What the 4th of July Celebrates, Barak Obama's "Unpopularity," a Book Review and Quotes from the Ancients

Because we have just experienced the Fourth of July Weekend, with all of its celebratory excesses, it might be a good thing to review what the fireworks and hot dogs were all about!   Read on.

 JL

 (Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. 

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed r light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. 

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. 

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. 

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. 

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

                                                               

Barack Obama’s Unpopularity

Polls, columnists and news articles have been talking about the “unpopularity” of the President.  His “approval rating” is lower than it ever has been.  Or so say those who want to believe that to be the case.  In the absence of advocates of courses of action other than those President Obama is following, I suggest that his “unpopularity” would be shared by anyone in his position today, regardless of party.

 

What was the approval rating of whoever was in charge of the leaking dikes in Holland way back when?  But a kid turned up to put his finger in the hole in the dike and solved the problem, at least temporarily.  We don’t have anyone around today to do that, so we are stuck with the nation’s chief executive as our problem solver. And he has a lot of dikes in which to shove his fingers, particularly since Congress has abdicated its role of solving problems via legislation.  But facing up to "real" issues would make Congress more unpopular than it already is.  So Congress is content to focus on criticism of the Administration.

 

During his tenure in office, President Obama has tackled two massive problems.  He has worked his proverbial butt off trying to make health care available to all Americans.  Because, believe it or not, all Americans do not have adequate access to health care, that is a very good thing to work to accomplish!  Give credit where credit is due.

This has involved adopting what was basically the Republican approach to the problem, making innumerable compromises along the way, dealing with the Supreme Court and in the absence of a cooperative Congress, using the executive powers when available to him to get things done.  Reforming health care is an organic project, evolving and changing almost daily, but the one thing the Affordable Care Act definitely has accomplished is that it has made a lot of enemies for the President. 

This is despite its successes thus far which its opponents refuse to acknowledge and which constant conservative bleating derides.  Thanks to the President, the nation now has, and deserves, a private health care program comparable to that already found in Massachusetts and in such foreign lands as Switzerland, which no one identifies as a socialist state.  

But the enemies of the President's health care efforts are out there, racheting up his supposed "unpopularity," and you can tell who they are by the fact that they refer to the ACA as “Obamacare,” even when they praise some of the Act’s provisions such as insurers not being able to turn anyone down or charge them more for health insurance because of their medical histories.

Signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act back in 2010

The other problem the President has addressed is how to provide security for the United States of America in a world where anti-American sentiment is included in the agenda of violent forces in conflict in the Middle East without getting American military personnel killed.  That is also a very good thing to work to accomplish!

In recent years, getting involved in such fighting where America’s national security was an issue (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) did not push those countries from the path they were on.  We believed, rightly or wrongly, that situations in these countries posed a danger to our country, and a lot of lives were lost in the process as well as a lot of anti-American sentiment developed based on our presence there.  

The President could easily drum up support for military intervention in Syria, a return of our armies to Iraq and a strong continuing presence in Afghanistan, and many in the country (not me) would back him up, and lo and behold, his approval rating would shoot up, the result of American patriotism rallying to his side. 

Avoiding "boots on the ground" in the Middle East

But such hawkish moves would put gold stars in the windows of many American homes, something the President wants to avoid.  So he seeks difficult diplomatic solutions, works with the local political and tribal forces in the Middle East, the Russians and although nobody admits it, the Iranians as well, to come up with answers.  Whatever they are, they will be unpopular answers.  But that’s the price Barack Obama pays for tackling the really tough problems. Health care reform and national security are not "cream puff" matters!

Those matters NOT dealing with life and death, which both national security and health care undeniably do involve, matters like trade agreements, environmental issues, tax reform and even immigration reform, remain on the back burner, although the heat is not turned all the way down on them, while the President tackles the really tough problems.  That’s why one should not take his “unpopularity” too seriously.

Jack Lippman

                                                             

A Book Review

Harvey Sage reviews a book, “A Higher Call” by Adam Makos, below.  I haven’t read it, but it occurs to me that World War Two took place seventy years ago, and that the kind of connections made between warriors on different sides of a war was somehow different then from what it is now.  I recall reading of similar instances in “Killing Rommel” where opposing armored units on both the Allied and Axis sides in North Africa treated each other with a kind of professional respect not unlike that described in Harvey’s review.  Somehow, since those days things have changed.  I cannot recall such acts being reported in the military actions in which we, and others, have been involved in the Middle East., for example.  If they have, I haven’t heard of them.           

JL

A HIGHER CALL

Harvey Sage

Based on best seller “A Higher Call” by Adam Makos

Lt. Charlie Brown looked to his left and saw Death. His fingers were curled like eagle’s talons gripping the pilot’s controls. The badly damaged B-17 was flying with half power as two of its four engines were not functioning. Its ten defensive guns were now useless as the bomber kept losing altitude. The aeroplane was approaching the German coast of the North Sea. It had done well, dropped its eight 500 pound bombs on Bremen, and then anti-aircraft fire had pummeled her, ripping holes in its fuselage, seriously wounding two of its ten man crew and killing another. Then came the German fighter planes, the Me-109s. Somehow the B-17 had fended them off, shooting two of them down. But now as the low and slow flying bomber approached the North Sea with its line of anti-aircraft guns, all seemed lost. Charlie wasn’t frightened as much as disappointed. “What a way to end his first mission”, he thought as he looked at the Me-109 flying parallel to him on his left. The B-17 was defenseless and the 109 could shoot him down at will. Charlie shrugged his shoulders and waited.

Minutes before, German air ace Franz Stigler heard the approaching bomber while he was at an airfield, getting his 109 re-armed. Seeing the prey he took off, intent on shooting it down. Franz approached it from the rear. Overtaking the bomber he noted that the rear gunner was dead, his turret smashed to pieces. Then, through a gaping hole on the fuselage he saw members of the crew tending to the wounded, huddled over them like a mother hen protecting her chicks. For some reason he felt sorrow for them. He saw the pilot on his right with an intense look on his face. Franz knew that all the man wanted to do was to try and bring the wounded B-17 back safely to England. He didn’t want to hurt anybody. He was trying to save his crew.

Franz saluted his enemy and stayed by his side, shepherding him across the coast with its anti-aircraft guns. Seeing that the bomber was being escorted by one of their own confused the gunners who held their fire. Once they were over the North Sea Franz tried to steer the bomber to the right toward neutral Sweden but Charlie Brown headed left toward England. Franz went back to base in Germany.

Brown and Stigler

Forty years later American author and publisher Adam Makos heard of this. Why had the German air ace allowed the B-17’s crew to live? In his quest for an answer to this unusual event he contacted Charlie Brown who had recently talked to Franz Stigler, now living in Western Canada. Makos spent the next eight years interviewing them and a host of others on both sides of the war. The result is the international and NY Times best seller, “A Higher Call.” Well written, fast paced and factual, the book addresses the question “Can good men be found on both sides of a bad war?”

                                                                
                                                     

Quotations from the Ancients

In the preceding blog posting, I included a quote from the Seventeenth century Jesuit scholar, Baltesar Gracian.  His book, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom,” is a repository of quotable ideas.  Another source of “wisdom” is Lao Tzu’s “The Way of Life” written in the Sixth century B.C. Since the world never seems to be without some military activity, “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, also written in that period, is filled with wisdom pertinent to strategy and tactics not only on the battlefield but in life as well.  Here is a brief selection from ‘The Art of War.”  

 Sun Tzu

          (Paragraph 18 from the section entitled “Attack by Stratagem.”)

Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

And from “The Way of Life.”

 Lao Tzu
 

(47)  
There is no need to run outside

For better seeing,

Nor to peer from a window.  Rather abide

At the center of your being;

For the more you leave it, the less you learn.

Search your heart and see

If he is wise who takes each turn:

The way to do is to be.
JL


                                       
                                                    

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