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The bias in the way in which the Media has covered the emerging presidential campaign has been evident for some months now.

The implication has been that a hawk like Rudy Giuliani speaks for the American soldiers and other military members, when he, John McCain, Fred Thompson and others, continue to parrot the Bush Administration’s line that the US must "stay the course in Iraq," as withdrawal would be a betrayal of our heroic fighting men and women.

The Media has given short shrift to Ron Paul, the only candidate among the Republicans who argues for withdrawal.

If that logic was correct, then Ron Paul must be the most hated of the candidates among those people associated with the US Military. But, is that true?

Given the means of electronic voting today, if the Bush Administration had the intestinal fortitude to do so, that hypothesis could readily be tested. The GOP was certainly keen to count the Military’s votes in the disputed election in Florida during the 2000 election.

Is there some alternative means of ascertaining the feelings of our Military with respect to the candidates and their views? As it happens, perhaps there is!

Few would argue that in politics, people and interest groups tend to put their money where their mouth is. That is, they give money to those candidates whose views reflect their own interests.

That being the case, the latest information we have about party donations is quite interesting!

Analyzing the latest finance reports, military-support for the Republican candidates, The Spin Factor broke down the donations from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and among Veterans (their figures do not include the Marines, which only slightly alters the results). The results can be easily verified by checking the reports by employer for Ron Paul and the other candidates.

Name

Total $

Army

Navy

AF

Vets

Paul
23,465

6,975

6,765

4,650

5,075

McCain
15,825

6,925

6,305

1,795

800

Romney
3,551

2,051

0

1,500

0

Giuliani
2,320

1,450

370

250

250

Hunter
1,000

0

1,000

0

–

Huckabee
750

250

0

500

–

Tancredo
350

350

0

0

–

Brownback
71

71

0

0

–

Thompson
0

0

0

0

–

*Note: The numbers for the last five candidates have not been thoroughly verified.

52.53%: Ron Paul
35.4%: McCain
7.9%: Romney
5.2%: Giuliani
2.2%: Hunter
2.6%: Others

Thus, more than half of the Military and Veterans donating funds to the Republican Party candidates gave their monies to one candidate, Dr. Ron Paul.

I would suggest this is about a clear an indication of the views of our Military on the positions of the Republican candidates as we are apt to get. Why doesn’t the Media offer this data to the American people?

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC.

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“[T]he British Constitution is more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. . . . An empire is a despotism, and an emperor is a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy. For, although the will of an absolute monarch is law, yet his edicts must be registered by parliaments. Even this formality is not necessary in an empire.” ~ John Adams, Novanglus Papers, 1775, quoted in William Marina, Egalitarianism and Empire (1975), Note 15.

My drive back to Asheville, North Carolina, from the January 27th, March on Washington, DC, offered a tranquil time to reflect on the events of that day. It was great to meet some of my fellow members of Historians Against the War (HAW) that have been giving speeches around the country opposing the war in Iraq.

I have seen no credible figures of the number of people attending the March. The crowd extended well down along the Mall westward from the Capitol. It is impossible to arrive at any set number because when my son and I arrived at a little after noon, a considerable number of people were already leaving, but with bunches of signs and brochures to take to people back home, as I did later in the day. At the same time, people kept arriving during the more than two hours we were there listening to various speakers opposing the Bush Administration’s policies.

I think what impressed me most, were the many signs, and the people with whom I spoke, who are coming to appreciate the fact that the fundamental issue is not just the Escalation of the War in Iraq, or Afghanistan, and all that entails but rather the larger question of Empire.

One of the signs stated it very simply:

“No War”

“No Empire”

“No Occupation”

The Neocons have gloried in the notion of Empire for more than a decade now, and several years ago, one of Bush’s advisors told the American people to accept this new, changing “reality.” Bush is certainly an Imperial Despot, by John Adams’ definition above, for he accepts “no law or limitation but his own will,” and clearly does not concede that his will can be limited by either Congress or the Courts.

Empire has always meant, not only a collapse of the idea of Law, but an enormous centralization of power, not only in foreign and military affairs, but domestically as well, with huge unaccountable bureaucracies developed to administer the State.

An interesting question is when did America change from a Republic to an Empire?

Some writer is always proclaiming that in some new action, we have finally “crossed the Rubicon” river, made famous by Julius Caesar’s army advance on the City of Rome, and I have even used that phrase myself.

The Anti-Imperialists of a century ago believed that had occurred with the decision to annex The Philippines, certainly a prime example of Colonialism. In the Election of 1900 William Jennings Bryan ultimately curtailed the Empire issue, so that despite the importance of Empire as the overriding issue in American politics today, neither of our two dominant political parties have deemed it essential to raise that as the central question facing the nation. One thing is certain in the election of 2008; it will not come to the fore in that election either!

I would suggest, however, that the Empire issue was already evident at the time of the American Revolution and the birth of the Republic itself. The crucial differences within the Revolutionary Coalition, and the debates preceding the Revolution among Classical Republicans dating back to the English Revolution and earlier, are totally obscured by that sweet little phrase, “the Founding Fathers.”

For want of space, let us discuss just one issue that concerned Classical Republican theorists; Standing Armies, something George W. Bush can relate to, because, lacking Conscription or a Draft, he is having difficulty locating the manpower to carry out his edicts, resorting to the old formula of volunteers, assisted by mercenaries on a contract basis. Roman Republicans well understood that was the harbinger of Empire!

The British proscription of Standing Armies in 1694 meant the Army to put down both the Americans and the Irish rebels must be stationed outside the British Isles. Halifax, Nova Scotia, was an ideal spot on the North Atlantic Triangle to station what Jimmy Carter would centuries later call, “a Rapid Deployment Force (RDF). The unpopularity of the War in America meant Hessian mercenaries as well.

Classical Republican theory’s alternative to a Standing Army that led to Empire, was the idea of a decentralized “People’s Militia.” General George Washington never liked the idea of a Militia because it never fitted into his kind of traditional 18th century warfare, of lines on infantry firing at each other at close range with famously inaccurate muskets. No wonder the British Redcoats prayed for rain so they could fix bayonets for a charge against the less experienced Americans.

Yet, as military historians such as John Shy have noted, it was the Militia that was always the “sand in the gears” of the British military machine. Properly used, as by General Nathaniel Greene in the later campaign in the South, the Militia made a significant contribution. Because the British never controlled very much of North America outside of New York City for any length of time, there was very little of today’s “guerrilla warfare” possible, but in that one area the guerrilla Militia was formidable.

What has been obscured by historians is that one wing of the American Revolutionary Coalition was already into the idea of Empire, and that General George Washington was a prime mover in that view. Even during the crucial battles in the South in 1781, Washington sent General LaFayette to negotiate with the Militia of Vermont, Ethan Allen’s “Green Mountain Boys,” about launching another attack to take Canada. By that time, the Militia understood the game about as well as do our high-priced Halliburton and Blackwater contractors in Iraq today, and demanded “double pay, double rations and plunder,” the last certainly a give-away of the imperial nature of the proposed venture, and a perfect way of countering Washington’s proposed expedition. As a result, the “Boys” returned to Vermont.

Peace might have been had in 1777—78, after the victory at Saratoga, and before the alliance with France, had the War Party in the American Coalition been willing to negotiate with the Carlisle Peace Commission, leaving out its continued demand for Canada.

Washington’s dislike of the Militia carried over into his presidency in the 1790′s with his handling of the so-called “Whiskey Rebellion” by using Militia from distant states, because the local rebels themselves were apt to be Militia. What the historian Richard Kohn called the “Murder of the Militia System” was also related perhaps to the need to use regular army troops for “Indian Removal,” an action many veterans later described as the most despicable in their careers.

Much has been made by some opponents of Interventionism, in suggesting that we go back to Washington’s Farewell Address, of “no entangling alliances,” as a model for the country today. I believe this a misreading of the Washington-Alexander Hamilton view, that this really meant an open door to unilateral intervention.

As exhibit one, I would offer Washington’s aid to the French Creoles in Haiti in 1792, in an effort to thwart the Blacks revolting there. Here was America’s first effort at “foreign aid,” some $726,000 at a time when that was real money! As a southerner and slaveholder, Washington was concerned that Black revolt would carry over into the United States. How different, really, was his effort from the dozens of American efforts in the last decades to prop up despots and counter-revolutionaries with financial resources to keep them in power?

One could go on and on with this Militia issue. The Second Amendment, for example, was passed by those anti-Standing Army Classical Republicans, so that the “right to bear arms,” was phrased in terms of “a well-regulated Militia,” The Amendment, still debated today, lost much of its meaning with the murder of the Militia idea and its total interment in 1908 by the great, early architect of the Empire, Elihu Root, in an aptly misnamed Militia Act. The National Guard idea fitted in better with Empire, and even in the labor strife of the 1890s, it was clear that Militia would not fire on their striking neighbors.

The neglect of the Militia was evident in the Territories of the American West after the Civil War. In the 1880s, General Lew Wallace, the Territorial Governor of New Mexico and author of Ben Hur, complained that while his Militia was forced to use old, Civil War, surplus, breech-loading rifles, Geronimo’s poor, marauding Indians had been given new, Winchester ’73 repeating rifles by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in the Interior Department, with which to hunt back and forth across the border with Mexico. A Militiaman chasing them would probably get hit with several bullets by the Indians, while he was attempting to reload his old rifle!

My main point is that the Empire issue is not new, but has its roots deep in the American past. It is rather ironic, that Ben Franklin, surely one of the Empire men, should have given us the memorable phrase, “We have given you a Republic, if you can keep it.” The restoration of the Republic will have to be an equally long-term project. To paraphrase a well-known quote, “Rome’s Empire wasn’t built in a day,” nor will the dismantling our or own Empire be accomplished overnight.

It is high time, however, that the American people recognize that the Issue is Empire, and that we need a political party that will recognize this fact, and build a coherent program around that opposition idea. The open abuses by George W. Bush of the Rule of Law has given us stark evidence that John Adams would clearly recognize, that, indeed, America today is an Empire, if any such doubts remain.

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC.

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In an obscure list of recent errors, on October 6, 2006, the New York Times revealed the following information:

“An article on Sept. 21 about criticism of President Bush at the United Nations by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran reported that Mr. Chavez praised a book by Noam Chomsky, the linguist and social critic. It reported that later, at a news conference, Mr. Chavez said that he regretted not having met Mr. Chomsky before he died. The article noted that in fact, Mr. Chomsky is alive. The assertion that Mr. Chavez had made this misstatement was repeated in a Times interview with Mr. Chomsky the next day.

In fact, what Mr. Chavez said was, “I am an avid reader of Noam Chomsky, as I am of an American professor who died some time ago.” Two sentences later Mr. Chavez named John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard economist who died last April, calling both him and Mr. Chomsky great intellectual figures.

Mr. Chavez was speaking in Spanish at the news conference, but the simultaneous English translation by the United Nations left out the reference to Mr. Galbraith and made it sound as if the man who died was Mr. Chomsky.

Readers pointed out the error in e-mails to the Times soon after the first article was published. Reporters reviewed the recordings of the news conference in English and Spanish, but not carefully enough to detect the discrepancy, until after the Venezuelan government complained publicly on Wednesday.

Editors and reporters should have been more thorough earlier in checking the accuracy of the simultaneous translation.”

With such sloppy reportage by America’s self-proclaimed “premier” source of news, is it any wonder that people around the world, who are aware of the lies, duplicity and hypocrisy, that pass for U.S. foreign policy and government-derived “public diplomacy," have grown to distrust the accuracy of the American media as well?

Sunday, October 8, 2006, at least, the Times did publish a piece on America’s continued hypocrisy entitled, “Castro Foe Puts US in an Awkward Spot,” which calls attention to our double standards on Terror, especially in a case where the Terrorists were trained by the CIA.

“EL PASO, Oct. 6 — Thirty years ago, long before liquids and gels were restricted on airliners, a tube of Colgate toothpaste may have brought a plane down from the sky.

Cubana Airlines Flight 455 crashed off the coast of Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976, killing all 73 people aboard. Plastic explosives stuffed into a toothpaste tube ignited the plane, according to recently declassified police records.

Implicated in the attack, but never convicted, was Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile who has long sought to topple the government of Fidel Castro.

Today, Mr. Posada, 78, is in a detention center in El Paso, held on an immigration violation while the government tries to figure out what to do with him. His case presents a quandary for the Bush administration, at least in part because Mr. Posada is a former C.I.A. operative and United States Army officer who directed his wrath at a government that Washington has long opposed.

Despite insistent calls from Cuba and Venezuela for his extradition, the administration has refused to send him to either country for trial.

Intensifying the problem is that Mr. Posada, who was arrested last year in Miami after sneaking into the country, may soon go free because the United States has been reluctant to press the terrorism charges that could keep him in jail.

That prospect has brought a hail of criticism of the Bush administration for holding a double standard when it comes to those who commit terrorist acts.

“The fight against terrorism cannot be fought à la carte,” said José Pertierra, a Washington lawyer who is representing the government of Venezuela in its effort to extradite Mr. Posada. “A terrorist is a terrorist.”

The Bush administration has stopped short of prosecuting him as a terrorist, however, even though the Justice Department called him as much this week. In papers filed in federal court in El Paso on Thursday, it described him as “an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks on tourist sites.”

Instead, Mr. Posada faces immigration charges, as the Bush administration tries its best to deport him somewhere else, where he would walk free.”

The Atlantic Monthly, October 19, 2006, also carries a long article about Posada “Twilight of the Assassins,” by Ann Louise Bardach.

This is, not of course, a new issue. This writer wrote about it several years ago, quoting Bush on Terrorists. The issue was obscured perhaps by the 2004 election then only a few weeks hence. Little has really changed since then, even as a new election approaches, and I have made only a couple of additions to that essay below.

While delegates to the GOP convention were congratulating themselves for their candidate’s tough stand against terrorism, the Bush administration was creating an international incident — little publicized in the United States — by harboring a notorious group of international terrorists on US soil.

Earlier this month, three anti-Castro Cuban exiles flew to Miami from Panama after serving four years in prison for "endangering public safety." They were arrested in 2000 for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro by planting explosives at a meeting the Cuban dictator planned to hold with university students in Panama.

The average convicted terrorist does not just waltz past US immigration authorities in this post-9/11 age of orange alerts, "no fly" lists and shoe searches. Senator Edward Kennedy reportedly gets stopped by airport authorities every time he tries to make a flight, allegedly because the "Kennedy" name appears on a database of suspects.

Only political influence exerted at the highest level could account for terrorists reentering US borders without impediment, despite rap sheets extending back as long as forty years:

Pedro Rémon, sentenced to seven years for the bomb plot in Panama, pleaded guilty in 1986 to bombing Cuba’s mission to the United Nations and later conspiring to murder its ambassador to the UN. A New York detective also fingered Rémon for the machine-gun murders of two political opponents.

Gaspar Jiménez, sentenced to eight years for the Panama bomb plot and falsifying documents, had previously served time in Mexico for the attempted kidnapping and murder of Cuban diplomats there. He was also indicted in Florida for blowing the legs off a liberal Miami radio talk show host in 1976. (The indictment was eventually dropped for insufficient evidence, even though the main witness passed several lie-detector tests.)

Guillermo Novo, sentenced to 7 years for the Panama terror plot, was arrested in 1964 for firing a bazooka at the United Nations, where Ché Guevara was speaking. In 1978, he was convicted of participating in one of the worst acts of terrorism ever committed on US soil, the car bombing in Washington, D.C. of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier. (The conviction was later overturned on a technicality, though Novo was convicted of perjury.)

A fourth Panama conspirator, Louis Posada Carriles, left Panama for Honduras. He is still wanted in Venezuela on charges of bombing a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all 73 passengers. In 1998, in an interview with the New York Times from a hideout in Central America, Posada admitted taking part in numerous acts of terrorism, including a wave of Havana hotel bombings in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist. He said his violence was funded by prominent US based supporters in the Cuban exile community.

The release of these terrorists from Panama — ordered by its outgoing president — has caused a furor in Central America. Venezuela recalled its ambassador and Cuba severed diplomatic relations with Panama.

Honduras also protested. "I will . . . demand that the United States and Panama explain how Posada Carriles used a false US passport," declared Honduran President Ricardo Maduro. "How did that airplane leave Panama with Posada Carriles, reach Honduras, and wind up in the United States?"

"We know we’re dealing with important international influences," the president added.

Those influences no doubt include the fact that Posada was trained by the CIA in the 1960s in sabotage techniques, remained on the CIA payroll into the 1970s, and in the mid-1980s (after escaping from a Venezuelan jail) assisted the Reagan administration’s covert supply operation on behalf of the Nicaraguan Contras.

Then there’s the undeniable fact that Cuban exile terrorists enjoy strong political support in the swing state of Florida, thanks to organized lobbying by such groups as the Cuban American National Foundation. That explains why President Bush, in 2001, rejected the advice of the FBI and freed from INS custody two convicted colleagues of Guillermo Novo in the Letelier assassination.

Conservatives have long (and rightly) derided the glib phrase, "one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter." The incoming Panamanian president, Martin Torrijos, likewise stood on principle when he rejected his predecessor’s decision to pardon the terrorists, saying, "For me, there are not two classes of terrorism, one that is condemned and another that is pardoned. . . . It has to be fought no matter what its origins."

Three years ago, after 9/11, President Bush appeared to draw the same line in the sand. Addressing members of the 101st Airborne Division, he declared, "If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist."

Today, Americans should ask whether those tough words were only rhetoric, quickly forgotten when political convenience dictates. Today, Bush appears to be harboring terrorists still, and by his own definition, that makes him one as well.

This article was first published by the Independent Institute.

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC.

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The 5th anniversary of September 11, 2001, certainly produced an outpouring of politically motivated media presentations ranging from conspiracy theories to justifications for pursuing the "War on Terror."

I would like to use the occasion, however, to give renewed attention to the significance of a previous September 11th sixty-one years ago, when retiring Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson sent a top-secret, eight-page, Memorandum to President Harry S. Truman, exploring the implications for the future of the Atomic Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki only a month earlier.

Curiously, it is virtually never mentioned in the criticisms or justification that erupt with regularity each August concerning the decision to drop those bombs on the Japanese people. Yet, for better or worse, those events are history, while the policy implications of Stimson’s Memo remain as relevant today as the day on which he wrote it. The great radical historian, William Appleman Williams, called it one of the most important documents of the then emerging Cold War, and Truman’s failure to respond to it, one of the great examples of The Tragedy of American Diplomacy.

Stimson was a conservative Republican. As a young man in the crisis of the 1890s, like Teddy Roosevelt, his letters spoke of the need for a war to help resolve the social and economic situation. Later, serving to administer America’s "Benevolent" policies in The Philippines, he heeded the advice of his mentor and fellow Yale man, William Howard Taft, to comport himself as a "Pro-Consul" within the American Empire.

He realized, however, that the dropping of the bombs had changed everything! In the Memo, easily Googled at the Truman Library, Stimson argued that any attempt to use the bomb to change Russian behavior would only be resented and counterproductive. He suggested instead, that the US share the technology with the Soviets.

“I believe that the change in attitude toward the individual in Russia will come slowly and gradually and I am satisfied that we should not delay our approach to Russia in the matter of the atomic bomb until that process has been completed…. Furthermore, I believe that this long process of change in Russia is more likely to be expedited by the closer relationship in the matter of the atomic bomb which I suggest and the trust and confidence that I believe would be inspired by the method of approach which I have outlined.”

Stimson reasoned the Russians would at once pursue obtaining such a bomb for themselves. It was not a secret, as Americans were for years led to believe, but an industrial technology being explored before the War, and which the Soviets would obtain in, say, four to twenty, years.

In a reference to the US "having this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip," Stimson noted, "their suspicions and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase. It will inspire them to greater efforts in an all out effort to solve the problem."

"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust."

Truman’s failure to follow Stimson’s advice, ensured that the worst of those predictions would be realized in the long Cold War that followed, ended only by Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to disengage from the Empire Game.

Now, of course, the Cowboy from Crawford has strapped his six-gun rather ostentatiously on his hip, proclaiming his desire to draw preemptively on Iran. But, everything observed by Stimson years ago still holds true except that the caliber of Bush’s weapon today might not be sufficient to do the job, and the Iranians may retaliate.

I would suggest that there is still a window open whereby George W. Bush has an opportunity, by courageously following Stimson’s advice, to reverse a chain of disastrous American policy moves toward Iran dating back at least to 1944. This might serve as a new beginning toward the development a renewed relationship with a part of the Islamic world.

If I were the President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and saw my "buddy" from Texas’ failure to pursue such an initiative, I might consider quoting from Stimson’s Memo myself in offering Iran the technology it needs to enhance uranium. To do so is the best way to build a basis for friendship and trust. Should that nation move toward development of a bomb, as have those nations such as Israel and India, helped along by the US, then the Iranians still lack the delivery system to use it effectively. They simply would have joined, what at this point, is hardly an exclusive club, excepting only the US, which has, of course, used the bomb in warfare to kill thousands of civilians.

Given the lack of such vision and courage of the leaders of the American Empire from Truman to the present, it seems highly unlikely that this nation will initiate the kind of bold diplomacy envisioned by Stimson!

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC. He studied Affordable Housing Technologies as a Senior Economist with the Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, of which Mr. Bartlett was then the Executive Director. This article originally appeared on the History News Network.

One of them, Lawrence Summers, is the President of Harvard University. He is resigning, effective in June, rather than face a long period of nasty confrontation with a part of the faculty. He can, however, salve his wounds with the long-term financial remuneration of a tenured senior professorship, and on the lecture circuit, should he choose not to go into either the business world or return to a career in government.

The other is Bruce Bartlett, whose book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, is just out. Bartlett, of course, was fired last October from a conservative think-tank in Dallas, Texas, The National Center for Policy Analysis. The reason? His book hit too close to President Bush’s responsibility for the policies of his administration. The president, directors, and some donors to NCPA, apparently believe policies can somehow be divorced from those who make them. What a novel view!

Both firings open up some interesting questions about the intellectual establishment in this country, ranging from universities to think-tanks. For now, let’s focus on the example of Bruce Bartlett’s.

There are three reasons for me to do so. First, Bruce has been my friend for some thirty years; second, despite all of his work in economics and taxation policy, he was trained as an historian, and third, his career choices may have some relevance for historians, especially younger ones, today.

I first met Bruce early in 1976 when, as a Liberty Fund Junior Fellow working on his MA in History at Georgetown, after an AB at Rutgers, he visited the Institute for Humane Studies (then in Menlo Park, CA, now at George Mason University) to do some research at the Hoover Institution. Since all of the Summer Fellows had returned home, he stayed with me in the Institute’s townhouse, where I resided as the Liberty Fund Senior Research Scholar.

I was flattered he had read several of my writings, and the evenings together for a number of weeks, really gave us opportunity to discuss our historical worldviews.

His thesis was later published as Cover-up: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941—1946 (Arlington House, 1978). That alone, would be enough to alienate him from the foreign policies of George W. Bush, because it is clear Bruce, was, and is, a non-interventionist, in both foreign and domestic policies. "Imperial George" hates that kind of "isolationist," blasting it no less than four times in his recent speech before the Congress.

What impressed me most, however, was that Bruce was one of among a handful of students I have known in my career who was not only a generalist, but interested in the philosophy of history as well. To demonstrate how out of place that is in today’s university, once, when I offered to exchange positions with someone at Northern Arizona University, so she could be nearer her ill mother in Florida, a "colleague" at FAU wrote to warn them that I was, "a generalist, an entrepreneur (I headed a modest Const. Co. on the side) and a dilettante." Fortunately, the Honors Program offered me an even better deal than did the "worried" History Department. Narrow specialization today is the game of the game!

I had corresponded with Carroll Quigley, the noted lecturer at the Foreign Service School at Georgetown, who had made some suggestions on my essay Egalitarianism and Empire. I was jealous of Bruce for having had the opportunity to sit in on a number of Quigley’s lectures even though he was not enrolled in his large courses. Quigley had been Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown, and the latter mentioned his writings in the speech accepting the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1992.

Bruce hoped the Liberty Fund would support his work toward a doctorate in History, but the board of the Fund decided against such a general policy. Had it done so, Bruce might have stuck it out to obtain the terminal degree in History. Enrolled, for same, later at Georgetown, and contemplating in the late 1970s, as a white male trying to get a job in an American university, as he has recounted it, one day he left a doctoral History class in mid-lecture, took Incompletes in all his courses, and was able to secure a job in Washington. His career is nicely described here.

Given Bruce’s conservative worldview, and the specialization that has occurred in American universities during these years, he certainly made the correct career choice. His experience with NCPA indicates also the parameters of the freedom of expression in such obviously biased "think-tanks," whether of the left or the right.

He is free now to do the interdisciplinary research that has always been his orientation. I would urge him to return to the broader parameters of the philosophy of History that interested him years ago, and that is not given much shrift in today’s universities.

Quigley died in 1977. As I was completing my stay with Liberty Fund, I suggested the Liberty Press reprint what I considered his most important work, The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis (1961), and was honored to contribute the "Selective Bibliography" short commentary when it was published in 1979.

I hope to be reviewing Bruce’s new book at length in several places. I would suggest to Bruce here, however, that the most important passage in the book has little, if anything, to do with Bush’s economic policies, or comparing them to Reagan’s, but rather to Quigley’s whole analysis of History.

On page 41, Bruce notes the journalist Ron Suskind, in an article that was much quoted, including by this writer, when it was published late in 2004, citing an unnamed Bush White House aide, "We’re an empire now, . . . and you, all of you, will be left to study what we do."

Well, Bruce, now that you are, so to speak, unemployed, I suggest you take a member of the Bush administration at his word, and continue to study what the Empire is doing, of which domestic economic policies are only a part.

What better place to begin that than to return to Quigley, whose book was focused around the concept of Empire and Universal Empire, in my view a much sounder framework of analysis than anything that has been done by the many writers quoting Spengler or Toynbee in the last decade since the Neocons proclaimed the "new" American Empire that increasingly looks like the "old" Empire of a century ago.

Certainly, the specialists in the universities are not going to do so in any great numbers. Their protests against the New Empire are miniscule, or even pathetic, compared to those in 1898, or even against the Vietnam War. I warn you, though, your idol, Ronald Reagan, was advancing the Empire during his watch, and men like John Negroponte first earned their spurs developing a strategy of killing the peasants in Central America.

To get you back to the insights of Quigley as a starting point, let me mention him on two issues which even George W. Bush believes are paramount today, Energy and the Weaponry now available to Global Insurgents in the "Long War."

Writing in 1961 Quigley noted that a fourth great Age of Expansion in Global Civilization might come about by our learning to efficiently harness the energy given us by the Sun, since all other sources on our planet were finite, or cause other problems in their development.

Apropos of what has been going on in Iraq and elsewhere, he observed, as quoted at the beginning of my own article, “Weapons, Technology and Legitimacy,” that we were in a new age of warfare, which a few military planners are now calling “Fourth Generation Warfare,” seemingly in ignorance that Quigley wrote another whole book on weapons in history.

As several historians have noted, History seeks to answer both the "How" and the "Why" of human action. The first great question is "Why, if we are a Democracy, have the American People, certainly including historians and other intellectuals, allowed their political leaders to change a nation created in the name of Liberty and Self-Determination, into becoming the world’s great bastion of Empire and Counter-Revolution?" Secondly, "How do we restore our nation toward a quest for those lost ideals?"

Bruce, you have shown you have the intellectual courage to take on a Republican administration of great power, in the certain knowledge it would cost you your rather comfortable position. Hopefully, yours will be the first salvo that will open further a great Fissure or Schism in the Republican Party and in American History over the question of Empire.

I can think of no one better armed and equipped to take on the great issue of Empire, and I am proud to see you returning to your roots in History.

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC. He studied Affordable Housing Technologies as a Senior Economist with the Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, of which Mr. Bartlett was then the Executive Director. This article originally appeared on the History News Network.

A coalition of Democrats led by New York Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, joined Republican Senate leader, Bill Frist, as well as Christian conservatives such as Cal Thomas, see Dubai’s acquisition of P&O’s port concessions as a threat to American security. Why, two of the 911 bombers came from that small nation!

Bush’s “War on Terror” having cried “wolf” everywhere, including Saddam’s Iraq, is now having the issue come back to “bite the President in the rear.”

Beneath all of this “security” clamor, it’s really the Wal-mart question again, in a slightly different guise.

There have been protests around America over the last few years as Wal-Mart has sought to open new stores in various communities. The hue and cry has come basically from two groups pushing two separate issues.

The first is that Wal-Mart’s “low” wages and alleged lack of other benefits is a threat to the American worker. Yet, thousands of people line up for the potential job openings as a new Wal-Mart prepares to open its doors. The unions operating in a number of America’s other supermarket chains have complained to politicians about that competition. The unions at General Motors and Ford have said the same thing about Japanese and other foreign auto makers building new plants in this country, especially in the South.

Well, are American ports any different? Only slightly.

American ports used to be controlled by a corruption-prone alliance of politicians and unions. One can recall with nostalgia a half century ago, as Oscar week approaches, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger and Eva Marie Saint in "On the Waterfront," offering us a glimpse of this relationship. And, as we observe the posturing of Chuck and Hillary, we are reminded that all of our actors are not in Hollywood. As a former Floridian and co-author of A History of Florida, I can attest that the Port of Miami has been a case study in such shenanigans, and that explains why some of the pols there are so upset.

A piece by John Nichols, "Corporate Control of Ports Is the Problem,” lets the cat out of the bag.

Nichols concedes that, Dubai and security issues aside, no corporation should be operating an American port, “it would be a bad idea.” Further, “Ports are essential pieces of the infrastructure of the United States, and they are best run by public authorities that are accountable to elected officials and the people those officials represent. While traditional port authorities still exist, they are increasing marginalized as privatization schemes have allowed corporations — often with tough anti-union attitudes and even tougher bottom lines — to take charge of more and more of the basic operations at the nation’s ports.”

So, the real issue is privatization. Mr. Nichols would prefer government ownership. In all of this talk of accountability, nowhere is there any mention of the historical reality that American ports were long bastions of the unholy alliance of corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and union officials. No wonder all of the unions, from teachers to longshoremen, are behind Chuck and Hillary on this issue.

In the course of criticizing the idea that corporations are in business to make money, he inadvertently concedes the phoniness of the “security” issue. “First: Like most American firms, most Arab-owned firms are committed to making money, and the vast majority of them are not about to compromise their potential profits by throwing in with terrorists.”

The other side of the Wal-Mart equation, the threat to smaller business interests, is revealed in a piece by Robert Wright in yesterday’s Financial Times, “Backlash to Dubai deal sends danger signal to US ports sector,” which is, unfortunately, available online only to subscribers. I shall, therefore, quote generously from it.

Wright reminds us this is not the first time such a controversy has arisen, citing the Chinese company, Cosco’s, effort in 1998 to take control of the Port of Long Beach. Cosco simply switched to nearby Los Angeles and used the facilities there.

First, the “legislation proposed by US senators now could affect a number of companies that already operate container terminals in the US, possibly forcing them to sell.”

Secondly: “The dispute could also put at risk the US’s reputation in the maritime industry as a safe, predictable place to do business, observers believe.”

Finally: “The ultimate effect may be to divorce practice in the US’s relatively protected, inefficient container ports sector further from that elsewhere in the industrialised world, where large international companies have generally developed more efficient businesses.”

Neil Davidson, a container ports analyst at London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants, indicates “the US container port industry would be unworkable without companies controlled by foreign governments. Proposed emergency legislation by senators Hillary Clinton and Robert Menendez would prevent foreign governments from controlling US container port assets.”

“Among key companies that could be barred from operating US container terminals are China Shipping, the state-owned Chinese line, which has a terminal at the Port of Los Angeles, and APL, a line based in Oakland, California, and owned by Singapore’s state-owned NOL,” and “There are a number of major state-owned shipping lines that have terminals in the US,” Davidson notes.

Further, “The law would prevent DP World, which is owned by the emirate of Dubai, from making any future investments but also lock out permanently Singapore’s PSA, the world number three container port operator by capacity, owned by the Singaporean government. DP World will become the world number four through the P&O takeover but will be only just behind PSA and Denmark’s APM Terminals.”

Finally: “Without DP World and PSA, the US would be further cut off from the influence of the world’s largest, most efficient container port operators. Hong Kong’s Hutchison Ports, the world number one, already refuses to invest in the US because its executives are skeptical of how the container ports industry is organized.”

Still, “that may suit the mainly small family-owned companies that lease container terminals at many US ports from the publicly owned port authorities controlling nearly all of them. Such small companies dominate the sector in the US, along with shipping lines, which lease dedicated terminals for their ships at many ports, especially on the west coast.”

Thus, “Although the restrictive practices at union-dominated US ports mean profits are not as high as in other parts of the world, business for such family-controlled companies has generally been good, according to Mr Davidson. Few have chosen to sell out in the same way as the owners of ITO, the small terminal operator that sold P&O its north American assets in June 1999.”

Finally, “US politicians well beyond Washington might also benefit if the deal were to fall apart. Many local port authorities are run by political appointees, who might benefit from attacking Arab interests if P&O North America’s terminal leases were surrendered and could be relet.”

Concludes Mr Davidson, “The US ports business is a pretty political animal.”

So, in summary, privatization has been going on for some time in American ports with modest profits as the efficiency of our ports has fallen relative to the operations of larger companies in Asia and elsewhere. Like the small businesses opposing a local Wal-Mart, these companies would like things to remain much as they are, and they are relying on Chuck, Hillary and Bill to keep it that way. If I might refer once again to a film analogy, I hope this time George will “veto one for the Gipper!”

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC. This article originally appeared on the History News Network.

~ A senior Bush administration adviser, 2002

A large number of Americans believe we are an “Exception to Historyu201D; brighter, richer, and just all around more Providentially Blessed, even when it appears this year with respect to wars, hurricanes, and just plain corruption and lies, that our leader may have lost the “Mandate of Heaven.”

It may be that we are just, as a People, simply slow learners!

Even if you teach all of the people all of the time, some folks just don’t learn very quickly, that the top of the stove is often hot to the touch. It appears, at times, that we even elevate one of these slow learners to the presidency, in order to better teach the rest of us by his example!

Anna Quinlan reminds us that we’ve been through this whole scenario before.

A historian might suggest to her, actually, this is at least the third time, and maybe, we have to hope this is not like baseball — 3 strikes and you’re out — and that we will have to wait as long as the Chicago White Sox did, to have a shot at a World Series again.

In the Philippines over a century ago, we killed and tortured at least several hundred thousand Filipinos, although it may have been many more, losing a mere 4,000 Providentially Blessed American soldiers who gave their lives for the Empire. This “success” was due in great part because the Filipinos had few guns, having often to use bolo knives, to face American rifles, machine guns and artillery. Like the Vietnamese, the Iraqis do have guns and explosives!

While we were still diddling around setting up a “regime change” Protectorate in Cuba, we overwhelmed the Filipino revolutionaries, and set up a government of the old, Spanish Comprador elite, that men like Gov. Gen. William Howard Taft out in the Islands, to use today’s terminology, would surely have proclaimed a great success in “Nation Building.”

Those Americans who believe that, might read the five-part series by Pedro Escobar in the Asia Times some months ago, entitled “The Sick Man of Asia,” detailing the corruption and instability in those Islands today. Apparently, Nations don’t stay Built! A good case could be made that this is about where things would be if we had simply left them with Spain. Most likely, with a little help somewhere along the line from the Japanese, they would have freed themselves from the Spanish anyway.

Perhaps America needs a new Motto: “Those who refuse to learn from History are doomed to repeat it.”

Actually, at this point, our nation is bankrupt, not only morally, but financially as well, and that inflationary trend was evident several decades ago.

A number of historians, going back to the ancient empires of old, have remarked on a seeming 300-year cycle of the high tide of imperial power. At this point, what remains, is to speculate whether our Empire will even make it into that less than charming circle!

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC. This article originally appeared on the History News Network.

~ Mark Twain, Puddenhead Wilson

Twain was too early on to have to deal with “political correctness,” but we must now say it is 513 years today since Columbus “encountered” America. The recent death of Simon Wiesenthal, the great Nazi hunter, who was a famous fan of the view that Cristobal Colon was a Jew, reminded me of my own views on that theory, which occurred along with my own first “encounter” with political correctness.

In 1975, I was asked by Robert Hoffman, a publisher himself, and the son of Sylvan Hoffman, the originator of an American history in the format of a newspaper, News of the Nation, to become the Associate Editor of a new edition of the book. The first edition, published in 1953 had been a Book-of-the-Month selection, the subject of high praise in a “My Day” column by Eleanor Roosevelt, and had sold widely as a textbook as well.

The publisher, Prentice-Hall sent me a book containing all of the politically correct grammar already in vogue by then. I cut out about a third of the old edition, added new pieces on cultural and social history, as well as bringing the book up to date, I had, beyond Bob, about a half dozen various editors at P-H, who were looking over all of the hundreds of articles I produced.

Amazingly, there were only two of my articles that caused a bit of a controversy. One detailed how after the War with Mexico, Hispanics in the southwest had been deprived of their property, and the efforts of the Justice Dept. to rectify that injustice. It was deemed too permeated with notions of Marxism and class conflict. I gave in to the majority when it became clear that they had no understanding of libertarian class theory and property rights.

The second involved Colon. The first edition carried a story entitled, “Fourteen Italian Cities Claim Columbus,” which I suggested be replaced by a piece called “Was Columbus a Jew?" I was especially excited by the opportunity this offered in the Teacher’s Guide to introduce the teachers to some of the exciting literature that existed on this subject. Most of the editors were themselves Jews, but I was again overridden, not because my research was wrong, but because no one wanted to offend any Italian-American readers. Oh well, 2 out of maybe 400 ain’t bad!

For those in doubt about the question of Columbus, I recommend, especially, Salvador de Madariaga’s classic, Christopher Columbus: Being the Life of the Very Magnificent Lord, Don Cristobal Colon (1940), but, these days try googling “Columbus+Jews” as well, along with other variations. In the turmoil of the Inquisition, Colon’s family had left Spain for Genoa, but he continued to use Spanish and as a young man fought with the French against Genoa.

He began his diary at the time of the expulsion of the Jews early in 1492, and his log was later kept in the Jewish calendar. It was the Jewish bankers around Ferdinand, himself of Jewish ancestry, who financed the expedition with a motive of finding some opportunity for the Jews. Sephardics did come to the New World, and it is perhaps no accident that the Cubans were known as the Jews of the Caribbean.

My point is not to attempt to build that case here, that has been done in a number of books, but to ask, why has this information, even as controversy, not made its way into American textbooks? I am less concerned with political correctness than with accuracy.

The same thing is true, for example, with one of the central events in our history, the American Revolution. David McCullough has just published a book, 1776, detailing the military events of that year. In testimony before the Congress, and in a number of radio and television appearances, he has complained about the poor quality of American textbooks, arguing that we need more good, narrative history to catch the interest of our students.

I would not argue with that, assuming the facts are correct, but would only add that the real problem is a lack of perspective. McCullough needs to begin by examining his own statements and assumptions. It is a trivial error to refer to Abigail Adams and the historian, Mercy Otis Warren, as “good friends,” when they were actually also cousins, but one expects accuracy from someone who wrote a book on Abigail and her husband.

In each of those same appearances, and in his recent book, he noted, one time mentioning John Adams’ name, that only a minority of the American people supported the Revolution. Nowhere does he ever document that statement. If that were true, then the Revolution was simply an elite coup. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest otherwise, but McCullough is just plain wrong in attributing that one-third notion to John Adams, although it is found in a number of American books, even recent ones.

In News of the Nation we devoted an article to refuting that idea, based upon an article I had done earlier, “The American Revolution and the Minority Myth.”

In short, there is a great deal more deplorable about American textbooks than how they deal with Evolution! We might start by dealing honestly about who Colon really was, as well as the nature of the American Revolution. Until historians begin to do so, it is useless to complain about the historical ignorance of a public that is susceptible to the incredible historical mendacity of so many of our political leaders.

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC. This article originally appeared on the History News Network.

Probably, that won’t be in the new Constitution, but rather tacked on as a treaty, as we did in Cuba after 1898. Incredible, how the face of Empire changes so little over a century!

Eric
Margolis suggests this is pretty much like the arch-Imperialist,
Winston Churchill’s, British plans of the 1920s, when Iraq was carved
out of the Ottoman Empire as oil was discovered, and the RAF took
charge.

I would point out, it is also very much like America in 1768, when the British sent 10,000 troops to occupy us, until that “Standing Army” was chased out of Boston in 1776, and settled into New York City until 1783. It was such imperial shenanigans that caused Patrick Henry to utter, “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!”

The American historian, Mercy Otis Warren, writing her history in 1805, rightly called that October day in 1768, the real beginning of the American Revolution, and a “day” that would live “in infamy.” Good, ‘ol FDR later borrowed that phrase on December 8, 1941.

Many Americans, apparently, see no contradiction between mouthing the ideas and slogans of our own Revolution, while at the same time denying them to other peoples around the globe, all the while blathering on about bringing these people “Democracy.” Nothing like Empire coupled with hypocrisy! No wonder much of the world hates us.

This is also the kind of stuff Joe Stalin preached and practiced in Eastern Europe after WWII. He was happy to help all of those captive nations write constitutions modeled on the Soviet Constitution of 1936, a great sounding document, under which he killed millions of Russians.

Since our “new” policy is built on what we did in Cuba a century ago, don’t be surprised if this produces an Iraqi version of Fidel Castro somewhere down the line. The British policy, after all, produced Saddam Hussein, and the Insurgency now raging in Iraq, will probably simply continue.

While Fidel is a nasty dictator, he appears to be in charge, even in the face of even a Category 5 hurricane last year, when 1.5 million Cubans were safely evacuated, with no loss of life, and no looting, although 20,000 buildings were destroyed by the storm. Compare that to the fiasco today on our Gulf Coast, especially in New Orleans, in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Maybe Bush can hire some of those “nation building” Cubans who gave us such a hard time in Grenada in the 1980s, and are now active in Venezuela, and other parts of Latin America. Whatever else Cuba is, it has a lower infant mortality rate than does the US, and, apparently, a greater sense of community.

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC. This article originally appeared on the History News Network.

The
New York Times,
August 7, 2005, carries a story by Damien Cave entitled, “Where
are the War Heroes?”

The intervention
in Iraq, as in other American wars, has produced its share of heroic
acts by both men and women. What is different is the way in which
the political establishment chooses to handle these deeds, much
to the “discouragement” of many in the military.

Unlike the
declared war in 1941, our numerous interventions since then, now
proclaimed as “preemptive” strikes against non-existent Weapons
of Mass Destruction, have drawn protests and divided the nation.
Publicizing heroes means calling attention to the horrors of war.
All of this is creating something of a legitimacy crisis for the
Empire, and the whole mode of counterinsurgency warfare. Some military
critics of the war such as William E. Lind, have tried to square
the circle by attempting to develop what they have termed “Fourth
Generation Warfare,” a sort of “kinder, gentler” Counterinsurgency
Imperialist Interventionism.

The Times’
picture of Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier in
World War II, reminded me of my friend and coauthor, Nathaniel Weyl,
who died several months ago at the age of 94 (see the NYT
Obit for May 8). To some extent, Nathaniel helped originate the
legend of Audie Murphy. He is most remembered, of course, for his
role in revealing Alger Hiss as a Communist, and for his book, Red
Star Over Cuba (1960).

One day as
we were working together on American Statesmen on Slavery and
the Negro (1971), later selected by Choice, the library
journal, as one of the ten outstanding history books of that year
(Lew Rockwell was our editor), Nate showed me a clipping of an article
from a Seattle newspaper, written by an old WWII buddy, turned columnist.
As his literary executor, I have searched for that piece, but conclude
that, if Nate kept it, it is among those papers he donated to the
Hoover Institution some years ago.

The writer
described Cpl. Weyl, scrawny, with helmet askew, as one of the most
unlikely looking soldiers in the American Army. Nate had resigned
his position as an economist in the Federal government to join the
Army. His job was to write up the commendations for the medals given
to the combat soldiers in the Third Division of General George S.
Patton’s, Third Army.

One day, his
superior, a Major Blossom (sp.?) in one of those large PR units,
well described by Cave’s article, called Nate to his office. “Weyl,”
he said, “as you are aware, we are the most decorated Division in
the Third Army, and it is the most decorated among all of America’s
fighting forces. Only one thing is missing. We must also have the
most decorated soldier! He, must, however, be legitimate! Your job
is to find him.”

As Nate dug
through all of the records of heroism, many of which he had written
up, two outstanding candidates emerged, whom he then interviewed.
The first was a Captain, who was daring, but rather, in Nate’s assessment,
seemed to enjoy war and killing. The problem was eliminated when
the officer was killed in action, as Nate had imagined might occur.

That left a
young enlisted man from Texas. Well, as we now know, it never hurts
the cause of a real hero to have a good wordsmith writing up your
commendations.

In fact, Nate
told me Audie was quite modest about it all. In the film, “To Hell
and Back,” he is shown for a short time out on a burning tank, filled
with fuel, while in reality it was for a much longer time, with
his buddies urging him to get off. Murph became a heck of a recruiter
for the Army after he was wounded.

The contrast
with Vietnam and today is stark. I recall in 1966 taking an Air
Force recruiter to lunch. His table had been very much ignored by
the Florida Atlantic University students. I told him I had led protests
against our intervention there, but that I understood his situation,
and wanted to learn what I could about what was really going on
in ‘Nam.

After a couple
of beers, he seemed to come emotionally unglued. I have no reason
to doubt what he said was true. It seems he was the only survivor
from a squadron ordered to take out a bridge, ordered by LBJ because
it had been built by the French with Marshall Plan funds. Flying
into that river valley meant facing thousands of rifles firing from
the banks as the Vietnamese came to understand our intentions. The
Air Force did not succeed in that mission.

I was left
wondering, did the Air Force have any inkling of the feelings of
this young pilot sent out as a recruiter? What if I had been an
FAU student wondering about joining up?

Recruitment
has become an increasing problem for the Empire these days, as the
deceptions, going back many years now, are creating a growing crisis,
in an American legitimacy, once believed by a great majority of
our nation, and which was the fundamental source of a once real
American Power. Gone are the days of heroic recruiters like Audie.
And, it certainly didn’t hurt that Audie’s trip into Hell was written
up by what I would suggest was the “best damn medal writer in the
American Army,” my friend, Nathaniel
Weyl.

August
8, 2005

William
Marina [send him mail]
is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University,
a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and
Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation.
He lives in Asheville, NC.

Did
he say anything new? Hardly. But what he omitted spoke volumes!

The
real test of the effectiveness, of his speech, however, will come,
not from the Media, or those millions of passive Americans and most
of the Congress that have supported his war, but among the youth
ranging from some of the "red" states of the South and
the Mid-west, to the inner cities ghettoes and barrios. Will these
young people, inspired by the President’s rhetoric, buy into the
notion that Iraq has been worth the cost? Bottom line: will they
enlist in Mr. Bush’s War?

I
rather think not!

They
are more likely to heed the warnings of some of our more cautious
and realistic military men that the insurgency will last years,
a position even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged
with the statement that it might take a dozen years.

Bush
is hoping that the Iraqi army will begin to shoulder the overwhelming
burden of the war, and mentioned the figure of 160,000, as if it
was the sheer number that mattered, rather than morale.

The
most perceptive observation made on the "Charlie Rose"
show discussing the speech, was that the U.S. was having trouble
finding middle echelon officers to staff the Iraqi army, and that
we intended to put in a number of American officers into those positions.

Now,
it is certainly true about the importance of the middle echelon
officers in any war, especially an insurgency, where the nature
of the warfare demands instant decisions, without the time for debate
or to consult with those of a higher rank, up the chain of command.

It
has been clear for months now, that this crucial sector of Saddam’s
old army did not, nor has not yet, come over to the side of the
new government sponsored by the Americans.

I
would not want to be in the shoes of, say, an American captain,
thrust into the midst of an Iraqi unit. We know the insurgents have
infiltrated men into these units. How difficult would it be for
one of these men to frag the American officer, or simply shoot him
in the back?

Fragging
was, of course, a problem in Vietnam, and there has already been
at least one case in Iraq. A newspaperman friend of mine from the
Vietnam era told me there were rumors that Max Cleland, the triple
amputee war hero, and later Senator from Georgia, attacked by Republicans
for his lack of enthusiasm for Iraq, had actually been fragged.
If this is true, it makes the cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death by
friendly fire look almost tame in comparison.

Certainly,
the morale and training of the middle echelon officers is critical.
Some military historians have suggested that in WWII, the creative,
and gung-ho 11,000 or so young recruits in that position were a
great weapon in achieving victory.

There
are already indications that some of our best young officers, often
West Point graduates, in which the country has a considerable investment,
are opting out of the Army for commensurate managerial jobs. Perhaps
the task of integrating with the Iraqi army will fall to the mercenaries
hired by companies such as Halliburton.

In
Vietnam, quite apart from the fragging, the increasing disillusionment
of the middle echelon officers was an early sign the war was not
going well. Anyone who has read many of the letters of these middle
echelon British officers in the American Revolution, often young
Scots, who wrote back to their families about going out into the
wilderness, perhaps never to return, will recognize this pattern.
The British referred to the area around Charlotte, North Carolina,
as the "hornet’s nest," and it was the defeats around
that area which led to the retreat toward Yorktown.

Clearly,
a segment of the American military shares the administration’s hope
that it will be possible build a U.S. supported regime, perhaps
on the model of what was done in the Philippines over a century
ago; not that that nation has been a great example of economic development
of late.

Americans
seem amazed by the degree of solidarity among the insurgents, that
some are willing to not only die for the cause, but to do so as
a suicide bomber. Part of the Media approach has been to glorify
the whole idea of "Empire." A new television show of that
title aired June 29th, in which we are suppose to identify with
Julius Caesar’s heir, Octavian, soon to be Caesar Augustus.

The
Founding Fathers of the American Republic, despising Empire as they
did, would not have admired that whole theme. Their heroes were
Brutus, Cassius, Cicero and Cato. It is well to remember that a
wounded Cato ripped off his bandages so that he might die, so much
did he hate the notions of Despotism and Empire. Suicide was preferable
to life in the Empire.

As
in the Philippines, we have found no shortage of bureaucrat Compradors,
willing to be our "willing executioners" of their own
people, in running "our" Iraqi government. Whether we
can find American recruits as well as Iraqi officers to continue
the war in the face of a growing public disenchantment, is the major
question facing the Bush administration in the months ahead.

July
5, 2005

William
Marina [send him mail]
is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University
and is a Resident Fellow of the Indepedent Institute. This
article originally appeared on the History
News Network.

In
that part of the evolution of a civilization known as the Empire
phase, there is always a drift toward volunteer, professional
imperial strike forces, to replace the volunteer, defensive militia,
what might be called the Cincinnatus model, as of the early Roman
Republic. By the time depicted in the recent film Gladiator,
the large part of the Roman forces fighting the Germans would have
been themselves part of that vast immigrant horde entering the Empire,
and finding employment with the State as the most immediate way
to better themselves economically.

The
emperors Hadrian and Trajan were Spaniards, and later Diocletian,
who brought the final phases of state socialism to the Empire, locking
people feudal-style into a niche, had himself risen from slavery
to don the imperial purple robes. For centuries, increasing numbers
of the old Romans had been on the dole, a life featuring bread and
circuses as discussed in HJ Haskell's The
New Deal in Old Rome (1938).

Have
things been any different in the emerging American Empire, thought
by some historians to be subject to some mystical historical "exceptionalism"?
After the War of 1812, one of earliest wars for expansion, the standing
army found new employment by dragging the Indians west along what
became known as the "Trail of Tears."

In
an article in a text and trade book of some years ago, in the format
of a newspaper, News of the Nation (1975), I quoted some
of those veterans who considered it the most degrading and immoral
assignment of their careers. There was no honor in it.

Even
in the mid-19th century, American adventurers were serving
the Chinese Empire, and Frederick Ward succeeded the British General
Charles "Chinese" Gordon in leading the "Ever-Victorious"
army against the T'ai P'ings, while Gordon met his demise at Khartoum.

After
the Civil War, having learned the strategy of "total war,"
the veterans of both the Confederacy and the Grand Army of the Republic,
some of them "Buffalo" soldiers, developed tactics of
"counter-insurgency" warfare against the Indians in the
west.

The
Philippine Insurgency was another great training ground, as were
the interventions later taking place all over the planet, from the
Marines learning auto-gyro tactics against Sandino in Nicaragua
in the late u201820s to the "Flying Tigers" organized to fight
the Japanese in Asia a decade later.

General Smedley Butler, one of seven Marines to win 2 Medals of
Honor in combat, discussed all of this in his controversial book,
War
is a Racket (1934), calling his own career that of a "gangster"
for imperialism. (See also, for example, Hans Schmidt, Maverick
Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American
Military History (1987).

Even
in the 1930s, the American Empire had its own "loan a soldier"
program underway. Today, of course, the Pentagon talks about the
global terrorists organizing these kinds of operations!

A
marvelous account of this is Marine Captain John H. Craige's Black
Bagdad (1933) recounting his "loan" to the Haitian
government as a white officer leading black troops, and which has
a wonderful description of voodoo in that country. (See also, Robert
Tallent, Voodoo
in New Orleans (1951). Craige managed also to serve at one
time or another "on loan" in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua,
and Honduras.

When
the Americans fled Saigon in 1975, many of the former army u2018copter
pilots signed on with Bell, which had secured a contract with the
Shah of Iran to build a new Persian Empire force, egged on by Richard
Nixon, who was anxious to sell him arms, and managed $9 billion
worth.

What
was known as the "Great Southeast Asia Floating Crap Game,"
a bevy of Vietnamese whores and their pimps, followed their American
clients to bases outside Tehran. Their drunken carousing was propaganda
for the Islamic mullahs, who in the inflation had lost their subsidy
from the Shah, and now attacked him as well as the wicked Americans.

A
syndicated article by Col. David Hackworth, entitled "Wanted:
Guns for Hire," amply demonstrates that the imperial war
games continue. It seems 80 American paratroopers, part of our standing
army in Macedonia "rescued" 400 members of the Kosovo
Liberation Army, the latter mostly armed with American weapons,
from the clutches of the Macedonian army. Why?

Because
17 of their "instructors" are members of "a high
ticket Rent-a-Soldier [Gladiator?] outfit called MPRI — Military
Professional Resources Incorporated — that operates in the shadow
of the Pentagon, and has been hired by the CIA and our State Department"
for operations in the former Yugoslavia.

This
is a kind of tactical, military version of the Carlyle Group, led
by former Pentagon official Frank Carlucci, employing former president
George Bush and many of Carlucci's former Pentagon officials, contracting
for billions of $$ to advise other governments, especially among
our client states.

MPRI,
which is headed by former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Carl
E. Vuono, "is filled with former U.S. Army personnel, from
generals to senior sergeants, all of whom draw handsome wages on
top of their Army retired salaries."

In
the early 1990s this same outfit trained soldiers in Croatia for
"Operation Storm," which resulted in the "ethnic
cleaning" of some 200,000 Serbians.

MPRI
even has a web site. Check it out. It advertises: "Providing
the world the best defense, law enforcement and leadership training
— capitalizing on the experience and skills of America's best seasoned
professionals. Integrity, ethics, professionalism, quality, and
cost competitiveness are our hallmarks."

It
sketches out four areas of expertise: National, International, Strategic
and Law Enforcement. Nationally, it has representation in 48 of
the 50 states, and all kinds of connections with the regular Army,
while internationally it lists "a long list of humanitarian
and peace operations around the world," including shipping
more than $900 million in donated food and medical supplies to the
newly independent states formerly part of the Soviet Union.

Strategically,
its Senior Leader Seminars are available abroad, and it even has
a National Seminar Series. Finally, in Law Enforcement, its Alexandria
Group offers all kinds of training, in case your local police are
not up to snuff.

The
potential here for humanitarian help is simply staggering. Imagine
the lives that could have been saved in Waco if MPRI had been contracted
with, instead of those less well-trained personnel at the BATF and
the FBI. And abroad, the Executive Administrative State need not
bother with the Congress, and cumbersome laws like the War Powers
Act, when a quick, clean intervention is required.

Declaration
of War by the Congress? Vietnam, and other interventions have demonstrated
that is a constitutional nicety of the past, as obsolete as the
Second Amendment. Standing Army? It's not even an issue, if you
have a standing contract force of veterans at the ready.

Col.
Hackworth observes, "While Ollie North's Contra boys and the
mercenaries who botched up the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion might
not have been so businesslike — or so blatant — they did establish
an unfortunate tradition of hired guns sticking our nation into
one minefield after another."

He
reports that dozens of his former Army pals are joining MPRI, or
other military contractors, in locations like Saudi Arabia, Taiwan,
ex-Yugoslavia, and Columbia. "We're talking booming business
here."

Hackworth
mentions that a number have rejected such offers of "a high-paying
mercenary job," or as one still-serving veteran of 3 wars said,
"A number of contactors have been pitching me to work for them
after I retire. I said no. There's no principles, no love of country,
no honor — just MONEY. I can't…sell my soul for a buck." And,
the Col. concludes, "There are laws on the books that prevent
American citizens from serving foreign governments, It's about time
Congress did its duty and enforced them."

Hackworth
is part of a long line of American military men who have questioned
this interventionism, often late in their careers. The recent book
by General Wesley K. Clark, the former commander of the Nato forces
in the former Yugoslavia, Waging
Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (2001),
makes it clear that this battle continues, and is raging between
groups within the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom, and between each of
those bureaucracies operating the Empire.

How
will it all end? History offers no sanguine lessons on halting Empire.
Despite its several historical inaccuracies, it is well to recall
that in the film, Maximus' soldiers owed a personal loyalty to him,
and not even to the authoritarian State, while the Republic of laws
was several centuries in the past.

The
film opens with the launching of huge missiles by catapults, the
guided missiles of their day, and the struggles by military contractors
for supplying the army with everything from sandals to shields,
had been a great arena of political corruption since long before
even Julius Caesar. Even without a vote, women ran the political
machines, and that old reactionary Cato the Elder could bellow in
the Senate, "How is it that we Romans, who rule over all other
men, are ruled by our women?"

So
relax, enjoy all the sports events this season, watch them live
in some arena and on television, or take a vacation trip abroad,
safe in the knowledge that MPRI, and other such companies, stand
ready to defend our Freedom in their own inimitable humanitarian
and professional fashion, both at home and overseas. Ain't Corporatism
Grand!

July
14, 2001

William
Marina [send him
mail]
teaches History at Florida Atlantic University and is an Adjunct
Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His web site is http://www.wmarina.com.

However,
in the great American historian Mercy Otis Warren's History
of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution
(1805, Liberty Press edition reprint, 1989), Vol. I, p. 38, one
finds the following, describing the crowd of people gathered on
the docks to observe the British troops disembark that grim October
1st day in Boston in 1768:

u201C…[T]he
troops arrived from Halifax [Nova Scotia]. This was indeed a painful
era. The American war may be dated from this hostile act; a day
which marks with infamy the councils of Great Britain [italics mine].u201D

FDR,
or one of his speech writers, may even have forgotten where he had
read u201Ca day which marks with infamy,u201D but it is a striking phrase,
and easily modified into u201Ca day that will live in infamy.u201D In any
event, I find it difficult to believe it was not lifted from Mrs.
Warren's history.

What
matters in retrospect, however, is not only Warren's magnificent
phrase, but that she used it to describe what was for her, and contemporary
Americans, the real beginning of the American Revolution.

Up
to that point the problems in America had been in the nature of
a constitutional quarrel. On that day the British changed it to
what Americans saw as a violation of their fundamental rights; a
standing army on American soil, or as she put it, u201CA standing army
thus placed in their capital.u201D And, u201CThe peaceable demeanor of the
people was construed , by the party who had brought this evil on
the city, as a mark of abject submission.u201D Finally, u201CIn this situation,
no remedy appeared to be left short of an appeal to the sword,…u201D

There
are those among us today, such as the historian Garry Wills, who
contend that the u201Cstanding armyu201D question is no longer a relevant
issue, that many Americans didn't own guns, and that militia don't
fight well anyway. That is a bunch of rubbish! If Wills and his
ilk are correct, how to account for the fact that the British officers,
defined the fundamental problem as that they were facing u201Ca people
numerous and armed.u201D And, the militia fought well when it was used
properly, not in situations of conventional 18th century
warfare, but in what was later termed tactics of u201Cpeople's war.u201D
Even in the Revolution, as the Americans acquired artillery, it
was observed that even the best trained u201CRed Coatsu201D would break
and run under such fire. They would have been damned fools not to
have.

Never
mentioned is the way in which the American women were silently helping
to win the war as fully one-third of the 15,000 Hessians went u201Cover
the hillu201D to marry, usually Pennsylvania u201CDutch,u201D girls (perhaps
the women had something more powerful than guns!), nor the u201Csea
goingu201D militia (not memorialized by the Minuteman statue) that took
over 1,500 prizes, against which even John Paul Jones heroic, solitary,
traditional sea victory must take a rather secondary place. None
of these realities ever seem to make it into the orthodox military
histories. Yet, certainly the British command was aware of these
events.

But
the u201CStanding Armyu201D question remains with us still, because it is
central to the whole question of Empire, in fact, the u201Csinewsu201D of
Empire. Today, the American Empire has Standing Armies all over
the planet, and even here at home. No wonder there are protests
here and around the world as well, described by those who attempt
to put them down by the euphemism u201Cterrorist.u201D In such circumstances,
one man's terrorist, becomes another man's patriot.

I
wonder what Mercy Otis Warren might write if she were alive today,
and could address the arguments of those who have trivialized the
whole u201CStanding Armyu201D issue?

June
5, 2001

William
Marina [send him
mail]
teaches History at Florida Atlantic University and is an Adjunct
Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He has written extensively
on the American Revolution as a People's War, and a number of these
articles will be posted soon at his web site: http://www.wmarina.com.

It
is pointed out that this could give the Chinese the power to cut
off our computer component supplies in the near future. What if
we couldn’t build, for example, a missile shield to use against
the Chinese because they refused to sell us the components? This
is highly outrageous to any self-respecting Empire. Why, it’s almost
like some nation cutting off oil to Japan in 1941, or economic sanctions
on Cuba in 1933, and more recently since the 1960s.

Linked
to that article is one from the NYT for April 28th, citing
an FBI warning that the Chinese, in retaliation for American actions
against China, may be hacking into American computer servers: "Hackers
have already unlawfully defaced a number of U.S. Web sites, replacing
existing content with pro-Chinese or anti-U.S. rhetoric."

What
the FBI neglected to mention, according to idefense, a cyberintelligence
company, is that 302 of the 307 known cyberattacks were against
Chinese sites. There is the usual insinuation that the Chinese government
is behind these 5 known attacks, while the 302 attacks against the
Chinese sites were just your average American hacker, angry at the
Chinese, and exercising the right to protest. Whatever, that’s quite
a ratio in favor of the US.

As
it happens, one of my former students is the webmaster of a site
that was hacked by the Chinese this past weekend. The Pentagon says
the Chinese government has developed its own computer-warfare programs.
If this is so, then the Chinese desperately need to rework their
programs, because the government site they hacked has nothing to
do with the National Security State, but is a Broward County agency
to help people get jobs. What kind of anti-proletarian activities
are the Chinese up to anyway? Still trying to bring down Capitalism
in the old-fashioned way!

The
Chinese hackers wrote, "F–k the U.S. Government and Poizon.com."
This was in retaliation for Poizon.com, the American hackers, apparently
having struck first with "F–k the Chinese Government."
You’ve got to hand it to both groups of hackers. They both understand
it’s government actions, and not the peoples of both nations, that
create the problems. It seems highly unlikely the governments would
have had much to do with such slogans since what they both have
in common is: "F–k Government," and that’s pretty anarcho-libertarian
sloganizing.

What
really seems to tick off our National Security Managers, however,
is that there is very little they can do to control such behavior
in the foreseeable future. Well, such name calling is probably a
much better therapy for letting off steam, than is raising missile
shields or dropping bombs. Long live the hackers!

But
not to worry. Our intrepid cybersleuths have already held two training
exercises to prepare against these potential cyberattacks, with
more training sessions to come. A few more of these, and there goes
part of our recent tax cut! New enemies are in short supply these
days, but the Oriental hordes may just be out there lurking in cyberspace.
Stay tuned.

May
31, 2001

William
Marina [send him
mail] teaches History at Florida Atlantic University and is
an Adjunct Scholar of the Mises Institute.

~
Mark Twain, a great American anti-Imperialist

Mao
Tse Tung got it half right! Some power does, indeed, come out of
the barrel of a gun. But real power – in the long run – must be legitimatized
into authority; some reason for citizens in a commonwealth to cooperate
without having the barrel of a gun constantly shoved down their
throats. Although, that is certainly one way to silence someone's
vocal chords.

The
ancient Chinese mandarins understood the importance of Legitimacy
to the whole idea of the State. Thus, when the Ch'in Emperor, Shih
Huang-ti, died in 210 BC after only 11 years in control of the new
Empire, the story is told how his body was tied into a chariot and
paraded around as if he were still alive. When the body began to
stink – as does Empire itself – his loyal minions placed
a cartload of fish behind his chariot and blamed the horrible smell
on those decaying bodies. If the Great Man isn't dead, how could
there be any problems in the Empire? Long Live Caesar!

A
recent conference at Auburn University, October 6-7, 2000, sponsored
by the Mises Institute, focused
around Martin van Creveld's interesting volume, The Rise and Decline
of the State (1999). The Legitimacy question hovered around the
edges of the discussions, and I was as guilty as anyone, perhaps
more so, for not bringing it into greater clarity.

I
certainly agree with Creveld that there are some cracks appearing
today in the facade of the State. But, I disagreed fundamentally
with his view that the idea of the State in the West, the effort
to create a corporate identity that separated the ruler and the
rest of us, was any different from other state systems or empires
of the past, into which he had rather rigidly categorized historical
evolution. It is simply that in each civilization, as one might
expect, the precise nature of this effort at separation took a uniquely
different form.

In
the West, for example, as late as the 17th century, writers
such as Robert Filmer were still using the idea of the mandate of
heaven to suggest that subjects must obey those rulers whom God
had placed over them. The next century, Enlightenment intellectuals
such as Voltaire and Jefferson were captivated by many Chinese ideas
brought back to Europe by the Jesuits. One of these, dating back
to Mencius, some two millennia earlier, was that the Mandate of
Heaven was not absolute. A ruler, through bad behavior and a lack
of virtue, could lose it! Thus, a justification for revolution.

As
I wrote about this for the conference, the day before I left for
Auburn, I went to the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables for a breakfast
meeting scheduled several days earlier. The place was literally
crawling with police and Secret Service men. President Bill Clinton
had flown in the day before for a Democratic Party fund raiser.
Many will recall that day the Heavens opened, dumping almost 15
inches of rain over Dade County. In the face of that, Clinton's
plane was unable to take-off, and he decided to stay over for a
round of golf at the hotel, one of his favorites.

How
far we have come in the evolution of the American Empire is suggested
by the fact that no one, certainly not the Republicans, had the
temerity to suggest what any good Confucian mandarin would have
instinctively understood. There might be a causal relationship between
the rains and the long-term behaviors of this President, who arrived
at that place in time just as they commenced! He had lost "the
Mandate of Heaven!"

No,
our welfare mentality mind suggested just the opposite; that having
experienced the devastation brought on by the rains, the President
would more quickly declare the place a disaster area, qualifying
for government aid, which, of course, he did. So, we have come 180
degrees since the founding century of the Republic. Such disasters
are not to be equated with misrule, but rather are seen as an opportunity
for government to dispense largesse.

I
mention these differing cultural worldviews because we live in a
society where such multiculturalism and diversity are themselves
literally praised to the heavens. On the other hand, clearly no
one takes these other worldviews very seriously these days. What
we have is multiculturalism without any real content; just enough
to perhaps acculturate new immigrants into voting participation
in the Empire.

At
this point, the reader is probably asking what "Florida Fiasco?"
or was Marina simply alluding to Bill Clinton's golf game. Yes,
we will get to Florida, but in doing so, two points are worth observing.

The
first point is that Empire, even though there are significant flash
points, both in domestic and foreign policies, comes as on cat's
paws, creeping slowly and silently, but inexorably forward. The
second is that cracks in the Legitimacy of the Empire often begin
as seemingly small incidents, hardly worthy of toppling such an
edifice. What it really demonstrates, of course, is that Empires
tend to have feet of clay.

In
writing and speaking about Empire for the greater part of my professional
life, I have frequently been asked two basic questions. What, exactly,
is Empire? and, When did the American Empire begin?

I
have found it difficult to improve upon John Adams' definition given
in 1775, that a Republic is characterized by a rule of law, that
of an Empire by despotism. This does not mean that there are no
laws in the latter, but rather so many, and so confused and often
contradictory, that the rulers choose those which they feel the
need to emphasize at any given point in time. Above all, Empire
is centralization of power, both at home and in continued interventions
abroad, all of which are needed to maintain "stability."

For
my part, I am one of those who believe that Empire did not begin
in 1861, or 1898, or 1918, or 1941, or 1965, to list a number of
wars that greatly extended the scope of our Empire, but rather that
it was inherent in the kind of republic we chose to develop in and
after 1776.

The
economist Jonathan Hughes suggested that the fundamental flaw of
the American Revolution was its failure to base property rights
on allodial claims, rather than vesting ownership in fee simple
with the State, in which the latter simply replaced the king. Thus,
the long-range game was given away at the outset, because individuals
didn't really own property, they rented it, more or less exclusively
but with some ultimate limitations, from the State, through taxes.

Thus,
the early basis for today's neo-feudalism, referred to by the euphemism,
"Growth Management." Jefferson, who thought he had eliminated
feudalism from America, must be rolling over in his grave. Here
again, Florida is a leader. At my University we have a Chair in
Growth Management. In a State that prides itself on "Government
in the Sunshine," the Chair has been funded anonymously. Apparently,
neither the Board of Regents nor the faculty union is bothered by
the possibility that the Chair might be funded by a source or sources
with a vested interest in the politics of Growth Management. If
there is no basis for suspicions of that sort, why should the source
remain anonymous? The more one functions in a university environment,
the more evident it becomes that ethics are taught, rather than
practiced there.

It
is important to understand that like all revolutions, the American
Revolution was a broad coalition of groups across a wide spectrum,
united ultimately only in the decision to separate from Great Britain.

Nabobs
such as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, hardly allodialists,
dreamed of speculation in vast western lands as the seat of the
British Empire moved westward. Their spiritual inheritors, Winston
Churchill, partly an American, and later Margaret Thatcher, spoke
always of the "English-speaking peoples," in their own
efforts to revive this long-lost unity.

Early
efforts at Empire can be seen in the leaders’ unwillingness to talk
peace in 1778, unless it included Canada and Florida, and in 1781,
LaFayette's attempt on Washington's orders, to mount another assault
on Canada at a time when it was clear that people wanted no part
of a protestant confederation. This was turned back only because
the militia from the Green Mountains in Vermont, refused to fight
for anything less than "double pay, double rations, and plunder,"
demonstrating thereby, a profound understanding of the imperial
impulse of their centralized, military leadership.

Ah,
well, with the Civil War and all of the interventions of the 20th
century, Empire has come a long way, Baby! Nowhere was this more
clearly illustrated than in a Marine Corps enlistment poster of
the Vietnam era, which proclaimed that "the Pax Romana was
one of the world's great periods of peace and stability." Tell
that to the Christian martyrs, or the Jews who died at Masada.

The
unstated conclusion, of course, was that the Pax Americana could
be an equally great period. Not all American boys have bought that
malarkey, and we should not be surprised that many around the planet,
so long the focuses of our interventionist efforts, have begun to
fight back, often with weapons originally given to them by our "peace
keepers."

This
Spring I'll be teaching 3 courses through the Internet; "Freedom
and the Evolution of Civilizations;" an "Introduction
to American Studies," which focus on three episodes in American
history, the Revolution, the Civil War and the enormous increase
in government in the 20th century; and "The History
of Florida." Many years ago, a student who had had several
courses with me told another student that I basically taught the
same course, whatever the title, to which I replied, "yes,
they are all about Empire." All of which brings us to the "Fiasco
in Florida."

Many
years ago, the political scientist V.O. Key observed that "Florida
is Different." Well, yes and no! Just this year we have had
the Elian Gonzalez Episode, which demonstrated the "blowback"
from Florida's role in the Cold War, and the extent to which federal
forces could once again invade the State in Miami, the "Cankercaust,"
in which the bureaucratic minions from Tallahassee could attack
people's property all over South Florida cutting down citrus trees
right and left, and now, what Mark Twain called "the lawyer
tribe' bringing every kind of Carpetbagger here in the name of restoring
"law and order" to the ballot process. Florida, has become
the microcosm of Empire, a Banana Republic, indeed!

In
the 1960s when the courts demanded that the legislature, dominated
by the rural "Pork Chop Gang," reapportion along the lines
of one man, one vote, it was held, without much argument, that Florida
had the worst representation of any of the American states. Along
with that, the ballot access expert, Richard Winger, throughout
the 1970s and into the 1990s, rated Florida was the state with the
worst ballot access.

Fear
of socialism in the 1920s led to Florida early on attempting to
make it difficult for any but the dominant two parties to get on
the ballot. In a
recent piece on LewRockwell.com, I recommended Walter Karp's
brilliant, Indispensable
Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America (1973, 1993)
as the best study of what has happened. I repeat that here, with
the additional observation that you will probably never find it
used in a college course on American political parties. It cuts
too close to reality for most academics!

In
the 1960s, of course, the great fear of the two-party oligopoly
in Florida was not socialism, but the populism of George Wallace.
Winger rated Alabama as having the best ballot access in the nation,
while its next-door neighbor, Florida, had the worst.

You
cannot understand the present mess in Florida balloting procedures
and mechanics without recognizing that part of restricting ballot
access was to argue that too many parties might complicate things.
The thing to do, of course, was to make ballot access, what with
signing petitions and cards, such a time-consuming and expensive
process, as to defeat most small party efforts.

This
meant in practice, that it was almost impossible to create a "grass
roots" party within the State. It also meant that any parties
must come from outside, from a larger regional or national base,
such as Wallace, later Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan or Ralph Nader in
presidential elections.

Keeping
an arcane voting organization, clearly a part of the traditional
American "spoils system" politics, was always a part of
the great game. Even as computers and other devices came into more
general use, and in spite of the Alabama example, it was often suggested
that anything more than the two-party participation might just overwhelm
the system in Florida. Now, of course, we have a situation where
even the two "oligops" can't seem to get it right at the
ballot box.

So,
with the revelations of the problems of counting and recounting
ballots, and with "chads" all over the floor, now it will
all be decided by the courts as well. Which proves that John C.
Calhoun was right that in such an imperial system the ultimate tyranny
would lie with the courts. When it is revealed that the Emperor
has neither clothes nor virtue, throw a huge, black judicial robe
over the whole mess! And pray brother, while preying on the populace.

Both
parties gave the judicial game away when early in the election,
they proclaimed that the real reason to vote for either the elephant
or the jackass was that the new leader would be making a number
of court appointments, especially on the Supreme Court. Might as
well let the courts decide the election itself as well. With the
almost total politicization of the courts, is there any reason to
doubt the phrase. "government by judiciary," in everything
from affirmative action to abortion?

As
a few bags of tea were the opening wedge to challenging the Legitimacy
of the British Empire, so the whole ballot fiasco is revealing the
extent of the corruption and rottenness of the system, right down
to the judiciary. What is really being revealed is a massive Crisis
in Legitimacy. For decades now a growing part of the population
has ceased to vote. To fill this void, we now have conscripted dead
people, aliens and even felons. Some "will of the people!"

A
few pundits in the media are suggesting that the rest of the nation
through the Congress, toss the corrupt and inept State of Florida
out of the sacred Union. Now, while that would not be a legal way
to do it within the American system, that is an idea with which
I can in some way relate.

For
years, I have pointed out to my students that in the Transcontinental
Treaty though which Florida was acquired and later, it was provided
that Florida might be split into two states. What was envisioned
in those days was an east and west Florida, all of which was silenced
by the controversy over slavery, and the notion of adding another
state to the South.

But,
why not put that into effect today? Why should we in South Florida
send our taxes north to L.A. (lower Alabama)/Tallahassee to build
a centralized governmental center to rule over us almost 700 miles
from the "Conch Republic" in Key West?

Let's
have a plebiscite along the I-4 corridor to let folks decide whether
they wish to be part of North Florida or South Florida. Once that
is decided, the two states can ask the Congress to fulfill what
was clearly the vision of our 19th century forefathers.
The next question to ask, might be, "if we no longer have to
send our taxes so far north to Tallahassee, why send them even farther
north to Washington, D.C.?

Whatever
happened to the American Revolution, anyway? With any luck, we may
just rediscover it!

November
21, 2000

William
Marina teaches History through the Internet at Florida Atlantic
University, and is an Adjunct Scholar at the Mises Institute. He
was recently selected as the Teacher of the Year for FAU's Broward
campuses. Among other books, he is the co-author of the 3rd
edition of A History of Florida (1999), and can be reached
at http://www.wmarina.com/.

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce";

Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), p. 96.

"America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, 4th of July Address, 1821

Dear President Carter,

I am writing to you about the recent accusations of possible election fraud in Tuesday's presidential election here in Florida, especially in Palm Beach County where the main campus of my University is located. With all the talk about an investigation, over what were poorly designed ballots to say the least, and with perhaps the closest election in history hinging on our State, who knows how long all of this may take? The Miami Herald reports that a veritable "mob" from both parties, what Mark Twain used to call "the lawyer tribe," will be descending from the North into our State. Frankly, Sir, I prefer you!

My reasons for doing so are several. You are one of the few Americans, perhaps the only one, whose integrity is respected internationally. I know from history books that there used to be other such Americans as, for example, Senator William Borah of Idaho, who championed the Chinese Revolution in the 1920s as well as those in Latin America, and whose speeches were carried on radio around the Hemisphere. While many American politicians continue to talk about him as an "Isolationist" I know you are aware that most of the world understands that he was basically opposed to Interventionism and Empire. You have also opposed such Interventionism and have sought only to help others through building houses for the less fortunate both here and abroad.

Secondly, you are a man of integrity, who while he may have admitted to a bit of lusting, never sought to carry such thoughts into action. Certainly the behavior of what one would expect of a true Southern Gentleman.

Most importantly, you have gone into such places of institutionalized corruption and electoral fraud as Haiti and have monitored the elections there in an effort to curb these practices. You even had the good sense to realize that America might be suffering from a kind of malaise about politics! Who better can understand corruption and fraud than you? I invite you to come to Florida to investigate this whole problem in the larger context of American life.

As a history teacher I have myself read a bit on such practices in Florida and the nation. There seem to be at least two schools of thought on all of this. One is that this rising tide of soft money and other such corruption in something new in American life.

I call this the "Aberrationist" school of American politics. You may recall that as late as the 1950s a number of historians still talked of our venture into Empire, as in the Philippines in 1898, as an Aberration, but after so many Interventions such as Kosovo recently, about which you had doubts, there is such a pattern that the use of that term has become almost laughable. From the standpoint of historical honesty, it at least has the touch of cold realism that several American history textbooks now openly discuss the existence of Empire, and acknowledge that it appears to be with us for the foreseeable future into the 21st century. Some legacy to offer our youth!

I take the view that while corruption has been with us for a long time; indeed, it appears endemic to American politics and as American as apple pie, but I confess that today the sheer size of the pie appears to be growing by leaps and bounds.

Have you ever thought about the notion that there is an integral relationship between the growth of Empire and the massive explosion of political corruption and electoral fraud today? I understand you are quite a reader, so I suppose you are familiar with the journalist H.J. Haskell's, The New Deal in Old Rome: How Government in the Ancient World Tried to Deal with Modern Problems, written over 60 years ago, and which demonstrates the growth of the welfare state and military imperialism as Rome moved from Republic to Empire. Corruption was rampant, but I find it fascinating that many of welfare agencies and corporations of the New Deal in the 1930s, which several historians have shown was much influenced by Mussolini's corporate Fascist experiments in Italy, didn't even have the imagination to much change their names from their ancient Roman antecedents.

Along with Haskell, you are probably also aware of my old high school chum, Jack Douglas, a sociologist, whose The Myth of the Welfare State, written only 11 years ago, discusses the relationship between welfare, corruption, Imperialism and Empire in a number of civilizations including our own.

What do you think of the view that this kind of corruption and fraud is part and parcel of the whole American essentially two-party system and has been so for the better part of two centuries now? Over 25 years ago Walter Karp took that position in Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America. He argued that the conservative leadership in the two parties, since at least the last century, would get together whenever there was a true insurgent movement in either of them, and if that failed, advocate war. Any economist would identify this as predictable oligopolistic behavior. In Florida a perfect example of this surfaced in 1966 when a quarrel among Democrats resulted in the conservatives helping to elect the Republican Claude Kirk.

Are you familiar with a short essay by former Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, published in the Summer of 1981, in of all places, the conservative journal, Policy Review, entitled, "Is America the World's Colony?" You perhaps remember that before your own presidency and that of Ronald Reagan, opposing the growing centralized bureaucracy that is at the heart of Empire, McCarthy was the hero of American liberals for opposing the War in Vietnam before Bobby Kennedy and a number of other such politicians had the guts to do so. I certainly can recall no other election before or since where the academics at my University and elsewhere were so activist in behalf of a "peace" candidate.

In that piece, he warned how our Imperial involvement was making us into a colony with investment coming in with the soft dollar, and technology flowing out so that the economy was increasingly controlled from without and a lack of control of the monetary system. The prosperity of the last decade ought not to lull us against these long term issues he raised. He saw our Interventionism as weakening us, and raised the question of the long term effects of immigration and refugees, all of which seem forgotten by today's liberals, including, citing Margaret Mead as he did, the dangers of bilingualism on cultural unity. Again, one sees similarities with ancient Rome.

One of the relationships which has fascinated me is the exchange of ideas between cultures. Today, many multiculturalists talk about various cultures as if they were totally discreet entities, when the truth is there has for centuries been a considerable borrowing back and forth. That ought to be celebrated, but it is very different from forced relationships in an Imperial context. It has gotten to the point that every shred of Southern cultural is called racism by the Imperial preachers of diversity.

Thus, we sent thousands of young progressives out to educate the Filipinos and administer the Islands after 1900. There was a kind of arrogance in all of that, what another Southern, Senator J. William Fulbright called The Arrogance of Power, and these Americans returned to push big government and public administration not from an experience of equals but of a master-subject relationship in which a certain corruption was the accepted norm. As the veteran William Howard Taft, having served in the Islands, explained to a young administrator Henry Stimson on the way out there, one must learn to think as a "Pro-Consul." Now, of course, America has such bases and Pro-Consuls all around the planet.

One scholar, Chalmers Johnson, a self-described early "spear carrier for Empire" has recently written a book about this entitled Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire."Blowback" is a Central Intelligence Agency term to describe the inevitable retaliation by others against the actions of the American Empire. If you want to understand why the destroyer Cole was attacked, costing the lives of a number of young Americans, read this book!

But the Filipinos, and others since, also learned from us even early on, especially from the subjugated and occupied South of the 1860s and 70s. Thus, the Katipunan Society, then leading the revolt against Spain identified with the anti-colonialism of the Ku Klux Klan, and not just in terms of the initial "K."

As we have come to accept the notion of Empire and Super-Power Imperialism with all of the corruption and abuse of law which that entails as we enter the 21st century, it is interesting to observe how we, especially the academics and intellectuals, who were also as Caesar's beck and call, have come to justify this state of affairs.

The key word, Jimmy, is "Reluctant." Have you got that, "Reluctant!" Shades of Augustus Caesar!

In other words, we didn't want to get into this Aberration, but we had no real volition, and so we just had to "Reluctantly" come back for more. It was Jacob Gould Schurman, the President of Cornell University and Head of the First Philippine Commission, who in 1900 first referred to Americans as "Reluctant Imperialists," and by Gosh, we've been "Reluctant" with a vengeance ever since.

The link between this foreign social welfarism and the corruption that accompanies it in this "uplifting" "Imperialism has now begun to be applied to the Welfare State at home. Thus, an unsolicited copy of the 4th edition of Bruce S. Jansson's The Reluctant Welfare State; American Social Welfare Policies – Past, Present, and Future (2001) was recently sent to me for possible class adoption as a textbook. Starting with the European background and through 14 chapters to the present, everything about the massive growth of the American Welfare State is explained, again and again, as – you guessed it – "Reluctant.!" One begins to wonder if there was ever an American leader who made a planned and conscious decision about Imperialism, Empire and the growth of the Welfare State. Well, apparently not, "nobody here but us Reluctants!" And, of course, we all know how reluctant Bill Clinton was in his relationships with a number of women. But then, it's that character thing, Stupid.

You know, Jimmy, despite all of the media hoopla about this close election, a number of Americans do share your feelings about a sense of malaise, and are increasingly turned off by the corruption and fraud that characterizes our politics. None of it surprises them. Marx was right!

For the first few times in this "Reluctant" dance one of the partners, the people, saw what was happening and thought it a "tragedy," but in this repeated "whoring" after Empire, most Americans have come to see it as Farce, and want little more to do with it.

As a Southerner you share a unique heritage; your ancestors were abused and occupied by a conquering force. George Orwell perhaps understood Southerners better than we have ourselves. Like him, we have been both Imperialists and Imperialized. Or, as Bill Clinton might put it, "I feel your pain!"

Ralph Nader shares this view about the corruption of the two Parties, but his is simply a different kind of corruption. I cannot forget how in the 1970s his Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGS) terrorized the campuses of Florida's State University System with a negative check off system which required a student to give PIRG a cut of his/her registration fees whether they wished to or not. It was to the great credit of the then President of my University, Glen Creech, that he stood up to what was Fascism pure and simple, and abolished that system. I don't really think Nader has changed much from those days!

And so, at every level of our society, the "Monsters" which have been the focus of this "Reluctant " Interventionism which is the essence of Empire, both domestically and in foreign affairs, have has come home to roost. We stand on the verge of global Empire, but as John Quincy Adams foresaw, we are no longer masters of our own souls. I note recently that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has now gone International in quest of Monsters to destroy!

One Southerner, Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy saw all of this rather clearly in the aftermath of that first act of Empire, the Civil War, and wrote very cogently in the 1870s about the dangers of Centralization and Empire You are a worthy successor to that tradition.

If not Reform, What?

As we in Florida confront these monumental issues of Empire and corruption, the fundamental issue ironically has come down to the micro level as has so often been the case in history; to some several thousand votes regarding a badly constructed ballot form. All of the politicos and media pundits will now blather on for months, perhaps years, about reform. Never matter that the System has grown more monstrous and more corrupt in the last century of progressive reform.

Empire is a slow cumulative process of corruption. From the first critics in the Roman Republic around 202 B.C. to fall of the Eastern Empire as described Edward Gibbon, was a staggering 1655 years, and reformer after reformer failed in attempts to shape up the System.

That does not mean that some "instruments of expansion" as Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown called them, have not several times reversed the process in the West. Many hold that the new technologies will do that, and I hope they are right. But, if so, that will be outside of this corrupt, statist political process.

Some of my Southern friends talk of secession as an answer, and I wish them well in that endeavor. For my part, I would prefer what J.Q Adams called "expanding the sphere," but that is probably properly the subject of a further future email.

In an essay in Reason magazine entitled "Surviving in the Interstices," (June, 1975) I many years ago explored one solution to the problem of Empire for those of us who live perhaps eight creative decades or so, and find that waiting around for the reform equivalent of the Thousand Year Reich, not very appealing. In every System, there are sub-systems, and there are fault lines – Interstices – however infinitesimal, between these. The Christians learned to survive in such a situation, so that by 150 AD they were feeding 1,500 of the destitute at a time when the government was incompetent to collect the garbage. With that kind of success the pagan, civic humanist leaders, no longer into persecution, later sought their help to "restore the Republic." The appeal of simple reform, replacing a corrupt Caesar with one with noble character, explains the tremendous appeal to Americans of a film like "The Gladiator." The Church, of course, was ultimately co-opted into the Empire.

In China, Taoism, Buddhism and secret societies, of course, were all interstitial efforts to deal with the pervasiveness of Empire. One of the things I admire about you, Jimmy, is the way in which without going on too much about the malaise that few Americans want to talk about, you have devoted yourself to such interstitial efforts as helping the less fortunate with housing.

There is, however, one other activity which I highly recommend to those kind of activists who want to confront the Monster, and who find interstitial solutions psychologically unsatisfying, although there is nothing to stop one from being involved in both approaches. I refer to the seldom used, but powerful solution, of "suing the government."

A few days ago we had a brilliant, dedicated speaker on our Campus, Charles Lewis, the director of the Center for Public Integrity. As he recounted all of the Systemic corruption, one could sense even he was becoming a bit dispirited by the relatively miniscule efforts at reform. He even quoted the public policy writer Robert Kaplan about – Heaven forbid! – the growing Anarchy in the Global System.

As I had a chance to discuss with him later, the present situation is as far from Anarchy – the absence of government and especially Statism (building one's value system and worldview around the idea of the State) as one could possibly imagine. Today, the State has become pervasive!

We suffer, not from an absence of Law, but from the Positive Law, Legalism that has always characterized Empires such as China and Rome; where our increasingly Caesarian leaders select from among thousands of laws, those which at any given point in time suit their needs and fancy. Anarchy? Not hardly!

I asked him if he was aware of Yale University Law Professor Peter Schuck's book, Suing Government? Lewis replied that he was not. I have mentioned that approach in the new edition of A History of Florida, and I highly recommend Schuck's book to you, especially should you come down to explore the situation here. Government ought to be held liable for its behavior and decisions which affect the rights of others, just as are individuals and corporations. I would go on further about that approach here, but that is arguably the basis for another email, and I have, I fear, gone on too long in this one.

I do hope, as a fellow Southerner, that you will come on down because I believe more than any other American today, you have shown the integrity to honestly explore various sides of an issue.

With Warm Regards,

Bill Marina

William Marina is professor of History at the Fort Lauderdale/Davie campus of Florida Atlantic University, and an Adjunct Scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is a "virtual professor" teaching through the Internet and will be teaching such a course on "Freedom and the Evolution of Civilizations" in the Templeton Foundation International Freedom Project at Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala next Spring. He can be reached at: http://www.wmarina.com/. Among several books, he is the co-author of the 3rd ed. of A History of Florida (1999), long considered the standard history of the State, He can assure any reader of this piece that a discussion of the "canker wars" will find its way into the 4th edition.

The
Miami Herald of Sunday, October 29th, in an
article by Martin Merzer, had
a particularly good account of the "war" in Dade and Broward
counties, where the trees were being cut at the rate of 5,000 a
day last week, in the face of complaints that had reached almost
50,000 at that point in time.

As
The Herald noted:

A
federal and state study that triggered this year's expansion of
the killing zone from 125 feet to 1,900 feet has not yet been published
or publicly reviewed by independent scientists, and several outside
experts say the tree-cutting blitz is out of control.

"This
disease is not severe enough to justify this attempt at eradication,"
said Jack Whiteside, a citrus specialist and retired plant pathologist
for the University of Florida.

He
said canker usually produces only cosmetic blemishes in fruit and
leaves. In severe cases, it can cause unripened fruit to drop from
trees, he said, but it cannot produce gnarled branches and dying
trees as claimed by Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford and some
other state officials.

SUBTLE
SYMPTOMS

Canker's
symptoms often are so subtle, Whiteside said, that the disease can
maintain a low profile for months or years before it reappears on
a large scale, regardless of eradication programs. He said canker
has ebbed and flowed in Florida since 1914.

"In
practice, it is virtually impossible to eradicate any pathogen that
produces such mild symptoms," he said.

Several
scientists, most of them retired and no longer dependent on state
or federal salaries or grants, told The Herald they agreed.

"Every
citrus-producing country in the world that's humid has this disease,"
said Heinz Wutscher, a retired horticulturist who worked for the
U.S. Department of Agriculture for 32 years. "There are definitely
problems with it, but it's not the kind of thing you want to spend
$120 million on and destroy millions of trees."

Actually,
the total cost is $175 million, and much of that is going to the
three main contractors who get paid $96.25 for every slashed tree:
Manny Diaz Farms, Asplundh and Ashbritt.

Whiteside
said other experts, some still in state government, agree with him
but are being muzzled because their bosses have close links to the
citrus industry. Crawford, the agriculture commissioner, once managed
a 3,200-acre cattle and citrus operation in Central Florida.

"People
who are depending on their jobs cannot speak out on this issue,"
Whiteside said.

Not
true, said Tim Schubert, chief plant pathologist at the state's
Division of Plant Industry and a leading state expert on canker.

"I
don't know of anyone who is suppressing their opinion about whether
this disease should be the target of eradication," Schubert
said. "We've been in contact with virtually every plant pathologist
with knowledge of this problem."

He
does agree with Whiteside on this: Canker is rarely fatal to a tree.

"I've
seen it kill some small seedlings," Schubert said. "But
in general, it will not kill a tree."

So
what we have here, as detailed by The Herald, is a multitude
of "sins" that come from Government Interventionism!

1. The
   Federal and State studies have not been shared with the scientific
   community.
2. A
   number of scientists disagree that the disease is severe enough
   to justify this effort at total eradication. Most often its effects
   are cosmetic, some fruit dropping, but not severe gnarling or
   death.
3. Canker
   is world wide, and probably cannot be eradicated even at a cost
   in Florida already approaching $200 million.

I
would also add several observations suggested at by the article,
and one that is not:

1. The
   large firms getting almost $100 to cut a tree are among those
   always cueing up for Government funds. That's not a bad payoff,
   given the magnitude of this job.
2. One
   firm, Manny Diaz Farms, while it has donated trees to universities
   such as my own, Florida Atlantic University, was caught selling
   undersized palms to Dade County involving millions of $$ and is
   now in the indictment process. It is part of a larger complex
   of construction and other firms that have "fed" off
   the County and the City of Miami and have helped to create South
   Florida's reputation as "Corruption Central," where
   many people have come to feel "honest politician" is
   a contradiction in terms. That Diaz Farms should have been allowed
   into the bid process and then selected is beyond belief!
3. Government
   researchers, especially at universities, who understand where
   their money is coming had better keep their mouths shut about
   "real" research results. Anyone who follows the news,
   or has attended or taught in universities as I have now for 45
   years, cannot but help to be aware of this situation. While not
   yet at the level of the National Socialists or the former Union,
   it is beyond that of Ancient Rome where Lucian described how the
   intellectuals were "bought" by Caesar, and even given
   Chairs of "higher learning."
4. What
   we know about Nature is that it has a way of coping with such
   diseases, whether in animals or plants. Canker seems to been around
   in Florida at least since before 1914, probably brought here with
   the citrus trees imported from around the world. Among the hundreds
   of thousands of trees cut down and killed were a huge number of
   healthy, but supposedly threatened trees.

Given
what we know about the life process of selection, is it unreasonable
to assume that many of then healthy, but now dead, trees were among
those that had over many years developed some degree of immunity
to the worst ravages of canker. Those were among the very trees
we ought to be saving and building upon.

Further,
if this were such a fatal disease, one would assume plant breeders
in nurseries would have for years been breeding in that direction
as well as for better fruit, faster growing trees, etc. Certainly,
that is how one would expect events to develop in a market situation.

The
Real Reason for the Canker War:

The
next day, Monday, October 30th, The Herald had
an article by Griff Witte entitled, "Trade threat at heart
of Florida's canker fight: Experts downplay real damage to fruit,"
that offered a truly paradigmatic insight into the issue.

A
number of citrus experts understand that the real threat to Florida's
$8.5 billion industry is not how canker affects fruit, but rather
"how the bacteria disease affects trade." Jack Hearn,
a retired plant geneticist who studied citrus for the U.S. Department
of Agriculture for 33 years in Florida, said canker-related embargoes
are used as "a trade tool more than a disease-control tool."

If
Florida were to learn to live with the disease, rather than attempt
to eradicate it, states and other countries would have legal grounds
to halt Florida citrus from being imported. Further, if canker were
allowed, it would open U.S. markets to fresh fruits from many nations
that have that "horrible" canker disease.

So,
what we really have is trade as a political tool of government,
along the lines of the "pork war" against Europe a century
ago, or the "beef war" against Argentina later. All of
which has now been incorporated into the thousands of pages that
make up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which document
has about as much relationship to real free trade as a Jackass has
to an Elephant!

One
expert is pessimistic that eradication will succeed, but that it
will now be difficult to stop. Advocates of eradication have painted
canker as so "dire" that a "strategy not involving
quarantine zones and cutting would make it hard to sell Florida
citrus outside the state," to other citrus producing states
such as California, Arizona, Texas and Louisiana, and perhaps Europe
as well.

If
Florida decides to live with canker, it opens the door to freer
trade since "there would no longer be any reason to exclude
fruit from Brazil or Argentina or Paraguay."

This
raises some interesting questions. If canker is so bad that we have
kept out the fruit from those nations above, how could their fruit
suddenly pose such a competitive threat? If their fruit is not cankerous,
then the whole phony issue is another example of Government's interference
with real free trade.

The
experts are even in disagreement as to whether canker really hurts
a tree and its fruit or not. Whiteside, the retired UF professor
cited above who published several articles on canker in the 1980s,
observes: "The rhetoric is that if we don't get rid of it,
its going to kill trees. But no one has left tree with canker alone
long enough to see what it does. I think we would see it wouldn't
do anything."

An
expert who disagrees ends up mentioning that the disease would be
severe on grapefruit, even though it doesn't change the taste of
the fruit. What it appears to do is produce some lesions on the
grapefruit that hadn't dropped off the tree, and that might make
it less marketable.

Cut
free of the whole governmental trade policy issue, one can begin
to make a more rational market analysis of what is really involved
in the canker issue.

The
canker police came to examine my heroic little key line tree that
has endured all sorts of calamities. It is still there, and such
lime trees are apparently not badly effected by canker. I intend
to fight to save my tree, which not only lives, but may have a soul.
Who am I to say about such things!

More
than 90% of Florida's oranges goes to juicers, so even under the
most dire of circumstances, since taste is not affected, that does
not appear to be the real problem None of the so-called experts
seem to have mentioned tangerines, tangelos, etc., so perhaps we
can assume they also needn't be cut as a part of trying to eradicate
the cursed canker in grapefruit.

So
the real problem is the grapefruit because it is by far the most
susceptible to canker, and almost half of Florida's crop is sold
fresh. While only 14% of world orange production is from Florida,
the State because of its climate and up to now absence of canker,
produces 40% of the grapefruit. Everybody has oranges, it appears,
but not everybody has good grapefruit.

As
The Herald concludes:

Critics
of the eradication program, though, say that moving from grapefruit
to other more resistant kinds of citrus is something Florida will
inevitably have to do. They point to countries like Argentina and
Brazil that have maintained profitable citrus industries even in
the face of canker, and they wonder why Florida can't do the same.

But,
they say, they understand why some in Florida's citrus industry
are reluctant: If the state has to produce citrus while fighting
canker, it will face increased direct competition from those countries
doing the exact same thing.

A
Good Long-Range Outcome?

Despite
the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent varieties of citrus
in the "Cankercaust," which is really about "The
Trade Politics of Grapefruit," something good might yet come
from all of this.

I
believe Florida can compete in world markets for grapefruit and
other citrus as have the nations mentioned above. We still have
a climate for uniquely good grapefruit.

It
is time we devoted our energies to further developing canker resistant
citrus rather than cutting down thousands of such potential specimens.
Bio-genetics can probably also help in the long run, but the protectionists
in Europe and elsewhere will in the short run scream about that
threat.

Global
trade, however, is not a one-way street. It must mean cutting free
of the narrow, mercantilist restrictions which have for so long
dogged the emergence and rise of the modern nation-state; not for
some but for all.

Why
Study Local and State History?

I
have dwelt perhaps overly long on what many might perceive a local
history, in trying to show this is in reality an issue of international
importance.

Nonetheless,
the study of local and state history is extremely important for
young historians as well as all of us. International events and
even comparative civilizations, of course, appear more exotic but
there is nothing that happens at that level which cannot be duplicated
in the microcosm of our own community.

If
were believe that liberty and freedom are inseparable from decentralization,
then the place to start is at that most decentralized of units,
your own locality. Almost all such issues prepare us for larger
ramifications.

November
3, 2000

William
Marina is professor of History at the Fort Lauderdale/Davie campus
of Florida Atlantic University, and an Adjunct Scholar at the Ludwig
von Mises Institute. He is a "virtual professor" teaching
through the Internet and will be teaching such a course on "Freedom
and the Evolution of Civilizations" in the Templeton Foundation
International Freedom Project at Universidad Francisco Marroquin
in Guatemala next Spring. He can be reached at: http://www.wmarina.com/.
Among several books, he is the co-author of the 3rd ed.
of A History of Florida (1999), long considered the standard
history of the State, He can assure any reader of this piece that
a discussion of the "canker wars" will find its way into
the 4th edition.