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Congress Breaks Congress by Taking Too many Breaks.

Senator Arlen Specter once said something intriguing when asked what recommendations he would make for improving Senate procedures. He suggested, sotto voce, that Senators should work longer.
By his account, Senators start their week mid-day Tuesday with luncheon meetings and by Thursday afternoon they are itching to get back to their home states. By Friday most of them have fled the Capital City for Reagan Airport.
To backup this plaint, the official numbers are now in: The Senate met for a meager 126 days during the past legislative year; the House met for a paltry 93 days.
We shan’t say this is a “Do Nothing” Congress reminiscent of President Truman’s complaint made decades ago. (Shall we?)
But it seems true indeed that legislators have been presiding over a “Do little, in very little time” Congress.
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Internationalism overtakes isolationism – International Relations

Beginning with the U.S. entry in the Spanish-American War, America experienced a shift of diplomatic and military isolationism from European affairs to one of internationalism and brief imperialism. It is important to note that no single event or person can explain U.S. foreign policy behavior entirely. American foreign policy is the result of a combination of causes and events, including the influence of several sources. These influences include five major categories to the making of U.S. foreign policy, including the following: external sources, American societal norms, the make-up of the U.S. government, the roles of individuals and institutions and lastly, the effect that individual people have in contributing to the foreign policy making process.

America’s “splendid little war” with Spain in 1898 provided the US with a colonial empire almost overnight. These newly acquired, or annexed, foreign lands, and the accompanying responsibilities thereof, included the Phillipines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and Cuba. One of the primary reasons that America went to war in 1898 was Spanish meddling in the affairs of Cuba, contrary to the Monroe doctrine. This American doctrine, however, did not preclude America itself from meddling in Caribbean affairs, or meddling in the affairs of any Western Hemisphere country for that matter. Spain had a massively larger army, but its navy was in disrepair. The U.S., on the other hand, had modernized its Navy under the direction of Alfred T. Mahan. This naval supremacy was the tipping point in the Spanish-American war between the two nations – the New World vs. the Old World.

When the US defeated the Spanish navy at Manila the victory propelled the US onto the world stage as a true and tested global actor. Up to that point, the US had been isolationist in nature, still recovering from the horrific American Civil War in the 1860’s. Some scholars believe that once U.S. western expansion was completed in 1880 and industrialization had come full bore after the Civil War, the American capitalist machine turned its eye to new markets in Latin America and the Far East.

The first openings of the Chinese market in the Far East put the U.S. in direct competition with the European powers, particularly Britain, Spain, France and Russia. There was a rush by the great powers at this point into the Chinese markets. The U.S. did not want to be left behind because this was a large market for U.S. industrial goods and source of seemingly infinite raw materials. John Hay, President McKinley’s Secretary of State summed up the U.S.’s awkward position at this juncture in history: “…we do not want to rob the Chinese ourselves, and our public opinion will not permit us to interfere, with an army, to prevent others from robbing her…”

The US, therefore, developed an Open Door Policy toward China, meaning that the US would not tolerate the division of China into “spheres of influence,” insisting that its territorial integrity be respected. This was a bold move on America’s part because it had little more than morality on its side, not a vast army, and only a small navy compared to European powers. This American “policy” had little effect because the United States was not prepared to support the Open Door policy with force. Successive administrations to the 1940s, however, considered it the cornerstone of their Far Eastern policy.

At the same time, the US was active in the external affairs of many Latin American countries. Of particular interest to US foreign policymakers was Panama and the isthmus canal project there. The US became directly responsible for Panama’s break from Columbia. Panama’s independence from Columbia secured America’s ability to connect the Atlantic and Pacific markets via the Panama shipping canal – a triumph of American economic and foreign policy.

Other external sources that influenced the U.S at this time included continued warfare between the great powers: The Russo-Japanese War; the British, German and Italian blockade of Venezuela; the clashes between Germany and France over French North Africa; the British-German naval arms race for control of the seas and the world’s commerce; and the growing tensions in the Middle East, where oil had been discovered. These were all inputs into America’s foreign policy decision-making process which pulled it from isolationism to internationalism. America was now vying with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan for what future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt called “the domination of the world.”

Societal sources also had their unique impact on American foreign policy. Domestic beliefs were transferred to the international sphere. For example, America has always had a sense of exceptionalism – the belief that America is a superior country in every way and that American beliefs and forms of government should be exported to other nations. One scholar put it this way: “The United States (s)hould transform other nations into communities that shared America’s political and social values and also its religious beliefs.” This is reminiscent of Democratic Peace Theory, which is still in vogue today as seen by America’s continuing attempt to export liberal democracy and free markets to other nations.

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TURNING and turning in the widening gyre … the falcon cannot hear the falconer;

The Second Coming
By Yeats
(frequently quoted by Joseph Campbell)

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

By Wordsworth

(Stanza V often quoted by Joseph Campbell)

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore –
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday –
Thou child of joy
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fullness of your bliss, I feel -I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herselfis adorning
This sweet May-morning;
And the children are culling
On every side
In a thousand valleys far and wide
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm: –
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
– But there’s a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother’s mind
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years’ darling of a pigmy size!
See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his father’s eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his `humorous stage’
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul’s immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind, –
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like a day, a master o’er a slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lies upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest,
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: –
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us -cherish -and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither –
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We, in thought, will join your throng
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forbode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway;
I love the brooks which down their channels fret
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

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The Bells

By Edgar Allan Poe

I

Hear the sledges with the bells –
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells –
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! -how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells –
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now -now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells –
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells –
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people -ah, the people –
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone –
They are neither man nor woman –
They are neither brute nor human –
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells,
Of the bells –
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells –
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells –
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

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100 years to an Imperfect Union

“Ten years after Appomattox, Northern support for the newly enfranchised ex-slaves and their white allies had faded. Recalcitrant Southern whites, whose Ku Klux Klan night-riding had been aggressively repressed by the federal government in the early 1870’s, regrouped under the political aegis of the Democratic Party. By mid-decade, most of the Reconstruction state governments had fallen at the ballot box to the forces of white supremacy, the self-proclaimed “redeemers.”

Mississippi, with a large black voting majority, resisted longer than other states, but redemption finally came there too, in 1875, sealed by a new frenzy of paramilitary carnage and intimidation. Two years later, after a disputed national election, the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes finally won the White House by agreeing to remove from the South the last of the federal troops who had upheld Reconstruction at the points of their bayonets. The troubled effort to build a Southern interracial democracy out of the ashes of the Civil War was over.”

—-
Lessons for Iraq… The US couldn’t build democracy in the South after the Civil War. Democracy-building is an ambitious undertaking in sectarian and ethnic concalves, as we have seen repeatedly – even in our own history.

See NYT review of:

‘Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War,’ by Nicholas Lemann
Review by SEAN WILENTZ

Link to REVIEW

“The story of Reconstruction’s demise in Mississippi is familiar to historians, and Nicholas Lemann, in “Redemption,” retells it in all its terrible gore. His account squares with recent scholarship, which has challenged both the traditional “Birth of a Nation” view (of Reconstruction as a tragic era of black plunder and white degradation = a fallacy) and the skeptical scholarship of the 1960’s and after that questioned the reformers’ commitment. Lemann, the dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia and the author of “The Promised Land,” among other books, affirms Reconstruction as a noble, thwarted experiment, the nation’s “unfinished revolution,” in the words of the era’s current leading historian, Eric Foner. This book strives to burn that academic re-evaluation into the minds of nonacademic readers. Written on a dramatic human scale, and leavened by some fresh research and analysis, it is an arresting piece of popular history. “

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Dali Lama words of wisdom 

So long as I am alive, my time and my life must be utilized properly. Then after my death, I don’t care how people remember me.

Love, compassion, and forgiveness-these are the things I preach

The main cause of suffering is egoistic desire for one’s own comfort and happiness.

Many of our troubles are man-made, created by our own ignorance and greed and irresponsible actions.

Sooner or later you’ll find a limitation of resources and will have to adopt a more content lifestyle.

Education and compassion… if you combine these to your whole life will be constructive and happy.

It’s best not to get too excited or too depressed by the ups and downs of life.

If you shift your focus from oneself to others, and think more about others’ well-being and welfare, it has an immediate liberating effect.

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Passed Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessment for HISTORY 

I took and passed the 4 hour AEPA History exam (plus essay). I am now certified to teach US and World history. http://www.aepa.nesinc.com/

Sample US history questions:
– The concept of Manifest Destiny would most likely have been used to justify…
– Which of the following best characterizes the Populist Party’s political efforts in the early 1890’s…
– One result of the Hartford Convention of 1814 was…

Sample World history questions:
– Bantu-speakers settled in all the following areas of Africa except….
– The Delhi Sultanate and the Aztecs had which of the following methods of governing in common?…
– Which of the following most clearly differentiates the period from 1450 to 1750 from earlier periods?…

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Understanding What Your Professor is Really Saying

WHAT THE PROFESSOR SAYS vs. WHAT THE PROFESSOR MEANS

You’ll be using one of the leading textbooks in the field. – I used it as a grad student.

If you follow these few simple rules, you’ll do fine in this course. – If you don’t need any sleep, you’ll do fine in the course.

The gist of what the author is saying to what’s most important. – I don’t understand the details either.

Various authorities agree that … – My hunch is that …

The answer to your question is beyond the scope of this class. – I don’t know.

You’ll have to see me during my office hours for an answer to your question. – I don’t know.

In answer to your question, you must recognize that there are several disparate points of view. – I really don’t know.

Today we are going to discuss a most important topic. – Today we are going to discuss my dissertation.

Unfortunately, we haven’t the time to consider all of the people who made contributions to this field. – I disagree with what roughly half of the people in this field have said.

We can continue this discussion – 1) I’m tired of this – let’s quit. or 2) You’re winning the argument – let’s quit.

Today we’ll let a member of the class lead the discussion. It will be a good educational experience. – I stayed out too late last night and didn’t have time to prepare a lecture.

Any questions ? – I’m ready to leave.

The implications of this study are clear. – I don’t know what it means either, but there will be a question about it on the test.

The test will be 50-question multiple choice. – The test will be a 60-question multiple guess, plus three short answer questions (1,000 words or more) and no one will score above 75 percent.

The test scores were generally good. – Some of you managed a B.

The test scores were a little below my expectations. – Where was the party last night ?

Some of you could have done a little better. – Everyone flunked.

Before we begin the lecture today, are there any questions about the previous material ? – Has anyone opened the book yet ?

According to my sources … – According to the guy who taught this class last year …

It’s been rewarding to teach this class. – I hope they find someone else to teach this class next year.

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Bill Moyers’ A World of Ideas [Quotes]

Barbara Tuchman

How would you sum up the original idea of America? A liberation from tyranny which had existed for centuries, in which government was in the hands of rulers with no particular right other than dynastic, of nobles who had nothing but property to justify their exercise of rule, and the monarchs who had only heredity to justify thiers. The interesting thing was that I found that the Dutch had voiced the same thing when they abjured the rule of Spain. The Oath of Abjuration written almost 200 years before our declaration of independence contains almost the same words.

On the whole, the ruling groups don’t truly govern in the interests of the underprivileged classes. We are going to feel the effects, just as the French did when the French Revolution occurred, through the same ignoring of the misery of the poor classes, and to the same financial irresponsibility. What really started the French Revolution was the condition of the deficit, which was owed because of their help to us – which is again another irony.

If we are moved merely by greed, and there’s no longer any respect for decent or honest government, then we will suffer the results. We’ve been suffering from them ever since Watergate-and now again with the Iran-Contra business.

History’s lessons move very slowly. People don’t put them into operation right away, when they’ve become visible, but only when they rise to the surface, and begin to flood the bottoms of your cellars, only when they affect your own living conditions. In the Middle Ages, the sewage wasn’t properly disposed of, but people didn’t pay attention to it until the waters of the rivers and the filth rose over the doorsteps. Then they had to. That’s what is beginning to happen, it is beginning to rise over the doorsteps. It is already, isn’t it?

We’re becoming accustomed to an almost satisfied with people in government who are either venal or stupid. And with the emphasis on fundraising for all elections, which is ruining the electoral system, we will be accepting entertainers as our candidates, not those who have learned the processes and practices of government. You can’t govern without having to training in it. Even Plato said that a long time ago. You need to be trained in government, to exercise it, to practice it. But the American public is now satisfying itself with entertainers.

I think all these developments must certainly affect, if not the person in government, at least the office. And it would be too bad if we lost respect for the office. I think that’s the point I was trying to make in the chapter on popes in The March of Folly. The activity of the Popes themselves cost the papacy so much respect and so much prestige that it made the Reformation possible. It didn’t cause the Reformation, but it made the idea of overthrowing the Roman Church possible.

The trouble is that our public men are really artificial. They’re created by the most devastating tool technology has invented, which is the Teleprompter. They don’t speak spontaneously. You don’t hear them meet a situation out of their own minds. They read this thing that’s going around there in front of them, these words that have been created for them by PR men. This is not the real man that we see. It allows an inadequate, minor individual to appear to be a statesman because he’s got very good speechwriters, and to read the stuff off because he’s a trained actor.

Governments persist in folly because they don’t want to let go of their position, or their power. They are afraid that if they let go, if they say, we were wrong, or we’re doing the wrong thing, they will be booted out, or they will lose their status. It’s not wanting to be left out in the next White House luncheon, or to be shoved into the wilderness if you report unpleasing information.

People say, what’s the use of reading history? I say, well, what’s the use of Beethoven’s sonatas?

Revolutions produce other men, not new men. Halfway between truth and endless error, the mold of the species is permanent. That is Earth’s burden.

Michael Josephson

Now we don’t know what to believe. People don’t believe their own government. When we reach the point where we can’t even trust the facts are government gives us, then we have lost something very significant in a democracy.

If even a small minority of people will speak up and demand more of themselves and others, even if only in their own lives, we’ll turn the pendulum around, and we’ll begin to swing back to the days when we could be really proud of the kind of people we are because of what we contribute to each other and to society. Ethics is a minority movement, and always will be. But a strong minority can change the tenor of this society in a meaningful way.

Joseph Heller

Most of the voting and party membership is pretty much based on something that might be called parochial loyalties. That’s the reason someone like John Connolly could switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party so easily.

Normally, the candidates are supported by people who are from the same financial and social status. Whether they come from Democrats or Republicans, they are backed by money. Finance is extremely important in American politics. H. L. Menckin says that this is the only society in which virtue has become synonymous with money and that the United States is the only large state ever founded solely on the philosophy of business.

We can’t eliminate politics. And no one who has enjoyed democracy has knowingly voted for a different system of government. It is congenial, it is entertaining. For you and me, who are among those in this country who are well fed and well housed and who can be reasonably sure that their income will continue and enable us to live as we are living, there’s no substitute for democracy. Consider how few the alternatives are.

I do believe the individual is important. But the individual does not count to governments. Governments are not normally concerned with the welfare of the people they govern. Even history is not concerned with them. During Rembrandt’s life, the potato was brought over from South America and cultivated successfully in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War. The cultivation of the potato was more important to more people than was Rembrandt’s painting of Aristotle or William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood. The potato gave tens of thousands of people life. You will not read about it.

We tend to measure progress by profit. That’s one way of looking at progress, but it’s not the only way. We have more millionaires now than any nation ever had in its history. At the same time, we have more homeless. We have very real problems here, and we don’t even seem to agree on what they are.

The motion in the Athenian assembly to invade Syracuse was deceitful, corrupt, stupid, chauvinistic, irrational and suicidal. It passed by a huge majority.

The emotions of people in a democratic society are no more rational than they are in any other type of society. They are manipulated. It is the function of leader in a democracy, if he wishes to be a leader, to manipulate the emotions and the ideas of the population.

The word quote “democracy” does not appear in the Constitution at all.

Money and conquest and commerce are the constants in human history.

Money goes where it will increase the fastest rather than where it is needed, and it has no national loyalties. We’ve seen that since the end of World War II. It may be that we no longer have to go to war to take possession of a country’s resources.

If you expect the democratic system of government to provide efficient government, you’re going to be disappointed. Hamilton and Jefferson and Carlyle and others assumed that in an industrial society the captains of industry would and should be the political leaders. They assumed that they would be men of intelligence, man of integrity, men of vision, and men who, having achieved wealth, would no longer have the accumulation of wealth as their goal and would be interested in the public good. That has not happened, as we know.

I believe the federal government is ungovernable.

We don’t have a tradition of revolution, and I don’t believe we’ll ever have another revolution, mainly because revolutions are middle-class phenomenon. Revolutions are not conducted by the most underprivileged in a society. They’re usually conducted by educated people. When Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” he was living in a part of the world that have more liberty than any other place.

Noam Chomsky

Even the mainstream Democratic theorists have always understood that when the voice of the people is heard, you’re in trouble, because the stupid and ignorant masses, as they are called, are going to make the wrong decisions. So, therefore, we have to have what Walter Lippman, back in 1920 or so, called “manufacture of consent.” We have to ensure that actual power is in the hands of what he called a specialized class – us smart guys, who are going to make the right decisions. We’ve got to keep the general population marginalized because they’re always going to make mistakes. The Founding Fathers had very strong feelings on this subject. The Federalists, for example, were very much afraid of popular democracy.

From a point of view which perceives democracy as a problem to be overcome, and sees the right solution is being farsighted leaders with a specialized class and social managers – from that point of view, you must find means of marginalizing the population. Reducing them to apathy and obedience, allowing them to participate in the political system, but as consumers, not as true participants.

We are the only major industrial democracy that doesn’t have a labor-based political party – a party based on the poor or the working class. We have only one political party – it’s the business party. We have two factions of the business party called the Democrats and the Republicans.