).
       The Roosevelt Administration set out to manage public opinion in ways no previous president ever had.  In a move reminiscent of totalitarian regimes, FDR created the Federal Communications Commission, and required radio stations to renew their licenses every six months (Folsom, 234).  Radio stations carrying critics of FDR were unlikely to have their licenses renewed.  FDR was the first president to have a press secretary.  Journalist Lorena Hicks was hired to "cover" the FERA, and to promote the New Deal to other journalists (Folsom, 225).  Journalist Arthur Krock commented that FDR had unparalleled success in suppressing negative news stories (Folsom, 225).  Press never mentioned or showed FDR's disability.  Pictures of Eleanor Roosevelt were altered to make her more attractive (Folsom, 226).  The press also refrained from pointing out FDR's marriage was a sham (Folsom, 227).  Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune, the most anti-Roosevelt newspaper in America, never dared broach the subject of FDR's well-known mistress Lucy Mercer (Folsom, 227).  Even when he started an affair with Norwegian Princess Martha they kept mum (Folsom, 228)!  Journalist Thomas Stokes ended up in the doghouse by pointing out that WPA employees were encouraged to campaign on the job during the 1936 election (Folsom, 230-31).
       Henry VIII took control over the Church (which actually violated the Magna Carta).  In a similar way, FDR did his best to alter American attitudes towards the role of the Federal government and the U.S. Constitution.  He did this by permanently altering the way agriculture functions, the enactment of the welfare state, and attacking traditional constitutional jurisprudence.
       The Roosevelt Administration thought that the forces of supply and demand should not determine commodity prices.  The concept of "parity" was created;  the agricultural commodity prices of 1910 were established as baseline prices, and it was arbitrarily decided that commodity prices in 1932 should be double what they were in 1910 (Folsom, 60).  Decreased production costs between 1910 and 1932 were never taken into account (Folsom, 64).  Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts pointed out that by the logic of the AAA, the government should pay shoe manufacturers not to make shoes in order to raise shoe prices (Folsom, 64).  In addition, unlike PWA/WPA, farm programs were not contingencies to deal with the Depression, but were intended to be permanent (Folsom, 65).  Economist Henry Hazlitt pointed out that if the parity concept from the farm program were applied to the auto industry, instead of cars costing $907 (as they did) in 1942, they should have cost $3270 (Folsom, 63)!  Most people think items costing less as technology develops is a good thing--the New Deal did not.
       The welfare state emerged with public works relief, and later, Social Security.  The PWA/WPA became a system of Tammany Hall-style patronage.  As a condition of employment, New Jersey WPA workers were expected to contribute to the Democratic Party (Folsom, 87).  Democrats were more likely to receive WPA work (Folsom, 86).  This system of patronage combined with the farm programs to elect a monolithic Democratic government, where the only resistant branch was the Court of King's Bench.  After all, WPA patronage was the reason for a Democratic Congress (Folsom, 171).  And as far as farm programs were concerned, the 3% of counties that received no AAA benefits were carried by Alf Landon in 1936 (Folsom, 188).
       Woodrow Wilson considered the Constitution and Declaration of Independence out-dated and irrelevant (Folsom, 255).  And like Wilson, FDR was a proponent of a "living constitution (Folsom, 256)."  The New Deal considered good intentions as justifying court packing and other violations of separation of powers (Folsom, 257).
         FDR surrogates Robert Allen and Drew Pearson furthered the court packing scheme through their scurrilous book The Nine Old Men. Examples of the abuse heaped upon a coequal branch of government are the pair's description of Willis Van Devanter as "The Dummy Director" and their declaration that George Sutherland had no brains (Schlaes, 273).
       FDR's plan for economic recovery was based on the idea that the Depression was caused by factors not borne out by the statistical record.  The theory was that wealth was  concentrated in too few hands, and that the public was not consuming enough.  These mistaken economic theories were served by a demonization of businessmen.  Roosevelt pioneered class warfare as a political strategy, condemning "great malefactors of wealth" and "economic royalists."  The New Deal tampered with the value of bonds, precious metals, and the currency.  The economic uncertainty that resulted meant that investors were hesitant to invest money given that taxes would swallow any potential profits.  FDR then prevented the expansion of industry by instituting the world's only undistributed profits tax (Folsom, 250).
       The Obama-era IRS scandal was part of a long tradition that originated with FDR, who used the tax system to punish the recalcitrant.  Business adversaries Andrew Mellon and Samuel Insull were singled out by the IRS;  especially Mellon, as he was the poster boy for the less-taxed 20s.  Black Republican celebrities Joe Louis and Jesse Owens were targeted for their politics (Folsom, 210).  "Nucky" Johnson, a Republican city boss, was investigated by the IRS, but somehow the equally criminal Democratic city boss Frank Hague went unscathed (Folsom, 155).  Republican Congressman Hamilton Fish was harassed by the IRS;  so was William Randolph Hearst (Folsom, 152).  Incompletely fawning journalists were often investigated by the IRS (Folsom, 231).
       Perhaps the thing that has most cemented the reputation of the New Deal has been the army of historians who overlook facts such as that in 1931 unemployment was 16.3%, and in 1939 it was 17.2% (Folsom, 2).  Results (or the lack thereof) never mattered to David Kennedy, William Leuchtenburg, or Arthur Schlesinger.  If any in this academic cadre admitted FDR failed in some way, it would hurt their reputation (Folsom, 253).  George McJimsey ignores the corrupt patronage aspects of Harry Hopkins and his WPA (Folsom, 259).
      In conclusion, England was forever altered by Henry VIII.  America was just as permanently changed by the Roosevelt years.  American politics will always be contaminated by the public's expectation for a payout.

Teachers Without Chests

       "Those who understand the spirit of the Tao and have been led by that spirit itself demands.  Only they can know what those directions are.  The outsider knows nothing about the matter.  His attempts at alteration, as we have seen, contradict themselves.  So far from being able to harmonize discrepancies in its letter by penetration to its spirit, he merely snatches at some one precept, on which the accidents of time and place happen to have riveted his attention, and then rides it to death--for no reason that he can give.  From within the Tao itself comes the only authority to modify the Tao.  This is what Confucius meant when he said, 'With those who follow a different Way it is useless to take counsel (Analects, XV, 39).'"  C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man (p.59).

       Mankind has warped David Hume's fact/value distinction into the idea that only facts have value.  Those values that are retained from Christianity are done so for convenience.  Want to advocate gay rights?  Put a "Love Your Neighbor:  No Exceptions" bumper sticker on your car.  Hence, wishing others well is transformed into approving homosexual behavior.  Want the U.S. to accept thousands of potential terrorists?  Invoke (as Pope Karl did) the Beatitudes.  Thus, people who think Christianity is a pernicious myth can cling to disconnected teachings as facts turned values.
       Educators are now told to refrain from conveying a sense of morality to their students.  This is one form of moral relativism;  the student must be free to decide what modes of behavior are appropriate for him or her.
       Another form of moral relativism is multiculturalism;  the values of Western Europe are not necessarily to be preferred.  Sharia Law, including tolerance for spousal abuse, is now a feature of life in Britain and Germany.
       In the void existing within today's young person (which morality or religion might have filled one hundred years ago), the material the university supplies to fill it is politics.  A college freshman will be encouraged to argue political positions in Composition 100.  They will study ideologies, environmentalism and feminism.  Students might earn a bachelor's degree without having read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, but they may well be required to read this or the other twentieth century political manifesto.
       Today's college campus, with its "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" is an island of political indoctrination where traditional philosophical ideas are never debated.  Undergraduates today have no time to question the meaning of the good life or the nature of friendship.  Campus is awash in contraceptives, yet you still hear of co-eds occasionally smothering the newborn they delivered in the bathroom of their dorm.
       If you think political corruption or financial crimes will become anything other than omnipresent, when educated people will have been taught from kindergarten through college that truth is relative and morality a matter of taste, you have a gift for groundless optimism that would put Pollyanna to shame.

Has the Whole World Gone Crazy?