Psycho-Killer, or Frightened Old Guy? What's the Difference?

S

ome years back I was sitting quietly at home when a strange car pulled into my driveway. And when I say pulled into my driveway I don’t mean that it came up the driveway in a normal way—no, I mean it came through the hedge separating my driveway from the parking lot next door, taking out a small tree, crossed over my driveway, and finally came to rest at an angle across my front yard. It was about three in the morning.

Now I could have taken a gun, gone outside, and shot the driver. To judge from today’s reports that would be, apparently, a fairly reasonable thing for a frightened elderly person to do. At least, that’s what one Philip Sailors did, with considerably less reason than I had to be frightened, when a strange car pulled into his driveway in a normal fashion. And while the justice system didn’t exactly give him a medal for it, it did allow him to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter—a mere $500.00 fine and a suspended sentence. Apparently it was important to keep this crazed loon out of jail for some reason.

According to news accounts it was about ten in the evening when the car pulled up into Sailors’ driveway. Inside were four young people, three of them high school students. Sailors looked out the window and saw the car.

Did he do what a sane person would do—go down and ask what the kids wanted, or whether they were lost or something? No. He did not. Did he do what a frightened elderly person would do, and call 911? Again, no. Not at all. No, he did what a psycho-killer in a bad movie might do—grabbed his gun, went outside, and started shooting as the car took off down the driveway in a futile attempt to escape. Then, to add to the deranged quality of it all, after killing the driver Sailors held the three high-school kids at gunpoint. According to one of them Sailors made no attempt to help the dying man.

The police arrived in response to two 911 calls, one from one of the kids in the car and another from a neighbor who had heard gunshots. Sailors claimed that he believed the high-school kids were home invaders and that the fleeing car was about to run him down. As a former missionary to Panama he ought to have been able to tell high-school kids out ice-skating from dangerous criminals. As a Vietnam veteran he should have been able to distinguish a car fleeing from a car approaching—you’d think. But no.

When the police arrived it came out that the driver had come to pick up another student at a nearby address. The car’s GPS system misdirected him to Sailors’ driveway. And Sailors was arrested for murder.

Sailors was reported to be grief-stricken—but he offered no apology when he accepted the plea deal that let him off with manslaughter. A news report says “Sailors did not want to comment after the hearing. He was surrounded by friends and family who came to the hearing as a show of support.” It also reported that he paid the victim’s family an undisclosed sum of money in settlement of a lawsuit. Nice.

Oh, yeah—for the record I did what a frightened elderly person would do—called 911 and waited. It turned out that the guy driving the car was not so much a crazed madman as a fellow who suffered a stroke, thus missing a turn and ending up in my yard. Probably just as well I didn’t shoot him, then.

Christianity and Common Law (guest post by Stevens and Brady)

W

e have political Sabbaths, such as the 4th of July, and 22d of February. We reverence them as days of great political events. But we do not enforce their observance by legislation. But the act in question compels all to observe Sunday as a sacred day. To oblige men to refrain from labour out of regard to its holiness, is to “control” their religious observance, as much as if they were ordered to kneel before the altar, or the images of the Saints. And to all those who conscientiously believe that it is not a holy day—that it is not the true Sabbath of the Lord, it is an “interference” with, and a constraint of their rights of conscience. It is no answer to say that the day of rest should be uniform among all. If it were a mere civil regulation, there might be some reason in it; but then it would be made a day of recreation—of relaxation; and most probably those days would not come so frequently. The French, when they discarded its religious character, when they worshipped the Goddess of Reason, and provided only for the rest of the people, fixed the tenth day. But I suppose it requires no other argument than reading the several acts upon this subject, to prove that our legislation looks to enforcing the religious observance of the day. If the legislature can direct that religious observance, then there is no limit to their power over religious subjects. If they can direct the people to stay at home quietly, they can direct them to go to church, and if they can direct them to attend church, they can indicate the church to be attended. In short, if they have any power over religious subjects, they have all power. Such power would be a perfect union of church and state, so much abhorred by the people of this republic. It would inevitably lead to religious persecutions, and finally to civil and religious tyranny.

The doctrine that the “Christian religion is a part of the common, law,” is, I suppose, the foundation and justification of this act. That doctrine was promulgated in the worst times, and by the worst men of a government that avowedly united church aad state; in times when men were sent to the block or the stake on any frivolous charge of heresy. To deny transubstantiation or the supremacy of the Pope, was a capital offence under one reign; and to admit them was a capital offence under another. Men were punished as blasphemers for denying the divinity of our Saviour, because the “Christian religion was a part of the common law.” Men were executed in great numbers by the civil power for denying the real presence, because that was a part of the Christian religion—and the Christian religion was a part of the municipal law. When the Protestants gained the ascendancy, to believe in the real presence was contrary to the Christian religion, and therefore a violation of the law, and punished by the secular arm. For it is truly observed: “That no set of men were ever found willing to suffer martyrdom themselves for conscience’ sake, who would not inflict it upon others the moment they obtained power.”

As late as the nineteenth century, this pernicious doctrine led Lord Eldon to decide that Unitarians may be punished as blasphemers at common law, and not treated as Christians, notwithstanding the repeal of the statute of 9 and 10 Will. 3: 3 Merivale, 353, Atty. Genl. v. Pearson.

How dangerous, therefore, is the apparently pious doctrine that the “Christian religion is a part of the common law!” If it be true, all who disbelieve that religion are habitual breakers of the law. The Jew, the Hindoo, the Pagan, are perpetual malefactors. They, of course, are beyond the protection of the law, or continually subject to punishment for conscience’ sake. These consequences of the doctrine were very satisfactory to the English government, in its origin. They enabled the tyrants of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to find a convenient excuse for sending to the block any one who became obnoxious to them. If such tyrant were a Roman Catholic, the heresy of the reformation was sufficient. If he were a Protestant, adhering to the church of Rome was equally so. This lauded principle found ready advocates in such bloody tools of tyrants as Jeffries, Audley, and Rich.

What else was it but the doctrine “that the Christian religion. was a part of the law,” and to be enforced by the civil arm, that gave the Holy Inquisition such horrid force, and placed the civil and religious liberty, and the lives of nations of men, at the mercy of the bloodiest power that ever inflicted misery upon the human race, in the name of Demons or of Gods!

This eonvenient doctrine enabled Henry the Eighth to dispose of all whom he chose to call his enemies, whether they were learned and conscientious gentlemen, like Sir Thomas More, or were wives of whose beauty he was weary. His successor, after robbing all the Jews of the kingdom of all their wealth, either sent them to death or banished them from the empire. And he was right, if this principle be right, for they were always violating the law, and of course deserved punishment.

If this doctrine is to be the rule of action, where do you find its interpretation? Where are to be found adjudged decisions of what this law teaches, so that the people may escape the perils of its violation? Are they to be seen in the doings of the Council of Nice or the Diet of Augsburg? Are they in the bulls of Hildebrand or the writings of Luther? in the rigid doctrines of Calvin, or the more liberal opinions of Wesley? Does this part of the “common law” (adopted in Pennsylvania) command us to bow down before the image of the Virgin and the Saints; or, discarding all visible symbols, to worship the Unseen God? This doctrine must drive us for refuge to the infallible church of Rome, where the decrees of the Pope are the unerring rule of this part of the “common law.”

—Thaddeus Stevens and J. E. Brady, 1848

Quotation of the Day

Hitting on women at conferences who have made it clear that they don’t want to be hit on does not say, “Sex is awesome!” Making video games where all or most of the female characters are helpless victims or scantily-clad sexual prizes does not say, “Sex is awesome!” Getting women drunk or high so you can have sex with them does not say, “Sex is awesome!” Treating the idea of enthusiastic affirmative sexual consent as ridiculous does not say, “Sex is awesome!” The exact opposite is true. All of this says, “Sex is a minefield. Sex is a battleground.”

Greta Christina
(Notes from a Pornographer on Sexism)

International Day for Tolerance

Step up and shake the hand
Of someone you can’t stand;
You can tolerate him if you try.—Tom Lehrer (National Brotherhood Week)

T

olerance is rather an odd thing to promote as a virtue. To tolerate someone seems like the least—the very least—we can do. Tolerating something is putting up with it—an adult tolerating the screams of a child, a pet-owner tolerating his iguana crapping in the shower.

Noah Webster nailed the concept in his 1828 dictionary: “…the allowance of that which is not wholly approved”. Indeed. He goes on to define toleration is its then-current incarnation:

… the allowance of religious opinions and modes of worship in a state, when contrary to or different from those of the established church or belief. Toleration implies a right in the sovereign to control men in their opinions and worship, or it implies the actual exercise of power in such control. Where no power exists or none is assumed to establish a creed and a mode of worship, there can be no toleration, in the strict sense of the word, for one religious denomination has as good a right as another to the free enjoyment of its creed and worship.

So what place does toleration have in a world where “me and you is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better” (as H. L.Mencken put it, channeling Thomas Jefferson)? What business do I have to tolerate you, or you to tolerate me, unless one of us is in a position to dictate to the other? Mind you, living in a nation in which mad tea partiers fly into hysterical rage at the mere sight of a dark-skinned person voting, I am aware that for some people at least tolerance would be a good first step. Better would be the realization that you have no right to privileges you would deny to others.

The UN vision of tolerance (PDF) is a bit wider, however:

Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication, and freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Tolerance is harmony in difference. It is not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement. Tolerance, the virtue that makes peace possible, contributes to the replacement of the culture of war by a culture of peace.

Further:

Tolerance is not concession, condescension or indulgence. Tolerance is, above all, an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others. In no circumstance can it be used to justify infringements of these fundamental values. Tolerance is to be exercised by individuals, groups and States.

All right, all that seems pretty straightforward. Hard to take exception to, really, And yet there are those who somehow have managed that. Take this website from Kjos ministries, for example. It finds something sinister in the replacing intolerance with tolerance. “Can Christian children really ‘appreciate’ what God forbids?” it wants to know. The author seems to be especially worried that if “one's views are not to be imposed on others” it would mean the end of “shar[ing] the gospel”, and that “Christian moral values” might be “equated with violence”. (Why on earth would that be, unless the author feels that violence is somehow a vital part of Christian morality?) It appears there’s always some raving loon out there prepared to take exception to the blandest and most innocuous of statements.

Anyway, today is the International Day for Tolerance. Show your support. Let’s get out there and tolerate somebody.

Are We Bored Yet?

I

 am in a foul mood this bleak Saturday in the 12014^th year of the Holocene Era. It’s cold out here, and icy winds knock down boughs and powerlines outside. Inside it’s not exactly toasty, but it’s quite warm, thank you, and I suppose I ought to count my blessings.

And one of those blessings is this page on a website called Reneland, “Where The Truth About Religion Is Told, Life In Los Alamos Is Remembered and Crimes Against Women Are Acknowledged”. Reneland sounds like a fun place—so how do I explain this inane entry, over two years old now, which makes some extraordinary claims about US religious history.

The author gets off to a rocky start by confusing the foundation of the nation (in the late eighteenth century) with the coming of the first settlers (early seventeenth century). There is a considerable difference. The first settlers did not found a nation. They set up colonies. The work of founding the nation belonged to a later generation.

She goes on to say “The freedom our founding fathers were in search of was the freedom to not be persecuted for their religious beliefs by the Catholic Church. By religious beliefs I mean Christianity, or better yet Protestantism.” This is bizarre. Puritans (for example) fled religious persecution by Anglicans, Catholics fled religious persecution by Huguenots, as well as various protestants fleeing Catholic persecution.

She then randomly flails away at a straw man who claims that the founders were not Christian—a belief held by nobody that I am aware of. (But the world is large, and there are many false beliefs. Nobody of any significance believes this anyway.) Yes, she is absolutely correct that the founders were white Christian men. And so?

But the ludicrous frosting on top of this half-baked cake is the following statement, made apparently in all seriousness:

There was no idea of any other non Christian religion, no religion, pagan or Jewish religion to any documents written when the forming of our government was happening.

I freely admit that I have no idea of what Reneland was trying to say, but the founders were quite aware of a variety of nonChristian religions, and wrote about them. George Washington, father of the country, explicitly included Judaism in the religious beliefs that were held by right, not by mere toleration. Other writers mentioned Hinduism and Islam as well. The idea that non-Christian religions were missing from “any documents written when the forming of our government was happening” is, to use one of her favorite words, ignorance.

And now come the golden sprinkles on this festive offering. “Let me give you some examples in the form of quotes by our founding fathers” Reneland writes. And of course you, my long-time readers (if any there be) know what is coming. A rich offering of fake quotes, misattributions, and other bizarrenesses. Let’s go:

First up, and by far the best of the offerings, are two quotations from John Adams. (Or from my viewpoint the worst, as they are legitimate. More or less.) The first:

I must not write a word to you about politics because you are a woman.

I actually don’t know why this one is here, or what the point of including it was. It comes from a letter to his wife Abigail (11 February 1779), and is part of an explanation of why he is avoiding a discussion of politics:

I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

What an offence have I committed! A woman!

I shall soon make it up. I think women better than men, in general, and I know, that you can keep a secret as well as any man whatever. But the world don’t know this. Therefore if I were to write my sentiments to you, and the letter should be caught and hitched into a newspaper, the world would say, I was not to be trusted with a secret.

Of course Adams had learned about the danger of intercepted letters, to his cost. And then we have this one, a familiar out-of-context quotation from Adams’ 11 October 1798 reply to the officers of the first brigade of the third division of the Massachusetts militia, slightly misquoted:

Our Constitution was made only for the [sic] moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

And now the real fun begins. Reneland lists three quotations attributed to George Washington, of which one is legitimate. The first is an over-familiar fake:

It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.

As I’ve pointed out in the past, it first appeared in this form in 1893, and rests only on the word of a lawyer who never met Washington. Believe it if you like, but there’s no reason to think it authentic. This is White Queen country here. Our next is a lightly-mangled excerpt from Washington's Farewell Address:

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that natural morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Here is the authentic passage:

Let it be simply asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

It’s close, at least. The third and last is a ring-tailed doozy:

We are persuaded that good Christians will always be good citizens, and that where righteousness prevails among individuals the nation will be great and happy. Thus while just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support.

As I’ve pointed out before, these are not Washington’s words in the least; they are taken from a letter written to him—let me reiterate to him—by a group of religious leaders. Washington is no more responsible for them than for any other random assemblage of words directed to him in his long and illustrious life.

Next comes a John Quincy Adams quotation, or rather, a slight misquotation:

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this, it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.

I’ve written about this one before. It’s basically legitimate, though it would be better to quote it directly from Adams, rather than from John Wingate Thornton. Also, John Quincy Adams isn’t really a founder.

Nor is James K. Polk, to whom this next mishmash is attributed:

The Bible is the rock on which this Republic rests. Under the benign act providence of almighty God the representatives of the states and of the people are again brought together to deliberate for the public good.

The first sentence is something usually attributed to Andrew Jackson, though on no very good authority. (Need I point out that neither is Jackson a founder?) The rest is legitimate, and is the opening of his fourth annual message to congress, 5 December 1848. Except, of course, the words “benign act” should be the word “benignant”.

And last, my favorite punching-bag, the ultra-fake Patrick Henry “quotation” written in 1956, long after the fiery orator’s death:

It cannot be emphasized enough to strongly or to often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s misquoted, but that’s the least of its problems. It is ignorance of the rankest variety to believe that Patrick Henry, or anybody of his time for that matter, could have written this—this piece of idiocy.

And it’s really too bad because, honestly, Reneland is not a bad place to visit. Just don’t drink the Kool-aid.

St. Philip

-->

T

oday belongs to the apostle Philip, by the reckoning of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Philip was one of the men Jesus specially picked to be in his inner circle, according to legend, and may have been one of his earliest followers if the fourth gospel is relying on some earlier (and with luck reliable) source, rather than just spinning tales as is its wont. As one of the twelve Philip would have been witness to the risen Jesus, and early tradition has it that he died a natural death—and that’s about what we know about the historical Philip, assuming there was such a person.

Papias, collecting his stories in the second century, used to interview people who had known Philip (among other apostles) to learn what he had said about Jesus—what sayings of his he remembered and the like. As his five-volume work is unfortunately lost, we know nothing of what he might have found out. A story he attributed to Philip’s daughters is sort of preserved, but I can’t help wondering if these women weren’t the daughters of a different Philip. This guy is known as the evangelist Philip, to avoid confusion with our present Philip, the apostle Philip. He did have daughters, if The Acts of the Apostles is to be believed.

After that the story of the apostle Philip dissolves into conflicting legends and outright fantasies. He was the very disciple whom Jesus told to drop everything (including burying his dead father) and follow him, for example. He preached in Greece, or upper Asia (take your pick), where, as the Spanish writer Pedro de Ribadeneira put it, “He threw down Idols, built Churches, erected Altars, ordained Priests, and gave a Form and Rule to the People to live like Christians, and like Men newly come out of the Darkness of Idolatry, and delivered from the Slavery of their Sins and Vices, and by a new Light of Heaven, acknowledged Jesus Christ for their God and Redeemer.”

In Hierapolis, “as Simeon Metaphrastes recounteth, [so writes Pedro de Ribadeneira,] he found in a Temple of this City, a strange and monstrous Viper, which the People adored and honoured with Sacrifices, as if it were a God. The Apostle was much afflicted with Sorrow and Compassion, seeing the Blindness of that deluded People, and the grievous Injury done to God, because they gave to the Devil in that Serpent, the Honour, Worship, and Reverence, which was only due to his divine Majesty.” That seems an odd concern, given that according to the narrative “many of [the people] daily perished, some being devoured by the Serpent, and others offered to him in Sacrifice”, but I suppose you can’t expect a saint to look at things in a normal manner. They’re commissioned agents of a Supernatural Power, and His interests clearly come first.

So what does Philip do? Does he go after the people who are feeding the serpent human flesh? Does he force them to stop it, and feed the damn creature its natural prey—or maybe release it into its habitat? Of course not. That would be sane. That would be just. That would be very unlike a saint. No, Philip curses the serpent, and it dies, “and the People were delivered from the Damages they received by him, and better disposed to admit of the Evangelical Light, and the Doctrine that the holy Apostle preached to them.” In other words, the problem with the serpent as Philip saw it was that it was an impediment to advertising his particular nostrum.

I originally intended to hook this up to some observations about the bridal chamber stuff in the Gospel of Philip, but time has run out and anyway James McGrath did something more interesting with the Nag Hammadi tractate. I wish I’d thought of it.

Goddess of the Wild Places

T

oday, it seems, is the festival of Feronia, a goddess of the wild places worshipped by the Romans. The Abbé Banier wrote of her in 1740 (The Mythology and Fables of the Antients, Explained from History, iii 189-90) “Feronia, whose Name comes from the Verb Fero, to bring Relief, or from the Town Feronia, near Mount Soracte, was, according to Servius, the Patroness of the enfranchised Slaves, who had a great many Offerings presented to her; this Goddess being in high Veneration thro’ all Italy.” Her sacred places appear to have been located away from human habitation, visited primarily during festival times, during which traders traded, worshipers carried out vows and offered sacrifices, and apparently the usual robbery and skullduggery that infests such gatherings went on as well. Dionysius of Hellacarnassus recorded an incident:

At this festival some Romans of considerable importance happened to be present on a certain occasion and were seized by some of the Sabines, who imprisoned them and robbed them of their money. And when an embassy was sent concerning them, the Sabines refused to give any satisfaction, but retained both the persons and the money of the men whom they had seized… (Roman Antiquities, iii 32.2)

Failure to resolve matters led to war.

Strabo tells us that “a remarkable ceremony is performed” at her temple, “for those possessed by the divinity pass over a large bed of burning coal and ashes barefoot, unhurt. A great concourse of people assemble to assist at the festival, which is celebrated yearly, and to see the said spectacle.” (Geography 5.2.9) So there might have been firewalking too.

It’s hard to get the hang of a festival after it’s fallen into disuse for a long time. I don’t pretend to grasp the essential nature of this one, though firewalking in a sacred grove away from civilization sounds colorful. As the fragmentary accounts of this one come from writers separated in time and space we can’t even be sure that the things mentioned belong to the same festival as celebrated at any particular locale, or era. Still, it’s a glimpse of a bygone time—even though it may be seen through a kaleidoscope.

On This Day in History

I

t was rainy and windy a half century ago in Vancouver, and on this day in 1964 I set off for Lewis Jr. High School while my brother stayed home ill to read Year of the Gorilla . (He had just got it for his birthday.) I got my report card—mostly Bs, but an A in math and Cs in Art and PE. (My art teacher wrote that I “need[ed] to activate [my]self a trifle”.) My reading teacher observed that I was “Excellent in all reading—should give more attention to written work.” My social studies teacher wrote that I “could be doing better. More effort and less reading during class time.” He agreed with my PE teacher that my display of effort was unsatisfactory.

When I got home I found out that my brother had received a copy of something called Planet of the Apes, a Pierre Boule novel translated from the French. (I don’t know if it was a belated birthday present or just some random gift.) He let me read it, but I wasn’t impressed. The ending irritated me. Our hero manages to make his way back to earth from a planet run by apes only to find that the apes have taken over our planet as well. Or something like that. It’s been a long time since I looked at the damn thing.

Armistice Day

R

emember the war to end all wars? The war to make the world safe for democracy? The guns of August? The good ship Goeben that put out to sea because they told her to? (A terror to her foes was she and also to her crew.) Kaiser Bill? The sick man of Europe? The Zimmermann telegram? Uncle Sam’s Boys at the Capture of Boston?

No? Well, neither do I. The Great War, later downgraded by its flashier sequel to the First World War, or World War I, has finally slipped out of living memory. Oh, I’m sure there are a few aging souls who can still remember some aspect of the war as it impinged on their childhood, but those who directed it, fought it, and suffered through it are now gone, and their memories survive only as oral tradition or written narrative. Or bizarre mementos encased in old metal boxes passed down to uncomprehending family members.

I have—or used to have maybe—a small box containing a 1918 Red Cross lapel pin, a hand-embroidered handkerchief with an American flag, and other disjecta membra of the Great War. I know their stories, involving a great-uncle whose troop-ship docked in France just after the war ended and a great-aunt who did volunteer work as a young woman, but when I’m gone even those faint aftertraces of memories will fade into the Great Darkness.

Even the holidays we erect to commemorate events regarded as significant by one generation fade over time. Today is Armistice Day, commemorating the cessation of hostilities arranged by Erich Ludendorff to give German the breathing space to prepare for the next war, and reminding us that war is a thing not to be entered into lightly. Or rather, today was Armistice Day. When the War to End All Wars proved to be only the first in a series—easily surpassed by the Second War to End All Wars, and then the Third (a.k.a. the Cold War)—Armistice Day was repurposed as Veterans Day, a day to remember all the veterans of wars past and yet to come. And as the Mad Tea Partiers subsume the day into Freedom Week—celebrating America’s propensity for aggrandizing its own freedom by crushing the freedom of others—the memories of the day dissipate further.

I’d rather keep the original name. As cartoonist Walt Kelly once wrote:

The eleventh day of the eleventh month has always seemed to me to be special. Even if the reason for it fell apart as the years went on, it was a symbol of something close to the high part of the heart. Perhaps a life that stretches through two or three wars takes its first war rather seriously, but I still think we should have kept the name “Armistice Day.” Its implications were a little more profound, a little more hopeful. [from Ten Ever-lovin’ Blue-eyed Years with Pogo, as quoted by Vagabond Scholar]

But time passes, life goes on, and one generation’s vital memories become another’s old handkerchiefs and buttons, to be discarded like yesterday’s candy-wrappers  and milk-cartons. Or recycled into something more useful to the present moment, like an old gramophone case doing duty as a liquor cabinet. It’s the way of things—but I don’t have to like it.

Quotation of the Day

… economies no longer function like they did two and a half millennia ago. We are no longer limited by the amount of shiny pebbles we can dig up from the ground (or take from someone else). We aren’t on the gold standard anymore. If we need more money, we can create it. You might not like the implications of that (it seems to freak out goldbugs), but what it means is that we are only limited by constraints in the real economy: resource shortages (including human ones) and misallocation of resources.

Mike the Mad Biologist
(OklahomaCouldn’t Elect Someone Worse Than Sen. James Inhofe, Right?)

Day of Failure

S

ome years ago, on what must have been a 9^th of November, I watched in amazement as a newscaster, totally oblivious to recent history, observed about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall what a triumph this was for Ronald Reagan. While historians might debate the extent of his responsibility for the event, no one could deny that it happened during his administration.

Well, of course I was reminded of the exchange between Albert Alligator and a firefly during an expedition deep into the swamp in search of lost friends. Albert has taken charge, and the firefly demands that Albert do something leaderful. “There! Looky! It stopped rainin’ … How’s that?” says Albert. “You can’t take credit for that!” the firefly protests. “Why not?” Albert demands. “It happened durin’ my administration din’t it?”

Well, us gotta be fair, as Pogo Possum observed, but this one was both wrong on the law and wrong on the facts. Merely because something happened while somebody was in office doesn’t make it that person’s responsibility, for good or ill, regardless of the Alligator Principle. And in fact Ronald Reagan wasn’t president when the wall fell—it was during the administration of his successor, George Bush I.

I mentioned the absurdity of the newscaster’s remark to several people, and was surprised to find that they all agreed with the newscaster against me—of course it happened on Reagan’s watch. I remembered quite clearly the events of the end of the cold war, and I was quite sure of my facts—but I looked them up anyway. (Like the Golux, I sometimes make things up.) But it is a fact, the Berlin wall fell on 9 November 1989, ten months into Bush’s regime.

I suppose this is a matter of what you choose to believe. If you wish to believe that the almighty Reagan huffed and puffed and blew down the entire Soviet Empire with some wimpy speech, well, there’s nothing to stop you. Mere facts are powerless against such an iron dream. I guess it could be one of his legendary third-term achievements.

But 9 November does mark the end of the hated Berlin wall, no matter what political spin you might care to put on it, and you can easily see why the Germans might want to celebrate it. Except, well, they don’t, exactly. 9 November comes with cultural baggage. It was 9 November in 1932 that Nazi thugs decided to launch their anti-Semitic campaign by smashing windows of Jewish-owned stores and burning down synagogues. If 9 November were a German holiday, you can bet what Erik Kartmann would be celebrating.

Interestingly, Joseph Goebbels announced the opening shots of the Holocaust at a celebration of another Nazi milestone—no, not the foundation of the SS—it was the anniversary of Hitler’s failed coup attempt against the Bavarian government nine years before, the almost-comic beer-hall putsch. Four police officers did lose their lives defending the republic against some two thousand right-wing gangbangers, but Hitler’s utter incompetence guaranteed its failure right from the start. After Hitler’s triumph at the ballot-box years later the whole event was romanticized, and Germans celebrated it as Reichstrauertag, a day of mourning.

Hitler’s attempted coup occurred five years to the day after Philipp Scheidemann had unilaterally proclaimed the monarchy ended and a republic established by shouting that information out the window to a crowd below. Okay, the reality was a little more complicated, but that moment endured in popular memory, and the ill-fated Weimar Republic was launched. Crippled by debt and deliberately undermined by cultural conservatives, it would eventually more or less vote itself out of existence, going out with neither a bang nor a whimper, but while it lasted it was a brief cultural oasis in the Reich’s otherwise grim history.

The republic, in many ways, attempted to embody the tolerant and open ways envisioned in the brief awakening of 1848. Robert Blum was one of the voices of this movement—poet, publisher, politician—and on 9 November (the day before his 41^st birthday) he became a martyr to it, when after being illegally arrested a few days before he was summarily executed. The spirit of 1848 was quickly flushed down the sinkhole of history as the various nations affected reverted to their primitive ways, but the day was remembered on the new calendar of progressive saints, as medieval writers used to recall the gruesome deaths of Christian propagandists on their various anniversaries.

The Germans now call it Schicksalstag, the fateful day. It is certainly a day of many failures—the failed revolution of 1848, the failed republic of 1918, the failed coup of 1923, the failed attempt to eradicate the Jewish people, the failed attempt to build a German socialist state. American presidents from George Bush I to Barack Obama have been annually declaring 9 November World Freedom Day for the past quarter century, but as far as I can tell it has never caught on except with right-wingers, who use it to buff up the shine on their St. Ronald icons. I’d leave it alone, personally. I’d hate to think that the cause of world freedom will end up just another goddamn failure.

Scalps and Strychnine

I

t’s a gray, foggy November day, which suits my gray foggy mood perfectly. I could write about many things, but today I feel the call of the dead. I hear voices calling to me through the void of time, and I feel impelled—at least encouraged—to heed their words.

It was on this very November day in 1852 that one of those events occurred that would have significance past anything that its participants could have seen. Ben Wright, professional Indian fighter, headed down in the gray dawn to talk with the leaders of the Modoc tribe about establishing peace between them and the Euro-American settlers that were passing through their land. In a short while most of the Modoc negotiators would be dead, and Ben Wright would be riding back to the California town of Yreka in triumph.

These are facts. What actually happened in between is a matter of conjecture. Participants and other interested parties have left us a variety of inconsistent tales, and from them we can weave as we like whatever story pleases us.

There are some details that are all too clear. One of Wright’s men, in town to pick up supplies and vote, bought strychnine from a local druggist, for example. (It was believed by those who sold it to him that the poison was intended for the Modocs.) On the night of 7 November Wright sent beef over to the Modoc camp for them to have a feast, and one of his men (a native American) warned a friend of his in the camp not to eat the meat. And the next day during a talk that turned angry Wright pulled out his gun and started shooting, His men followed suit, and the Modoc negotiators ended up dead. Somehow things had gone wrong. These are facts.

Well, probably—as certainly as things ever get in history. What exactly went wrong? Decades later Captain Goodall, who bought the strychnine for Wright, told a regional historian

when at length it was found necessary to close the campaign on account of approaching winter and snow, a final talk was had, in which a beef was killed and well dosed with strychnine which I bought in Yreka and sent out to Wright. This was given to them and by them eaten half raw. But the plan failed of killing all of them off, for the heat of the fire deprived the poison of its strength. However it was successful thus far, that it made them all very sick with the “jerks,” and actually killed five of them—that is, made good Indians of them; or in other phrase “sunned their moccasins.”

On the other hand, George Gilless, who sold part of the strychnine to Wright, wrote:

Captain Ben Wright, in the Fall of ’52, sent to Yreka for strychnine, with which to poison the Modocs, who had been invited to his camp to treat for peace. A portion of the poison was supplied by the house in which I was then a partner in. We gave all the strych­nine we had. A gentleman now living in San Francisco (Captain William Clarkson) assisted my partner in obtaining an additional quantity, that which we contributed not being deemed sufficient. Swill, the Oregon Indian, did object to this mode of warfare, and his objection frustrated the attempt to poison the Modoc Peace Commission. The Modocs were afterward invited into camp to treat for peace, and Ben Wright and his troops did assault and kill nearly all of them. This information I had from Wright himself and it was the talk of the men generally belonging to his command on their entrance into Yreka after the close of their campaign. [According to other accounts Swill informed his Modoc girlfriend of the plot to poison them; presumably this is what Gilless is referring to when he wrote “his objection frustrated the attempt to poison the Modoc Peace Commission.”]

John Hallick, one of Ben Wright’s men, contradicted Gilless. In an 1873 interview with a local newspaper he told a story of long patient negotiations with the Modoc representatives. Eventually a woman serving as interpreter warned them that the Modocs intended to kill them all during the next day’s talks, and urged them to flee. Wright and his men, however, instead went secretly armed to the talks, and before the Modocs could carry out their treacherous plan, turned the tables on them by shooting them first. Another of Wright’s men is said to have confirmed the story.

A major problem with this story is that the weeks of negotiations never happened, as shown by the contemporary record. The key to understanding this is that the interview didn’t occur in a vacuum. Context matters. In this case the context is the then-ongoing Modoc War, in which negotiations with the besieged insurgents had in fact gone on for weeks. Hallick, or the interviewer, wanted to draw a parallel between current events and this twenty-year-old incident. Wright’s negotiations had taken no more than a few days, but to make the parallel better they needed to be strung out. To my mind, this casts doubt on a second parallel the interview makes much of. Supposedly the interpreter warned Wright of impending treachery. This was parallel to a warning given in the then-current 1873 conflict by an interpreter, a warning that proved all too accurate.

At least one old resident of the region, Elijah Steele, expressed his doubt about this new version of the story. He was out of town at the time of the event, so as he says

all I know of that was hearsay; but I know it was generally known that Ben Wright had concocted the plan of poisoning those Indians at a feast, and that his interpreter Indian, Livile [=Swill], had exposed to the Indians, so that but few ate of the meat, and that Wright and his company then fell upon the Indians and forty out of forty-seven, and one other, died of the poison afterward. There is one of the company now in the country who gives this version, and I heard Wright swearing about Dr. Ferrber, our druggist (now of Vallejo), selling him an adulterated article of strychnine, which he said the doctor wanted to kill the cayotes. That the plan was concocted before they left Yreka defeats the claim now made for them, that they only anticipated the treachery of the Indians.

What actually happened? I wasn’t there, and neither were you or anyone else living today, and the people who might have told something useful were busy grinding axes. But here’s what I think. I think that when Ben Wright gave the beef to the Modocs for a feast, it was adulterated with strychnine. Wright had gone to a great deal of trouble to secure it; it is difficult to believe that they would not have gone ahead with the plan. But Swill’s timely warning, at least to his girlfriend, probably did, as Steele wrote, discourage many of the Modocs from eating it, and the result was that the mass poisoning never came off, even if some did become sick or die. We know that Wright and his men kept watch on the Modoc camp all night, and when dawn came that some of them went down to the camp to continue their negotiations—or maybe to investigate exactly what had happened. If they were expecting to find only dead people, they were severely disappointed. They were instead confronted by an angry head man and his enraged followers. It is not clear why they were angry from the available accounts, but a failed attempt to poison them all would certainly fill the bill. Wright drew his concealed gun and shot one of the men, and Wright’s men started shooting at others. Early reports say that 31 Modocs were killed, and that two of Wright’s men were seriously injured. (How isn’t stated—the Modocs didn’t have firearms and their bows were supposedly unstrung.)

An unknown writer in Yreka gave the earliest account of events:

On Monday morning last, three persons ar­rived from Capt. Benjamin Wright’s camp, with information that a fight had taken place on Monday morning previous with the Indi­ans, and that thirty-one Indians had been killed, and two of our citizens wounded and wanted medical aid. [21 November 1852, printed in the Shasta Courier of 27 November 1852]

On 10 December a courier informed the Oregon Weekly Times “that Capt. Wright with his company of 25 men, near the great Tule Lake near the Southern trail, had a fight with the Indians, in which he was completly [sic] victorious, having killed forty-seven—and brought in 47 scalps, several horses, bows and arrows and various Indian ictors [sic].  Two men only were wounded.” By March of the next year the Indian Department was receiving reports that “A party of citizens under the conduct of Captain Ben Wright last fall massacred over thirty Indians out of forty-eight, who had come into Captain Wright’s camp by invitation to make a ‘peace.’” This same report indicated that the peace talks were only a ruse on Wright’s part to get the Modocs into a place where he could kill them.

Now we are often told that we shouldn’t judge historical figures by modern standards; they were men of their time and culture and lived according to their own codes. Fair enough. But by the standards of their day, as well as ours, murdering peace negotiators under a flag of truce is reprehensible. Even if we accept the later version of some of Ben Wright’s men, that they only committed treachery to forestall treachery, it is nothing but an attempt to claim that two wrongs—one of them only meditated—somehow make a right. And if it is true that they invited men to a peace conference with the intention of killing them en masse—then there is no excuse for their actions. Not by our code, certainly, but also not by theirs. It is an abomination, poison or no poison.