Is this the face of a crazy man? If so, then what of the men, both Republican and Democrat, who want to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial?

Ron Paul promotes “crazy” conspiracy theories, according to writers such as Leon H. Wolf on RedState. What frequently goes unasked is, in comparison to what?

Some of Paul’s beliefs are odd, but they’re not nearly as insane or dangerous as the war on drugs or the war on terror. One really can’t say with a straight face anything Ron Paul believes, in concert with his libertarian outlook, would result in the mass incarceration or murder of thousands of innocent people. That distinguishes Paul from his opponents.

In any case, let’s not forget: Conspiracies do happen, sometimes with the participation of thousands of people in government. One of the worst in contemporary history was the Vietnam War, about which the government lied wholesale to the American public for more than two decades (read Daniel Ellsberg’s book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers or watch the documentary featuring Ellsberg, The Most Dangerous Man in America). And let’s not forget the Tuskegee experiments. Let’s also not forget the racist origins of the drug war or the CIA’s using drugs to fund covert operations, some conspiracies about which Ron Paul was right. And this is a doozy: The US government murdered thousands of people during Prohibition by poisoning alcohol supplies.

Given the breadth and horror of US government conspiracies that have become public knowledge, some additional conspiracy theorizing shouldn’t seem “insane” at all.

I break with Ron Paul in that I am more firmly grounded in rational skepticism, and I require more than folk tales and ambiguous circumstantial evidence interpretable in multiple ways before I accept a proposition, such as a conspiracy theory. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it happened.

But, because it’s possible—because it’s the kind of thing the government is widely acknowledged to have done before—running with it isn’t really “crazy” or, as far as I’m concerned, a disqualifier for public office. Indeed, after the past decade of politicians and their media lapdogs preaching faith in the government, I’d rather a candidate have an abundance of suspicion of the government than a dearth of it. We could’ve used more suspicion when government foreign policy “experts” were telling us Saddam had WMD’s and supported terrorists.

I feel like some Americans haven’t absorbed what’s happened to this country. Our economy has been trashed. Our prisons are full of Americans rotting away even though they’ve done nothing wrong. Our police act like gangs, beating people without cause and stealing property via asset forfeiture. Our Congress is deliberating on whether to censor the Internet and allow the indefinite detainment of American citizens without trial. Our president, Barack Obama, thinks he can start wars by himself and kill American citizens without accountability.

The people who let all this happen and want it to continue? They’re the serious ones. The people, like Ron Paul, who might perhaps be too suspicious of the establishment and want to reverse the assaults on our honor and our liberty? They’re nuts.

Which I find crazy! To me, authoritarianism and murder, and the prejudice and avarice that lead to them, are so completely beyond the limits of moral behavior that nothing else—especially a few off-the-wall conspiracy theories that aren’t so much more outlandish than anything we know the government’s done—can possibly compare.

Maybe Americans have become so used to their country’s brutality it doesn’t even register for them anymore as the ghastly moral crime it is.

See also

The sharp-as-usual Conor Friedersdorf wrote a smart post about Ron Paul and conspiracy theories.

Now let’s get crazy

Think Ron Paul is crazy? Check out his opponents. is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

But something that can be endlessly reinterpreted can’t have definite meaning. And something so vague is contrary to what, from my readings, the Founding generation thought a Constitution was.

An illuminating book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn, contains a section called “Constitution and Rights” in which Bailyn presents contemporary writings showcasing the evolution of constitutional thought in America during the mid- to late-18th century. A constitution was conceived of as a fixed and inviolable covenant, between the people and/or with God, above government and permanently constraining it, that would demarcate the frontier of government power and secure the people’s “universal, inherent, indefeasible” rights. Only with the consent of “a clear majority of all the inhabitants” could alterations be made. A constitution was believed only capable of securing rights if its stipulations could not be “altered or changed by ruler or people, but [only] by the whole collective body.” Whereas room was made for judicial review, the purpose was not to “adjust” a constitution but to defend it.

The Federalist Papers are consistent with this view of constitutionalism. In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton writes (emphases mine):

The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing….

Though I trust the friends of the proposed Constitution will never concur with its enemies, in questioning that fundamental principle of republican government, which admits the right of the people to alter or abolish the established Constitution, whenever they find it inconsistent with their happiness, yet it is not to be inferred from this principle, that the representatives of the people, whenever a momentary inclination happens to lay hold of a majority of their constituents, incompatible with the provisions in the existing Constitution, would, on that account, be justifiable in a violation of those provisions; or that the courts would be under a greater obligation to connive at infractions in this shape, than when they had proceeded wholly from the cabals of the representative body. Until the people have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon themselves collectively, as well as individually; and no presumption, or even knowledge, of their sentiments, can warrant their representatives in a departure from it, prior to such an act.

…

That inflexible and uniform adherence to the rights of the Constitution, and of individuals, which we perceive to be indispensable in the courts of justice, can certainly not be expected from judges who hold their offices by a temporary commission.

Had the Founding Fathers conceived of the role of the judiciary as not just defending the Constitution, but updating it for “changing conditions,” then how odd for Hamilton to declaim exactly that in Federalist 78, and to dispute the need for a Bill of Rights in Federalist 84. I would think if the Founding Fathers had envisioned anything like a “Living Constitution” whereby the constitution would be periodically adjusted by the judiciary, they wouldn’t have consigned the declaration of essential rights to an afterthought, or left the list as short as they did. And, had the original public understanding of the Constitution included a federal judiciary with the ability to adjust to changing conditions, then given the contemporary revulsion of central power and philosophy of constitutional rule, the states probably wouldn’t have ratified the document.

But they did ratify the Constitution, and it was put into practice, after which the earlier principles of constitutonalism continued to hold sway. In a letter written during his presidency, on March 27, 1801, to Eddy, Russell, Thurber, Wheaton, and Smith, Thomas Jefferson describes what he views as proper constitutional interpretation:

The Constitution on which our union rests, shall be administered by me according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States, at the time of its adoption,–a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it merely lest the constructions should be applied which they denounced as possible. These explanations are preserved in the publications of the time, and are too recent in the memories of most men to admit of question.

Of course, today, the explanations are obscured by the passage of two centuries. But we still have the publications in which those explanations appeared, so due diligence can mitigate against historical amnesia.

Joseph Story, a protegee of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, an influential Supreme Court justice in his own right, and the author of one of the dominant works on jurisprudence in the 19th century, the 1833 collection Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, supports the revolutionary era idea of constitutionalism in his chapter “Rules of Interpretation” (emphases mine):

On the other hand, a rule of equal importance is, not to enlarge the construction of a given power beyond the fair scope of its terms, merely because the restriction is inconvenient, impolitic, or even mischievous. If it be mischievous, the power of redressing the evil lies with the people by an exercise of the power of amendment. If they do not choose to apply the remedy, it may be fairly presumed, that the mischief is less than what would arise from a further extension of the power; or that it is the least of two evils. Nor should it ever be lost sight of, that the government of the United States is one of limited or enumerated powers; and that a departure from the true import and sense of its powers is, pro tanto, the establishment of a new constitution. It is doing for the people, what they have not chosen to do for themselves. It is usurping the functions of a legislator, and deserting those of an expounder of the law. Arguments drawn from impolicy or inconvenience ought here to be of no weight. The only sound principle is to declare, ita lex scripta set, to follow, and to obey. Nor, if a principle so just and conclusive could be overlooked, could there well be found a more unsafe guide and practice, then mere policy and convenience. Men on such subjects complexionally differ from each other. The same men differ from themselves at different times. Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy. And the policy of one age may ill suit the wishes, or policy of another. The constitution is not to be subject to such fluctuations. It is to have a fixed, uniform, permanent construction. It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, today, and for ever.

None of this is to say the principles of the Constitution can’t be logically extended for the modern day. Just because Article I, Section 8, doesn’t mention an air force or a space fleet doesn’t mean Congress can’t establish them; all military branches the Founding generation could have imagined appear, and little reason exists to suppose the constitution was understood to allow some branches but not others. Likewise, just because the First Amendment doesn’t mention the Internet doesn’t mean web users don’t have free speech; had the Internet existed in 1789, it likely would have been included in the First Amendment, and including it now does no violence to the principle at hand.

“Amendment by judiciary,” however—inserting, altering, or removing constitutional principles through new judicial interpretation, or, as Obama put it, “read[ing] in the context of an ever-changing world”—destroys the firm covenant “we the people” made when founding America in favor of the very oligarchical caprice the Founding generation sought to avoid with the Constitution in the first place.

Supplemental reading

Randy E. Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, expounds on “The Original Meaning of the Commerce Clause” in an article for the University of Chicago Law Review.

On a “Living Constitution” is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

This fervent libertarian believes you make many fair points. People often don’t properly anticipate the consequences of their actions or make adequate provision for the future. What I fail to see, however, is why state involvement would ameliorate these problems.

Medieval lords ate well at the expense of their serfs. Such a conception of wealth doesn't apply today.

Humans comprising the state are just as fallible as their peers. Unlike their peers, though, humans in the state can force everyone else to go along with their mistakes. This makes them much more severe and much less correctable, than if a private person, corporation, or industry erred; others would have proceeded differently, so not all society would suffer, and we could learn from their example.

As for my other big quibble with your post, I believe your premises regarding the impact of wealth are flawed. Your argument seems to carry the assumption that one’s wealth is unavailable for the rest of society to use if it’s not taxed, but nothing could be further from the truth. If I save my money in a bank, that funds loans and credit. If I buy stocks, then I’m providing capital businesses need to operate. If I buy stuff (food, computers, phones, etc.), then I’m bankrolling the paychecks of those who designed, made, and transported the stuff.

Once upon a time, acquiring great wealth meant others couldn’t use it. Food and gold sitting in a lord’s manor, usually after the lord seized it by force, was unavailable to anyone else. Today’s economy doesn’t work like that anymore, but anachronistic ideas about wealth persist nevertheless.

Wealth, shortsightedness, and state intervention is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

(This blog entry is a reply to the horrid piece “The blood-stained century of evolution.”)

This article has numerous problems.

First, it engages in the logical fallacy appeal to consequences. Any consequences of a proposition, be they good or ill, have no impact on whether the proposition is true or false.

Second, throughout most of human history, religion has sought totalitarian control over everyone’s beliefs, thoughts, and actions. Within a religion’s dominion, whoever did not submit to the religious authorities faced torture and death. Whomever lived outside religious authorities’ control, these authorities often tried to convert through conquest. Few places on Earth have been free of the misery, oppression, and warfare that has resulted. The histories of Europe and Asia are particularly riven with suffering and bloodshed stemming from heretical dissent, sectarian rivalry, and interfaith hatred. If religion hasn’t quite achieved the body count of Nazism and Communism, the only reason is that religious police and faithful combatants didn’t have remote surveillance, gas chambers, machine guns, warplanes, battleships, tanks, missiles, and nukes.

Third, as a corollary to the above point, no ideological construct in human history has done more than religion to divide people into opposing groups, most of which believed they were the favored of God and hated the other groups. For example, Christians and Muslims hated Jews for centuries, the Christians because they nonsensically held Jews responsible for Christ’s death, the Muslims because a group of Jews supposedly thought Mohammed was a charlatan when he told them God was communicating with him. The Nazis didn’t invent the anti-Semitic hatred that drove the Holocaust; it was an ancient though still vibrant relic of religion.

Fourth, whereas some individual clergymen bravely resisted the Nazis, the Catholic Church as a political institution supported fascism around the world and collaborated with the Nazis, even to the extent of revealing files to them to help them determine who was sufficiently “pure” to avoid the gas chambers (and who was not). Many Protestant churches also cooperated with the Nazis. And, in Russia, the Orthodox Church served as a puppet of the state instead of resisting. And, of course, in both Germany and Russia, most people were Christians of one kind or another. Even Adolf Hitler was a member of the Catholic Church in good standing, although he made embellishments to the Christian mythos. And Joseph Stalin, even though he became an atheist, had trained as a monk; I guess extensive religious teaching didn’t dampen his homicidal tendencies.

Fifth, to the extent that the Nazis and the Communists did aim to supplant religion, the replacement was another kind of unreasoning faith: worship of an all-encompassing state. The totalitarianism that flowed from that had nothing to do with unshackling man’s reason or Darwinian evolution by natural selection, but with squashing them.

Sixth, the article mischaracterizes Darwin’s work. Darwin was a scientist who merely studied life and recorded what he found. “Might makes right” and other such drivel has nothing to do with Darwin or with evolution, which just concerns inheritance of traits through successive generations and fitness for particular environments. I must note, though, “might makes right” adeptly describes much of religious ideology and history. Think of the admonitions in many religious texts that if the will of a particular deity isn’t followed, divine and earthly punishment will ensue.

Seventh, I disagree with the article about the implications of abandoning God and embracing evolution. As I’ve written before, God is not an alternative to man’s will but rather a vessel into which man pours his will and hopes to escape responsibility for it. The erosion of the God concept doesn’t mean an ill-equipped humanity starts making moral decisions; humanity has done that all along. But society might become more self-reflective and willing to deal with its flaws without a divine scapegoat for them.

Also, I think realizing that man is only another animal that evolved over billions of years from microscopic life, and that genetics shreds arbitrary notions of “race” while confirming everyone’s unqualified and equal membership in the human species, would encourage treatment of the planet and each other with more humility and respect than religion has engendered. In that regard, Darwinian evolution isn’t divisive but unifying.

(C/P: Boston Atheists)

Addendum: Far from admiring Darwin, the Nazis banned Darwinist work. Why would the Nazis have forbidden books in a discipline they supposedly admired?

Rebutting “The blood-stained century of evolution” is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

So, what can the United States do about the situation? To answer that question, knowledge of Iran’s historical circumstances, as well as of the history of its nuclear program, is essential.

I. Historical Background

To predict how Iran will react to an American or UN stratagem, one must consider the history that will inform Iranian actions. This history is one of both foreign exploitation and increasing clerical power. The 19th century would be a good point at which to begin telling the tale.

Fath ‘Ali Shah, the first sovereign of the Qajar dynasty, ruled from 1797 to 1834. His realm had suffered through decades of warfare, leaving his government’s coffers unable to pay operational costs. Therefore, Fath turned to the British to help fund government activities, which gave the British Empire influence in the country. Meanwhile, after more wars that resulted in the Treaty of Golestat in 1813 and the Treaty of Turkmanchay in 1828, Iran had to cede the Caucuses to Russia. The Turkmanchay treaty also opened Iran to Russian merchants and diplomats. This development sparked nearly a century of diplomatic feuding between Britain and Russia, with the two nations vying for dominance in Iran, that would have dire consequences for Iran in the 20th century.

Even before then, though, Iran slipped more and more under the umbrella of the West, and not to Iran’s benefit. As European influence expanded and transportation systems developed, tying Europe and the Middle East more closely together, Iran’s economy shifted in the process. The economy became more susceptible to “global market fluctuations and… periodic famine.” But the shahs of the Qajar dynasty did nothing to slow the pace of European encroachment. Instead, to raise money, they sold land to wealthy capitalists, hindering customary patterns of land usage and harming the economy even more. To raise more money, Naser al–Din Shah, who ruled from 1848 to 1896, granted “excessive concessions” to foreigners over trade issues in exchange for hard cash. This, he did not spent on his people or his country, but on his court and his luxurious vacations to Europe. The shah’s behavior, in collaboration with foreigners, enraged many Iranians.¹

The Tobacco Riots of 1890 constituted the start of backlash against the shahs. Naser al–Sin had given the British massive concessions on tobacco trading in Iran. Angry protests and a boycott of tobacco forced Naser to rescind the concession. The events of 1890 showed:

1. Iranian merchants could organize and whip up public support.
2. The Iranian people could curtail the power of the shah.
3. The Shi’a clergy, men to whom Iranians traditionally turned for guidance for hundreds of years, who had helped agitate the people against the tobacco concession, were increasing in power.²

With these factors at work, the Tobacco Riots would serve as a preview of future events, including the Islamic Revolution nearly a century later, as well as something much sooner…

Concurrently with Iran’s increasing interaction with the West, newly arisen Iranian intellectual circles interested themselves in democratic procedures. These intellectuals found solace in the 1905 Russian Revolution³ during which popular uprisings convinced Tsar Nicholas II to substitute Russia’s absolutist state with a constitutional monarchy.⁴ After the shah’s government beat some Iranian merchants, the intellectuals united with the merchants and the clergy to stage colossal strikes and protests against the government. Eventually, to appease the Iranian masses, the shah allowed for the writing of a constitution in 1906. (This was the first alignment of all these forces that would prove strong in 1978–1979.)

Foreign intervention would spell the doom of the constitutional government. First, in 1907, the almost century–old squabbles between Britain and Russia culminated in the Anglo–Russian Convention. This Convention carved for the two empires “exclusive spheres of influence in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tibet.” In Iran, as per the treaty, Britain controlled areas “along the Persian Gulf,” and Russia regions “in northern Iran and the Caucuses.” As a result of the agreement, then, both Russia and Britain had large stakes in the internal politics of Iran.⁵

Four years later, in 1911, Iran’s constitutional regime paid an American consultant, William Morgan Schuster, to advise the government regarding finances. Schuster recommended aggressive means to obtain funds from all over Iran. This upset the British and the Russians, from whose spheres the Iranians would also acquire money under Schuster’s plan. Russia demanded the Iranian government fire Schuster; upon said government’s refusal, the Russians deployed soldiers to march on Tehran. Facing this threat, the shah sent Schuster home and terminated the constitutional regime.

Until World War I, the Russians acted as the de facto masters of the Iran outside its official sphere of influence. The Great War, however, forced the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from the country. Unfortunately for Iran, its respite did not last long. The Russians soon came back, along with the British, the Germans, and the Turks, who fought battles amongst themselves in Iranian territory.

In 1917, though, the new Soviet Union ended Russia’s claims in Iran, engendering much Iranian love for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (despite the elites’ dread of Communist ideas spreading to their country). A few years later, in 1921, the British also abandoned their spheres of influence in Iran, after “international pressure.” Britain did not leave Iran without a parting gift: It supported an Iranian military officer, Reza Khan, who in 1920 had been crucial in suppressing a Communist revolt. Reza Khan seized control of the Iranian military and eventually overthrew the last Qajar shah, after which he anointed himself Reza Shah Pahlavi, the first shah of the Pahlavi dynasty.⁶

Reza secularized Iran somewhat through educational and judicial changes. He shifted jurisdiction over many issues from Shi’a religious tribunals to state courts or government agencies. He instituted secular schools. But the new shah was not a liberal dedicated to the welfare of his people. His government censored the media and prohibited unions and political parties. The shah also renewed trade concessions for oil, which would inflame Iranian wrath for decades.⁷

Iran’s shah was not a complete stooge of the West, although he chose an unethical way to show it. In the 1930’s, afraid of the Soviet Union and desperate for more commerce, Reza increased trade and enhanced relations with the Third Reich. When Reza would not renege on his deals with the Nazis, the British and the Russians invaded Iran in 1941 and deposed him. The familiar conquerors elevated Reza’s son to Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi.

Ironically, during World War II, foreign rule increased media freedom, political liberty, and economic prosperity. New political parties and trade unions arose. At the same time, the Shi’a clergy enhanced their strength, with the dissolution of the previous shah’s secularization initiatives. After the war, when the foreign occupiers withdrew, moderate leftists, Iranian nationalists, and some clergymen loosely coalesced into the National Front, under the leadership of Mohammed Mosaddeq. The purpose of the National Front was to limit the shah’s and the clerics’ power (although the latter goal caused tensions in the political alliance). Another objective of the National Front was to achieve Iranian control of Iranian natural resources, ending “foreign exploitation” of them.⁸

Toward that end, after Mosaddeq became prime minister in 1951, he nationalized all of Iran’s oil. Britain, the primary recipient of Iran’s oil largesse, hated Mosaddeq’s action and, ergo, placed trade sanctions on Iran. Subsequently, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and current British Prime Minister Anthony Eden advocated a combined United States–United Kingdom operation to topple Mosaddeq. Nothing quite that grandiose occurred. Despite that, August 1953 saw the end of Mosaddeq’s administration. Mosaddeq’s grip on the state’s helm had been loosening because his social democratic programs had been alienating his clerical supporters. Following the shah’s hasty departure from Iran after a political conflict with Mosaddeq, the Iranian prime minister lost his already tenuous position to a Central Intelligence Agency–sponsored coup. Mohammed Reza resumed his position within a week of his flight.

Thanks to American intervention in Iran—not even to contain the Soviet Union, but to protect business profits—any chance for Iran to become a progressive republic vanished. The resurgent shah, to avoid another Mosaddeq, stifled all further political deviation from his agenda. Israel’s Mossad and the CIA assisted Mohammed Reza in this regard by helping him in 1957 to forge his own Gestapo, the Organization of National Security and Information, also known as Sazman–e Amniyyat va Ettela’at–e Keshvar (SAVAK). This secret police cemented the shah’s ruled for decades, causing Iranians to quake with fright. (As Yoda said, fear leads to anger…)

In 1960–1963, Mohammed Reza introduced the White Revolution. As part of this Revolution, the shah liberalized laws to convey more equality to women and began economic reforms that increased Iranian incomes. These measures angered the Shi’a clergy, whose power the economic reforms eroded and who wanted to continue subjugating women as per Islamic tenets. Soon, ordinary people became discontent as well with the White Revolution, as the economic reforms backfired. Failing farms compelled an Iranian rush to the cities, where Iranians found “high prices, isolation, and poor living conditions.” An ever–decreasing standard of living accompanied rampant inflation. During all this misery, Iranians had no political outlet through which to vent their dissatisfaction. No political freedom existed, with SAVAK arresting and torturing anyone who dissented from the shah’s policies. Only bloody rebellious actions could serve as channels for the people’s rage.⁹

Supporting the shah while this was happening was the United States of America. Ever increasing numbers of American consultants assisted Mohammed Reza with economic planning and military strengthening. With American aid, the Iranian military emerged as the strongest in the region and one of the biggest on Earth. The shah’s reliance on Americans tarnished both him and them in the eyes of the Iranian people.

Finally, in the 1970’s, Iranian intellectuals tired of Mohammed Reza’s tyrannical maladministration. They joined forces with Shi’a clerics loyal to the exiled philosophy professor Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini. Khomeini had condemned the White Revolution in 1963, for which government agents stormed Khomeini’s madrasah, “killing several students,” and arrested him. Eventually, the government forced Khomeini into exile. This did not stop Khomeini from constructing doctrines for the maintenance of a Shi’a Muslim state and disseminating them to the Iranian people, thereby fortifying and gaining allegiance.¹⁰

The alliance of intellectuals and clerics fomented a revolution in 1978–1979 that forced the shah to abdicate and allowed Khomeini to return home. Iranians voted for the institution of an Islamic Republic by a large margin. Ayatollah Khomeini (of whom current Ayatollah Khameini is the successor) and his Shi’a clerics and mullahs brutally crafted this Islamic Republic, eliminating whatever Western influence they could along the way. The ayatollah and his cronies have dominated Iran from 1979 until today, exhibiting as much barbarism as the shah ever did. Iran’s democratically–elected president serves as a figurehead. He possesses little authority to thwart the designs of the Shi’a theocrats.¹¹

All this history reveals a Western proclivity for harmful interference in Iranian affairs extending back 200 years. One could defend the intervention in World War II as necessary to constrict German trade and ensure the flow of Lend–Lease materiel to the Soviet Union.¹² Every other intrusion into Iran was an imperialistic endeavor to protect Western business interests. After two centuries of detrimental foreign exploitation, Iranians would have little reason to trust in the good intentions of the United States and Europe. This distrust, in concert with Iranian hostility toward foreign interference in political life and usurpation of natural resources, could make UN attempts to command Iran backfire. Iran could perceive such ultimatums as yet more Western efforts to dominate Iran’s future.

The Shi’a clergy emerges in the history as a force that, after embedding themselves into Iranian culture for centuries, have exercised rising societal influence over the past century, until they took over the country outright in 1979. Shi’a clerics have entrenched themselves in the local ways and traditions. These clerics will not disappear as a concern anytime soon. Domestic rulers in ivory towers could not rid themselves of Shi’a clergy as a potent social influence; foreign soldiers definitely will not be able to accomplish that.

With cognizance of the broad historical context of Iran, description and analysis of the current nuclear crisis with Iran is now proper.

In August 2002, an Iranian dissident movement accused the theocratic government of operating in the city of Natanz a uranium enrichment facility and in the city of Arak a heavy water plant. In December 2002, while on its weapons of mass destruction allegations binge, the United States proclaimed Iran’s guilt of “across–the–board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.” Unlike with Iraq, American declarations about Iran turned out to be at least partially true. The IaeA examined Arak and Natanz in February 2003, and it declared a few months later Iran had broken the Non–Proliferation Treaty.¹³

Iran promised the European Union Three—Germany, France, and Britain, who had taken the lead in diplomacy with Iran—in October 2003 it would cease all research into the enrichment of uranium, an essential procedure in constructing both nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. That December, Iran pledged it would cooperate with surprise inspections of its nuclear installations. Iran did not keep that oath, though, as the IaeA chastised Iran in June 2004 for insufficient cooperation. To strike back, Iran announced it would start researching and making centrifuges, vital to uranium enrichment, again. But Iran reversed course several months later, in November 2004, assuring the Europeans it would halt “all nuclear fuel processing and reprocessing work.” Iranian President Mohammed Khatami seemed to negate this the next year, in February 2005, when he said no Iranian government would surrender Iran’s right to nuclear technology.¹⁴

The frothing hard–liner Ahmadinejad replaced the moderate Khatami in the middle of 2005.¹⁵ With Ahmadinejad as its spokesman, Iran dropped all pretense of cooperating with the Europeans. On September 15, 2005, Ahmadinejad told the world his country would spread nuclear technology throughout the Muslim world. Nearly four months later, on January 1, 2006, Iran revealed it had discovered how to extract uranium from ore. Ten days later, on January 10, Iran restarted its research on nuclear fuel. This finally compelled the Europeans to give up their efforts to negotiate. They recommended the United Nations Security Council take up the matter.

On January 13, Iran threatened to toss the IaeA out of the country if the Security Council itself involved itself in the situation. Regardless, in a rare occurrence of agreement between the United States, Germany, France, Britain, China, and Russia, all six nations wanted the Security Council to take action.¹⁶ This produced a Security Council resolution on March 29 demanded Iran totally cooperate with the IaeA within 30 days. The Security Council’s declaration was not “legally binding,” however, because Russia and China were reluctant to impose sanctions or start war in the event of Iranian noncompliance.¹⁷

Afterward, on April 11, Ahmadinejad said Iran had learned how to enrich the uranium after they had extracted it. The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization announced the Natanz facility had accomplished the feat. Because of this, on April 28, the IaeA declared Iran in defiance of the March 29 Security Council requests.¹⁸ That is where the nuclear confrontation with Iran stands now.

II. Problem Statement

Iran, a barbaric theocracy whose president has wished for Israel’s destruction and indicated he would disseminate nuclear technology, has been researching such technology. The Iranian government claims it only wants peaceful nuclear energy. (Plenty of oil sits beneath Iran, and lots of desert that could accommodate solar collectors lies across the country. One could wonder why Iran would need nuclear technology for energy production.) The United States and its diplomatic partners worry Iran desires nuclear weapons for its own use and to give to terrorists. Hence, the United States wants Iran to end its nuclear program.

III. A: Policy Options—Diplomatic (Political)

The United States has been seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis with Iran for the past several years. Washington, D.C., has not negotiated directly with Tehran, with which Washington has no diplomatic relations. Instead, the administration of American President George W. Bush stepped back to let Britain, France, and Germany attempt to convince Iran to terminate its nuclear program. This constitutes an exception to normal American foreign policy; the US government, especially under Bush, has preferred to address what it perceives to be security threats by itself or as a leader of an alliance. Relying completely on other countries in this instance means the US government is not in ultimate control of what happens. If the president says jump, the leader of another country will not necessarily say, how high. Still, with the American commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US government might not have wanted to stretch itself further by tackling the Iranian problem.

The Europeans did not accomplish their objective. Iran continued its nuclear research while not taking its negotiations with Europe seriously. Iran was always ready to go with another nuclear transgression for any imagined slight. Eventually, the Europeans conceded defeat, so the Security Council has now taken charge of the issue.

The Security Council has not had any more success than the Europeans did alone so far, though. It has only managed a toothless resolution on March 29 that Iran ignored altogether. Furthermore, nearly a month after the Security Council issued its commands, Iranian President Ahmadinejad speechified regarding the Security Council: “The Iranian nation won’t give a damn about such useless resolutions… Today, they want to force us to give up our way through threats and sanctions but those who resort to language of coercion should know that nuclear energy is a national demand and by the grace of God, today Iran is a nuclear country.”¹⁹ UN diplomacy does not appear to be a winning strategy.

The US could engage with Iran directly, but that would necessitate recognizing Iran’s government and opening diplomatic relations with it. Washington would be averse to doing that, especially with Ahmadinejad occupying the Iranian presidency. Besides which, Iran already knows the might of the United States forms the backbone of every diplomatic maneuver so far, yet Iran does not seem to care. For the US to open direct negotiations with Iran would, therefore, not help. All it would do is give Iran the status of being a nation the US has deemed fit for recognition, in exchange for nothing, which would bolster Iran and humiliate the United States.

III. B: Policy Options—Economic

In an effort to fabricate a compromise whereby Iran could have nuclear energy but the rest of the world could feel safe Iran was not gaining dangerous nuclear know–how, Russia offered to enrich uranium for Iran on Russia’s own soil and then ship the uranium back to Iran. Nothing has come of this Russian initiative, though.²⁰ Iran has apparently decided it wants to enrich uranium itself.

If Iran does not start cooperating with the United Nations, the Security Council could meet again and insist Iran alter course for “international peace and security.” Iranian noncompliance with such a resolution would permit the Security Council to enact economic sanctions against Iran. China and Russia, however, have been squeamish about such a move.²¹ Also, implementing broad economic sanctions against Iran would constrict or prevent the flow of oil out of that country. As the world grapples with high oil prices, across–the–board sanctions could damage everyone’s economy even as Iran hurts. The situation could be like Thomas Jefferson’s embargo of Britain and France all over again.

Perhaps sanctions could leave alone oil trade with Iran; that would have a better chance of sticking. Because oil is already the lifeblood of Iran’s economy, and because oil would become more important with trade in everything else forbidden, Iran could not afford to cut off oil supplies or fiddle with prices too much. So the rest of the world would not hurt for oil, although Iran would still suffer the pain of sanctions. If Iran continues its intransigence, Russia and China might support limited sanctions, as they would not threaten oil supplies, although a lot of skilled diplomacy would be necessary.

III. C: Policy Options—Military

In the April 17, 2006, issue of The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh unveils to the American people secret plans the US government has for war with Iran. The end objective of the war would be the overthrow of the theocracy. To achieve this, the US military would bomb Iran extensively, which planners hope would embarrass the Iranian government, thereby inspiring the Iranian citizenry to revolt and depose the mullahs. Concurrently, the American military would drop bunker–buster tactical nukes on Iranian nuclear facilities, such as the one at Natanz.²²

That is one of the most idiotic plans in the history of military strategy. The American dream of happy Iraqis valiantly rising against their oppressors and eagerly embracing regime change Washington would like turned out to be fantasy. No reason exists to believe the same American dream would come true in Iran. Two hundred years of Western imperialism in Iran has ensured Iranian revulsion of foreign influence. Most Iranians would stick by their own people rather than act as foreigners attacking their home want. The Shi’a clergy, who have centuries–old traditional claims to Iranian hearts, and not bomb–happy Americans, would find the most supporters in Iran. Because of this, not even Iranian opposition groups want American intervention, believing it would damage their cause.²³

Plus, targeted American strikes against Iranian nuclear infrastructure could likely fail. The Iranians have had the Israeli destruction of Iraq’s French–supplied nuclear reactor at Osirak, as well as hundreds of American and British sorties across Iraq in the 1990’s, from which to learn. They protected against bombing runs by constructing some of their nuclear installations underground. In addition, the US government does not know the locations of a few of Iran’s important nuclear assets. A bombing campaign could miss them.²⁴

After the United States gained nothing from starting a war, Iran could inflict grievous costs in retaliation. The Shi’a Iranians, through shared faith with Shi’a Iraqis, command enormous influence with them. Many more Shi’a Iraqis than who are insurgents now could become such at the urging of their Shi’a brethren in Iran. Iranian troops could start attacking American soldiers in Iraq. Iran could even capture parts of Iraq. One Pentagon affiliate has said, “The Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck.” Hezbollah could come out of hibernation as well, attacking Israel and American interests in the Middle East.²⁵ And, deciding it has nothing to lose, Iran could use its oil as an economic weapon to harm Western economies.

Sometimes, the benefits of military action can outweigh horrendous consequences. World War II stands as the most powerful demonstration of that truth. Attacking Iran as the military plans in Hersh’s article suggest would not, however, yield sufficient gains to offset the damage to American interests and operations or to justify the enormous loss of life in Iran, Iraq, and Israel (if not more countries).

IV. Policy Recommendation

I have not seen any policy or strategy under consideration of which I approve, so I will devise my own.

The United States and Europe should continue pursuing diplomatic solutions to the Iranian nuclear issue. I do not think Iran would capitulate to such an approach, though. Iranians, with reason, loathe foreign attempts to influence their politics and control their resources. As a result, I do not believe Iran will voluntarily strike a deal with anyone to limit or eliminate a national program it sees as its right. Meddlesome foreigners can go to hell.

Before I outline my proposal, I must state, I do not believe Iran will use nuclear weapons offensively if it learns how to make them. Any obvious first use of nuclear weapons on Iran’s part would invite nuclear retaliation from Israel and the United States, and possibly from France and Britain. Passing nuclear weapons off to terrorists would not be a viable option for Iran, either, because nuclear forensics could trace a bomb’s fissile material back to its source.²⁶ One might say the so–called “Mad Mullahs” are just that—mad—but Iran’s lack of military aggressiveness over the past 20 years, with trigger–happy Americans and Israelis nearby, argues against that. Iran’s theocrats are evil but not demonstrably insane or suicidal. They would place their own collective survival above global Islamist revolution. If nothing else, a dead revolutionary movement cannot advance its cause.

With Iran’s rationality in mind, I propose what I call neo–containment. In the neo–containment framework, if Iran were to develop nuclear weapons, the United Nations would place limited sanctions, as I described above, on Iran. Food, water, and medicine for the Iranian people, in addition to oil, would be the only exemptions to the sanctions. Limited sanctions would prevent mass starvation and famine while squeezing the Iranian economy. Militarily, the United States would officially point nuclear missiles at Iran and promise it will suffer the missiles’ fury if it does use nuclear weapons on anyone. If Iran does not want to struggle under sanctions and squirm under nuclear threat, Iran could dismantle its nuclear weapons and relinquish the capability to create more. If that does not happen, then Iran’s economic and technological capabilities can wilt under sanctions, and its psyche can suffer from knowing the world’s sole remaining superpower, with an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons, might use those weapons on Iran, annihilating it. Iran could never build enough nuclear weapons to combat that threat. From these economic and military coercive devices, frustration and fear could build in the Iranian population, undermining cultural health and thereby national cohesion.

To try to ensure the resulting anger flows to the Iranian government and not the United States, the American government should utilize soft power resources. Washington should emphasize its foe is the theocracy of Iran, not its people. The US should publicly appear not to be interfering with Iran internally, but to be sitting back after promising to recognize Iran officially and extend economic and technological assistance to Iran if the Iranians overthrow their government. Covertly, Americans should spread through Muslim networks messages about the benefits of disarmament and democracy and the evils of nuclear–intent mullahs. When Iranians receive these messages, they should see them as coming from Muslim brothers, not American imperialists. To complement this tactic, Iranian expatriates who know the positives of republican government and the negatives of Shi’a theocracy could tell their stories to the world. This could all inspire hope and desire within Iranians for something better than lives of terror under a repressive theocracy.

Containment worked against the Soviet Union. It took 40 years to do its job, but the United States avoided a devastating war that would have left the world a worse place than it is now. I believe the similar strategy I described above would handle Iran just as adeptly. Indeed, neo–containment could perform even better. Iran could never threaten the United States with nuclear extinction, so Americans would not have to live with the dread of that again. Since Iran would be incapable of wiping out either the American people or their nuclear capability, no matter what, the Iranian government would be insane to employ nuclear weapons in anything other than clear self–defense. So Americans need not fear even the loss of a city. The risk of such an attack would not be zero, because Iran’s government could theoretically defy rationality. But the danger would be minimal, and it would not be anything we do not already face from China, Pakistan, or Russia.

Neo–containment would thus be the least perilous idea, while promising the most impressive results. The strategy would not guarantee complete success: American soft power might not overcome the tinge of “American imperialist dog.” Cold War victories argue the US would have a good chance of accomplishing its goals, though.

¹ Encyclopædia Britannica, “Iran.” Available http://www.search.eb.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/eb/article–9106324.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Encyclopædia Britannica, “Russian Revolution of 1905.” Available http://www.search.eb.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/eb/article–9064487.

⁵ Britannica, “Iran.”

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ WashingtonPost.Com, “Timeline: Iran’s Nuclear Development.” Available http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp–dyn/content/custom/2006/01/17/CU2006011701017.html.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Encyclopædia Britannica, “Iran: Year in Review 2006.” Available http://www.search.eb.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/eb/article–9403324.

¹⁶ WashingtonPost.Com.

¹⁷ Paul Kerr, “UN Urges Halt to Nuclear Enrichment,” Arms Control Association: Arms Control Today. Available http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2006_04/uniranurges.asp.

¹⁸ WashingtonPost.Com.

¹⁹ CNN.com, “IAEA: Iran Defies U.N. Demands.” Available http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/04/28/iran.nuclear.ap/index.html.

²⁰ Kerr.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Seymour Hersh, “The Iran Plans,” The New Yorker. Available http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact.

²³ Jill Jermano, lectures at The George Washington University, 17 April 2006.

²⁴ Hersh.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Barry L. Rothberg, “Averting Armageddon: Preventing Nuclear Terrorism in the United States.” Available http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/djcil/articles/djcil8p79.htm#H2N18. Gabriele Rennie, “Tracing the Steps in Nuclear Material Trafficking,” Science and Technology. Available http://www.llnl.gov/str/March05/Hutcheon.html.

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What set the Vulcans apart from previous generations of foreign policy gurus, such as the “Wise Men” who devised containment and the “Best and Brightest” who stumbled through the 1960’s, was their emphasis on American military power.  That the generations of foreign policy officials should differ in this regard makes sense, considering their respective backgrounds.  The Wise Men were businessmen, bankers, and lawyers; naturally, to prosecute foreign policy, they would rely on economics and institutions, the tools of business and legal professionals.  Later, the Best and Brightest, who hailed from Ivy League academia, would, through a combination of elitist disrespect for the military and lack of real-world experience, bollocks up the Bay of Pigs invasion and the defense of South Vietnam.  Finally, in the latter stages of the Cold War, the Vulcans experienced foreign policy through the prism of the Defense Department.  At one time or another, Rumsfeld and Cheney served as defense secretaries; Wolfowitz was an undersecretary of defense; Rice worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Powell chaired the JCS; and Armitage worked as an assistant defense secretary.  Also, Powell and Armitage had even served as military officers.  Of course, Powell still was one, as the JCS Chairman.  That the Vulcans would perceive military power as what ought to be the primary tool of American foreign policy should be little surprise, then.  The military was what these people knew.

As advocates of solving America’s problems through military might, some of the people who would later become identified with neoconservatism, early in their careers, opposed détente with the Soviet Union.  They did not share foreign policy virtuoso Henry Kissinger’s belief American power was on the wane, so the United States should seek accommodation with the Soviet Union.  Firstly, the budding neoconservatives did not trust the Soviet Union to honor the terms and spirit of détente.  Secondly, the future Vulcans did not believe American power was ebbing.  They thought the United States was the most powerful country in the world, and as such, need not reach accommodations with anyone else.  To counter the Soviets, the Vulcans advocated buttressing America’s dominant international position with a military buildup, restoring and surpassing the might and prestige the American military had before Vietnam.

For this goal, the Vulcans struggled against Kissinger in the administrations of President Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, slowly eroding Kissinger’s influence as the years passed.  The election of Democratic President Jimmy Carter placed this battle between Republican moderates and hawks into stasis, but the subsequent Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan saw victory for the anti-détente forces.  Kissinger and his policies of accommodation were out.  The future Vulcans, including neoconservatives who had been Democrats but defected to the Republicans because they considered Carter weak on Communism, were in.

The 1980’s saw the neoconservative ideas put into practice:  Reagan massively increased the American military budget.  At first, the Reagan administration displayed no interest in reaching deals with the Soviets.  Indeed, Reagan dismissed the USSR as an “Evil Empire.”  Reagan might have seemed to betray the neoconservatives when he negotiated with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, but Reagan did not soften his rhetoric about the Soviet Union.  In addition, Reagan did not proceed from an assumption the United States was weakening and so needed to reach an accord with the Soviets.  Instead, Reagan dealt with Gorbachev from a position of strength, given to him by a preeminent American military.  One could say Reagan followed neoconservatism to a natural end by seeking a just peace with the Soviet Union on American terms, an endeavor partially enabled by America’s colossal military strength.

After the Cold War, the United States found itself the one superpower in the world.  The Vulcans wanted to ensure the permanency of America’s supreme worldwide influence.  They believed the United States should not downsize its military, in order to cash in on a post-Cold War “peace dividend,” but enhance its military strength and expand its military capabilities so much, no other group of nations could hope to match the American military.  Any such enterprise would not be affordable or feasible for foreign nations or alliances.  With its unchallengeable military domination, the United States would always be able to ensure its ideas held sway in the international realm.  And it would not have to cooperate or compromise with anyone.  The United States could unilaterally prosecute its foreign policy objectives.  This neoconservative strategy for Pax America evoked condemnation from the American left when it became public, but the Democratic administration of President William J. Clinton did not substantially deviate from the course the neoconservatives had set for the post-Cold War United States.

With the current Republican administration of President George W. Bush, the Vulcans are back in power (excepting Powell and Armitage, who left office after Bush’s first term).  In the War on Terror, the neoconservatives have profoundly impacted American foreign policy, using the war as a test bed for their Pax Americana stratagem of using the military to solve the nation’s foreign policy difficulties, without recognizing constraints other international actors have sought to place on us.  The United States has refused to negotiate with governments it views as enemies in the War on Terror.  Americans have just issued demands, such as surrender Osama bin Laden or cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors, after which the American military attacked countries that did not comply.  In the process, the United States has eschewed the military aid of its allies, such as NATO.  The United States went so far as to shrug off international opposition to the war in Iraq.

I believe The Rise of the Vulcans superbly explains how the Vulcans wedded themselves to neoconservatism.  Readers get to know much about the Vulcans whom James Mann describes, as well as the neoconservative philosophy of foreign policy.  This allows readers to understand better why the Bush foreign policy advisers behave as they do.  Thankfully, Mann’s swift and cogent prose makes achieving this understanding easy and fun.  If Mann were a historian or political scientist, excess verbiage and ponderous explanation likely would have made reading The Rise of the Vulcans a chore.  But Mann’s writing benefits from his experience as a journalist, I think, which would have taught Mann to craft his writing for maximum readability.

The neoconservative ideology Mann describes scares me, to be honest.  While I agree with the neoconservative strategy against the determined foe that was the Soviet Union, I oppose their vision for a post-Cold War Pax Americana, a.k.a. an American Empire.  To any who would object to that characterize, I ask, how else could one label a country that uses its military to achieve foreign policy results, while concurrently aiming for supremacy over the international system and striving to ignore the preferences of other countries?  That is not the United States of which the Founding Fathers conceived in 1776 and 1789.

Do not misunderstand me: Even today, I support a powerful military.  I am not a dove; I even thought the idea, at least, of invading Iraq and toppling the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was appropriate.  But I must oppose as “imperial” efforts to use the military to impose Pax Americana on the world and to act without consideration of our allies or the international institutions we helped forge after World War II.

Bibliography

Mann, James.  The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet.  New York: Penguin Books, 2004.

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Yet in his seminal work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville says, “I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.” [1]

How could this be the case, in light of the factors that Americans think make them free? The answer, according to Tocqueville, is that the very rule by the majority which Americans believe aids their liberty, instead subjects it to dire peril.

In the United States, nothing exists outside the majority to curtail its influence, says Tocqueville. The majority possesses command of everything. American society holds the needs and wants of the many above the few or the one. This stems from the American belief that the most wisdom lies with the greatest number of people; after all, if everyone has equal intellectual capacity, then whatever the most people think must be correct. For the Americans of Tocqueville’s depiction, the majority simply cannot fail.

Even those Americans who fall outside the majority fall to its will without much difficulty because Americans are equal to each other, without class distinctions. What the majority wants, most minorities can therefore swallow. Besides which, many Americans outside the majority hope someday their group will become the majority, so they recognize the majority’s right to rule as it would.

By Tocqueville’s reckoning, this makes the American majority, in a word, omnipotent. No force can halt or even delay its advance. As a consequence, the majority has no time or even inclination to consider the thoughts and ideas it squashes underfoot. [2]

Boosting the majority’s power is the structure of the legislatures. Each year, elections for the legislatures take place, often sending new representatives with new ideas to the federal capital and the various state capitals. And the legislatures have a lot of power to do what they want. The speed with which the majority selects representatives, and the power those representatives have, gives the majority the ability to enact its every whim on America’s polity. [3]

Tocqueville questions how a system in which the majority rules thusly can be free from despotism. If one man can abuse power, why can a majority not do the same? The character of men, says Tocqueville, does not change just because they are in a group. If a group—the American majority—has power without barriers, power without “time to moderate itself,” then liberty is at substantial risk. No guarantee exists against tyranny. If individuals or minorities suffer oppression, to whom can they appeal? No one, pronounces Tocqueville, for the legislature, the executive, the military, the jury, and sometimes the judiciary are under the dominion of the majority. [4]

The “tyranny of the majority” could surpass that of the absolutist. The absolutist cannot stop thoughts contrary to his own from percolating. His power lies only on the temporal plane; he has no control over mental worlds. When the majority has resolved something, though, discussion of the issue stops, and everyone goes along with the majority’s flow. The majority’s will strikes at the hearts and minds of people, stopping them from contradicting the majority, as well as crushing “the desire to do it.” [5]

Within the American majority, Tocqueville grants that one is free. But outside the majority, one finds unhappiness. A political career is impossible, for one cannot please the “single element of force and success” (i.e. the majority). And when one speaks his mind, against what the majority believes, people abandon him, and he becomes a virtual social leper. His opponents in the majority will not recognize him, nor will those Americans who think as he does, for they lack courage and do not want society to shun them, too. Consequently, one likely will surrender to the majority, and one will shut his mouth as if he is sorry he ever opened it.

This estrangement the majority bestows upon its foes assaults their very souls. This is how the majority’s tyranny can outclass that of the absolutist, whose weapons harm only the body while leaving the spirit intact. [6]

Unlike some of the aristocracies of Europe, the American majority will not allow observers to make the slightest fun of it. Writers must extol the virtues of the majority, and they can never criticize it.

“The majority, therefore,” says Tocqueville, “lives in perpetual adoration of itself.”

Tocqueville concludes, “There is no freedom of mind in America.” Whereas the Spanish Inquisition could not stop the circulation of books of which the monarchy disapproved, the American majority has no need even to try such a thing, for the very thought of publishing books contrary to the majority never occurs. Whoever is outside the American mainstream can find no device with which to spread his views and opinions. [7]

Another reason why Americans have no freedom of mind is their tendency, more than others, to accept dogma. Tocqueville concedes that everyone on the planet believes a fair share of dogma, which is evil because it makes one an intellectual slave, but necessary because otherwise one could not consider anything closely, as he would be too busy trying to prove everything. Americans enslave themselves to dogma to a frightening extent, however, according to Tocqueville.

This spawns from the American assumption everyone has more or less equal knowledge. With this notion in mind, an individual feels weak in comparison to a multitude of people; each of them is intellectually equal to him, so the combined wisdom of the mass must dwarf his own. This permits the mass—the American majority—to force its beliefs into his mind and the mind of everyone else.

The majority in this way does not persuade anyone of anything. It merely force-feeds people ready-made opinions, relieving them of the burden of constructing their own beliefs. This seriously compromises any chance of intellectual liberty or independent thought, says Tocqueville. [8]

The American majority’s control over the United States leads American historians to emphasize general causes of events. Individuals do not receive much attention. As a result, many folks start to think individual action is not voluntary. Instead, they think large forces that affect millions of people control their destinies. Scholars focus on how events came to be, and they do not think of how things could have gone otherwise. Essentially, free will itself comes into doubt. [9]

Despite all of the reasons Tocqueville cited for the rule of the majority constituting a tyranny, freedom still exists somewhat in the United States because it lacks administrative centralization. The majority can command all it wants, but to carry out its commands, the majority must use executors “who often do not depend on it, and whom it cannot direct at each instant.” Federalism, then, saves the Americans from descending into majoritarian dictatorship. It can “delay or divide” the will of the majority, sapping it of its full strength. [10]

[2] Ibid., 235-237.

[3] Ibid., 238-239.

[4] Ibid., 240-241.

[5] Ibid., 243.

[6] Ibid., 244-245.

[7] Ibid., 245.

[8] Ibid., 408-410.

[9] Ibid., 469, 471-472,

[10] Ibid., 250-251.

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These advocacies of violence for one’s own selfish ends are not Machiavelli’s only breaks with the teachings of ancient philosophy and Christianity. Machiavelli also put forth a conception of the world whereby no natural order exists. God or luck is not around to guide the world or anyone on it. Humans and their own initiative are responsible for shaping and changing the world. Consequently, if one wants to acquire anything, one must fashion or achieve it himself, without relying on divine providence or luck.¹

Agathocles the Sicilian, King of Syracuse, whom Machiavelli describes in the middle of The Prince, is a paragon of Machiavellian philosophy.

This man was born of non-royal lineage to poor parents; his father was only a potter. Agathocles lived a lifetime of crime, but his sins were of “such virtue of spirit and body” that he rose through the ranks of the military to become praetor of Syracuse. And then, Agathocles decided he wanted to become Syracuse’s leader. He naturally sought to achieve this goal with the same criminal methods that brought him to prominence in the military.

After warning Hamilcar the Carthaginian, a general fighting in Sicily, what he was planning, Agathocles summoned the senators and populace ostensibly for a discussion of important public issues. But when everyone had gathered, Agathocles commanded his soldiers to slaughter all the senators and wealthiest people of Syracuse. With them then dead, Agathocles took control of the city as its prince.

Despite the brutality of Agathocles’s rise to power, however, there was nary a public complaint about the affair. Agathocles was secure in his position during his reign as well.²

This all demonstrates the Machiavellian principle that violence and criminality are the means by which one obtains power. “To kill one’s citizens, betray one’s friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion” are not ethical, says Machiavelli, but they constitute the path to empire and dominion. So any overlord who employs these methods is not the inferior of any other leader.³

One might think this is nonsensical, for violent actions do not inspire love, and are not good leaders ones who are loved? Machiavelli contends this is not true. Love relies on “a chain of obligation,” that men will break because they are evil. Therefore, a prince who must use a people’s love for him to rule lives upon a shaky foundation. Also, seeking love paradoxically inspires hatred, because funding beneficent works for some people requires either taking property from other people or financing the works oneself. The latter makes one poor, and ergo weak and contemptible. And the former enrages those from whom money must be taken.

Instead, says Machiavelli, inspiring fear within one’s subjects is the better course of action. If the people fear their leader, they shall retain that fear into perpetuity, rather than forgetting it as they do love when convenience strikes. The violence that instills this fear will not cause a country to hate its leader, either. The prince need only take care to show justification for his endeavors, and to refrain from touching men’s property and women. After all, Machiavelli proclaims, “Men forget the death of a father more quickly than the loss of a patrimony.” (This ties into why taxation to fund good works, in the pursuit of love, instills hatred instead.)⁴

Additionally, to avoid hatred, a leader must ensure he commits most of his atrocities swiftly as he is assuming power. This is necessary “to secure oneself.” Afterwards, the prince should discontinue routine violence and only use it for “utility for the subjects.” Otherwise, if cruelties persist, one’s people will not feel secure, and so they will despise their leader.⁵

Agathocles demonstrated Machiavelli’s philosophy of violence very well. He wrested supreme power for himself with a swift flash of brutality. But he refrained from seizing anyone’s property, and his thirst for blood did not run rampant during his administration. This is why, according to Machiavellian values, the people of Syracuse feared Agathocles but did not hate him. Consequently, Agathocles gained and kept power without significant opposition.

Another Machiavellian principle Agathocles showed during his seizure of power was caution of the aristocracy. The rich always scheme for more possessions and more control, says Machiavelli. Whereas “the people want not to be oppressed,” the aristocrats “want to oppress.” Should any opportunity arise, “the great” as Machiavelli calls them, will betray their leader for their own gain.⁶ Thus, when Agathocles executed the richest citizens of Syracuse, he eliminated what could have been a threat to his rule, as per Machiavellian guidelines.

Machiavelli also emphasizes relying on oneself, instead of on fortune or on other people. Fortune, after all, does not exist; humans are the makers of their own fates. And other individuals are wicked schemers who will take advantage of one’s reliance on them.⁷ The only force or person, on which one can depend, is oneself.

Agathocles receives praise from Machiavelli for his self-reliance. Agathocles did not rely on anyone’s help as he rose to power. Instead, he climbed through the ranks of the military by his own efforts, experiencing “a thousand trials and hardships.” After Agathocles staged his coup d’etat, he maintained his rule himself through “many spirited and dangerous policies.” He did not depend on others or on any public love of him.⁸

He also did not rely on luck when, into his reign, the Carthaginians twice defeated him in battle and eventually laid siege to Syracuse itself. Instead, Agathocles took the initiative to defend his city, and turn the tide of the war against Carthage. While keeping some troops in Syracuse to withstand the Carthaginian siege, Agathocles slipped out of Syracuse with the rest of his men and assailed Africa, where Carthage stood. Agathocles beat Carthage on its own soil, thereby freeing Syracuse and forcing the Carthaginians to concede Sicily to him.⁹

² Ibid., 34-35, 37.

³ Ibid., 35.

⁴ Ibid., 63-65, 66-68.

⁵ Ibid., 38.

⁶ Ibid., 39-40.

⁷ Ibid., 66-67.

⁸ Ibid., 35.

⁹ Ibid., 35.

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This oath to believe in God and act according to his principles comes from Zoroastrian scripture, a representative of the millennia-old literature of Persia. Despite its age, scholars have not examined Persian literature to any great degree. Many of its few extant remains lay spread across the Earth, residing in public and private hands, improperly inventoried or even unrecorded. Those receive at best incomplete supplementation from meager references in the writings of Greek, Latin, and Arabic authors. Therefore, in combination with their own scarcity, students of Persian literature have yet to construct a whole model of ancient Persian literary works.²

The first written Persian literature appears in Pahlavi, the language of Persia under the Sasanian dynasty, rulers of Iran from 226 to 651 AD.³ Pahlavi spawned from Old Persian, the only traces of which are rock inscriptions commanded by Darius the Great and later Archaemenian kings, and it evolved into Modern Persian. The Pahlavi literature scholars know about today compares to the Bible’s Old Testament in size and deals largely with religion and liturgy.⁴

As it did on the Arabian Peninsula,⁵ poetry also held importance in Persia. When Iranian poetry arose is uncertain, but a legend from the famous Iranian poet Firdausi places its invention at around 3000 BC, during the reign of King Jamshid in Iran’s Golden Age. Two types of poetry existed at first: the ballad and the epic. The ballad, which tells a story, eventually begot the lyric, the hymn, the satire, and the panegyric. The epic, a longer storytelling mechanism, of which The Shah-Namah by Firdausi is an example, likely derived from the ballad as well. In the modern era, nothing remains of the first ballads, nor of any “love poetry” artists might have created. Heretofore-mentioned Zoroastrian scripture comprises the first Persian poetry on record.⁶

Zoroaster, from whom Zoroastrianism takes its name, resided in either northwestern Iran around 600 BC,⁷ or in eastern Iran around 1400 BC,⁸ depending upon the source. Wherever Zoroaster originally lived, the teachings of “one of the great religious leaders of the East”⁹ soon spread throughout Persia.¹⁰ Zoroaster told of a Dualistic world where good and evil dominate; leading the forces of good is Ahura Mazda, or Ormazd,¹¹ the “lord of wisdom, the one, eternal, uncreated, good, wise, and munificent god.”¹² Commanding the forces of evil is Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman. Good and evil will struggle against each other until the end of the present world, when Ahriman will fail, as men, with their free will, choose good, banish evil, and bring vohu hsapra, or paradise.

Meanwhile, before the coming of paradise, Ormazd describes the actions of humans in his “life-book,” which Ormazd will use to determine people’s judgments upon death. Men who have lived well will cross the Cinvat Bridge into heaven, and men who have lived poorly will experience the torture of hell or the wait for ultimate decision in purgatory.¹³ During their lives, humans should pray before “the life-giving force” that is fire. This is not fire worship, as many have erroneously assumed, but worship of God via the fire.¹⁴

Enjoying some of its greatest influence 1,000 years before the rise of Christianity as the state religion of the Archaemenian kings, Zoroastrianism faltered after Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 333 BC and destroyed many of its holy books. Following the Mesopotamian invasion came a dark age of 550 years, in which any literary or religious activity that might have occurred left no trace, either in poetry or in prose.¹⁵ With the coming of the Sasanian dynasty, though, Persian religion and literature restarted. After ousting the Parthians in 229 AD, the Sasanians revived Iranian traditions that had lapsed into disuse.¹⁶ Pahlavi prose evidence reveals a rebirth of Iranian poetry, recording that even two Sasanian kings were poets. One king, Bahram Gur (420 to 438 AD), allegedly created the Persian rhyming couplet while lion hunting with his gorgeous lover, Dilaram.¹⁷

In the spiritual realm, the Sasanians revived Zoroastrianism as the religion of state once more. This time, however, the Sasanians instituted a church hierarchy, similar to that of the Byzantine Christian church. The priests who comprised this hierarchy were the Magi, who had already established themselves as Zoroastrian adepts before the Sasanian dynasty. (Some of these Magi, according to Christian theology, were the Wise Men who witnessed the birth of Jesus Christ.) The Magi maintained the prayer fires and helped people make sense of the myriad forces of light and darkness on Earth.¹⁸

Zoroastrianism prevailed in Iran until the Muslims conquered it in 651 AD. Despite their respect for other monotheistic religions, the Muslims henceforth suppressed worship of Ormazd. To escape oppression, some Zoroastrians ran for India, while a few others elected to weather Muslim discontent and remain in Iran. Remnants of these Zoroastrian groups, known as Parsis, still exist today, and only through them has the modern world learned about Zoroastrianism and its scriptures.¹⁹

The main component of those scriptures is the Avesta, the “bible and prayer book” of the Zoroastrians.²⁰ Though it debuted sometime afterwards, the Avesta’s meter bears similarity to that of the Indian Vedas.²¹ Avistak, the Pahlavi word from which Avesta probably comes, means “wisdom, knowledge, the book of knowledge” or “the original text, the scripture, the law.”²² Appearing throughout the Avesta are bits and pieces of poetry, which though few, prove the utilization of poetic expression in Iran at least 3,000 years ago.²³

The language in which the Zoroastrians constructed the Avesta takes its name from the work: Avestic. It is a sister language of Old Persian and Sanskrit, and therefore, in spite of its manifestations in Pashto, it is not an ancestor of Modern Persian.²⁴ What actual script Avestic might have used is a mystery, because Alexander’s Macedonians ruined most of the original books, and the Sasanians wrote down the Avesta in Pahlavi when they recorded it from their oral tradition. In this Pahlavi text, instead of reading the Avesta from left to right, as a Westerner would, one reads it “from right to left.”²⁵

Several divisions form the Avesta. The oldest part, the Gathas, likely promulgated from Zoroaster himself. Other sections came later, as subsequent generations of Zoroastrians, up to the Sasanians, worked on and added to the Avesta.²⁶ An example of the newer sections is the Yashts, which contained poetry, interspersed with prose, proclaiming the virtues of several demigods, heroes, and powers. Octosyllabic meter formation, a la the Kalevala verse from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” characterized the Yashts’ poetry. The language of the Yashts is younger than that of the Gathas, but the Yashts are poetically and religiously older,²⁷ featuring polytheistic notions and other religious principles antedating Zoroaster.²⁸ The tenth Yasht, for instance, praises a figure from early Iranian mythology, Mithra, who observes and helps men, sparks battles, and dispenses justice.²⁹

The Avesta would remain unknown to most of the world but for the Parsis, individuals who continued their Zoroastrian ways after the Muslim seizure of Persia, and who thus preserved the Avesta through the generations. These Parsis, in the middle of the 18^th century, introduced Westerners to the Avesta, exposing them for the first time to a native and contemporary source about early Iranian literature and thought. This allowed scholars to begin serious research of Persian literature and religion.³⁰

Effects of that Persian religion and literature continue to reverberate across the globe. Modern monotheistic religion, still the primary driving force behind geopolitical events, has borrowed extensively from Persian Zoroastrianism, with, amongst other examples, the Muslims appropriating the concept of an “unbegotten” God,³¹ and the Christians copying the notion of a purgatory.³² While in Babylonia’s captivity, the Jews interacted frequently with the Persians, likely adopting, or at least considering, some of their ideas, which in turn passed to their monotheistic progeny.³³ The physical remains of Zoroastrianism and early Persian literary and religious thought might be few—only scraps of manuscripts³⁴ and 140,000 Parsis exist³⁵—but their influence will exert itself for millennia to come.

² Yu. E. Borshchevsky and Yu. E. Bregel, “The Preparation of a Bio-Bibliographical Survey of Persian Literature,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (April 1972): 169.

³ Williams A. V. Jackson, Early Persian Poetry from the Beginnings Down to the Time of Firdausi (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920): 2; Williams A. V. Jackson, An Avesta Grammar in Comparison with Sanskrit (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1892): xxxi; and Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, Volume II (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1951): 3.

⁴ Browne, 3.

⁵ Dr. Mohammed Sharafuddin, lectures at The George Washington University.

⁶ Jackson, Early Persian Poetry, 1, 2, 6.

⁷ Ibid., 2.

⁸ Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair, Islam: A Thousand Years of Faith and Power (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2002), 22.

⁹ Jackson, Avesta, xi.

¹⁰ Jackson, Early Persian Poetry, 2.

¹¹ Jackson, Avesta, xxiv.

¹² Bloom and Blair, 22.

¹³ Jackson, Avesta, xxiv, xxviii.

¹⁴ Bloom and Blair, 22-23.

¹⁵ Browne, 3.

¹⁶ William D. Whitney, “On the Avesta, or the Sacred Scriptures of the Zoroastrian Religion,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 5 (1855-1856): 341.

¹⁷ Jackson, Early Persian Poetry, 8.

¹⁸ Bloom and Blair, 23.

¹⁹ Jackson, Early Persian Poetry, 14, and Avesta, xi.

²⁰ Jackson, Avesta, xi.

²¹ Jackson, Early Persian Poetry, 4.

²² Jackson, Avesta, xi.

²³ Jackson, Early Persian Poetry, 6.

²⁴ Browne, 3.

²⁵ Jackson, Avesta, xxxi.

²⁶ Ibid., xxiii, xxix.

²⁷ Jackson, Early Persian Poetry, 4-5.

²⁸ Ilya Gershevitch, “Zoroaster’s Own Contribution,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 23 (January 1964): 14.

²⁹ Jackson, Early Persian Poetry, 5.

³⁰ Whitney, 340-341.

³¹ Dr. Sharafuddin.

³² Kevin Knight, “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Purgatory” <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm>, 21 March 2003.

³³ Jackson, Avesta, xxx.

³⁴ Borshchevsky and Bregel, 169

³⁵ “Zoroastrianism and Avesta: Overview and FAQ” <http://www.avesta.org/zfaq.html>, 30 March 2003.

Thus Spoke Zoroaster is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Three-and-a-half centuries ago, a very similar man wrought his influence on politics, both in England and in America. His name was Hugh Peters, and he shared Reagan’s ability to captivate and persuade the masses, with simple directness and descriptive metaphors.¹ Hugh,² too, received the appreciative approbation of his friends and the intense scorn of his foes. His enemies despised him so much they executed him, after which they wrote biting parodies of his viewpoints, such as The Tales and Jests of Hugh Peters, and slanderous biographies of his life, such as England’s Shame by William Yonge.³

Hugh Peters entered life in May or June, 1598, at Fowey, Cornwall,⁴ a county that occupies a peninsula on England’s southwest corner.⁵ Cornwall has a different past from the rest of England: even after the Saxons had long since established control elsewhere in England, the Cornish peninsula remained under the dominion of the Celts. Only in the tenth century AD did the Saxons take Cornwall, and even following the Saxons’ conquest, Cornish assimilation into greater English society occurred but slowly. In 1200 AD, 200 years after the Norman Conquest, Celtic culture still pervaded Cornwall, with the marked absence of big urban centers, the broad disbursement of its population, and the lingering predominance of its native language, Cornish. As of the 1640’s, the decade of the English Civil War, the majority of Cornwall’s residents west of the town of Truro continued to speak Cornish.

Cornwall’s early modern economy based itself upon something an industry unique to the peninsula, which no other region in the known world, much less England, possessed: tin mining. Even fishermen and farmers toiled in the mines during times of economic hardship. Tin mining exacted a harsh toll on workers, and for their difficult labor, the workers earned relatively little money. Presiding over the tin mining areas, and administering law and order, were not standard courts, but royal Stanneries that did not fall under the jurisdiction of normal English laws. Tin mining and Stanneries tied the Cornish together, so that the common inhabitants of the English-speaking East felt more loyalty to their counterparts in the Cornish-speaking West than to Englishmen in other counties.

Because of Cornwall’s societal and physical isolation from the rest of England, intermarriage amongst the Cornish happened often. A saying goes, “All Cornish gentlemen are cousins.” From 1509 to 1640, between 70 and 80 percent of weddings involving lowly ranking Cornish gentlemen were to Cornish wives, and the commoners intermarried yet more often. But the most highly ranking Cornish gentlemen, who often fulfilled such roles as justice of the peace, deputy lieutenant, and sheriff, did not partake of the rampant intermarriage, preferring to marry spouses outside the county, rather than choose fellow Cornish who gripped the lower rungs of the social ladder.

Upper gentry deviated from Cornish norms in other ways, too. They enjoyed more money and more education, and they possessed more interest in issues affecting all England. All the upper gentry spoke English, and many higher gentlemen in the East went so far as to despise Cornish. The Eastern gentry had assimilated themselves the most into English culture, and their religion was the most liberal, as opposed to the conservatism with which most Cornish beheld religion.⁶ Naturally, the Eastern gentry would have felt more kinship with English elsewhere than with their Cornish neighbors.

Enter Hugh’s parents, whom he deemed “considerable.”⁷ Hugh’s mother, nee Treffey, descended from the gentry family who governed the Eastern parish to which Fowey belonged. And Hugh’s father, whose Dutch ancestors had fled to England from Antwerp in 1543, because of persecution for their “reformed” Protestant religion, worked as a merchant.⁸ Having upper Eastern Cornish gentry maternal ancestors, and Dutch paternal ancestors, Hugh lacked connections to the vast majority of other Cornishmen, who would overwhelmingly support King Charles I during the English Civil War, whereas Hugh and the numerically few Eastern gentry would support Parliament.⁹

Spending his childhood immersed in the successful merchant community, instead of the impoverished tin mining families, Hugh developed an interest in trade, especially that of New England, and particularly that in fish. Later emphasizing to Hugh the importance of healthy commerce, and inspiring within him a utilitarian perspective of life that valued business acumen, was financial misfortune Hugh’s family suffered after losing cargo at sea. As a result of their monetary decline, Hugh’s family had actually become poor by the time they sent him to Cambridge University in 1613.¹⁰

While Hugh was attending Cambridge, his tutor passed away, leaving 14-year-old Hugh “exposed to my shifts.”¹¹ The newly master-less teenager, according to Royalists writing after his death, then became what English society at the timed feared: a sinful, dishonest, and promiscuous young man. Cambridge authorities supposedly flogged and expelled Hugh for his dissolute immorality. That, however, would have been news to Hugh, who received his BA from Cambridge in 1618.¹²

Even though Hugh matriculated at Cambridge at the same time as several notable Puritans, such as Thomas Goodwin, and most likely interacted with them, Hugh apparently did not adopt their ways of thinking. That happened two years after Hugh graduated from Cambridge, in 1620.¹³ Hugh heard a minister preaching from the text “The Burden of Dumah” at St. Paul’s in London, and then, “God struck me with the sense of my sinful estate.”¹⁴ Hugh awakened to the cause of Puritan religion, becoming a deacon in 1621. Hugh returned to Cambridge for his MA in 1622, and in the latter part of that year, he spent a few months in London, listening to the sermons of the Puritans Davenport, Gouge, and Sibbes. The next year, in 1623, the Bishop of London licensed Hugh as a priest, a short time after which the Earl of Warwick appointed Hugh as curator of the Holy Trinity Church in Rayleigh, Essex.¹⁵

During his stay in Essex, Hugh completed his conversion to Puritanism after listening to the words of Thomas Hooker, another Puritan divine¹⁶ (who would eventually, in America, defend the right of the people to elect their own representatives).¹⁷ After preaching in Rayleigh for a few years, Hugh in 1625 wedded a “good gentlewoman,” a widower named Elizabeth Reade, who brought with her an income of 200-300 pounds annually. Hugh’s new step-daughter by virtue of this marriage was the wife of John Winthrop, Jr., with whom Hugh would become a friend.¹⁸

In 1626, assisted by his new money,¹⁹ Hugh ventured to London, not to preach, but to study religion further. Some of Hugh’s friends, though, persuaded him to preach one time at St. Sepulcher’s Church; a “young man” in attendance, whom Hugh said was an MP, offered to arrange for Hugh 30 pounds yearly if he would preach at St. Sepulcher’s once a month.²⁰ Hugh agreed to do so, and his sermons eventually attracted so many devotees as to necessitate weekly appearances.²¹ A hundred per sermon Hugh claimed to convert to Puritanism. Hugh achieved so much success, he said, that others experienced “envy and anger.”²²

That might just be rationalization for what happened shortly thereafter. In November of 1626, the Earl of Warwick invited Hugh to preach at Christ Church. On the pulpit, Hugh prayed that the Queen abandon her Catholic religion, lest she die for her sinful practices. Subsequently, the authorities imprisoned Hugh, but Warwick paid bail to release him. His brush with jail did not deter Hugh, for he then prayed again, at St. Sepulcher’s, that the Queen forswear Catholicism. Hugh thusly won a six-month holiday in New Prison, without the possibility of bail. Once Hugh had finished his sentence, the Bishop of London revoked his preaching license, ignoring Hugh’s protestations of loyalty to the Church of England. Despite having no license, Hugh resumed preaching anyway, at his old Rayleigh church, for the rector and the wardens weren’t cognizant of Hugh’s expulsion from the ministry. Hugh justified his defiance of the Church’s commands and doctrines, while simultaneously professing loyalty to it, by insisting he was loyal to the true Church of England, the core of it, if not to its current wretched façade.

Meanwhile, throughout the 1620’s, Hugh engaged in other activities aside from preaching to advance the Puritan cause. He helped to fund lay appropriations, whereby Puritans purchased church ministries throughout England for Puritan preachers to occupy. Also, in May 1628, Hugh bought 50 pounds of stock in the New England Company, which eventually changed into the Massachusetts Bay Company.²³ Presumably from his participation in this enterprise, Hugh knew John White of Dorchester, whom Hugh called, “That good man, my dear firm friend.”²⁴

In the late 1620’s, because of “some trouble” (likely his confrontations with Church officials), Hugh journeyed to Holland. Once there, Hugh adhered to the army of United Provinces Stadholder Frederick Henry, who practiced the religion for which Hugh’s paternal ancestors suffered oppression, but tolerated other Protestant religions as well. Frederick’s forces included four English regiments; Hugh became the chaplain of the regiment under the command of Sir Edward Hardwood. Hugh accompanied Hardwood’s regiment through several battles, while also learning the virtues of the tolerant Protestantism Frederick espoused.

Hugh departed the Stadholder’s army in winter 1631 to attend the Convention of Protestant Estates at Leipzig, which Gustavus Adolphus had organized. The Convention’s purpose was to mobilize the various Protestant churches against Roman Catholicism, but the divide between Calvinists and Lutherans proved too great for the sects to cohere into a large Protestant alliance. But the Convention did provide Hugh yet another outlet to demonstrate his commitment to the worldwide struggle against Catholics.²⁵

Following the Convention of Protestant Estates, Hugh Peters accepted in 1632 the ministry of an English church in Rotterdam. Under Hugh’s guidance, his congregation accepted ideas in which the future Independents would believe. In addition, Hugh displayed his tolerant leanings by refusing to shun the Brownists, of whom many English religious figures disapproved. Neither of these activities pleased the Church of England, which was, with Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud at the forefront, at this time attempting to establish control over English churches in the Netherlands. Facing harassment from the Laudians, Hugh left the Continent.²⁶

Upon the advice of some of his Puritan friends in New England, Hugh resolved to sail to America.²⁷ After evading Laud’s minions in England with great difficulty, Hugh boarded a ship bound for Massachusetts in July 1635. Accompanying Hugh on this adventure were, amongst other passengers, Sir Henry Vane, the son of a privy councilor, and John Winthrop, Jr., the husband of Hugh’s stepdaughter.

The men found a colony suffering from economic depression and political division. Hugh drew on his experience and fascination with trade and finance to help Massachusetts improve its economy, by urging its inhabitants to focus on commercial endeavors, such as shipbuilding and fishing, instead of on agriculture, as the colonists had been doing. In order to ameliorate the political discord, which Hugh loathed, he worked with Vane to set up a “reconciliation meeting” of myriad factions in November 1635. Hugh sat on a committee to revise Massachusetts law as well, aiming to help reduce “legal disputes.” A year after his arrival, in December 1636, Hugh replaced Roger Williams as minister at Salem, and fairly quickly ended the conflict Williams had engendered…²⁸ if only by excommunicating Williams and having one of his followers killed so everyone in Salem would be too scared to challenge their former preacher’s expulsion or their new preacher’s doctrine.²⁹

Around the same time, Hugh also seemed to flout his own principles of Protestant toleration in a confrontation with Ms. Anne Hutchinson. Hutchinson had formulated three levels of Christian progression, beginning with “nature and instinct,” proceeding to “law and human reason,” and concluding with “spirit, grace, and divine reason.” According to Hutchinson, many people who occupy the second stage mistakenly presume themselves to inhabit the third stage; one of those individuals, said Hutchinson, was Hugh Peters. Hugh, in turn, labeled Hutchinson’s beliefs heresy, that would encourage worshipers to ignore the words of God, thus exhibiting “devil-inspired individualism.” As of December 1636, though, Hutchinson’s followers paid no attention to what Hugh and his compatriots had to say.

Consequently, in May 1637, Hugh played an integral role in castigating and expelling Hutchinson and her top devotees from Massachusetts. Hugh perceived little contradiction between his actions vis-à-vis Hutchinson and Williams followers, and his ostensible tolerance of other Protestant viewpoints. Tolerance, to Hugh, did not extend to those he considered subversives trying to foment discord and disagreement. Also, because in Hugh’s mind, New England was a more perfect godly society than old England, displaying more intolerance in Massachusetts was acceptable. Elsewhere, where the godly had not established as much control, Hugh’s utilitarian expediency demanded more toleration. And, even if a slight contradiction did exist between his actions in America and in Europe, Hugh believed God might lead people to do inconsistent things, to shape a consistent larger picture.³⁰ Of course, that philosophy would have granted Hugh license to do essentially anything he wanted, but Hugh did not acknowledge that.

A few years after the business with Hutchinson and Williams, on August 3, 1641, Hugh departed Massachusetts to return to England, with the mission of assisting with creditors, encouraging the West Indies cotton trade, jumpstarting migration to Massachusetts, and helping the Puritan cause any way he could. When he arrived in his home country, Hugh discovered a nation in strife, the English Civil War just beginning.³¹ With godly fears of a Catholic attack from Ireland permeating the religious atmosphere after the outbreak of an Irish rebellion³² on October 23, 1641, Hugh abandoned his position as colony representative and signed on as chaplain to a parliamentary force heading for Ireland, which Hugh determined, “The clearest work.” Hugh’s intention was to do everything he could to “Christianize and civilize the Irish.”

Ultimately, though, Hugh’s stint in Ireland did not last long enough to effect any sort of mass Irish conversion, for the parliamentary force stayed in Ireland only from June to September 1642, achieving little success. Hugh still professed worry over the plight of Protestants in Ireland, however, and he preached his concern to his fellow Englishmen. Finally, in November 1646, Parliament assigned Hugh to organize supplies and troops destined for Ireland. His good performance of that task recommended Hugh for the mission of arranging materiel for Oliver Cromwell’s expedition to Ireland in 1649, to subdue the Irish rebellion completely. After finishing his initial assignment, Hugh then joined Cromwell’s army in Ireland as a chaplain and an advisor to Cromwell. Hugh suggested that Cromwell prosecute the war mercilessly, engaging in an archaic shock-and-awe campaign to persuade the Irish to lay down their arms, thus potentially ending the conflict more quickly.

Hugh’s work in Ireland, though, was but a small portion of his contribution to the parliamentary cause during the English Civil War; for most of the conflict, he occupied himself in England. On April 29, 1644, Hugh Peters went to the Committee of Both Kingdoms. Soon afterwards, Hugh joined the army of his old friend, the Earl of Warwick, as a chaplain. When the winds of war began blowing against Parliament, Hugh made preparations to flee England, but when Parliament’s fortunes increased, Hugh started propagandizing for Parliament throughout the country, via his passionate and persuasive sermons. Hugh additionally preached to Londoners “against the Reformed Churches, the Presbyterial Government, Assembly, Uniformity, Common Council and City of London and for a toleration of all sects.”³³ Political Independents welcomed Hugh’s efforts, but moderates found him off-putting, and political Presbyterians reviled the man.³⁴

Beginning in October 1645, Hugh performed as chaplain for Oliver Cromwell, commencing a political relationship in which Hugh would, from that time forward, enthusiastically support Cromwell. As a chaplain attached to Cromwell’s unit, Hugh frequently briefed Parliament about the battles in which Cromwell’s forces engaged. Hugh acted, too, at the behest of other generals besides Cromwell; in February 1646, Fairfax sent the Cornish Hugh Peters on a mission to persuade the Royalists in Cornwall not to attack Fairfax’s men. Personally going to Royalist headquarters in Cornwall, Hugh sparked talks that successfully convinced the Cornish Royalists not to assail Fairfax’s army.³⁵

After the first war concluded, Hugh defended the Army’s decision not to disband in his 1647 tract A Word for the Armie, and Two Words for the Kingdom, saying that the Army had not yet received arrears and indemnity and had needed to fight corruption in the House of Commons, and that the Army was still essential to preservation of law and order, and to resolve the Irish troubles. Furthermore, the Army deserved gratitude for winning the war against the King. In answer to concern over some soldiers’ lack of discipline, Hugh explained that lack of pay was the motivation, so compensating the troops for their efforts was necessary.³⁶

Hugh did other things to keep himself busy after the first war as well. Motivated by his lifelong revulsion of disagreement, Hugh said during the 1647 Putney debate that the participants should try to find a subject on which they agreed, after the discussion of voting and representation proved divisive.³⁷ Hugh accompanied Cromwell as chaplain during both the second war and the 1649 Irish campaign, as heretofore described. In what might have sealed his fate after the Restoration, Hugh also propagandized for the King’s death,³⁸ calling him “a dead dog.”³⁹ Hugh was not actually averse to the idea of monarchy—during the first war, he claimed to be fighting for England’s true king, and years afterward, when Cromwell was considering kingship, Hugh was ready to preach in support of a King Oliver I—but the behavior of Charles I led Hugh to resolve he could not fit within a godly system, so he had to die.⁴⁰

Following the King’s execution, Hugh continued to preach, now in Whitehall, on behalf of his friend, the new Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.⁴¹ In March 1654, Cromwell appointed Hugh to a new government group, the Commissioners for the Approbation of Public Preachers, also known as Triers, whose objective was to ensure that preachers applying for open positions were qualified for them. Hugh led the Triers to approve men based on their moral rectitude, not their religious denomination, because for Hugh, morality was what mattered, not theology (at least, when he was in England). Under Hugh’s guidance, the Triers accepted Independents, Presbyterians, Baptists, and, surprisingly, Episcopalians.

When Oliver Cromwell died, Hugh Peters preached at his funeral. “My servant, Moses, is dead,” Hugh proclaimed. Hugh proceeded to support Oliver’s son, Richard Cromwell, as Lord Protector, until his departure at the Restoration. Hugh offered some words of encouragement for the Restoration, but generally withdrew from public life after the ascension of King Charles II.

That did not save from the wrath of the newly empowered Royalists. For many of them, even though Hugh did not personally help execute King Charles I or sign his death warrant, Hugh’s public relations efforts were still quite pernicious, maybe more than the regicide itself.⁴² The Act of Indemnity excluded Hugh,⁴³ and in May 1659, the Royalists put Hugh in jail. On October 12, 1659, Hugh’s trial judge, after denying Hugh legal representation, found Hugh guilty of assisting with the King’s execution, and sentenced Hugh to be “hanged, drawn, and quartered.” A year later, on October 16, 1660,⁴⁴ Hugh perished at Charing Cross.⁴⁵

Throughout his 40 years on the public stage, Hugh Peters sounded one note continuously, both in his speeches and in his writings: the necessity of faith in God. In A Word for the Armie, for example, Hugh suggested that many of the problems England was experiencing had their roots in popular lack of belief in and gratitude towards God. To solve England’s difficulties, Hugh recommended that Englishmen trust in God more, to “manage” England well. The English should also have devoted themselves to God more, because as things stood, “We content ourselves to give him a female when we have a male in the flock.” (Apparently, the concept of equality between the sexes eluded Hugh, not that anyone else in the era was progressive on the matter.) If England’s government were to improve, godly men, obsequious before their Lord, would have to run it.⁴⁶

Hugh’s belief in the need for faith had not changed when, while waiting in the Tower of London for his impending doom, Hugh wrote to his daughter in 1660 A Dying Father’s Last Legacy to an Onely Child. In this text, Hugh unceasingly expounded the wisdom of embracing God and Christ. On the second page, Hugh told his child, “Above all things know, that nothing can do you any good without Union with Christ.” Page 70 found Hugh commanding, “Stand in awe of God, and fear him always; hold to the Word as to Life; Question not Truths… Be very low and humble before the Lord.” Hugh concluded the work with a poem, in which, “I wish you neither Poverty, / nor Riches, / but Godliness…” Of course, Hugh also had to work in a condemnation of Roman Catholicism: “I wish Religion / truly pure may grow, / Above Profaneness and Idolatry, / Which strike to nip it, / and to keep it low…”⁴⁷

A Sermon by Hugh Peters: Preached Shortly before His Death, from 1660 as well, echoed many of the same points. Only Jesus Christ can “give satisfaction to the soul,” said Hugh. Fleeting riches and beauty do not suffice for true happiness, and people who seek those things above all else will never find the peace Christ can bring. Instead, such vain interests comprise “a worm in the gourd that will eat it out.” If a person does not have Christ, Satan will draw him or her into Hell, a fate from which neither money nor friends can offer protection. In order to enjoy the benefits Christ provides, one cannot embrace him only when he is most beneficial; the proposition is all-or-nothing. Mere Gospel will not bring one to Christ, for the “Doctrine of Devils,” such as Catholicism, can stymie it. Only Christians with “sincere affection after Christ,” strong faith from reading Scripture, and humility before God can attract Christ into them. The destiny of everyone else lies in the fires of Hell.⁴⁸

In his writings, Hugh did talk about more than just God. In Last Legacy, he included some autobiographical details towards the end, and he registered sorrow at for his popularity,⁴⁹ which is hardly surprising, considering his notoriety earned him a death sentence. In A Word for the Armie, Hugh made some secular recommendations as to how the English might improve their government. He thought Parliament should make journalists accountable to the state, to prevent “scandalous and slanderous personal affronts,” or if that were impossible, to hold people accountable for what they wrote, for the public would know their names. Paying government officials, so they would not connive for money, also struck Hugh as a good idea. Hugh wanted peaceful relations with other countries, particularly Scotland, and successful resolution of the Irish situation (which came in 1649). Also on Hugh’s agenda were proposals to feed all the English children, institute academies to teach “piety and righteousness,” abolish primogeniture, make prisons more humane, eliminate judicial pageantry, quicken legal proceedings, apportion Parliament seats better, and allow people to ward off tyranny by choosing their own representatives.⁵⁰

Even though few people would know of Hugh Peters today, he was an influential speaker and propagandist in his time. Many of his suggestions for the shape of English government might not have took hold, and his achievements on behalf of Parliament might have been transitory, but some of Hugh’s other accomplishments, such as assisting with the financial rescue of Massachusetts, which could have enabled it to lead a revolution a century later, continue to resonate today. Perhaps contemporary sentiment against Hugh, for the role he played in the execution of King Charles I, has prevented at least semi-popular recognition of him.

¹ J. Max Patrick, Hugh Peters, A Study in Puritanism (Buffalo, New York: University of Buffalo, 1946): 173.

² The normal standard is to use people’s last names when referring to them repeatedly, but “Hugh’s” flows much better than “Peters’s,” so this paper will eschew that tradition, at least in regards to Hugh Peters.

³ Sidney Lee, ed., The Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1909), vol. XV, pp. 957, 961, s. v. Peters, Hugh. Hereafter DNB.

⁴ Patrick, 137.

⁵ Cornishlight, “Cornwall Map Showing Towns and Villages” <http://www.cornishlight.co.uk/cornwall-map.htm>, 29 April 2003.

⁶ M. J. Stoyle, “‘Pagans or Paragons’: Images of the Cornish during the English Civil War,” The English Historical Review 111 (April 1996): 300-302.

⁷ Peters, Hugh, A Dying Father’s Last Legacy to an Onely Child (London: 1660): 97.

⁸ Patrick, 137, and Peters, Last Legacy, 98.

⁹ Stoyle, 299-302.

¹⁰ Patrick, 137.

¹¹ Peters, Last Legacy, 98.

¹² Patrick, 137-138.

¹³ Ibid., 138.

¹⁴ Peters, Last Legacy, 99.

¹⁵ Patrick, 138.

¹⁶ Peters, Last Legacy, 99.

¹⁷ “Hooker, Thomas.” Encylopaedia Britannica. 2003. Encylopaedia Britannica Online. 29 April 2003. <http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=41884>.

¹⁸ Patrick, 138.

¹⁹ Ibid., 139.

²⁰ Peters, Last Legacy, 99-100.

²¹ Patrick, 139.

²² Peters, Last Legacy, 100.

²³ Patrick, 139-140, 192-193.

²⁴ Peters, Last Legacy, 101.

²⁵ Patrick, 140-142.

²⁶ DNB, 955.

²⁷ Peters, Last Legacy, 101.

²⁸ Patrick, 145-147.

²⁹ DNB, 956.

³⁰ Patrick, 148-149, 200-202, 204-205.

³¹ Ibid., 149, 152.

³² Dr. Linda Levy Peck, lecture at The George Washington University, 19 February 2003.

³³ Patrick, 152-156.

³⁴ DNB, 957.

³⁵ Patrick, 156-157.

³⁶ Peters, Hugh, A Word for the Armie, and Two Words for the Kingdom (London: M. Simmons, 1647): 5, 7-8.

³⁷ Andrew Sharp, ed., The English Levellers (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 118-119.

³⁸ Patrick, 153-154, 157, 168, 172.

³⁹ Peters, A Word, 9.

⁴⁰ Patrick, 171-172.

⁴¹ DNB, 960.

⁴² Patrick, 160, 166, 172.

⁴³ Peters, Last Legacy, 106.

⁴⁴ Patrick, 166-167.

⁴⁵ DNB, 961.

⁴⁶ Peters, A Word, 9-10, 14.

⁴⁷ Peters, Last Legacy, 2, 70, 118, 120.

⁴⁸ Peters, Hugh, A Sermon by Hugh Peters: Preached before His Death (London: John Best, 1660): 6-9, 16-22.

⁴⁹ Peters, Last Legacy, 108.

⁵⁰ Peters, A Word, 3, 10-13.

Hugh Peters, a Puritan Preacher is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

I allow the paper as written in 2003 remain on this site, though, as a reminder of the establishment’s folly back then as well as my own.

After the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics sputtered and died, thus ending the Cold War, the bipolar system of world affairs evaporated, leaving a planet unsure of what factors would shape events to come. Harvard University Professor Samuel P. Huntington tries to dispel that uncertainty with his book Clash of Civilizations and Remaking World Order, in which he postulates an Earth on which civilizations, linked by culture and religion, would primarily set the course of international affairs. The civilizations, of which seven or eight exist, will inevitably conflict and compete with each other, as the people of the ever-changing and ever-shrinking world seek assuredness and identity in their own civilization, and disdain and stereotype other civilizations. This conflict and competition might lead to a “clash” between some civilizations, in which the participating civilizations would align against each other in mutual fear and hostility, possibly resulting in horrific warfare and bloodshed that would make no distinction between civilian and soldier. After all, in the epic battle between “us” and “them,” “they” cannot survive, if “we” want to preserve the civilization’s traditions and lifestyles.¹

The Islamist terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, followed by America’s war against Muslim terrorists, prompted some thinkers to ask, has a clash of Western and Islamic civilizations begun?² Subsequent events have shown the answer to be, “No.”

Indeed, many Muslim countries have been quite cooperative with the United States in prosecuting the War on Terror. For example, in the latest phase of the War, the invasion and liberation of Iraq, coalition ground forces (Americans, British, and Australians—all Western) launched their assault from Kuwait.³ Turkey, albeit belatedly, extended overflight rights to coalition planes.⁴ Also participating in American President George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” that supported the American operation in Iraq were the Islamic nations Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan.⁵ Other Muslim states that helped the coalition, by permitting troop basing, were Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Djibouti, and Saudi Arabia.⁶

Because it is the birthplace and holiest land of Islam, Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the United States merits particular notice. The friendship began in February 1945, when American President Franklin D. Roosevelt met Saudi King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud after the Yalta Conference, promising to help protect the Saudis in exchange for cheap oil. That arrangement persists today; as well as assisting with domestic security,⁷ the United States acts as Saudi Arabia’s predominant armament and materiel supplier, equipping the Saudi forces with jets, tanks, and airplanes. In addition, the Americans have stationed over 6,000 military personnel in Saudi Arabia, whose purpose was to defend the kingdom from expansionist Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during and after the Gulf War (though with Saddam gone and Iraq on the path to democracy, the troops will soon have little reason for being there).⁸

The Saudi government demonstrates its appreciation for American military aid by exporting oil to the United States, which gets 1/6 of its petroleum from Saudi Arabia.⁹ Even today, despite OPEC fears that newly available Iraqi oil might potentially create a drop in prices, Saudi officials have not reduced oil shipments.¹⁰ If Saudi participation in the early 1970’s OPEC oil boycott is any indicator, such restraint is not necessarily a given, whatever pact the Americans and the Saudis have.¹¹

As heretofore mentioned, the land of Mecca and Medina has assisted with the War on Terror by allowing American troops destined for Iraq to base there. Also, of course, the Saudis authorized the Americans to direct Operation: Iraqi Freedom from the Prince Sultan Air Base in the middle of the Saudi desert,¹² and they let thousands of American Special Forces troops infiltrate Iraq from their territory, eight hours before the attempted decapitation strike of March 19, 2003.¹³ Before the invasion of Iraq, when the United States was focusing on Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia helped the War by severing relations with the Taliban¹⁴ and by, as in the current endeavor, lending the Americans Prince Sultan Air Base as a command center.¹⁵

If a “clash of civilizations” were occurring between the West and the Muslims, the War on Terror would not enjoy the support it does from several Muslim states, including the home of Mohammed, Saudi Arabia. One could try to counter this argument by noting that millions of Muslims vociferously oppose the War on Terror,¹⁶ and that even within Saudi Arabia, an American ally for over 50 years, many citizens revile the hosting of American soldiers and understand Osama bin Laden’s crusade against the United States.¹⁷ But, as realists would argue, since governments are the primary actors on the international stage,¹⁸ not even a conflict between individual countries, much less between whole civilizations, could take place without their support. And even from the liberal perspective, which assumes the importance of non-state forces,¹⁹ the War on Terror is not a civilizational conflict, because most Muslims’ active dislike of the West, through its representative, the United States, has not translated into the masses becoming terrorists and fighters themselves.²⁰

Furthermore, the residents of Afghanistan and Iraq, both Islamic countries, where the United States has toppled brutal regimes over the course of its War on Terror, received Americans warmly and happily. While the Americans conducted their air campaign against the Taliban, some Afghans helped American Special Forces designate targets by providing the soldiers horses from which to operate their equipment. After the Taliban collapsed, the Afghans celebrated their freedom and thanked their “infidel” liberators.²¹ The Iraqis behaved similarly: they cheered the downfall of President Saddam Hussein’s regime, vandalizing his statues and posters, while expressing their gratitude towards the coalition forces who secured their freedom.²² Now, the Iraqis are working with coalition soldiers to restore law and order within the country.²³

Muslims in Kosovo appreciate the Americans as well. NATO, with the Americans at the forefront, halted Serbian ethnic cleansing against Muslims in Kosovo, and today, in a sign of affection, the American stars-and-stripes fly all over Kosovo. A poster of former American President Bill Clinton six stories tall looms above the capital city’s primary street, Bill Clinton Boulevard. One Kosovar doctor, Besnik Bardhi, gave his daughter the name “Madeleine,” after former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

“If there is a God,” Bardhi proclaims, “his missionaries on Earth are Americans.”

Fondness for Americans runs so strong in Kosovo that, two years ago, after an American troop’s firearm accidentally discharged and killed a young boy, the boy’s father absolved the American of guilt and symbolically welcomed the soldier into his family. Just as remarkably, following the September 11 attacks, some Muslims worried so much about a possible American withdrawal from Kosovo that they proposed their own children face combat in Afghanistan, just so the Americans could remain in Kosovo.²⁴

The joyous rapture with which the Afghans and the Iraqis received the Americans, and the intense esteem in which the Kosovars hold them, show that two vital components of a “clash of civilizations,” popular terror of losing the traditional culture and virulent hatred of the opposing side, do not exist with any uniformity amongst Muslims. If they did, the populaces of the Afghans, the Iraqis, and the Kosovars would have greeted the Americans largely with guns and bombs instead of with demonstrations and cheers. Considering that not even the people of the very countries America and its allies targeted, or in Kosovo’s instance, rescued, view the “other civilization” as a dangerous enemy, one could hardly claim a civilizational war is occurring.

With many states, most societies, and all targeted countries in the Muslim world not lining up to fight the West, an explanation other than a “clash of civilizations” is necessary to describe the War on Terror. The Bush administration, in its National Security Strategy, thinks the struggle that has gripped the world’s attention stems from conflict within Islamic civilization, between authoritarian and undemocratic rulers, and frustrated groups who look to terrorism because they cannot express themselves politically.²⁵ Others, such as the Cato Institute, believe American interference in foreign affairs inspires loathing, and therefore, terrorism, against the United States.²⁶ Which viewpoint is correct is a topic for another paper.

(Sorry, these endnotes aren’t as helpful as they could be, because for this paper, we could skimp on notes referring to class texts.)

¹ Huntington.

² Dr. Kimbra L. Fischel, lectures at The George Washington University.

³ Cable News Network, “Forces: U.S. and Coalition” <http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/coalition/index.html>, 13 April 2003, and “Maps/Troop Movement” <http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/maps/fullpage.troops/>, 13 April 2003.

⁴ Cable News Network, “Turkey Grants Overflight Rights to U.S.” <http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/23/sprj.irq.turkey.overflights/index.html>, 13 April 2003.

⁵ Cable News Network, “World Braces for Iraq War” <http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/18/sprj.irq.int.reaction/index.html>, 13 April 2003.

⁶ Cable News Network, “US & Coalition Bases in the Persian Gulf” <http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/maps/index.html>, 13 April 2003.

⁷ Michael T. Klare, “The Geopolitics of War” <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=klare>, 13 April 2003.

⁸ World Politics, 174-177.

⁹ Klare.

¹⁰ “The Bigger Threat Still Lurking—Economies After the War,” The Economist (12 April 2003): LexisNexis Academic Universe, 13 April 2003.

¹¹ Cable News Network, “Backgrounder: Saudi Arabia is a Key U.S. Ally” <http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/fyi/news/11/09/saudi.arabia/index.html>, 13 April 2003.

¹² Craig Smith, “Saudis Quietly Play Crucial War Role” <http://www.iht.com/articles/90394.html>, 13 April 2003.

¹³ John M. Broder with Eric Schmitt, “A Nation at War: The Plan,” The New York Times (12 April 2003): B1. LexisNexis Academic Universe, 13 April 2003.

¹⁴ CNN, “Backgrounder.”

¹⁵Deborah Amos, “Saudi-U.S. Tension May Affect Iraq Action” <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/saudi_us021110.html>, 13 April 2003.

¹⁶ Ben Wedeman, “Arab Leaders’ Loyalties Torn Over Iraq” <http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/19/otsc.wedeman/index.html>, 13 April 2003.

¹⁷ World Politics, 174-177.

¹⁸ Dr. Fischel.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ As the cable news networks have pounded into viewers’ heads again and again…

²¹ Gaddis, 54.

²²Cable News Network, “Iraqis Attacking Symbols of Saddam” <http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/09/sprj.irq.baghdad/index.html>, 13 April 2003.

²³ Ellen Knickmeyer, “U.S.-Iraq Joint Patrols Begin in Baghdad” <http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030414/D7QDHPHO1.html>, 14 April 2003.

²⁴ William J. Kole, “Reviled in Many Places Around the World, Americans are Adored in Kosovo,” Associated Press (6 February 2003): LexisNexis Academic Universe, 13 April 2003.

²⁵ Gaddis, 53-54.

²⁶ Ivan Eland, “Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism?” <http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb50.pdf>, 14 April 2003.

Whom are We Fighting: Muslim Civilization or Muslim Terrorists? is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Dudley Newcomb Carpenter, a doctor on a ship that fought at the Battle of Manila Bay, reached the rank of captain in the US Navy.

What can one say about Dudley Newcomb Carpenter, whom one newspaper called “one of the finest looking, most sociable and brightest officers of his grade in the navy”?¹ Not much, really. I searched the Internet with Google and perused the databases on ALADIN, entering every iteration of Carpenter’s name I could imagine, but I still could not find a lot beyond a rough summary of his life. He entered this world on June 28, 1874, in Kittery, Maine,² and left it on March 26, 1955, in Bremerton, Washington. After graduating from Harvard Medical School, Carpenter worked as a surgeon in the United States Navy, where he eventually achieved the rank of captain.³ During his naval career, Carpenter participated in the Spanish-American War of 1898,⁴ helped establish hospitals at such locations as Bas Obispo, Mexico; Bremerton, Washington; and Baguio, Philippines; he also served as the Reserve Fleet surgeon in the 1910’s, commanded the Division of Planning and Publication at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery from 1923 to 1927, and sat on the Medical Examining and Retiring Board during the Second World War. Carpenter apparently wrote pieces for the Naval Medical Bulletin,⁵ though I could not find any of them.⁶

Fortunately, Carpenter kept a journal of one of his stints, from May 18, 1897 to August 15, 1898 aboard the USS Raleigh, which along with the letters and clippings that accompany it in his collection at the Library of Congress, provides the only detail about Carpenter’s life available. In his journal, Carpenter describes such locations as Italy, Northern Africa, the Middle East, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, where Carpenter fought in the Battle of Manila Bay.⁷ The section of the journal in which the Battle rages stimulates the most excitement, so that portion, in addition to Carpenter’s letters about the Battle, was the focus of my research.

Before I recount Carpenter’s experiences during the Battle, I should provide some details about the Battle itself. It took place on May 1, 1898, a few days after the United States had declared war on Spain. An American naval fleet—Commodore George Dewey’s⁸ Asiatic Squadron⁹—steamed into Manila Bay¹⁰ hoping to find and destroy the Spanish Navy’s Pacific fleet,¹¹ under the command of Spanish Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón,¹² thus eliminating any threat it might pose to America’s West Coast. Even though Dewey’s ships lacked full stocks of ammunition, they annihilated the Spanish flotilla at Cavite,¹³ experiencing no casualties themselves while inflicting 381 deaths and injuries on their Spanish counterparts. After the Battle of Manila Bay, Spanish naval power in the Pacific vanished.¹⁴

According to Carpenter, the Raleigh received an official telegram of the war declaration on Tuesday, April 26, 1898.¹⁵ The Raleigh, which had anchored in Hong Kong, then departed for Mirs Bay, a short distance away, alongside the Olympia and the Baltimore, with British sailors cheering on the Americans from the Hong Kong shore.¹⁶ After rendezvousing with the Asiatic Squadron inside Mirs Bay, the Raleigh sat with the rest of the fleet until 2 PM Wednesday. While the ships were waiting, Carpenter writes, “Our one thought is on Manilla [sic].”

The Asiatic Squadron could not head for Manila before Wednesday because it had to wait for the American consul from Manila, who had difficulty leaving the city because of “rough seas.”¹⁷ (Engine trouble on the Raleigh, because a “careless oiler” had damaged the port circulating pump,¹⁸ had also threatened to delay the Squadron, but the ship’s engineers had repaired the pump 12 hours before the consul arrived.) With the consul safely in American hands, Dewey’s fleet stormed towards Bolinoin¹⁹ at eight knots.²⁰

The consul, though, provided one of the ship captains with intelligence that convinced the fleet commanders to go straight to Manila Bay.²¹ Carpenter describes the three-day journey as “auspicious,” with “lovely cool days and beautiful moonlight [sic] nights.” The ocean was so calm Carpenter hardly knew he was afloat. Drills for general quarters, fire, and collision kept the crew prepared for combat, and target practice kept the gunners’ eyes sharp. During both day and night, the fleet practiced signaling each other, with red and white flashes on the foremasts of various ships.²²

Before the Asiatic Squadron attacked the Spanish fleet, the Boston and the Concord searched Subic Bay²³ for Spanish gunboats. After those two ships found the Bay empty, the whole fleet anchored there; Carpenter had expected the fleet to stay the night, but a council of war among the fleet commanders decided not to wait for dawn. To make itself harder to see in the darkness, the Raleigh extinguished all of its running lights but for a shielded one on its rear, as did the other ships. Thusly prepared, the Squadron moved to commence its assault.²⁴

As the ships slid into Manila Bay, bright bolts of lightning pierced their shroud of darkness.²⁵ Spanish forts launched torpedoes at the Americans, all of which the Americans avoided.²⁶ Soon afterwards, the crews saw flashes on the northern shore, after which a “small black rock,” which was really a Spanish fort, lobbed a shell with a “shrill, curdling whirr” at the Raleigh as it passed. The Raleigh gave its opinion of that with its five-inch guns, firing the introductory American shots of the Battle of Manila Bay. The fort continued its assault, until the Boston eliminated its artillery battery. With that peril overcome, the fleet sailed merrily up the Bay.

Even though the crew knew a more fierce battle with the Spanish fleet was coming, one would not have known it by observing their behavior, writes Carpenter. He says they could have been going to a “festive occasion, from their jokes and general good spirits.” Below decks on the Raleigh, the crew even danced to an accordion and a guitar. This continued until the dawn of May 1, 1898, which brought the Battle proper in its wake.²⁷

In the light of early morning, the Americans could see the Spanish ships waiting for them at Cavite. The Americans charged at the Spanish without fear, paying no heed to the Spanish shells that were falling around them but not hitting them.²⁸ Withholding their response, the American ships drew to within 4,000 yards of the Spanish, at which point the Olympia, leading the American attack,²⁹ let loose with its eight-inch guns. The firing accelerated from both sides, orchestrating a cacophony of violence with “the whirr of shells” and “the whiz of shrapnel.”³⁰ The Americans circled around, and in what Carpenter calls “a stirring sight,” they pummeled the Spanish with the eight-inch guns of the Olympia and the Baltimore and the six-inch guns of the Raleigh. Fire started to ravage the Castilla, and the Reina Christina began to sink.³¹

Some Spanish torpedo boats, cloaking themselves with the smoke of the burning ships, tried to assail the Americans by surprise, but the Americans forced them to withdraw; the torpedo boats only tried again by going along the shoreline. They did not even get to retreat that time, “as one doubled like a jackknife” after a shell hit it, and its partner fled to the beach and hemorrhaged its crew, who “scampered like scared rabbits over the embankment.” The defeat of the torpedo boats terminated Spanish attempts to sink the American fleet with torpedoes.³²

By that period of the Battle of Manila Bay, the Americans had experienced no significant casualties: only six sailors on the Baltimore had suffered injury. Carpenter writes that at this time, 7:45 AM, the Americans pulled back in order to facilitate a meeting of the fleet commanders and to have breakfast.³³ As the captains were discussing the Battle, “We cheered each other while the bands of the Baltimore and the Olympia played.” Once the meeting and the breakfast concluded, the Americans, fully refreshed after a good rest, rejoined the Battle at 11 AM, with the Baltimore in front.

This was when the Americans knew they had achieved victory. The Castilla and the Reina Christina sat under blankets of fire, and the only other Spanish ship in sight was the Don Antonio de Ulloa. Carpenter says the most exciting part of the Battle then took place. The Baltimore approached the shore,³⁴ and she swept along the whole coast, firing “shot after shot” at Spanish artillery batteries as they revealed themselves, churning up large billows of dust that showed where the Baltimore had directed her fury. The Baltimore then came upon a fort with two water batteries in front of it.

The Baltimore rammed the batteries, fiercely pushing away whatever was in her path.³⁵

With the batteries annihilated, the Olympia, the Boston, and the Raleigh bombarded the Spanish arsenal at Cavite. They also sank the Don Antonio de Ulloa,³⁶ “which defiantly waved the Spanish flag.” Carpenter gives the crew of the Don Antonio credit by recording they “stood up nobly,”³⁷ even though their ship went down in 15 minutes.³⁸

Meanwhile, the Concord stalked a merchantman that attempted to claim English affiliation, but the captain of the Concord “decided that as they were good Spaniards in the morning they had better be so all day.” After allowing the merchantman a little while to reach the shore, and watching that time expire, the Concord’s captain ordered his crew to shell the merchantman,³⁹ which the Raleigh observed flaming as it passed the crippled merchantman on its way to the city of Manila itself.

The Americans thought the city of Manila would wage yet more battle against them, as it had constantly shelled the American fleet before and after breakfast. Manila instead erected the white flag of peace, ⁴⁰ and promised not to attack unless the Americans fired first, so the Americans anchored nearby, amongst a fleet of sailing vessels.⁴¹

The Battle of Manila Bay was over, and the Americans had won.⁴² The ships of the Spanish Navy’s Pacific fleet were lying either in American hands or at the bottom of the Bay.⁴³ One hundred twenty men perished on the Castilla and fifty-six died on the Reina Christina, and eighty men on the latter ship had wounds. Of the Spanish, Carpenter says they demonstrated admirable courage and possessed excellent weapons, but “they could not shoot straight” with them.

During the Battle, only one American died: an engineer on the McCulloch from heat exhaustion. As an assistant surgeon, Carpenter had little to do but rescue four firemen and take them to sickbay. This afforded Carpenter the opportunity to witness almost the entire Battle, during which he contributed to the Reina Christina’s death by shooting it a few times with a six-pounder. He also observed the activities of the normal gunners, such as “Old Rodman,” who would say before firing on the Spanish, “Farewell, vain ship.”⁴⁴

After reading some of Carpenter’s journal and letters, I have learned much about the Battle of Manila Bay. Before doing this research project, I knew only that the Americans had shattered Spanish Pacific naval power during the Battle; I remained ignorant of most of the details. Now, however, I can play the Battle in my mind, from the “small black rock” treacherously shelling the Americans to the Baltimore crusading against the batteries to the Spanish fleet burning and sinking, with the happiness and confidence of the Americans providing texture to the whole picture.

One thing I still cannot do, though, is understand Carpenter. Throughout the writings of his I read, he relates little beyond what he saw and some of his gut reactions to that. Carpenter fails to record his deep thoughts or feelings, to provide context for the facts of his memories. While he does demonstrate awe at the sight of American shells crashing into Spanish ships, and excitement at the adventure of the Baltimore fighting the Spanish artillery, all that reveals is his basic humanity. Bright lights and loud sounds thrill normal people. As a researcher, I take dissatisfaction in the fact that Carpenter, at least in his descriptions of the Battle of Manila Bay, provided only enough for me to conclude he was normal. By definition, that does not distinguish him from most individuals.

Perhaps some other sections of Carpenter’s journal might convey his ruminations and emotions. Maybe Carpenter left something else somewhere that would allow a researcher to discover him, not just his factual recollections. If not, then, unfortunately, history really has lost him.

¹ Dudley Newcomb Carpenter, papers (1897-1901). Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. Washington, D.C. 1 container (ca. 17 items). This particular bit of information comes from a newspaper clipping. For more information about the collection, see Appendix A. To see the clipping, look at Appendix J.

² Or Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as the National Cyclopedia, cited below, insists.

³ “Deaths,” Journal of the American Medical Association 158 (28 May 1955): 324. See Appendix B.

⁴ Naval Historical Center, “Manila Bay Medal – USS Raleigh” <http://www.history.navy.mil/medals/dewey/dewey3.htm> and “Photo # NH 43347 picture data” <http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h43000/h43347c.htm>, 9 December 2002, along with Patrick McSherry, “USS Raleigh Crew Roster” <://www.spanamwar.com/Raleighcrew.html>, 21 October 2002. Even though these are web sites, I deem them credible, because the first two are from a body attached to the Department of the Navy, and the last is from someone who maintains an elaborate web site full of information that jibes (mostly) with that of the Center and with that contained in Carpenter’s material.

⁵ National Cyclopædia of American Biography, s.v. “Carpenter, Dudley Newcomb.” See Appendix C.

⁶ I could find, however, two other articles Carpenter wrote: “Visit to the Chefoo, China, School for the Deaf,” Association Review 9 (1907): 359-362; and “Gunshot Wounds as Seen in the Philippines,” Medical News (6 August 1898): 174-176. I located the former in the Adams Building of the Library of Congress, and I discovered the latter in the back of Carpenter’s journal. A copy of “Gunshot Wounds” appears in Appendix D.

⁷ He was then an assistant surgeon. From a crew roster in the Library of Congress collection. (Appendix G)

⁸ George Dewey (1837-1917), aside from leading the Asiatic Squadron in the Spanish-American War, also participated in the American Civil War, fighting with the Union Navy in battles at the Louisiana cities of New Orlean (1862), Port Hudson, and Donaldsonville (both in 1863), then with the blockade forces in 1864 through 1865. After the Spanish-American War, in March 1899, Congress fashioned for Dewey the rank of Admiral of the Navy, the highest any naval officer has ever achieved. From Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

⁹ The Squadron’s members included the Olympia, which was the flagship, the Baltimore, the Raleigh, the Boston, the Concord, the Petrel, the McCulloch, the Nanshan, and the Zafiro. From Patrick McSherry, “The Battle of Manila Bay (Cavite)” < http://www.spanamwar.com/mbay.htm>, 21 October 2002.

¹⁰ Manila Bay reaches from the South China Sea into Luzon, the Philippines. The Spanish started constructing the city of Manila in 1571. Aside from hosting a key battle of the Spanish-American War, Manila Bay also witnessed naval and aerial battles during World War II. From EBO.

¹¹ This fleet comprised Admiral Montojo’s flagship, the Reina Christina, the Castilla, the Isla de Cuba, the Isla de Luzon, the Don Antonio de Ulloa, the Don Juan de Austria, the Marques del Duero, the El Cano, and the Argos. From McSherry, “Battle of Manila Bay.”

¹² Patricio Montojo y Pasarón (1839-1917) served on various assignments in the Philippines and elsewhere before taking charge of the Spanish Pacific fleet. After he lost the Battle of Manila Bay, the Spanish court-martialed and imprisoned him. Later, the military exonerated Montojo, but he could not regain his commission. Ironically, Dewey testified in Montojo’s defense. From Jose Poncet, “Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón” <http://www.spanamwar.com/montojo.htm>, 16 December 2002. (The EBO had nothing on Montojo!)

¹³ Cavite, on the southern peninsular coast of Manila Bay, contained the Spanish naval base the Asiatic Squadron seized after the Battle of Manila Bay. From EBO. Admiral Montojo located his fleet there to avoid harming Manila during the confrontation with the Americans. From McSherry, “Battle of Manila Bay.”

¹⁴ McSherry, “Battle of Manila Bay.” See Appendix E.

¹⁵ Carpenter’s journal, p. 282.

¹⁶ Dudley Newcomb Carpenter, Manila Bay, to Anna Carpenter (his mother), 3 May 1898, letter in Library of Congress collection. A copy is in Appendix F.

¹⁷ Carpenter’s journal, p. 282.

¹⁸ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

¹⁹ I searched for this city or place on the Internet, but I could find no reference to it. Perhaps Carpenter spelled it incorrectly.

²⁰ Carpenter’s journal, p. 282.

²¹ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

²² Carpenter’s journal, p. 282.

²³ Subic Bay lies in Luzon, Philippines, 35 miles northwest of Manila Bay. From EBO. Admiral Montojo had stationed his fleet there for the confrontation with the Americans, but the artillery that was to fire on the Americans from Grande Island was not in place, so Montojo took his ships back to Manila. From “History of Subic Bay” <http://www.subicbay.net/Collections/The%20Subic%20Bay%20History.htm>, 12 December 2002. I think this web site is reliable because it fits with McSherry’s description of the Battle of Manila Bay.

²⁴ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

²⁵ Carpenter’s journal, p. 283.

²⁶ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898. The Spanish said the Americans “must have had a map of their torpedos [sic].”

²⁷ Carpenter’s journal, p. 283.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 283-284.

²⁹ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

³⁰ Carpenter’s journal, p. 284.

³¹ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

³² Carpenter’s journal, p. 284.

³³ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

³⁴ Carpenter’s journal, p. 285.

³⁵ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898. Carpenter says the Baltimore shoved “everything before her,” which I presume to mean the batteries because ramming a fort and surviving is quite improbable.

³⁶ I think Carpenter might have gotten the names of the Spanish ships confused, because in his 3 May 1898 letter to his mother, Carpenter identifies the ship as the San Juan, even though Don Antonio de Ulloa is the correct name, as McSherry indicates in his description of the Battle.

³⁷ Carpenter’s journal, p. 285.

³⁸ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

³⁹ Carpenter’s journal, p. 286.

⁴⁰ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

⁴¹ Carpenter’s journal, p. 286.

⁴² McSherry, “Battle of Manila Bay.”

⁴³ A typed tally sheet pasted to the inside back cover of Carpenter’s journal.

⁴⁴ Letter to mother, 3 May 1898.

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