Author: James Pasley

Born in 1906, Dietrich Bonhoeffer grew up the sixth of eight children in Breslau (now Poland) and Berlin. His father, a renowned psychiatrist, was not particularly religious. Even Bonhoeffer’s mother, a pastor’s daughter, had little contact with the church. So it was somewhat surprising that in 1923 the then 17-year-old decided to study theology out of intellectual interest.

Bonhoeffer received his doctorate by the age of 21 and was a lecturer by 25 – an exceptionally rapid rise in the academic and theologian spheres.

However, it was on attending the Theological Seminary in New York in 1930 that Bonhoeffer’s faith shifted. He became profoundly fixated on, and influenced by, the famous Sermon on the Mount and the notion of living in Christ’s image. Bonhoeffer later wrote that “until New York I was a theologian but not yet a Christian.”

The scholar many contemporaries had once considered arrogant suddenly was reborn as a campaigner for social justice and peace. His new credo: The church should be open to all, even non-Christian victims of every social order. He viewed Nazi Germany’s rejection of the Jews as a rejection of Jesus Christ, who himself was a Jew.

Not wanting to be involved in the Nazi-influenced national church, Bonhoeffer moved to London to preach in 1933. Returning to Germany in 1935, he helped found the opposition Confessing Church in Finkenwalde before it was forcefully shut by the Nazi secret police in 1937. And in 1940 Bonhoeffer was silenced by an official Nazi gag order.

In the same year he joined the resistance group of Major General Hans Oster and began his risky double life as a resistance courier and preacher of peace.

On April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested for “undermining the military.”

In the Berlin-Tegel prison where he was confined he found time to read, write letters and poems and, most importantly, to work. After the failure of the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, the Gestapo uncovered documents indicting Bonhoeffer in the plot.

Six months later he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp before being executed in another camp in Flossenbürg.

According to a fellow inmate, Bonhoeffer reportedly departed with the words: “This is the end – but for me the beginning.”

The following was written by Bonhoeffer while being held in prison.

‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.

Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplishes anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

‘If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature.

This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one.

There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.

We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.

We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability.

And so, it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.

Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.

It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him.

He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.

This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

‘Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it.

Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.

 This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly.

The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

‘But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.’

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from ‘After Ten Years’ in Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, vol. 8) Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010. 

The Laws of Human Stupidity

Mella, P. (2017). Intelligence and Stupidity. Creative Education, 8, 2515-2534. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2017.815174

Scientific Research, Open Access Web Site

As a young man, Cipolla wanted to teach history and philosophy in an Italian high school, and therefore enrolled at the political science faculty at the University of Pavia. While a student there he discovered his passion for economic history.

He graduated from Pavia in 1944. He then studied at the University of Paris and the London School of Economics.

Cipolla obtained his first teaching post in economic history in Catania at the age of 27. This was to be the first stop in a long academic career in Italy (Venice, Turin, Pavia, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Fiesole) and abroad. In 1953 Cipolla left for the United States as a Fulbright fellow and in 1957 became a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Two years later he obtained a full professorship.

Carlo Cipolla attempted to determine the percentage of stupid people in a given population. To determine if that number depends on education or on the social circle of the person, Cipolla conducted a “lighthearted” experiment that entailed dividing the population of his University into four groups: school custodians, students, clerks and teachers, in order to determine the percentage of stupid people in each group.

Surprisingly, he found that the number of stupid people remained constant for all the groups. Enthusiastic about his discovery, he extended his research to a group of Nobel Prize winners; here, too, he found, “happily”, that this population had the same number of stupid individuals. Based on this “lighthearted” experiment, he arrived at his first conclusion:

The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person (Cipolla, 2011: 11) .

He found it extraordinary that nature succeeds in maintaining constant the percentage of stupid individuals no matter what population is being considered.

Concentrating his attention on the results of these experiments, Cipolla presented several “Basic laws on human stupidity” :

1) Stupidity is inevitable. In all places, times and groups there has always been and will always be a percentage of stupid people; in his book A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity, the philosopher Walter Pitkin (1934) estimated that four people out of five are stupid enough to be called “stupid”; that amounts to over four billion today;

2) Stupidity cannot be quantified. No matter hard we try to quantify the number of stupid individuals, their number will always be greater than the one we have come up with;

3) It is not possible to recognize the stupid individual. Stupidity can be found in the simple as well as the educated person; in the worker and the businessman; adults and children; citizens or rulers. We cannot recognize the stupid person from his appearance but rather from the consequences of his behavior.

People whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid. Day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments (Cipolla, 2011: 12) .

4) Stupidity is reflexive. All of us can show stupid behavior intermixed with other types of behavior. Often when we judge others as being stupid we are unaware that we may have the same characteristic.

5) The stupid person is more dangerous than the bandit (Cipolla, 2011: 28) ; The latter harms others but at least procures advantages for himself, while the stupid individual produces only disadvantages, for himself and for others; in effect stupid people do not know they are stupid, and that is one more reason why they are extremely dangerous;

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake (Cipolla, 2011: 31) ;

6) The decline of a nation begins when the number of stupid individuals exceeds that of the intelligent citizens.

Carlo Cipolla must have been amused by his lucid analysis. In fact, the essay that, in Italy, presents his theory―together with other essays full of irony―is titled “Allegro ma non troppo” (“Cheerful But Not Too Much”).

However, his test is truly powerful and convincing, especially owing to his decision to focus the analysis on the most deleterious form of social behavior, stupidity, thereby confirming Albert Einstein’s conviction: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe”.

Unfortunately, rational persons have great difficulty in understanding the modus operandi of those we can define as stupid since, in carrying out their actions, stupid individuals are not guided by any form of rationality, and for this reason their behavior is not only harmful to the interests of others but also self-damaging.

The American Interest Web Site

It’s the Foolishness, Stupid

ROBERT J. STERNBERG

Was A History of Human Stupidity an example of its subject?

A Short Introduction to the History
of Human Stupidity (1932)
Walter B. Pitkin

What is there to be learned from a book on human stupidity published in 1932? Well, for one, that the history of stupidity never ends. Walter B. Pitkin gives plentiful examples of human stupidity, and one would have hoped that such examples would have ended in 1932. But there followed World War II; the Vietnam War (for those who have not noticed, the Communists won); genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia and Sudan (Darfur); Enron, Tyco and Arthur Andersen; and a current involvement in Iraq with rapidly shifting ex post facto rationales, billions of dollars spent, and no endgame apparent to anyone, least of all those highly educated men of state who got us into it. These messes are not examples of stupidity alone, of course. Venality, greed, opportunism, irresponsibility and other less charming human traits played roles as well. But stupidity has surely been a prince among these causes.

Pitkin defines intelligence in a reasonable way, as “the ability of the individual to adjust successfully to new situations.” He defines stupidity as the opposite.

I would prefer to call it foolishness to distinguish it from low IQ, which is clearly not what Pitkin means given that many of his examples of stupid people, such as Walt Whitman, almost certainly had high IQs. But whatever we call it, Pitkin believes that stupidity is omnipresent in the world.

The reason is that the very attributes that led to success over evolutionary history lead to failure in more modern times. In particular, he insists that our distant ancestors had to be insensitive and indifferent to multitudinous stimuli in the environment, but that today—1932, anyway—we need to pay attention to those many stimuli. This evolutionary thesis is probably wrong.

Pitkin was unusual if he was anything. Early in his career he seemed to fancy himself a philosopher. In 1910, when he was 32 years old, he joined with five other authors to produce a book entitled The Progress and Platform of Six Realists.

The book is practically unreadable, though it seems to be a brief for a form of radical positivism. Pitkin’s chapter is about evolution, and what is intelligible about it seems to be mainly wrong.

A few years earlier he tracked down Edmund Husserl in Germany, trying to persuade him to let him translate one of Husserl’s books into English. He seems to have abandoned his philosophical ideas, becoming a journalism professor at Columbia University and writing a series of mostly self-help books. 

Life Begins at 40 was his most famous, but he also wrote books giving advice on speed-reading and commented on just about every subject under the sun, gaining him a reputation as a kind of walking encyclopedia.

Pitkin was always a pessimist: Just before A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity appeared in 1932, he published The Twilight of the American Mind (1928), an early entry in the field of American declinism in which he warned against too much immigration and too much education for less-than-keen minds.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his reputation for such views, Pitkin was a household name. A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity sold like hotcakes for Simon & Schuster, and it was translated into 15 languages. Perhaps there is something Pitkin got right after all?

 There is something. We can learn from A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity that there is a difference between the more academic, analytical side of intelligence and its more practical side.

Very academically brilliant people, such as Manuel Jones, a physicist cited by Pitkin, can be practically incompetent. Pitkin may have had some of these same tendencies, as do many of us.

Think about it.The skills that lead to success in school are by no means the only ones people need to function effectively in teams, communicate in a clear and convincing fashion, and understand other people’s belief systems and emotions. Nevertheless, societies continue to hang onto rather narrow beliefs about intelligence, even in their quiz shows.

Many countries have television quiz shows that test people’s knowledge of obscure facts. The United States has a program, College Bowl, that pits undergraduate students from various universities against each other to determine which university had the smartest students, in much the same way that the universities competed in football.

There were other programs, such as The Sixty-four Thousand Dollar Question, for which the stakes were so high that the producers decided to rig the games, causing a nationwide scandal when the fraud was discovered.

Today, in the United States as in other countries, there are spelling bees, and there even was a recent documentary, Spellbound, that chronicles the lives of youngsters memorizing the spellings of thousands of words in order to compete nationally to be the spelling champion.

Is memorizing thousands of obscure spellings, or for that matter pi to thousands of digits, the road to intelligence, or to foolishness? More importantly, can a person be smart, in the sense of knowing all the facts he or she needs to know and then some, and at the same time be stupid in some other sense?

Examples of foolish behavior in smart people abound. Bill Clinton, a graduate of Yale Law School and a Rhodes Scholar, compromised his presidency by his poor handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and other scandals with women from his past.

The antics of Silvio Berlusconi, one of the richest men in the world and the Prime Minister of Italy, at times seem to defy belief such as his claim that Mussolini wasn’t responsible for any of the deaths of his countrymen; he only sent them “on vacation.”

In history, we only need to go back to Neville Chamberlain and his slogan of “peace in our time” as a means to appease Hitler to realize that smart people can act very foolishly.

Such behavior is not limited to politicians. Some of the world’s smarter and better-educated businessmen brought us the scandals and fiascoes that led to the bankruptcies of or fiascos in major U.S. corporations such as Arthur Andersen, Enron, Tyco, WorldCom and others. Such scandals are not, of course, limited to the United States.

If there is one conclusion that seems clear, it is that smart people can act stupidly. If stupidity is in some sense the opposite of wisdom, it means that intelligence is no protection against it.

No one would question whether Clinton, once the most powerful man in the United States, or Berlusconi, currently the most powerful man in Italy, is smart.

We learn also from Pitkin, correctly I believe, that stupidity is more a state than a trait. That is, intelligent people can behave stupidly much of the time. Indeed, he concludes that every normal person actually needs many moments of stupidity.

Kenneth Lay, formerly CEO of Enron, was an economics professor. Another CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, was a Harvard MBA. And Andrew Fastow, the CFO, was a graduate of the Tufts university.

What is it that leads smart people to do stupidthings? Pitkin doesn’t delve very deeply here, but I would suggest that smart people are especially susceptible to stupidity precisely because they think they are immune to it.

The unrealistic optimism fallacy. This fallacy occurs when one believes one is so smart or powerful that it is pointless to worry about the outcomes, especially the long-term ones, of what one does because everything will come out all right in the end—as in “I’m too brainy and powerful to have to worry about anything.” If one simply acts boldly, one’s intelligence will turn things around in time. What were Richard Nixon’s cronies thinking when they planned the break-in at the Watergate? What were George W. Bush and his handlers thinking when the “mission accomplished” banner was waved to signal the end of the war in Iraq?

The egocentrism fallacy. This fallacy arises when one comes to think that one’s own interests are the only ones that are important. One starts to ignore one’s responsibilities to other people or to institutions. Sometimes people in positions of responsibility may start off with good intentions but then become corrupted by the power they yield and their seeming unaccountability to others. A prime minister, for example, might use his office to escape prosecution, as has appeared to happen in some European and South American countries in recent years. Berlusconi saw to the passing of laws that specifically protected his economic and legal interests.

The omniscience fallacy. This fallacy results from having at one’s disposal essentially any knowledge one might want that is, in fact, knowable. With a phone call, a powerful leader can have almost any kind of knowledge made available to him or her. At the same time, people look up to the powerful leader as all-knowing. The powerful leader may then come to believe that he or she really is all-knowing. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a bright man, was more or less immune to listening and learning, a fault of which his distant successor, Donald Rumsfeld, has also been accused (although whether fairly or not remains to be seen).

The omnipotence fallacy. This fallacy results from the extreme power one wields, or believes oneself to wield. The result is overextension and, often, abuse of power. Sometimes leaders create internal or external enemies in order to demand more power for themselves to deal with the supposed enemies. In the United States today, the Federal government has seized more power to itself than any government since World War II on the grounds of terrorist threats. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has turned one group against another, with the similar goal of maintaining his own power.

The invulnerability fallacy. This fallacy derives from the illusion of complete protection, such as might be provided by a large staff. Leaders especially seem to have many friends ready to protect them at a moment’s notice, but they may be shielding themselves from individuals who are anything less than sycophantic. Eliot Spitzer engaged in behavior that he himself had investigated and prosecuted in the past.

The ethical disengagement fallacy. This fallacy occurs when one starts to believe that ethics are important for other people but not for oneself. Many leaders of countries, corporations and even churches have seemed to think themselves exempt from the ethical standards to which they hold others. Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker come to mind.

Pitkin has some very good insights on “six stupid tendencies” in our judging of other people. To mention just a few, we can slip up when we judge people only by the ephemera of their personal mannerisms or on-screen presence (unfortunately, the way many politicians come to be judged); by looking only at externals, such as how good-looking or tall they are, rather than by what they are like inside; and by judging them by our own habits and standards rather than by who they are. But in the end, for all the book’s many flaws, Pitkin’s main achievement is to remind us that there is a difference between book knowledge and academic intelligence, on the one hand, and broader skills, on the other. I mentioned one such broader skill above: practical intelligence. But there is an even more important one, perhaps: wisdom.

Wisdom can be defined as using one’s academic and practical intelligence, as well as one’s knowledge base, for a common good over the long and short terms by balancing competing interests through the infusion of positive ethical values. Schools need to place more emphasis on teaching wisdom and less on the learning of facts, many of which will be out-of-date or irrelevant shortly after they are learned. We test for many unimportant things that crowd the important lessons out of the curriculum.

The nation will not be saved by the No Child Left Behind Act. Indeed, the crumbling, unpopular Administration that has pushed it so hard seems to be full of people whom everyone else in the country has left way behind, or so one might conclude from a Gallup Poll which found George W. Bush to have the lowest popularity rating of any president since the poll was started. Nor will America be saved by aptitude tests, achievement tests, and schools that employ drill-and-kill regimes to maximize scores on standardized tests.

Source: BBC Monitoring

A gang that kidnapped a group of missionaries from the US and Canada in Haiti last week is demanding $1m in ransom for each of the 17 people it is holding, the Haitian justice minister has told the Wall Street Journal.

The gang is notorious for kidnapping groups of people for ransom.

The same gang, 400 Mazowo, abducted a group of Catholic clergy in April.

The clergy were later released but it is not clear if a ransom was paid.

All of those kidnapped are US citizens, except one who is a Canadian national. Among those seized are five men, seven women and five children. The youngest child is reportedly only two years old.

They worked for Christian Aids Ministries, a non-profit missionary organization based in Ohio, which supplies Haitian children with shelter, food and clothing.

The missionaries were returning from a visit to an orphanage when the bus they were travelling in was seized by the gang members on a main road in the town of Ganthier, east of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

There are a reportedly 162 gangs active in Haiti with an estimated 3000 members.

Seizing vehicles and all of their occupants for ransom is one of the main activities the 400 Mazowo gang uses to finance itself.

The Washington Post said one of those abducted had posted a WhatsApp message calling for help. “Please pray for us!! We are being held hostage, they kidnapped our driver. Pray pray pray. We don’t know where they’re taking us,” it said.

The White House said on Monday that both the US Department of State and the FBI were assisting Haitian authorities with the case.

A former field director for Christian Aid Ministries in Haiti told CNN that the kidnappers had already made contact with the missionary organization.

Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois, told CNN he believed the US should negotiate with the kidnappers, but not pay ransom.

“We need to track down where they are and see if negotiations – without paying ransom – are possible,” he said. “Or do whatever we need to do, on a military front or police front.”

In Haiti, local unions staged a walkout on Monday in protest at the rising levels of crime.

The strike closed down business in Port-au-Prince and other cities, as public transportation employees stayed home. Barricades were set up in some areas to prevent workers from crossing picket lines.

Haiti has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world.

This year has been particularly bad, with more than 600 kidnappings recorded in the first three quarters of 2021, compared with 231 over the same period last year, according to a local civil society group.

The Catholic Church has previously described the situation as “a descent into hell”, with gangs taking people from all walks of life, both local and foreign.

Staff and agencies at The Guardian

Authorities are said to be negotiating for the missionaries release but are reluctant to pay money that will be used for ‘more guns and more munitions’

Liszt Quitel told the Wall Street Journal the FBI and Haitian police were in contact with the kidnappers from the 400 Mawozo gang.

It is the largest reported kidnapping of its kind in recent years, with Haitian gangs growing more brazen and abductions spiking as the country tries to recover from the 7 July assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck southern Haiti on 14 August and killed more than 2,200 people.

Associated Press in Port-au-Prince

Thu 21 Oct 2021 14.18 EDT

In a video posted on social media on Thursday, Wilson Joseph, the supposed leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, said: “I swear by thunder that if I don’t get what I’m asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans.”

Joseph also threatened the prime minister, Ariel Henry, and the chief of Haiti’s national police, Léon Charles, as he spoke in front of coffins that apparently held several members of his gang who were recently killed.

“You guys make me cry. I cry water. But I’m going to make you guys cry blood,” he said.

Earlier on Thursday, the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, said that the families of those who’d been kidnapped are from Amish, Mennonite and other conservative Anabaptist communities in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Ontario, Canada.

Weston Showalter, a spokesman for the religious group, read a letter from the hostages’ families, in which they said, “God has given our loved ones the unique opportunity to live out our Lord’s command to love your enemies.”

The group invited people to join them in prayer for the kidnappers as well as those kidnapped and expressed gratitude for help from “people that are knowledgeable and experienced in dealing with” such situations.

“Pray for these families,” Showalter said. “They are in a difficult spot.”

The same day that the missionaries were kidnapped, a gang also abducted a Haiti university professor, according to a statement that Haiti’s Office of Citizen Protection issued on Tuesday.

It also noted that a Haitian pastor abducted earlier this month has not been released despite a ransom being paid.

“The criminals … operate with complete impunity, attacking all members of society,” the organization said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of demonstrators blocked roads and burned tires in Haiti’s capital to decry a severe fuel shortage and a spike in insecurity and to demand that the prime minister step down.

The scattered protest took place across the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.

In addition to kidnappings, the gangs also are blamed for blocking gas distribution terminals and hijacking supply trucks, which officials say has led to a shortage of fuel.

Many gas stations now remain closed for days at a time, and the lack of fuel is so dire that the chief executive of Digicel Haiti announced on Tuesday that 150 of its 1,500 branches countrywide were out of diesel.

“Nothing works!” complained Davidson Meiuce, who joined Thursday’s protest. “We are suffering a lot.”

Some protesters held up signs including one that read, “Down with the high cost of living.”

Demonstrators clashed with police in some areas, with officers firing teargas that mixed with the heavy black smoke rising from burning tires that served as barricades.

Alexandre Simon, a 34-year-old English and French teacher, said he and others were protesting because Haitians were facing such dire situations.

“There are a lot of people who cannot eat,” he said. “There is no work … There are a lot of things we don’t have.”

The country has been further thrown into chaos by the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse (Joe Van Nell,  Mo Ease) in July, as rival factions fight to gain control of the country in the face of a struggling police force.

Peter Beaumont, Tom Phillips and Julian Borger

 The Guardian, Wed 7 Jul 2021

Moïse, was assassinated in his home by a group of armed men who also seriously injured his wife, according to a statement and comments made by the country’s interim prime minister.

Speaking on a local radio station, Claude Joseph confirmed that Moïse, 53, had been killed, saying the attack was carried out by an “armed commando group” that included foreigners.

In a televised national address, Joseph declared a state of emergency across the country, and made a call for calm. “The situation is under control,” he said.

Late on Wednesday Haiti’s communications secretary said police had arrested the “presumed assassins”. Frantz Exantus did not provide further details about the killing or say how many suspects had been arrested. The police chief later said officers were fighting with the group and that four had been shot dead and another two arrested.

According to the Haitian ambassador to Washington, Bocchit Edmond, Moïse’s killers claimed to be members of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as they entered his guarded residence.

“This was a well-orchestrated commando attack,” Edmond told the Guardian. “They presented themselves as DEA agents, telling people they had come as part of a DEA operation.”

In videos circulating on social media, a man with an American accent is heard saying in English over a megaphone: “DEA operation. Everybody stand down. DEA operation. Everybody back up, stand down.”

Residents reported hearing gunshots and seeing men dressed in black running through the neighborhood.

“It could be foreign mercenaries, because the video footage showed them speaking in Spanish,” Edmond said.

“It was something carried out by professionals, by killers … But since the investigation has just been opened, we prefer to wait on legal authorities to have a better assessment of the situation. We don’t know for sure, with real certainty, who’s behind this.

“This is an act of barbarity. It’s an attack on our democracy,” he said.

Edmond said he had asked the White House on Wednesday for US help in identifying and capturing the killers.

“We need a lot more information,” Joe Biden said later at the White House, calling the killing “very worrisome”.

In a written statement, the US president offered condolences and assistance. “We condemn this heinous act, and I am sending my sincere wishes for First Lady Moïse’s recovery,” the statement said. “The United States offers condolences to the people of Haiti, and we stand ready to assist as we continue to work for a safe and secure Haiti.”

Moïse’s time in office was marked by an increase in political instability, allegations of corruption and a long-running dispute about when his period in office should end.

He had been ruling by decree for more than a year after the country failed to hold legislative elections and he wanted to push through controversial constitutional changes.

Haiti’s opposition claims Moïse should have stepped down on 7 February to coincide with the fifth anniversary of 2015 elections that were cancelled and then re-run a year later because of allegations of fraud. In February the US said it supported Moïse’s position that he had the right to govern until February 2022.

Earlier this year amid allegations by Moïse of a coup attempt that planned to “murder him” and fresh protests, he moved to protect his position, ordering the arrest of 23 people including a supreme court judge and a senior police official, while declaring he was “not a dictator”.

Opponents had also accused Moïse’s government of fueling political violence by providing gangs with guns and money to intimidate his adversaries.

So we have to ask. Was one of the gangs he provided guns and money to, the 400 Mawozo gang, responsible for the recent kidnappings?

Sure raises a lot of new questions doesn’t it?

So where is this place and what can history tell us about Haiti?

CIA World Factbook

The native Taino (Tie EE No) – who inhabited the island of Hispaniola when Christopher COLUMBUS first landed on it in 1492 – were virtually wiped out by Spanish settlers within 25 years.

In the early 17th century, the French established a presence on Hispaniola.

In 1697, Spain ceded to the French the western third of the island, which later became Haiti.

The French colony, based on forestry and sugar-related industries, became one of the wealthiest in the Caribbean but relied heavily on the forced labor of enslaved Africans.

In the late 18th century, Toussaint L’OUVERTURE led a revolution of Haiti’s nearly half a million slaves that ended France’s rule on the island.

After a prolonged struggle, and under the leadership of Jean-Jacques DESSALINES, Haiti became the first country in the world led by former slaves after declaring its independence in 1804, but it was forced to pay an indemnity to France for more than a century and was shunned by other countries for nearly 40 years.

The United States Government’s interests in Haiti existed for decades prior to its occupation. As a potential naval base for the United States, Haiti’s stability concerned U.S. diplomatic and defense officials who feared Haitian instability might result in foreign rule of Haiti.

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson suggested the annexation of the island of Hispaniola, consisting of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, to secure a U.S. defensive and economic stake in the West Indies.

Following the assassination of the Haitian President in July of 1915, President Woodrow Wilson sent the United States Marines into Haiti to restore order and maintain political and economic stability in the Caribbean. This occupation continued until 1934.

After the US occupied Haiti from 1915-1934, Francois “Papa Doc” DUVALIER and then his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” DUVALIER led repressive and corrupt regimes that ruled Haiti from 1957-1971 and 1971-1986, respectively.

A massive magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010 with an epicenter about 25 km (15 mi) west of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Estimates are that over 300,000 people were killed and some 1.5 million left homeless.

On 4 October 2016, Hurricane Matthew made landfall in Haiti, resulting in over 500 deaths and causing extensive damage to crops, houses, livestock, and infrastructure. 

Currently Haiti is listed as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere..

Population

11,198,240 (July 2021 est.)
Ethnic groups

Black 95%, mixed and White 5%

Languages

French (official), Creole (official)

Religions

Roman Catholic 54.7%, Protestant 28.5% (Baptist 15.4%, Pentecostal 7.9%, Adventist 3%, Methodist 1.5%, other 0.7%), Vodou 2.1%, other 4.6%, none 10.2% (2003 est.)
Population below poverty line

58.5% (2012 est.)

So, hopefully you can now, once again, see why we need to pay attention to what is happening in the world around us.

The national media loves to keep us in the dark.

We all remember the Haitian refugees huddled under the bridge at the Texas border.

People were asking lots of questions and, just like that, they disappeared. Who were they? Where did they go? Why were they here? Were they refugees or criminal gang members? Better yet, how did they get here?

By ignoring the follow up on the investigation as to the assassination of the Haitian President, and the increased violence in Haiti, have we helped in creating the current immigration and kidnapping crisis?

To me, this is a perfect example of why the United States cannot step back into the world of isolationism.

While we worry about the proper pronouns to use in addressing someone and focus on wokeness in our society, what critical issues are we ignoring on the world stage?

Look at the results of ignoring the Haitian issue. Now think about Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, China, Russia, and North Korea.

Wake up America, before it is too late.

Well folks, we have a real mess on our hands.

As you are aware, we have a huge problem with our supply chain.

The evening news shows hundreds of ships anchored off shore and thousands of box containers stacker up at our piers.

They are even talking about serious shortages of goods and empty shelves during the Christmas shopping season.

How in the world has this happened?

The answer is simple. Government regulation. In their effort to fix one problem in California, they have triggered a huge problem nationwide.

Now bear with me folks, because this one was tough to research since governments have a tendency to not advertise their screw ups.

There are 2 big issues.

The first is something called the AB5 Gig Worker Law in California.

The Second is the California Truck and Bus Regulation Compliance Requirement

Let’s start with the AB5 Gig Worker Law in California.

Now folks, I must be honest. I didn’t know what a gig worker was until I started my research.

Gig workers are independent contractors, online platform workers, contract firm workers, on-call workers and temporary workers.

Gig workers enter into formal agreements with on-demand companies to provide services to the company’s clients. Gig work consists of income-earning activities outside of standard, long-term employer-employee relationships.

Well, that makes sense. I knew I had heard the term before. When a band gets a job to play at a local venue, they usually refer to it as a gig.

So with our definition in hand, let’s dive into this AB5 thing.

NOLO.com

Nolo, in Latin, means “I don’t choose to.”

By Stephen Fishman, J.D.

California’s Historic AB5 Gig-Worker Law

California law (AB5) changes the rules for how employers determine whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor.

Bottom of Form

This law took effect in California on January 1, 2020 that dramatically changed the rules employers must use to determine whether workers are employees or independent contractors (“ICs”) in the state.

The distinction is important because independent contractors are not entitled to most of the protections and benefits that employees get. This includes a minimum wage, overtime pay, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation insurance, and paid family leave.

The law applies only to workers in California—regardless of where the employer is based. It does not apply to workers outside of California even if the employer is based in California.

As a result of AB5, many California workers who had previously been classified as ICs must be reclassified as employees and are entitled to employee benefits and protections. This led to an uproar in the business community.

Uber, Lyft and other online hiring platforms sponsored a successful ballot proposition (Proposition 22) that exempted most drivers for app-based rideshare and delivery platforms from the law

Over 50 categories of workers are exempt from AB5. However, workers in these exempt categories are not automatically ICs. Instead, almost all such workers are required to pass muster as ICs under the legal test in effect before AB5 was enacted.

Under the law, an ABC test must be used to determine if non-exempt California workers are employees or independent contractors for most California employment law purposes. Under this test, all workers are presumed to be employees.

A worker qualifies as an independent contractor only if the person satisfies a new “ABC test.” Under this test, a worker is an IC only if he or she:

(A) is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact, and

(B) performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business, and

(C) is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.

All three prongs of the ABC test must be satisfied for workers to be independent contractors. In other words, to be an IC a worker must: be free from control + work outside the hiring firm’s usual business + have an independent business.

It’s difficult for most workers to qualify as independent contractors under the ABC test.

The biggest sticking point for the truckers needed to haul our supplies from California ports to destinations throughout the nation, is the second one.

“performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business”

Quite simply, an independent trucker can’t satisfy this requirement if he or she performs services related to the hiring firm’s core business.

So, if an independent trucker must be classified as an employee under the ABC test, the worker’s employer must provide the worker with the benefits and protections mandated by the California employment laws.

This includes minimum wage, paid annual sick leave, time and one half for overtime, reimburse employees for out-of-pocket expenses necessarily incurred on the job, such as driving expenses, provide meal and rest breaks, and paying employees for unused vacation time when employment ends.

In addition, as employees, the workers must be provided with California unemployment insurance. Their employers must register with the California Employment Development Department and pay unemployment insurance premiums.

California law also requires all employers with at least one employee to have workers’ compensation insurance.

The list goes on and on with things like California paid family leave, disability benefits, etc. Do you now see the problem?

It used to be that a freight company could hire an independent trucker to pick up a load from the port in LA and haul it to Kansas City for X amount of dollars.

The freight company just contracted with the trucker and paid a set fee, period. Now, that company would have to pick up the tab for all the benefits due emplyeee in California.

So in trying to fix the UBER problem, the California Legislature screwed up the entire trucking industry.

Good grief.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the California environmentalists added another hurdle.

This brings us to our second big issue.

I had a heck of a time trying to find info on this one.

It deals with another California state law.

The California Air Resources Board came out with new regulations in June of 2019.

It can be found under Truck and Bus Regulations.

According to the California Air Resources Board, the new The Truck regulation affects individuals, private companies, and Federal agencies that own diesel vehicles with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) greater than 14,000 lbs. that operate in California.

What it basically says is that all trucks and buses operating in California must have 2010 model year or newer engines.

Now I am not a trucker, but I do know that those trucks are expensive. I would be willing to bet that a huge percentage of those we see on the road have motors that are over 12 years old.

So, once again, California, in an effort to fix one problem, has created a problem for all of us.

Now I know what you are saying. Professor P, where is our history lesson for today? Well, here we go.

By Tim Harford
BBC World Service

So now that we have identified the problem, we need to look at the impact.

Toys from China, copper from Chile, T-shirts from Bangladesh, wine from New Zealand, coffee from Ethiopia, and tomatoes from Spain.

Like it or not, globalization is a fundamental feature of the modern economy.

In the early 1960s, world trade in merchandise was less than 20% of world economic output, or gross domestic product (GDP).

Now, it is around 50% but not everyone is happy about it.

There is probably no other issue where the anxieties of ordinary people are so in conflict with the near-unanimous approval of economists.

Perhaps the biggest enabler of globalization has not been a free trade agreement, but a simple invention: the shipping container.

It is just a corrugated steel box, 8ft (2.4m) wide, 8ft 6in (2.6m) high, and 40ft (12m) long but its impact has been huge.

Here is your history lesson.

Consider how a typical trade journey looked before the invention of the shipping container.

In 1954, a simple cargo ship, the SS Warrior, carried merchandise from New York to Bremerhaven in Germany.

It held just over 5,000 tons of cargo – including food, household goods, letters, and vehicles – which were carried as 194,582 separate items in 1,156 different shipments.

Just keeping track of the consignments as they moved around the dockside warehouses was a nightmare.

But the real challenge was physically loading such ships.

Longshoremen would pile the cargo onto a wooden pallet on the dock.

The pallet would be hoisted in a sling and deposited in the hold.

More longshoremen carted each item into a snug corner of the ship, poking the merchandise with steel hooks until it settled into place against the curves and bulkheads of the hold, skillfully packed so that it would not shift on the high seas.

There were cranes and forklifts but much of the merchandise, from bags of sugar heavier than a man to metal bars the weight of a small car, was shifted with muscle power.

This was dangerous work.

In a large port, someone would be killed every few weeks.

In 1950, New York averaged half a dozen serious incidents every day, and its port was safer than many.

Researchers studying the SS Warrior’s trip to Bremerhaven concluded the ship had taken ten days to load and unload, as much time as it had spent crossing the Atlantic.

In today’s money, the cargo cost around $420 a ton to move.

Given typical delays in sorting and distributing the cargo by land, the whole journey might take three months.

Sixty years ago, then, shipping goods internationally was costly, chancy, and immensely time-consuming.

Surely there had to be a better way.

Indeed, there was: put all the cargo into big standard boxes and move those.

But inventing the box was the easy bit – the shipping container had already been tried in various forms for decades.

The real challenge was overcoming the social obstacles.

To begin with, the trucking companies, shipping companies, and ports could not agree on a standard size.

Some wanted large containers while others wanted smaller versions; perhaps because they specialized in heavy goods or trucked on narrow mountain roads.

Then there were the powerful dockworkers’ unions, who resisted the idea.

Yes, the containers would make the job of loading ships safer, but it would also mean fewer jobs.

US regulators also preferred the status quo.

The sector was tightly bound with red tape, with separate sets of regulations determining how much that shipping and trucking companies could charge.

Why not simply let companies charge whatever the market would bear – or even allow shipping and trucking companies to merge, and put together an integrated service?

Perhaps the bureaucrats were simply keen to preserve their jobs.

Such bold ideas would have left them with less to do.

The man who navigated this maze of hazards, and who can fairly be described as the inventor of the modern shipping container system, was called Malcom McLean.

McLean did not know anything about shipping, but he was a trucking entrepreneur.

He knew plenty about trucks, plenty about playing the system, and all there was to know about saving money.

As Marc Levinson explains in his book, The Box, McLean not only saw the potential of a shipping container that would fit neatly onto a flatbed truck, he also had the skills and the risk-taking attitude needed to make it happen.

First, McLean exploited a legal loophole to gain control of both a shipping company and a trucking company.

Then, when dockers went on strike, he used the idle time to refit old ships to new container specifications.

He repeatedly plunged into debt.

He took on “fat cat” incumbents in Puerto Rico, revitalizing the island’s economy by slashing shipping rates to the United States.

He cannily encouraged New York’s Port Authority to make the New Jersey side of the harbor a center for container shipping.

But probably the most striking coup took place in the late 1960s, when Malcom McLean sold the idea of container shipping to perhaps the world’s most powerful customer: the US Military.

Faced with an huge logistical nightmare in trying to ship equipment to Vietnam, the military turned to McLean’s container ships.

Containers work much better when they are part of an integrated logistical system, and the US military was perfectly placed to implement that.

Even better, McLean realized that on the way back from Vietnam, his empty container ships could collect payloads from the world’s fastest growing economy, Japan.

And so trans-Pacific trading began in earnest.

A modern shipping port would be unrecognizable to a hardworking longshoreman of the 1950s.

Even a modest container ship might carry 20 times as much cargo as the SS Warrior did yet disgorge its cargo in hours rather than days.

Gigantic cranes weighing 1,000 tons apiece lock onto containers which themselves weigh upwards of 30 tons and swing them up and over on to a waiting transporter.

All of this is choreographed by computers, which track every container as it moves through a global logistical system.

The refrigerated containers are put in a hull section with power and temperature monitors.

The heavier containers are placed at the bottom to keep the ship’s center of gravity low.

The entire process is scheduled to keep the ship balanced.

And after the crane has released one container onto a waiting transporter, it will grasp another before swinging back over the ship, which is being simultaneously emptied and refilled.

Not everywhere enjoys the benefits of the containerisation revolution.

Many ports in poorer countries still look like New York in the 1950s.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains largely cut off from the world economy because of poor infrastructure.

But for an ever-growing number of destinations, goods can now be shipped reliably, swiftly, and cheaply.

Rather than the $420 that a customer would have paid to get the SS Warrior to ship a ton of goods across the Atlantic in 1954, you might now pay less than $50.

Indeed, economists who study international trade often assume that transport costs are zero.

It keeps the mathematics simpler, they say, and thanks to the shipping container, it is nearly true.

So, thanks to Mr. McLean and his invention, I must ask, do we really have a shipping problem, or is what we are seeing the result of government bureaucrats in California passing laws and regulations that affect us all.

Tensions with China are at their worst in 40 years, Taiwan’s defense minister has said, warning of the risk of an accidental strike between the two.

The Defense Minister’s comments came after China sent a “record number” of military jets into Taiwan’s air defense zone for four consecutive days.

Taiwan considers itself a sovereign state. China, however, views Taiwan as a breakaway province.

It has not ruled out the possible use of force to achieve unification.

While Chinese jets have not been flown all the way to the island, Taiwan has warned that there is a risk of a “misfire”.

Taiwan’s air defense zone, which it monitors for threats, extends over an area that covers the Taiwan Strait and a large swathe of the Chinese mainland. They consider jets crossing an unofficial line between China and Taiwan as an incursion.

Taiwan also warned China would be capable of mounting a full-scale invasion of the island by 2025.

The Taiwanese Parliament is currently considering a multi-billion-dollar defense spending bill to build missiles and warships.

A number of Western allies of Taiwan have expressed concern at China’s open display of military might recently.

However, US President Joe Biden said his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping had agreed to abide by the “Taiwan agreement”.

Mr Biden appeared to be referring to Washington’s longstanding “one China” policy under which it recognizes China rather than Taiwan.

However, this agreement also allows Washington to maintain a “robust unofficial” relationship with Taiwan. The US sells arms to Taiwan as part of Washington’s Taiwan Relations Act, which states that the US must help Taiwan defend itself.

So what is the story about this Taiwan thing?

Let’ satrt with a little history and a fellow named Chiang Kai Shek.

Chiang Kai-shek was a Chinese military and political leader who led the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) for five decades and was head of state of the Chinese Nationalist government between 1928 and 1949.

Chiang Kai-shek was born on October 31st,1887 in Zhejiang, an eastern coastal province of China. His father was a merchant. At the age of 18 he went to military training college in Japan.

He returned to China in 1911 to take part in the uprising that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and established a Chinese republic.

Chiang became a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (known as the Kuomintang or KMT), founded by his brother-in-law, Sun Yat-sen.

Supported by Sun Yat-sen, Chiang was appointed commandant of the Chinese Military Academy in Canton in 1924, where he built up the Nationalist army.

After Sun’s death in 1925, Chiang became leader of the Koumintang party. He spearheaded the Northern Expedition which reunified most of China under a National Government based in Nanjing. In 1928, he led the suppression of the Chinese Communist Party.

Chiang oversaw a modest program of reform in China but the government’s resources were focused on fighting internal opponents, including the Communists.

From 1931 on, Chiang also had to contend with a Japanese invasion in Manchuria, in the north-east of China.

In 1937, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China.

When the United States came into the war against Japan in 1941, China became one of the Allied Powers.  So, he was our ally in WWII.

As Chiang’s position within China weakened, his status abroad grew and in November 1943 he travelled to Cairo to meet US President Franklin D Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

After the war, in 1946, civil war broke out between the Koumintang party and the Communists.

In 1949, the Communists were victorious, establishing the People’s Republic of China.

Chiang and the remaining Koumintang forces fled to the island of Taiwan.

There Chiang established a government in exile which he led for the next 25 years.

This government continued to be recognised by many countries as the legitimate government of China, and Taiwan controlled China’s seat in the United Nations until the end of Chiang’s life. He died on April 5, 1975.

So, Taiwan is an island which has for all practical purposes been independent since 1950, but which China regards as a rebel region that must be reunited with the mainland – by force if necessary.

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, the United States, seeking to prevent the further spread of communism in Asia, sent the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Taiwan Strait and deter Communist China from invading Taiwan.

US military intervention forced Mao’s government to delay its plan to invade Taiwan. At the same time, with US backing, the government of Taiwan continued to hold China’s seat in the United Nations.

Aid from the US and a successful land reform program helped the Taiwanese government solidify its control over the island and modernize the economy.

Chiang promised to fight back and recover the mainland and built up troops on islands off the Chinese coast. In 1954, an attack by Chinese Communist forces on those islands led the US to sign a Mutual Defense Treaty with Chiang’s government.

When a second military crisis over the offshore islands in 1958 led the US to the brink of war with Communist China, Washington forced Chiang Kai-shek to officially abandon his policy of fighting back to reclaim the mainland.

In 1972, Taiwan formally lost its seat in the United Nations to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

In 1979, the United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China and ended its military alliance with the government of Taiwan.

However, that same year, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which commits the U.S. to help Taiwan defend itself from attack by the Chinese.

That is where we are today.

I found an interesting article about where we may go from here.

The Federalist

By Chuck DeVore

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decides to quash the island nation of Taiwan’s successful run at democratic self-governance, will the Chinese try to limit the conflict to Taiwan and its immediate waters, or will they immediately embark on a wider conflict involving the United States, Japan, and other nations? It’s a big question.

In other words, when this war comes, will the CCP try to keep the conflict confined to Taiwan, or will it strike out broadly, seeking to preempt Japanese and U.S. forces that might attempt to come to Taiwan’s assistance?

Once again, let’s look at history for the answer.

In the First World War, imperial Germany’s decision to invade France via Belgium in response to war in the Balkans between Serbia and their Austro-Hungarian allies is seen by historians and strategists for triggering the United Kingdom’s entry into the war against Germany.

Why did Germany attack France when its initial threat was Russia to the east?

The main reason was that planners in the German General Staff thought Russia was too large to be defeated quickly. Thus, France needed to be knocked out first in a quick blow — as happened in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, when France was defeated in six months.

What might have been a regional war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia following the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, took an terrible turn when Russia ordered the mobilization of its army in late July.

Germany declared war on Russia two days later, with France ordering mobilization the same day. Two days after that, Germany declared war on France.

German planners decided that the only way to win the war quickly was to march through Belgium and Luxembourg, risking a British declaration of war. This occurred the following day, largely dooming Germany to defeat.

Discounting diplomatic considerations, German war planning was solely driven by military considerations of time, space, and force — France, first and quickly, then Russia.

Similarly, many analysts believe the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would seek to attack only Taiwan during an effort to seize the island.

This assumes that China believes it could successfully deter the United States and Japan from coming to Taiwan’s aid. But deterrence can’t be ensured.

Thus, China will likely have to assume that both the United States and Japan will act to prevent Taiwan’s conquest. As with German war planners in 1914, China cannot assume it can choose its opponents.

World War II Parallels

A generation later, Nazi-led Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939 after securing a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and then their attack on France in May 1940, forced a French surrender in only 46 days. In June 1941, Hitler broke his deal with Stalin invaded the Soviet Union.

In China’s case, it has successfully allied with Russia, but in a largely naval contest in the Pacific, Russian assistance will be limited. Beyond Russia, it’s hard to imagine China pulling off a diplomatic coup by allying with other nations. With whom would they strike a deal? Japan? India? The United States?

Imperial Japan’s decision to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and the oil and resource-rich British and Dutch colonies, came in response to U.S. economic embargoes on Japan.

The U.S. demanded Japan give up its imperial ambitions or face a debilitating loss of American oil exports.

Japanese war planners hoped to defeat U.S. naval forces piecemeal, first by destroying the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Then, the Japanese hoped, the prospect of a long and bloody slog across the Pacific would force the Americans to sue for peace.

Japanese planners saw Americans as not having the stomach for the prospect of years of fighting against the spiritually superior Japanese.

Japanese planners also knew time was not on their side. America’s massive industrial advantage — about six-fold that of Japan’s — ensured that as time went on, Japan’s prewar naval superiority would shrink rapidly.

Japanese war planners, like Germany’s leading up to 1914, appeared to give little consideration to diplomacy.

Their desire to expand their empire in China and recently seized French Indochina meant that they would never agree to U.S. demands to abandon their ambitions. Thus, with the decision to fight already made, the only remaining choices were how to carry out the conflict.

As with Japan in 1941, China must have secure maritime access to import oil and raw materials from the nations along the South China Sea.

The sole difference in this historical comparison that appears to fail, is the issue of time. Japan was running out of time while China seems to have time on its side.

Measured in purchasing power, China’s economy is increasingly larger than the U.S. economy.

China is engaged in a massive naval buildup, launching more naval tonnage than the United States and Japan combined are willing or able to produce.

To top it off, China is quadrupling its strategic nuclear force and may build substantially more nuclear missiles.

If China so decides, it might simply wait until it has a substantial advantage over the combination of Taiwan, the United States, and Japan.

As such, China could move on Taiwan at a time of its choosing while warning Japan and the United States to stay out of the fight — or else.

The risk of doing so is that deterrence only works if the enemy is deterred. In other words, China can lay the groundwork for deterrence through strength, but it is up to leaders in Japan and the United States to decide if they are, in fact, deterred from intervening on Taiwan’s behalf.

But several considerations make it less likely that China will want to wait to conquer Taiwan when it has a massive advantage. 

First, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission Xi is 68 years old. He is ruthlessly ambitious and has been building a cult of personality to rival Mao’s. Xi will not want to leave the conquest of Taiwan to his successor.

Second, every year that passes sees Taiwan develop more and more of its own unique culture and political traditions. Young Taiwanese are more likely than ever to see themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

In addition, America’s massive loss of face in Afghanistan and the perception that President Joe Biden’s decision-making abilities are in serious doubt could contribute to China deciding to move sooner, rather than later.

If so, expect China to conduct an aggressive first strike, hitting Taiwan, Japan, and the United States simultaneously and with surprise.

This attack would likely include missile strikes on Guam, Hawaii, Okinawa, the Japanese Home Islands, and even cyberattacks on key U.S. infrastructure.

China’s intent would be four-fold: to preempt forces that could help Taiwan and prolong its defense; to destroy foreign ability to come to Taiwan’s rescue; to demoralize foreign adversaries, causing them to sue for peace; and to set the stage for a globe-dominating Chinese empire led by the Chinese Communist Party.

Will history repeat itself? Let’s hope not, but the possibility definitely exists.

Caller? What do you think? Should we step in now and support Taiwan, or sit back and wait to see what happens next?

Well folks, we have already talked about Critical Race Theory in our schools. Looks like the pushback has put it on the back burner for now. However, the latest buzz in the education world has now shifted to something called Social Emotional Learning.

So, I decided to do a little research on the topic.

From the National University Web site:

“Today, in an ever-diversifying world, the classroom is the place where students are often first exposed to people who hail from a range of different backgrounds, hold differing beliefs, and have unique capabilities. To account for these differences and help put all students on an equal footing to succeed, social and emotional learning (SEL) aims to help students — both children and adults — better understand their thoughts and emotions, to become more self-aware, and to develop more empathy for others within their community and the world around them. 

By developing these qualities in the classroom, it can help students become better, more productive, self-aware, and socially-aware citizens outside of the classroom in the years ahead. “

Folks, I am a firm believer that Parents should teach kids how to live. Teachers should teach kids how to learn.

For this reason, I am totally opposed to this latest approach to teaching our kids. Now don’t get me wrong. I love our teachers. It is a noble profession and has been for over 2000 years.

What is happening in our schools is not the teacher’s fault. It falls on the Federal Department of Education and their ability to hold our state Departments of Education hostage by threatening to withdraw federal funding.

Bear in mind that no where in the US Constitution does it mention education. They simply do not have the authority to do what they are doing to our schools.

I know a lot of the teachers here in our schools. They are excellent at what they do. Many were my students. They chose to be teachers and specialized in disciplines like mathematics, science, social studies, and English.

Like I said, they are excellent in their fields of study. Unfortunately, the government has now stepped in and forced them to now focus elsewhere.

I feel sorry for the teachers. They are stuck in the middle of a bureaucratic mess and that is why many are leaving the teaching profession.  

So, what is SEL in Education?

According to the website, Social emotional learning (SEL) is a methodology that helps students of all ages to better comprehend their emotions, to feel those emotions fully, and demonstrate empathy for others. These learned behaviors are then used to help students make positive, responsible decisions; create frameworks to achieve their goals, and build positive relationships with others.

I must ask. Should this be the responsibility of the parents or the teacher?

Here are the Five Social Emotional Learning Core Competencies.

• Self-awareness – To recognize your emotions and how they impact your behavior; acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses to better gain confidence in your abilities.
• Self-management – To take control and ownership of your thoughts, emotions, and actions in various situations, as well as setting and working toward goals. 
• Social awareness – The ability to put yourself in the shoes of another person who may be from a different background or culture from the one you grew up with. To act with empathy and in an ethical manner within your home, school, and community. 

• Relationship skills – The ability to build and maintain healthy relationships with people from a diverse range of backgrounds. This competency focuses on listening to and being able to communicate with others, peacefully resolving conflict, and knowing when to ask for or offer help.
• Making responsible decisions – Choosing how to act or respond to a situation based on learned behaviors such as ethics, safety, weighing consequences and the well-being of others, as well as yourself.

Behavior, diversity, ethics? Are these things that you want someone else teaching your children? What happens if their position on these topics is different than those of you and your family?

Who is better at evaluating your child’s strengths and weaknesses? Parent or teacher?

Who is better equipped to guide a child in their reaction to certain situations? Stand up for yourself or be submissive? Parent or teacher?

Who is better equipped to explain ethnicity, poverty, cultural differences to your child? Parent or teacher?

Who is better to explain right from wrong to your child? Parent or teacher?

These questions lead us to ask, “Does Social And Emotional Learning Belong In The Classroom?”

Are these core competencies what we sent our kids to school to learn?

Again folks, this is not what our teachers signed up for, it is what they are being forced to do.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING WILL BE THE DOWNFALL OF SOCIETY

MARCH 21, 2018

By Teresa Mull The Heartland institute

Critics of the public school system, myself included, often blame public schools for failing to teach kids.

It’s alarming that U.S. students continue to lag academically behind their international peers (only about one-third of high school graduates are prepared for college), and it’s pathetic most students test very poorly in geography, civics, reading, and math. 

As bad as it is that schools aren’t teaching our kids important areas of learning, it’s what they are teaching that should really frighten us.

Increasingly, more schools are adopting an aggressively progressive curriculum. In Minnesota, “School leaders adopted the ‘All for All’ strategic plan—a sweeping initiative that reordered the district’s mission from academic excellence for all students to ‘racial equity,’” The Weekly Standard reported in February.

Children in kindergarten are expected to become “racially conscious” and examine their “white privilege.” And leftists’ radical agenda is taking hold in a less blatant but no less toxic way in the rise of social and emotional learning (SEL), which presents just as much danger to parents, kids, and the education system as Common Core.

SEL is “a coordinating framework for how educators, families, and communities partner to promote students’ social, emotional, and academic learning,” the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) states on its website.

CASEL is one of the masterminds behind the SEL movement. “A growing number of schools and districts” are “imbedding” SEL into “English Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, and general teaching approaches,” CASEL reports.

The way children “feel” about their skin color is likely a product of SEL making its way into Minnesota schools’ social studies curricula. But how do emotions come into play in a straight-forward subject such as math?

SEL teaches kids to feel and not to think. Of course, feelings themselves are not bad or dangerous, but they can be when they aren’t tempered with a sense of right and wrong.

Traditional public schools, apparently determined not to teach kids history, how to read, spell, add, subtract, multiply, or anything useful, instead take on a role of psychotherapist (and not a good one).

The problem is not that children have emotions, but that government schools can’t acknowledge that absolute truth and right and wrong exist, let alone what truth, right, and wrong are.

So, we have a bunch of kids trained to embrace their feelings—and since feelings can’t be right or wrong, society devolves into chaos.

As we’ve seen over and over, the eruption of feelings at colleges, such as recently at the University of California at Berkeley and University of Virginia, has become all too common.

Many Americans, especially younger Americans, are products of a radical society. They now feel emboldened to express their disagreement, even to the point of violence, because they have no sense of morality, and they’ve been told since kindergarten that their feelings are always valid.

It’s not the kids’ fault, but if society continues to erode into a soulless, violent nation full of mob-like citizens who only feel and react like barbarians and don’t think like civilized folk, we are all to blame.

Traditional public schools, it’s been decreed, don’t have a place in teaching religion, morals, or anything that makes a strong, decent society, so we must ask ourselves: Do they have a place in analyzing the feelings and emotions of students—or even in society at all?

THE SANDSTORM: IT’S TIME TO END GOVERNMENT-RUN SCHOOLING

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

By Larry Sand The Heartland Institute

The National Center for Education Statistics recently published K-12 enrollment data for the 2020–21 school year, and it showed a 3% drop – about 1.5 million kids from the previous year.

With a total k–12 enrollment of about 51 million students in the U.S., that equates to a loss of 1.5 million children. The largest segment of the leavers and no-shows were kindergarteners and pre-k kids, whose enrollment dropped by 13% last year.

As the American Enterprise Institute points out, “Such figures are unprecedented; public school enrollment has grown almost every year during the 21st century, with any declines coming in well under 1%.”

While the main reason for the exit is Covid-related, there are other reasons to bail. The latest NAEP – also known as the nation’s report card – reveals that just 37 percent of U.S. 12th-grade students are proficient in reading and a pitiful 24 percent are proficient in math.

It’s important to note that these results are from 2019, before the teacher union orchestrated Covid hysteria forced schools across the country to shut down. 

So where are the escapees going? Some parents are availing themselves of the new private school options throughout the country. According to the latest available data, 18 states have created seven new choice programs and expanded 21 existing ones this year.

Charter schools also have experienced more growth in 2020-21 than they have in the past six years, according to data released last week from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

While traditional public schools were losing students, independently-run charter schools in 39 states saw an influx of 240,000 new students, a 7% increase over last year, more than double the rate of growth from the prior year.

Additionally, homeschooling has been booming. The Census Bureau reports that between 2012 and 2020, the number of homeschooling families remained steady at around 3.3%. But by May 2020, about 5.4% of U.S. households with school-aged children reported they were homeschooling. And by October 2020, the number jumped to 11.1%.

If government-run schools are not meeting their customers’ expectations, perhaps it’s time to think about doing away with them. As a country we did quite well before the government stuck its large bureaucratic nose into our lives, and we can do so again.

The push for a governmental role in schooling began in the 1830s, when a group of reformers declared that state involvement was needed to ensure that all children receive a better, more unified education.

Leading the charge was Horace Mann who, with like-minded souls, campaigned for a greater state role in the process.

They argued that a centrally planned system of tax-funded schools would be superior to the independent and home schools that existed at the time.

As the late Cato Institute scholar Andrew Coulson noted, “Shifting the reins of educational power from private to public hands would, they promised, yield better teaching methods and materials, greater efficiency, superior service to the poor, and a stronger, more cohesive nation.

Mann even ventured to predict that if public schooling were widely adopted and given enough time to work, ‘nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete,’ and ‘the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged.’”

This kind of thinking is what has gotten us to the concept of social emotional learning today.

Think about this. In 1840, before compulsory public schools existed, literacy rates were about 90 percent. But today?

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old – about 130 million people – lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

In California, they spent about $79 billion on education in 2019, yet only half of all California students performed at grade level in reading on the most recent state-administered test.

Also, just 34% of California 4th-graders scored proficient in math on the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

So what changed?

Again, the problem isn’t the teachers, it is what is being taught.

What is taught is out of the teachers’ hands and is now mandated by a bureaucratic system that has totally lost the vision of what a public education should be.

The simple answer here is to compare education to food. To feed your family do you go to the government-run supermarket near your home? Of course not. You find a local, privately-run store that has the food you want at the best price.

Just imagine if the government forced you to buy food from that crappy government market down the street that sold rancid meat, overripe fruit, and month-old bread.

Folks, that is where we are today. Why are we feeding our kids spoiled meat, over ripe fruit, and stale bread? Simply because the government says that is all you can have or you get nothing?

Obviously, our parents and grandparents saw the difference between what should be taught in our schools and what should be taught at home. 

Remember, parents should teach kids how to live. Teachers should teach kids how to learn.

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021 By Jordan Davidson

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

On Friday, September 17^th, France pulled its ambassadors from the U.S. and Australia after Australia ditched its existing submarine deal with France in favor of a U.S. partnership.

President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that the U.S. struck a deal with Australia and the United Kingdom that administration officials said would provide Australia with the “technology and capability to deploy nuclear-powered submarines.”

It’s a move that, even though it hurt an ally, the administration claimed was necessary to push back on China’s desire to control the South China Sea.

“We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region, and how it may evolve,” Biden said. “Because the future of each of our nations and indeed the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead.”

“It is believed to be the first time France has withdrawn ambassadors from the two countries,” BBC reported, referring to the United States and Australia. “French diplomats in Washington had already cancelled a gala to celebrate ties between the US and France in retaliation.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that the retaliatory decision to remove ambassadors, which was ordered by President Emmanuel Macron, comes in the wake of “unacceptable behavior between allies and partners whose consequences directly affect the vision we have of our alliances, of our partnerships and of the importance of the Indo-Pacific for Europe.”

He also said it feels like a “stab in the back” after Australia canceled its roughly $40 billion deal with France for diesel-electric submarines in favor of another deal with the United States.

“We built a relationship of trust with Australia, and this trust was betrayed,” Le Drian said. “This is not done between allies.”

Now folks, if you will remember, it was just a week ago that I stated one of my greatest concerns about the mess in Afghanistan was what comes next and what message have we sent to our allies worldwide.

When we should be doing damage control from the Afghanistan pull out and sending a message that we will continue to support our allies, we have now managed to alienate one of our longest and best allies in Europe.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the history of US/French relations.

Before Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, America’s Continental Congress created a secret committee. Its members were authorized to seek help from sympathetic European countries who could aid the cause of American Independence from Britain.

The Committee was formed in November of 1775.

France was interested in helping the Colonies. Among other things, aiding the Americans was a way for France to pay-back Britain for using American Colonials (like George Washington) to defeat French claims to North-American territory during the Seven-Year (“French and Indian”) War.

The result of that war caused France to lose all of Canada and all of its claim to the land in what is now the US, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River.

In the early fall of 1776—when Benjamin Franklin was still the most well-known American in the world—the Second Continental Congress chose him to negotiate with France.

The now-aging Franklin was especially popular in France where his groundbreaking ideas about lightning and electricity had been tested by Frenchmen.

Franklin traveled to France with his two grandsons, 17-year-old William Temple Franklin and 17-year-old Benjamin Franklin Bache.

Although France was already helping the American cause, Franklin asked for more. He met with the Comte De Vergennes, the French Foreign Minister, on the 28th of December, 1776. Franklin wanted a Treaty, between France and America, but France was initially reluctant.

Would a treaty put France in a difficult situation with Britain? After all, why wouldn’t  England’s King George III and Parliament view a French agreement with America as a direct confrontation by France against Britain?

And … what if America lost the war for independence? An American victory, by December of 1776, was far from certain. Among other issues, General Washington had lost the Battle of Long Island. If America lost the war, would that bankrupt the French government?

Franklin continued to keep the American cause of independence alive, for the next 2 years.

Things changed, in favor of a French-American treaty, after the Patriots defeated the Redcoats at the Battle of Saratoga (in New York). The negotiators signed the Treaty of Alliance on February 6, 1778.

King Louis XVI—whose approval was needed for the Treaty to become effective—agreed to the terms the following month.

The Treaty of Alliance with France included a term of mutual defense in the event that Britain attacked either France or America.

Another term prevented either country from seeking a separate peace agreement with Britain.

Although Ben Franklin made many significant contributions to his new country, one of the most-important was negotiating this Treaty of Alliance.

 France was a military power and her resources were invaluable during the final years of America’s Revolutionary War.

Many historians believe that America may not have won the Battle of Yorktown—the final battle in the long war for independence—without French help.

Now I would be remiss if I did not include something about the Marquis De Lafayette.

The Marquis de Lafayette was born on September 6, 1757, in Chavaniac, France. He served the Continental Army with distinction during the American Revolutionary War, providing tactical leadership while securing vital resources from France.

Lafayette’s father was killed in battle during the Seven Years War, and his mother and grandfather both died in 1770, leaving Lafayette with a vast inheritance. He joined the Royal Army the following year.

Inspired by stories of the colonists’ struggles against British oppression, Lafayette sailed to the newly declared United States in 1777 to join the uprising.

He was initially rejected by colonial leaders, but he impressed them with his passion, and willingness to serve for free, and was named a major-general in the Continental Army.

His first major combat duty came during the September 1777 Battle of Brandywine, when he was shot in the leg while helping to organize a retreat.

General George Washington requested doctors to take special care of Lafayette, igniting a strong bond between the two that lasted until Washington’s death.

Following a winter in Valley Forge with Washington, Lafayette improved his credentials as an intelligent leader while helping to draw more French resources to the colonial side.

After traveling to France to press Louis XVI for more aid, Lafayette assumed increased military responsibility upon his return to battle.

As commander of the Virginia Continental forces in 1781, he helped keep British Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis’s army pinned at Yorktown, Virginia, while divisions led by Washington and France’s Comte de Rochambeau surrounded the British and forced a surrender in the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.

After returning to his home country in December 1781, Lafayette rejoined the French army and organized trade agreements with Thomas Jefferson, the American ambassador to France.

So, there you have the beginning of our relationship with France. The French did indeed fight in the Continental Army alongside our forefathers against the British.

In turn, the Americans were early supporters of the first French republic. A Frenchman drew the plan for America’s capital city. An American, Thomas Paine, helped draft the French Declaration of Rights.

Thomas Jefferson bought the entire middle portion of the US, the very land you listeners are currently standing on, from Napoleon in 1803, in what the Library of Congress refers to as “the greatest real estate deal in history”.

Jefferson got everything from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains for a cool $15m (about $.04/acre).

Let’s not forget that it was the French who gave us our very symbol of freedom. The Statue of Liberty. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted it; Gustav Eiffel engineered it; and the French public paid for it. It was dedicated in October 1886.

Next came the World Wars. Americans think the United States single-handedly liberated Paris in the second world war.

Americans also think France exhibited simple cowardice by surrendering so quickly to the Nazis, failing to appreciate their loses in WWI, which killed one out of every two Frenchmen between the ages of 22 and 32 just twenty-one years earlier.

During WWI we played Wal Mart and made a fortune selling arms and supplies to Europe while they saw the casualty rate hit 38 million people.

It is no wonder the French surrendered to the Nazis when faced by Hitler’s overwhelming forces.

Has our relationship always been good with France? Of course not. We fought them is a quasi war in 1800. They failed to support our efforts in our conflict with Iraq.

But through it all, France has remained a major player on the world stage.

Regardless of our past differences, they are a key ally, and the recent submarine deal, which France refers to as a “Stab in the Back”, is just another reason why our allies on the world stage are having serious doubts about whether or not the US can be trusted.

So, France lost a lucrative deal to build submarines. Does it really matter?

From a notional defense standpoint, yes. France considers the Asia-Pacific region to be of key strategic and economic importance, with 1.65 million French citizens on islands including La Réunion, New Caledonia, Mayotte and French Polynesia.

In the statement on Wednesday, Mr Biden reaffirmed the importance of French and European engagement in the Asia-Pacific region

Washington also played along by admitting things could have been handled differently, giving a nod to European defense, and agreeing to boost support in North Africa. The French ambassador has said he will return to Washington next week. They’re talking again, but much trust has gone.

Again, the timing of the new deal is significant. It comes just a month after the US exit from Afghanistan, when doubts have been raised in multiple quarters about US commitment in the region.

Britain too is eager to be more involved in the Asia-Pacific area especially after its exit from the European Union and Australia is increasingly concerned about China’s influence.

“It is a ‘big deal’ because this really shows that all three nations are drawing a line in the sand to start and counter the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) aggressive moves in the Indo-Pacific,” Guy Boekenstein, senior director of defense and national security at Australia’s Northern Territory government, told the BBC.

The agreement involves the sharing of information and technology in a number of areas including intelligence and quantum technology as well as the acquisition of cruise missiles.

But the nuclear submarines are key. They are to be built in Adelaide in South Australia and will involve the US and the UK providing consultation on technology for their production.

“A nuclear submarine has enormous defense capabilities and therefore ramifications for the region. Only six countries in the world have nuclear submarines. They are a really powerful deterrent capability without giving them nuclear weapons,” Michael Shoebridge, director of defense, strategy and national security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said.

Nuclear submarines are much more stealthy than conventional ones – they operate quietly, are able to move easily and are harder to detect.

At least eight submarines will be supported, although it’s not clear when they will be deployed. The process will take longer due to a lack of nuclear infrastructure in Australia.

They will not be nuclear armed, only powered with nuclear reactors.

“Let me be clear: Australia is not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons or establish a civil nuclear capability,” Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

So it appears the Australians made the right decision in cancelling the contract with France for the production of diesel submarines.

However, once again, we have to look to the current administration as to how it was handled. When the announcement came about the deal, the French were said to be totally surprised.

I think they realize that nuclear subs will be a true asset to the defense of the region, but one can’t help but wonder why they, as an ally were left totally in the dark and treated like a third world country.

Alliances are a tricky business. You cannot simply cast one alliance aside for another, It is a recipe for disaster and history has proven that time and time again.

The Afghan withdrawal, the French submarine deal, even recently the debate in the House about re-supplying Israel with missiles needed for their Iron Dome System. All of these issues are being watched on the world stage.

I leave you with this one question. If you were currently living in another country, would you trust the United States as an ally?

Michael Rubin, Senior Fellow, AEI, American Enterprise Institute

President Joe Biden and his team have compared the air operations to evacuate Americans and Afghans from Kabul’s international airport to the Berlin Airlift.  

Many commentators and politicians fell into line and adopted the talking point, and White House Chief-of-Staff Ron Klain rewarded some by retweeting their comments.

To compare the two, however, is nonsense.

Put aside the difference in scale. In 1948-49, the Berlin airlift landed a 10 ton C-54 plane every 45 seconds, supplying 5,000 tons per day of food and fuel to 2,500,000 people.

The real difference is that President Harry S. Truman ordered the Berlin Airlift to stop an enemy bent on denying freedom to the citizens of West Berlin.

The crisis in Berlin originated in Moscow.  Truman sought to protect people by holding firm. The crisis in Kabul is one solely of President Joe Biden’s own making.

Had he not ordered a unilateral withdrawal, the Taliban would not now be in any Afghan provincial capital let alone in Kabul. More importantly, the Berlin Airlift affirmed that the United States would not give ground.

Biden’s withdrawal signals the opposite: it is all about giving ground. Rather than signal that the United States was willing to hold firm in the face of an ideological enemy bent on denying freedom to American allies.

Biden’s Afghanistan surrender is the opposite: It is about ending a fight against terrorists without any real care about what happens next.

So how about a little history.

After World War II, the Allies partitioned Germany into four sections. A Soviet-occupied zone, an American-occupied zone, a British-occupied zone and a French-occupied zone.

Berlin, the German capital city, was located right in the middle of the Soviet zone. So, being the capital of Germany, it was also divided into four sections.

In June 1948, the Russians–who wanted Berlin all for themselves–closed all highways, railroads and canals from western-occupied Germany into western-occupied Berlin.

Bear in mind, there were French, British, and American zones in Berlin and the city sat as an island surrounded by the Soviets.

The Soviets believed that by cutting off all supply lines to Berlin, it would make it impossible for the people who lived there to get food or any other supplies and would eventually drive Britain, France and the U.S. out of the city for good.

Instead of retreating from West Berlin, however, the U.S. and its allies decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the “Berlin Airlift,” lasted for more than a year and carried more than 2.3 million tons of cargo into West Berlin.

So how did they get in this situation?

As World War II came to an end in 1945, the Allied powers held peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to determine how they would divide up Germany’s territories.

As I stated earlier, the agreements split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: They gave the eastern part of the country to the Soviet Union and the Western part to the U.S. and Great Britain. In turn, those nations agreed to cede a small part of their territories to France.

Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements likewise split the German capital into Allied sectors: The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western.

This occupation of Berlin, governed by a multipower agency called the Kommandatura, began in June 1945.

The Soviets were dissatisfied with this arrangement. Twice in the past, they had been invaded by Germany, and they had no interest in promoting that country’s reunification–yet it seemed that was exactly what the United States, Great Britain and France had in mind.

In 1947 the Americans and the British combined their two sectors into a single “Bizonia,” and the French were preparing to join as well.

In 1948, the three western Allies created a single new currency (the Deutsche Mark) for all of their occupation zones—a move that the Soviets feared would fatally devalue the already hyperinflated Reichsmarks that they used in the east. For the Soviets, it was the last straw.

The Russians were also concerned about a unified West Berlin: a capitalist city located right in the middle of their occupation zone that would likely be powerfully and aggressively anti-Soviet. They decided that something needed to be done to stop this creeping unification.

The Soviets now withdrew from the Kommandatura and began a blockade of West Berlin, a maneuver that they hoped would effectively starve the western powers out of Berlin.

If West Germany was to become its own country, they argued, then Berlin, located more than 100 miles from its border, could no longer be its capital.

On June 24, 1948, the Soviet authorities announced that the Autobahn, the highway connecting western Germany to Berlin, would be closed indefinitely “for repairs.” Then, they halted all road traffic from west to east, and barred all barge and rail traffic from entering West Berlin. Thus began the blockade of Berlin.

As far as the western Allies were concerned, withdrawal from the city was not an option. “If we withdraw,” said the American military commander, “our position in Europe is threatened, and Communism will run rampant.”

President Harry Truman echoed this sentiment: “We shall stay,” he declared, “period.” Using military force to strike back against the Soviet blockade seemed equally unwise: The risk of turning the Cold War into an actual war—even worse, a nuclear war—was just too great. Finding another way to re-provision the city seemed to the Allies to be the only reasonable response.

It was quickly settled: The Allies would supply their sectors of Berlin from the air. Allied cargo planes would use open air corridors over the Soviet occupation zone to deliver food, fuel and other goods to the people who lived in the western part of the city. This project, code-named “Operation VITTLES” by the American military, was known as the “Berlin airlift.” (West Berliners called it the “Air Bridge.”)

The Berlin airlift was supposed to be a short-term measure, but it settled in for the long haul as the Soviets refused to lift the blockade.

For more than a year, hundreds of American, British and French cargo planes ferried provisions from Western Europe to the Tempelhof (in the American sector), Gatow (in the British sector) and Tegel (in the French sector) airfields in West Berlin.

At the beginning of the operation, the planes delivered about 5,000 tons of supplies to West Berlin every day; by the end, those loads had increased to about 8,000 tons of supplies per day. The Allies carried about 2.3 million tons of cargo in all over the course of the airlift. An Allied supply plane took off or landed in West Berlin every 30 seconds. The planes made nearly 300,000 flights in all.

Life in West Berlin during the blockade was not easy. Fuel and electricity were rationed, and the black market was the only place to obtain many goods. Still, most West Berliners supported the airlift and their western allies. “It’s cold in Berlin,” one airlift-era saying went, “but colder in Siberia.”

By spring 1949, it was clear that the Soviet blockade of West Berlin had failed. It had not persuaded West Berliners to reject their allies in the West, nor had it prevented the creation of a unified West German state. (The Federal Republic of Germany was established in May 1949.)

On May 12, 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade and reopened the roads, canals and railway routes into the western half of the city. The Allies continued the airlift until September, however, because they wanted to stockpile supplies in Berlin just in case the blockade was reinstated.

Most historians agree that the blockade was a failure in other ways, too. It amped up Cold War tensions and made the USSR look to the rest of the world like a cruel and unpredictable enemy.

It sped up the creation of West Germany, and, by demonstrating that the U.S. and Western European nations had common interests (and a common foe), it motivated the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance that still exists today.

So folks, with the history I just provided, let’s go back to Joe Biden stating that the Afghanistan airlift was like the Berlin Airlift.

The Kabul airlift was an operation removing Americans and allies from a country we were, by President Biden’s order, abandoning.

The Berlin airlift was the opposite. It was a US effort to avoid abandoning West Berlin which was threatened by Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union. And it was very successful.

One thing both airlifts have in common is that they were the products of the personal decisions of American presidents made against much expert advice.

Biden says he was bound, in this one case, to carry out a decision of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. Despite indications that the very limited troop deployment in Afghanistan was sustainable, he ordered it ended within a short deadline.

President Harry Truman’s decision was made in almost the opposite circumstances. In June 1948, the Soviet Union cut off all motor, rail and barge traffic from the US and British occupation zones to West Berlin, which was landlocked deep in the Soviet zone.

The city’s 2.5 million people had only 36 days’ supply of food and 45 days’ supply of coal. Allied troops were vastly outnumbered by Red Army units. The Berlin blockade looked impossible to break.

Truman’s top military and diplomatic advisers, men of great ability, doubted that Berlin could be supplied solely by air. But Truman ended a key meeting in July 1948 by starkly declaring, “We’re not leaving Berlin.”

Air Force Gen. William Tunner, who supervised the Burma-to-China “hump” airlift during World War II, organized logistics until airplanes landed at Berlin’s Tempelhof airport every 30 seconds and were unloaded within 30 minutes. Berlin was supplied with food and coal over the winter, and in May 1949, the Soviets called off the blockade.

Now the people of East and West Berlin had a choice. Stay in East Berlin and live under communist rule under a Soviet dictatorship or flee to West Berlin under democratic leadership where you had the opportunity stay in West Berlin’s free, capitalist society, or fly out of West Berlin to a new life of freedom elsewhere in the world.

By 1961, an estimated 1,000 East Germans were fleeing every day. From 1949 to 1961, an estimated 3.5 million people, or fully one-fifth of the East Germans citizens, had left for the West.

This mass exodus eventually led to the night of August 12, 1961, when East German soldiers began to construct what became known as the Berlin Wall.

Initially, streets were torn up and wire fences were strung, soon to be replaced with a brick wall, and then much more.

The barrier got ever higher, more complex, and deadlier. Eventually, there were two walls with a death strip in between.

The Berlin Wall had miles of concrete walls, wire mesh fencing, barbed wire, trained dogs, and anti-vehicle trenches surrounding the western section of Berlin.

The boundary was supplemented with watchtowers, bunkers, and mines. Border guards were told to shoot those attempting to escape from East Berlin to West Berlin.

So, folks, Truman’s steadfast support of the Berlin airlift provided the opportunity for millions to flee communist rule between 1948 and 1961.  It was also one reason Truman, at age 64, won the 1948 election after trailing for months in the polls.

Today, it’s beginning to look like Biden’s role in this Afghanistan airlift may have the opposite effect in the 2022 midterm elections.

Just as Truman’s airlift, blocking totalitarian advances, strengthened the president and his party in 1948, President Biden’s airlift accommodating totalitarian advances is, at least temporarily, weakening the president and his party in 2021.

Obviously, the President should have paid more attention in his history class. The answers to this recent mess were right there in front of him.

Finally, something to think about. What message did Truman send to our allies in 1948 as compared to the message sent by Biden to our allies today?

Two of the greatest leaders in the study of warfare were Antoine Henri Jomini and Karl Von Clausewitz. 

Jomini was an officer in the French army during the time of Napoleon. He attained the rank of general and in the remaining 54 years of his life, after the Napoleonic wars, he served as a military consultant and scholar. 

Before his death in 1869, he had written 27 volumes on the wars of Fredrick the Great, The French Revolution, and Napoleon.  His greatest work was titled Summary of the Art of War.

Jomini said there were fundamental principles for successful war making and that these principles are un-affected by time, place, and weaponry.  He contended that these principles are applicable in any wartime situation. 

His 4 rules were as follows:

1. Maneuver to bring the major part of your forces to bear on the enemies decisive areas and communications.
2. Maneuver to bring your major forces against only part of the enemy’s forces.
3. Maneuver to bring your major forces to bear upon the decisive area on the battlefield or of the enemy’s lines. 
4. Maneuver to bring your mass to bear swiftly and simultaneously.

Bottom Line: Bring your army’s weight to bear at the right time and the right place.

Jomini said your military should include maneuvering whereby your army can successfully dominate three sides of a rectangular zone held by your enemy.  To Jomini war was primarily a matter of maneuvering to gain territory in places, not a matter of annihilating the enemy forces.

The other leading scholar in wartime tactics was Major General Karl Von Clausewitz, born in 1780, Clausewitz was admitted to the Berlin war academy for young officers and became the organizer of the Prussian army. 

His major work was titled On War, published in 1831. Clausewitz first principle was that war is essentially an act of violence. Its outcome is not determined by specific calculation but by immaterial and moral factors. 

He contended great leaders are a matter of insightful genius, not following rules of effective strategy and tactics.  The object of war, according to Clausewitz, is to compel your opponent by violent means to bend his will to yours. 

Bottom Line: Destroy his armed forces, not seize territory, or key locations.  (Totally the opposite of Jomini.)

Clausewitz also argued that wars could be determined by political implications, although, in most cases, wars are won by attacking the enemy’s armed forces. 

In certain wars, public opinion can play a major role.  Public opinion, put upon the government of the warring power, can cause that government to fold and surrender to its’ enemy.  The Vietnam War and recently, Afghanistan, are good examples of this.

The works of Jomini and Clausewitz became standard reading for America’s service academies. 

The US Military Academy at West Point, New York was established in 1802.  A handful of engineering officers and cadets were assigned to the post. 

65 of the original 89 graduates served during the War of 1812 and formally became members of the Army Corp of Engineers during that war.

West Point went on to become the premier military and engineering school in the nation.  By 1846, it had graduated almost 1,000 cadets and by 1860, more than 76% of US army officers were West Point graduates.

Now with the military strategies of Jomini and Klauswitz in mind (tactics vs. kill them all let God sort them) I think we should look at which approach seems to work best.

The French were in Indochina (Vietnam) long before we were and warned us not to go there. (Charles Degaulle)

The Soviets were in Afghanistan for ten years and were defeated by the Afghans, yet we went there as well.

What did the North Vietnamese and the Afghans have in common, that allowed them to beat the most powerful militaries in the world?

A combination of the strategies of Jomini and the ruthlessness of Klauswitz.

In other words, guerilla warfare.

https://www.thoughtco.com/guerrilla-warfare-definition-tactics-examples-4586462

By Robert Longley

Guerrilla warfare is waged by civilians who are not members of a traditional military unit, such as a nation’s standing army or police force.

This type of warfare is typified by sabotage, ambushes, and surprise raids on unsuspecting military targets. Often fighting in their own homeland, guerrilla combatants use their familiarity with the local landscape and terrain to their advantage. (Jomini)

Guerrilla tactics are characterized by repeated surprise attacks and efforts to limit the movement of enemy troops. (Jomini)

Guerrilla groups also use tactics of propaganda to recruit fighters and win the support of local populations. (Klauswitz)

The use of guerrilla warfare was first suggested in the 6th century BC by Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, in his classic book, The Art of War.

In 217 BC, Roman Dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus, often called the “father of guerrilla warfare,” used his “Fabian strategy” to defeat the mighty invading army of Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca.

In the early 19th century, citizens of Spain and Portugal used guerrilla tactics to defeat Napoleon’s superior French army in the Peninsular War.

More recently, guerrilla fighters led by Che Guevara assisted Fidel Castro in overthrowing Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista during the Cuban Revolution of 1952.

Largely due to its use by leaders like Mao Zedong in China and Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam, guerrilla warfare is generally thought of in the West only as a tactic of communism.

However, history has shown this to be a misconception, as a multitude of political and social factors have motivated citizen-soldiers.

Guerrilla warfare is generally considered a war motivated by politics—a desperate struggle of common people to right the wrongs done to them by an oppressive regime that rules by military force and intimidation.

All you have to do is look at the Civil War in Missouri and the campaigns of Missouri guerillas like William Clarke Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson, The James boys and Cole younger and his brother.

Why were they so successful against 80,000 Union troops here in Missouri?

When asked what motivates guerrilla warfare, Cuban Revolution leader Che Guevara gave this famous response:

“Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in misery.”

History, however, has shown that public perception of guerrillas as heroes or villains depends on their tactics and motivations.

While many guerrillas have fought to secure basic human rights, some have initiated unjustified violence, even using terrorist tactics against other civilians who refuse to join their cause.

For example, in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s, a civilian group calling itself the Irish Republican Army (IRA) conducted a series of attacks against British security forces and public establishments in the country, as well as Irish citizens who they believed to be loyal to British Crown.

Characterized by tactics such as indiscriminate bombings, often taking the lives of uninvolved civilians, the IRA’s attacks were described as acts of terrorism by both the media and the British government.

Guerrilla organizations run the gamut, from small, localized groups (“cells”) to regionally dispersed regiments of thousands of well-trained fighters. The groups’ leaders typically express clear political goals.

Along with strict military units, many guerrilla groups also have political wings assigned to develop and distribute propaganda for recruiting new fighters and winning the support of the local civilian population.

In his 6th century book The Art of War, Chinese General Sun Tzu summarized the tactics of guerrilla warfare:

“Know when to fight and when not to fight. Avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak. Know how to deceive the enemy: appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

Reflecting General Tzu’s teachings, guerrilla fighters use small and fast-moving units to launch repeated surprise “hit-and-run” attacks.

The goal of these attacks is to destabilize and demoralize the larger enemy force while minimizing their own casualties. In addition, some guerrilla groups hope that the frequency and nature of their attacks will provoke their enemy to carry out counter-attacks so excessively brutal that they inspire support for the rebel cause.

Facing overwhelming disadvantages in manpower and military hardware, the ultimate goal of guerrilla tactics is typically the eventual withdrawal of the enemy army, rather than its total surrender. 

Guerrilla fighters often attempt to limit the movement of enemy troops, weapons, and supplies by attacking enemy supply line facilities like bridges, railroads, and airfields.

You can’t take on a tank or an A10 with a deer rifle, but you can attack the fuel depot and supply lines that provide logistics for these weapons.

In an effort to blend in with the local population guerrilla fighters rarely wear uniforms or identifying insignia. This tactic of stealth helps them utilize the element of surprise in their attacks.

Dependent on the local population for support, guerrilla forces employ both military and political arms.

The political arm of a guerrilla group specializes in the creation and dissemination of propaganda intended not only to recruit new fighters but also win the hearts and minds of the people.

While they both employ many of the same tactics and weapons, there are important differences between guerrilla fighters and terrorists.

Most importantly, terrorists rarely attack defended military targets. Instead, terrorists usually attack so-called “soft targets,” such as civilian aircraft, schools, churches, and other places of public assembly. The September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing are examples of terrorist attacks.

Unlike terrorists, guerrilla fighters rarely attack civilians. In contrast to terrorists, guerrillas move and fight as paramilitary units with the objective of seizing territory and enemy equipment.

Throughout history, evolving cultural ideologies such as liberty, equality, nationalism, socialism, and religious fundamentalism have motivated groups of people to employ guerrilla warfare tactics in efforts to overcome real or imagined oppression and persecution at the hands of a ruling government or foreign invaders.

While many battles of the American Revolution were fought between conventional armies, civilian American patriots often used guerrilla tactics to disrupt the activities of the larger, better-equipped British Army.

In the Revolution’s opening skirmish—the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775—a loosely-organized militia of Colonial American civilians used guerrilla warfare tactics in driving back the British Army.

We hid behind trees and rocks and refused to line up opposite of the enemy on the battlefield. Drove the British nuts!

American General George Washington often used local guerrilla militias in support of his Continental Army and utilized unconventional guerrilla tactics such as spying and sniping.

In the final stages of the war, a South Carolina citizen militia (Francis Marion, the swamp fox) used guerrilla tactics to drive British commanding General Lord Cornwallis out of the Carolinas to his ultimate defeat in the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia. 

In modern times, we have seen the effectiveness of guerilla tactics.

In late 1979, the military of the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in an effort to support the communist Afghan government in its long-running battle with anticommunist Muslim guerrillas.

Known as the Mujahideen, the Afghan guerrillas were a collection of local tribesmen who initially fought the Soviet troops from horseback with obsolete World War I rifles and sabers.

Think about that. WWI rifles and horses against the Soviets, the second most powerful army and air force on the planet at that time.

The conflict escalated into a decade-long proxy war when the United States began supplying the guerrillas with modern weapons including advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft guided missiles.

Over the next 10 years, the guerillas used their U.S.-supplied weapons and superior knowledge of the rugged Afghan terrain to inflict ever more costly damage on the far larger and better equipped Soviet army.

Already dealing with a deepening economic crisis at home, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in 1989.

The guerillas now took control of Afghanistan and formed the Taliban government.

With recent events, we know the rest of that story.

So folks, what we should have learned from this whole Afghanistan mess is that guerilla tactics work.

Lacking the numerical strength and weapons to oppose a regular army in the field, guerrillas avoid pitched battles.

Instead, they operate from bases established in remote and inaccessible terrain, such as forests, mountains, and jungles, and depend on the support of the local inhabitants for recruits, food, shelter, and information.

The guerrillas may also receive assistance in the form of arms, medical supplies, and military advisers from their own or allied regular armies.

The tactics of guerrillas are those of harassment. Striking swiftly and unexpectedly, they raid enemy supply depots and installations, ambush patrols and supply convoys, and cut communication lines, hoping thereby to disrupt enemy activities and to capture equipment and supplies for their own use.

Because of their mobility, the dispersal of their forces into small groups, and their ability to disappear among the civilian population, guerrillas are extremely difficult to capture.

Isis in the Middle East, Hamas in Lebanon, the Chechens in Georgia Armenia, and Azerbaijan, the list goes on and on.

What should we have learned from our recent conflicts in the middle east and elsewhere in the world?

It does not take a huge army and massive weapons to win a war.

Guerilla tactics work.

Maybe, just maybe, we should start studying our history before we become involved in the next conflict.

• 

Found a good article by Michael Ginsberg to use as a source. He is an attorney in Washington DC for a defense contractor and a 2002 graduate of Harvard Law School.

Following the Great Depression the US turned to a policy of isolationism. People did now want anything to do with another war. Internal bickering between political parties assured that politicians would never come to agreement on entering any new conflict. All of our money was being spent to pull us out of the depression.

As a result. The US, still traumatized by the First World War and focused on disarmament, feared taking on the growing evil of the Nazis expanding throughout Europe.

So, as Germany rearmed, France, Britain, and the United States were too concerned about the pressing economic problems of the Depression to take vigorous action.

In the early 1930s, the United States was eager to wash its hands of world problems and take a domestically focused approach to its economic woes – leaving the gold standard, raising tariffs, and launching enormous public works programs like the WPA, CCC, and TVA programs.

Sound familiar? In this weakened state, we found ourselves incapable of pushing back against Germany, Italy, and Japan, allowing them to grow into the threats they became.

Germany then, like today’s China and Russia, took advantage of the situation and used it to rectifying historical grievances and losses of territory.

In the 1930s Germany pushed for the recovery of territory lost to Poland in the First World War and ignored the requirements put on them by the Treaty of Versailles. Italy sought the glory and empire it felt Versailles denied it as a victor of the war and launched a military campaign in North Africa.

Today China has swallowed Hong Kong whole and is making ever more threatening noises about Taiwan.

President Xi Jinping’s plan is to reverse the centuries of humiliation, both real and imagined, China suffered at Western powers’ hands.

Russia, too, seeks a remedy to historical grievances and the piecemeal reassembly of the Soviet empire, whether in Central Asia, Ukraine, or the Baltics.

Empowered by the West’s internal squabbling during the 1930s, Adolf Hitler continued to press his advantages – remilitarizing the Ruhr region, the Austrian Anschluss, and the partition of Czechoslovakia through the Munich Pact.

In each case, the trauma of the First World War, the economic stresses of the times, and the lack of an allied vision led the West to seek alternatives to confrontation.

This was the age of appeasement. Hitler and Mussolini both saw it and took advantage of the situation.

If the western powers weren’t willing to stop the small things they were doing, why not start taking bigger steps. That is exactly what happened. Japan, sitting on the sideline, saw this as well and took its first step by invading Manchuria in northern China. Again, the US did nothing.

It was not until the invasion of Poland that Britain and France finally were stirred to act against Hitler. By then, it was too late.

Indeed, the Nazis used the West’s preference for diplomacy and endless discussions of disarmament to stall for time while it rebuilt its war machine.

At the start of WWII Hitler had all the men and equipment he needed to conquer Europe. The US was totally unprepared.

China has done much the same, quietly building its military force over the last two decades until today, when it feels much more prepared to dictate terms.

As in the 1930s, today, the every-man-for-himself mindset is strong.

America’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan without any collaboration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies supporting the mission has fractured the alliance badly and called into question America’s appetite for defending the world order, just as in the 1930s.

Enemies and friends alike are now questioning whether the United States would come to the rescue of Taiwan, Ukraine, South Korea, Israel, or others.

To be sure, there are differences. Unlike the 1930s, economic ties among antagonists, particularly the United States and China, are big issues and conflict risks throwing both countries into economic turmoil. Whether that is enough to contain China’s aggression is unknown.

Today’s US situation is as it was in the 1930s. Then, the Germans dictated the sped of events until war became inevitable and Germany was strong enough to fight for six years.

Today, with the United States signaling its retreat and without the full support and confidence of our allies, China will gladly fill the vacuum with no resistance.

The questions now, as in the 1930s, will be these: Will Biden move to isolationism so he can focus on his domestic agenda? How far can China and Russia push before the US pushes back? And what will that pushback look like?

Here is something to think about folks.

Downsizing and budget cuts are nothing new to the military.

Following every major conflict there has come a time when the military has been forced to consolidate.

Even the global situation is not unique; drawdowns have come at times where the United States was still expected to project power and protect its interests at volatile spots on the globe.

World War I was a watershed moment for the Army. It mobilized active, National Guard, and draftee divisions; trained them; and put them overseas in France to carry out major campaigns — all in less than a year.

At its height, the Army of 1918 swelled to 2.5 million men and women. By 1920, however, the Army had dropped down to barely 200,000 men, with only 56,000 in the National Guard.

Further cuts in 1922 and 1923 left the Army at 133,000.

What happened?

Three things: a wave of pacifism and isolationism following the massive casualty lists from World War I, a national security strategy that relied heavily on the Navy for national defense, and the National Defense Act of 1920.

Out of these, the most important was the NDA of 1920. It was the first time that the president took an active role in “declaring a military policy for the United States,” as a New York Times article stated. The new policy cut the Army’s personnel heavily, moved qualified officers who no longer had a position in the Army to the National Guard and the newly-created reserves, expanded the reserve components, and placed the remaining Army units in a state of high readiness for mobilization.

President Warren G. Harding envisioned a regular Army that could deploy quickly and a reserve force of shell divisions that could be recruited to full strength in the event of war.

Although the regular Army was smaller, they were able to spend more money on professional schooling for officers and noncommissioned officers across all Army components.

Education and training became the focus, which paid dividends when the Army mobilized in 1940–1941 for World War II.

Professionally trained officers and noncommissioned officers were available from all three components to man and train new units.

However, the real gap was in research and development of new weapons and technology.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur wrote in 1933 that the Army’s tanks were useless on a modern battlefield. The Army continued to rely on their stocks of war materiel from World War I up until the beginning of World War II, severely hampering overall wartime readiness.

That the U.S. Army could continue on this track well into the 1930s — when Japan and Germany were militarizing, communism and nationalism were tearing Spain apart, and Italy was invading Ethiopia — was only made possible by the isolationist direction of U.S. foreign policy.

It was a widely held belief that the arms race had brought about World War I, so a large number of arms control treaties marked the interwar years.

As long as the great powers (U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and Japan) abided by these treaties, then global aggression could not bring about another world war.

The U.S. also pursued good diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and passed several neutrality acts in the 1930s to make it clear that it wanted no part in a European conflict.

Defense spending was, therefore, purely for defensive purposes, not the two-front offense that World War II would bring.

It was not until 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, that the U.S. government made significant changes to boost defense spending and authorization.

While Biden and his administration would like to go down the path of traditional isolationism, the U.S. populace remains committed to the idea of American military power being used as a force for good in the world.

There is division and debate over how to use our military in an unstable Middle East, to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine or face down an ever expanding Chinese influence in the world.

Obviously, we can now clearly see that our military and the Biden administration do not agree on our current policies when it comes to using force.

Where the Army was in a defensive posture for the continental United States in 1920-1940, the current Army is tasked with containing global threats before they reach the homeland.

As stated in the 2015 National Security Strategy, the military will “conduct global counterterrorism operations, assure allies, and deter aggression through forward presence and engagement.”

That same document goes on to say, “Although our military will be smaller, it must remain dominant in every domain.” That is a tall order in an age of terrorists, proxy wars, ever-growing cyber threats, and increased weapons proliferation.

As we now focus on a $3 trillion domestic infrastructure program that includes a focus on climate change and the expansion of government domestic programs, the military will be stretched thin to meet the challenges it will face in a very dangerous world.

The following quote attributed to Scottish history professor Alexander Tyler in 1787 University of Edinborough, seems to portray an accurate reflection of what we are facing as a nation today:

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

We are now with a world every bit as dangerous as the one our parents and grandparents faced in the years between the two World Wars.

During that time, the world saw the United States as weak.

Bear in mind, we sat on the sidelines when Hitler and Hirohito launched their campaigns for domination.

It was a full two years before we entered the war and then, it took the attack on Pearl Harbor to get our politicians to wake up and realize that diplomacy and negotiation are not the only answer when your nation is being threatened.

Peace through strength has proven to be effective throughout history.

The road to destroyed nations has been paved for thousands of years with broken treaties.

Professor Tyler went on to tell us what we can expect if we don’t get our act together.

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

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• From spiritual faith to great courage;
• From courage to liberty;
• From liberty to abundance;
• From abundance to complacency;
• From complacency to apathy;
• From apathy to dependence;
• From dependence back into bondage

“These words were written two years before George Washington became our first President.

It is time that we learned from our past.

Can you imagine being under the control of a government that has complete control of the economy, imposes huge taxes on its citizens, and is led by a bumbling, forgetful, leader and his assistant who is totally incompetent and unprepared for the job? All this, while completely ignoring the wishes of the people.

Do you think I am talking about our current situation here in the US? Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Guess what. These are exactly the same conditions that our forefathers experienced under King George III and his Prime Minister, Lord North, in the years leading up to the time of the American Revolution.

Now believe it or not, our forefathers did not immediately take up guns to fight the King. They were much smarter than that. They knew there was no way a handful of colonists could defeat the largest military fore in the world at the time.

Yet, they came up with an amazing method of resistance that got the immediate attention of England and the British Parliament and forced the King and his Prime Minister to back off.

What was their secret weapon?

For that answer, we need a little history.

In 1651, the British Parliament, in the first of what became known as the Navigation Acts, declared that only English ships would be allowed to bring goods into England, and that the North American colonies could only export its commodities, such as tobacco and sugar, to England.

This effectively prevented the colonies from trading with other European countries. The act was followed by several others that imposed additional limitations on colonial trade and increased customs duties. Now came the secret weapon.

They called them Nonimportation Agreements, today, we call them boycotts.

Nonimportation Agreements, (1765–75), were a way to force British recognition of political rights through the application of economic pressure.

At the time, the colonists had suffered under the Navigation Acts, The Stamp Act of 1765 (a tax on cards, dice, newspapers and legal documents), and the Townshend Acts 1767, (a tax on paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea). C

Colonial nonimportation associations were now organized to boycott all English goods.

In each case, British merchants and manufacturers suffered huge reductions in trade with the colonies and they now put pressure on Parliament to lift the restrictions on the colonies.  

Guess what folks? It worked! The British businessmen marched on Parliament and said , “You idiots are costing us a fortune!”

Parliament, facing a hostile electorate, repealed the acts.

Now, where did we get this term boycott?

Simply put, a boycott is a protest where the protesters do not buy a product or give money to a company.

Instead of buying a certain product, they might also buy another, very similar product from a different company.

The word boycott comes from the name of English Captain Charles Boycott.

Boycott was in charge of looking after the land of a landlord in County Mayo, Ireland (40,000 acres).

In 1880, the Irish tenants (those who rented) wanted their rent lowered.

Boycott refused, and threw them out of the land they had rented.

The Irish Land League then proposed that instead of becoming violent, everyone in the community should stop doing business with Captain Boycott. The captain was soon isolated.

No one helped him with the harvest, no one worked in his stables or his house. Local businessmen no longer traded with him, even the postman no longer delivered his mail.

The Boycott affair was big news in Ireland, England, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

His name’s transformation into a common term is attributed to a local priest, who suggested using “boycott” to describe what was happening because “ostracize” was too complicated a word for the local peasantry.

Boycotting spread across Ireland. The word was adopted elsewhere, including non English-speaking countries.

The new word was included in the first edition of A New English Dictionary Based on Historical Principles (1888), later known as the Oxford English Dictionary.

And so Captain Boycott lives on, having unwillingly lent his name to a time-honored tactic.

So let’s go back to our story:

American cities in the colonies, now implemented boycotts to resist unpopular British policies.

The use of raw materials, goods produced in the colonies, and Yankee ingenuity were the order of the day.

It was during this time the American colonies experimented with the notion of being self-sufficient and not relying on the mother country.

The merchants and traders agreed to boycott British goods until the taxes on those goods were repealed. Some critical goods were exempt from the boycott such as salt, and hemp and duck canvases. Smuggling was widespread.

This was in direct violation of the Navigation Acts. Almost every American community benefited from or participated in the smuggling of illegal goods obtained from Dutch, French, and Spanish merchants.

Smuggling was not only a cheaper alternative to taxed British goods, but also served as an effective means to resist and undermine British policies. Boston was rife with smuggled goods and smugglers.

Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere were all known as notorious Boston Patriot smugglers and were all proponents of the use of non-importation agreements and similar boycott tactics.

The Stamp Act was repealed because of joint boycotts by American colonies.

New York merchants first implemented the boycott to protest the Stamp Act and they were able to persuade the merchants of other cities to do the same.

Boston was one of the cities New York merchants persuaded to participate in the boycott agreement to combat the Stamp Act.

As a result of the successful boycott and pressure from British merchants who were losing a fortune, Britain gave in and finally repealed the Stamp Act.

The impact of the Boston boycotts, and all similar agreements, were significant.

Approximately sixty merchants and traders signed the agreement on August 1, 1768, and within two weeks, all but sixteen of Boston’s merchants, traders, and business owners had joined the boycott.

Boston tradesmen, artisans, and other business owners happily signed the agreement in hopes the boycott would generate business for them.

Within months, almost every port and region within the Thirteen Colonies adopted similar boycotts to protest and undermine the Townshend Revenue Act, although many Southern merchants and traders with Loyalist leanings refused to cooperate.

Smuggling was rampant throughout the colonies. The effects felt by British merchants who traded with the American colonies were alarming.

 Merchants lost money shipping their goods to the colonies where they would not be received.

More often than not the goods were never allowed ashore. If they were, they rotted on docks or in warehouses or were looted by the colonists.

The situation was a nightmare for customs officials who could not collect taxes on goods that were either not allowed ashore or were never sold.

In response to the Boston boycotts, Parliament ultimately repealed the Townshend Revenue Act taxes on all commodities except tea.

The King insisted Parliament keep at least one tax to prove the colonists had not completely won.

The Boston boycotts of 1768 and the subsequent repeal of the Townshend Revenue Act taxes on all commodities except tea was a major cause leading to the December 16, 1773 Boston Tea Party.

With the passing of the Tea Act in May of 1773, the tea tax under the Townshend Revenue Act was still in effect.

The tea tax which was not repealed, like the other taxes under the 1767 Townshend Revenue Act repealed in 1770, was one of the fundamental reasons why the Tea Act angered and mobilized colonists to protest and boycott the shipments of British East India Company tea.

If the tea tax would have been repealed in 1770 with all of the other taxes, in all probability the Boston Tea Party would have never happened.

So folks, the boycott agreements in the years prior to the American Revolution were a very effective tactic to protest British policies and demonstrated to other colonies the potential for united action.

As a result of the successful boycott Boston started with the 1768 Boston Non-Importation Agreement, the First Continental Congress in 1774 would pass a colony-wide prohibition against any trade with Britain.

 Now I have to admit, the colonists did have a major problem.

During this period, 1/3 of the colonists supported King George, 1/3 Supported George Washington and the patriots, and finally 1/3 didn’t care one way or the other.

So how do you enforce a boycott? The answer?

The Sons of Liberty.

American Battlefield Trust Web Site

REV WAR  |  ARTICLE

Who Were the Sons of Liberty?

The Sons of Liberty was a secret underground society created due to the social and political fallout of the French and Indian War.

The war, which took place throughout the world, was just one part of a larger conflict called the Seven Years War.

The French and Indian War, coupled with the fighting throughout the globe, nearly pushed the British Empire to the brink of financial collapse due to the increased spending needed to fight an international war.

As a result, the British increased taxation among the colonies and stationed soldiers of the Crown within these colonies.

The British Empire needed money and goods for their empire, and they turned to the colonies for both. However, the Sons of Liberty made it their goal that the Empire received neither.

The British Parliament rationalized that the fighting in North America against the French was to protect the colonists and their interests, and thus, they should pay their share in taxes to help pay off their war-debt.

So, the solution was to forcefully quarter soldiers with American colonists via the Quartering Act. This quartering also increased the required funds needed in order to sustain the lives of thousands of British soldiers, who also had to be fed, out of pocket, by the colonists.

The first of many taxes forced upon the American people were the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, which we talked about earlier.

 Once the Stamp Act had passed, a secret group called the Loyal Nine, the precursor to the Sons of Liberty, gathered crowds around the famous Liberty Tree in Boston.

The crowd, angered by the Stamp Act and provoked by the encouragement of the Loyal Nine, began rioting throughout the streets of Boston.

These riots targeted the taxable goods and the tax collectors, which put many colonial officials at risk of being tarred and feathered or even killed.

The rioters also destroyed an immeasurable amount of property. In one case, Boston rioters raided the home of the Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson and stole an estimated £250,000 worth of his possessions.

The Loyal Nine, having sparked resistance, turned to publishing patriotic ideas in the Boston Gazette. Eventually, the Loyal Nine began signing their political dissent as ‘The Sons of Liberty’ thus establishing a much larger resistance group.

What was originally organized in Boston by a local brewer turned politician, Samuel Adams, quickly snowballed into a larger network of resistance to the British Crown. With the coordination of various Sons of Liberty chapters, the Stamp Act was repealed within one year of it being enacted.

However, this victory came at a price. The British Parliament passed the Declaratory Act when they repealed the Stamp Act. The Declaratory Act was more of a formal threat than an actual piece of legislation, as the Act stated that the British King and Parliament have the power to enact any and all legislation onto the colonies. This Act only served to reinforce the Sons of Liberty’s idea of “No Taxation Without Representation,” as written by a fellow member, James Otis Jr.

Under Samuel Adams and other members of the Sons of Liberty, the boycott was enforced throughout Boston and the surrounding Massachusetts area.

Anyone who dared to sell British goods risked their store being vandalized or worse.

Even their physical safety was at risk as the Sons of Liberty turned to violence to threaten shopkeepers that did not comply with the boycott.

Eventually, the patriotic resistance to British rule became too much to handle and revolution and war was inevitable. When lawmakers of Virginia gathered in 1775 to discuss negotiations with the British King, Sons of Liberty member, Patrick Henry exclaimed to the Second Virginia Convention “Give me liberty or give me death!”. Thus, cementing the American stance for independence from British rule and initiating the American commitment to the Revolutionary War.

When colonial legislatures opposed British policies, many King appointed governors simply dissolved those assemblies. Unofficial groups such as local committees, county-wide conventions, and congresses quickly became central to patriot organizing.

They relied on economic networks that included farmers, traders, artisans, working men, and women to create a new political movement.

The inclusive nature of the movement seemed to show that ordinary free people were capable of having a stronger voice in politics.

So there you have it folks. When faced with a government completely out of control, our forefathers turned to boycotts and it worked.

Would the same tactic work today? What if everyone refused to simply not watch ABC news, or patronize a certain coffee shop, or eat a certain brand of ice cream?

It worked in the 1700’s, would it work now?