Category: Politics & History

A democracy founded on equal justice and civil rights for all citizens is a ridiculously utopian vision, but it is also the only realistic solution.

His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

—The Balfour Declaration (1917)

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. 

—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1960s)

No justice, no peace. 

—Slogan used in protests against police violence (from the 1980s)

If God as some now say is dead, He no doubt died of trying to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem.

—I. F. Stone (1967)

Impelled by centuries of persecution culminating in the Nazi Holocaust, the State of Israel was established on land captured by Great Britain from the Turkish Ottoman Empire and inhabited for centuries by Arab Palestinians. Despite the Balfour Declaration’s pious but vague stipulation that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” quite a lot was done, and thus in the effort to resolve one gross injustice a second gross injustice was committed and has continued to this day.

“If the Jews give one-tenth the devotion to Arab relations that they’ve given to the land, they can build a secure homeland,” wrote I. F. Stone in 1945. That did not happen. Instead, a political and economic struggle was spun into an ethnic struggle featuring implacable hatred on both sides. The abortive U. N. partition plan of 1947 sparked a war that resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel by force. In 1964 Stone wrote, “The usual Jewish attitude toward the Arabs is one of contemptuous superiority.”

Partition has never been the solution to such conflicts, whether it appears in the form of a wall, a border, a system of apartheid, or endemic prejudice that institutionalizes injustice. No justice, no peace. So long as the State of Israel’s slow-drip ethnic cleansing continues, though the level of violence fluctuates and creates at times the illusion of peace, the war will go on.

There is no reason to expect this atrocious situation to change. It would require extraordinary events and extraordinary leaders—one thinks of F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela—to imagine a better future and bring it into being. What’s needed is not a “two-state solution” but a single inclusive democracy founded on equal justice and civil rights for all citizens, whatever their religious, racial, ethnic, or linguistic differences. That’s a ridiculously utopian vision, but it is also the only realistic solution—not just for Arabs and Israelis, but for all of us, everywhere.

If you are represented by politicians who are liberal or progressive, or if you contribute to environmental organizations like Greenpeace, they need to hear from you about nuclear energy and climate change. Here is my reply to my NDP member of parliament, Laurel Collins, after she responded to my first plea by sending me a link to an op-ed written by another NDP MP, Richard Cannings.

Dear Laurel,

Thanks for your reply and your link to Mr. Cannings’ op-ed about SMRs and nuclear power in general.

Regarding the two most popular fears about nuclear power—accidents and waste, both cited by Mr. Cannings—I would urge both of you to have a look at Nick Touran’s very informative site about these issues and everything else to do with nuclear energy, here: https://whatisnuclear.com. Short answer: both of those fears are overblown.

Mr. Cannings makes the point that nuclear plants take too long to build and that more immediate solutions are needed. I would agree, with the caveat that the best response is not either/or, but both/and. The fact that it takes time to build up nuclear generation capacity should tell us that we need to begin right now!

The other argument against nuclear power—its cost—seems suspect to me. Costs are always (a) comparative, and (b) determined by accounting methods. The costs of not effectively addressing climate change, I would submit, are far, far greater than the up-front investments needed to increase our nuclear energy capacity.

Finally, this is a global problem. Even if we were able to meet Canada’s energy needs without building up our nuclear capacity—a claim I find highly dubious—there is no way that developing economies can modernize their energy infrastructure and provide prosperity to their people without a huge global increase in the use of nuclear energy. Canada should be part of that effort. Embracing that cause would be good for the Canadian economy, for the planet, and for the lives of millions of people around the world.

Again, thanks for writing back. I hope that you and the rest of the NDP will continue to study these issues and be bold enough to revise conclusions that are not supported by the science and the facts.

With my best wishes,

Eric

See also my earlier posts about nuclear energy: “The argument for nuclear power,” and “Nuclear power: safe and economical.”

We need a logical, fact-based analysis of the “gun violence problem” in the United States. To begin:

Since we know that guns are not the problem, let’s focus on the real issue: addiction. 

Sex addiction, we know, causes people to shoot up massage parlours. 

Food addiction leads to mass murder at grocery stores. 

Addiction to prayer produces killings in all sorts of houses of worship. 

Shopping addiction leads to killings at malls. 

Video addiction causes murders in movie theatres. 

Sugar addiction would lead to mass murders in candy shops, except that it also causes obesity and lethargy. 

Gun addiction would lead, presumably, to mass murders in gun shops, but we haven’t seen any of that, which confirms what we already knew: guns are not the problem!

Addiction is the problem, and of course, addiction to violence contributes to every one of these specific variations. 

Obviously, we would not have these addiction problems if it weren’t for people. 

Clearly, then, people are the problem. Once we find a way to get rid of all these people, such needless tragedies will cease. 

“A member of the late Legislature and an important official of Vancouver Island, in a letter to a professional friend in San Francisco, under date of October 22d, says:

“Victoria I have resolved to leave, and to leave in all human probability for ever, unless some more hopeful signs appear in the commercial horizon. • • • There is a general exodus talked of, and I confess with some show of good reason. In my judgment there are, at the present time, upon Wharf street alone, three solvent men—the whole commercial fabric totters to the very foundation, and when the crash comes it will be such as Vancouver Inland has never witnessed before. The failures of the past seven days will amount to over a million dollars. The future looms with dark lowering clouds without a solitary ray of light, unless Vancouver is turned over to the Yankees, in which case a magnificent and glorious harvest lies before us.”

—Marin Journal, Volume 6, Number 34, 3 November 1866

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=MJ18661103.2.8&srpos=1312&e=-------en--20--1301--txt-txIN-Bogy-------1

Bruce was the first African-American elected to the Senate to serve a full term (1874 – 1880). He tells his story in this 1886 newspaper interview:

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Reminiscences. of the Kansas Life of Ex-Senator B. K. Bruce.

HIS ESCAPE FROM QUANTRELL.

A Number of Chatty Anecdotes Related by Him to an “Alta” Correspondent . . . .

Special Correspondence of the Alta California. 

Washington, October 11, 1886.— Some half dozen old-time Kansans chanced to gather together a few evenings since at one of the leading Washington hotels, and the conversation naturally drifted into reminiscences of the “Kaw” State in the early days, and the array of men more or less renowned, dead and alive, who had cast their fortunes in that then remote quarter of Western civilization. Two of these gentlemen were living at Lawrence when the guerilla [sic] chief Quantrell [sic] plundered that town and murdered several hundred people. After giving a vivid description of the attack and massacre, and narrating how they narrowly escaped death, one of the gentlemen casually remarked that Ex-Senator and Ex-Register of the Treasury Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi was a citizen of Lawrence at that time, engaged In teaching a colored school. Meeting Mr. Bruce on Pennsylvania avenue shortly thereafter your correspondent ventured to ask him if this was correct, and if so how he came to be in Kansas at that period. 

THE SACKING OF LAWRENCE.

“Yes,” replied the ex-Senator from Mississippi, “I was in Lawrence when Quantrell sacked the town and butchered so many people, and my life was saved by a miracle. Quantrell’s band certainly would not have spared any colored man. I was born in Virginia, and taken, while a slave, to Mississippi when a mere lad. From there I went to St. Louis, Missouri, and after the firing on Fort Sumpter and the opening of the War of the Rebellion, concluded I would emancipate myself. So I worked my way to Kansas and became a free man before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln. 

“I had, fortunately, managed to pick up something of an education during the period of my slavery, and finally settled down at Lawrence as a school teacher. The night before the Quantrell raid, I had been watching and nursing a sick friend, and when the day broke I heard firing, which indicated that trouble was brewing. Looking out the window I saw armed men riding by, firing their pistols, and immediately realized that the enemy was upon us. To remain with my sick friend would have been to invite certain death, so I bade him adieu, and with no clothing on my person but shirt and drawers, watched my opportunity, got out of the house and hid in the bushes behind a fence.

A NARROW ESCAPE

“I saw the fighting going on, and the rebs rode by without discovering me, although they pursued every man in sight. At last I had a clear field, ran down to the Kaw river as fast as I could, and jumped in. My flight was observed, and several armed men rode furiously toward me. Fortunately, keeping my head under water, I managed to hide beneath a hedge of vines and roots near by the shore. The troopers rode to the river and searched everywhere without discovering my retreat, although they came within a few feet of me a dozen times. Finally they rode away, and I remained I concealed in the river all day and did not emerge from my harbor of safety until after nightfall, when the town had been sacked and burned, and the guerillas [sic] hastily evacuated with their loot.

“General Jim Lane was at Lawrence at the time, and he, too, miraculously escaped. He subsequently followed Quantrell’s men away down into Missouri, and when he returned, Lane said he had managed to kill quite as many of the guerillas as they Had killed of our people. I asked him how he knew that those he killed were Quantrell’s men, to which inquiry he grimly replied that he felt certain of it, because going down his troops killed every man they met with new clothes on, and coming back they killed all they saw with old clothes on, so that no mistake could have been made in this particular. I did not, as is generally supposed, live in Mississippi during the war. I returned there after the war ended, and entered the arena of politics. I was elected and served two terms as Sheriff of my county before I was chosen a Senator in Congress. 

A SENATOR’S MAIDEN SPEECH.

“By-the-bye,” continued Mr. Bruce, “at my first canvass for sheriff, my Democratic opponent, who was a man of considerable force as a public speaker, challenged me to meet him in debate. I was reluctant to do so, especially in view of the fact that, as the county was largely Republican, my election was assured, and, therefore, nothing was to be gained thereby. But, being pressed to accept the offer, we agreed to divide time at a meeting in a precinct where the Democrats were largely in the majority. After eloquently narrating his services to the Democratic party, his participation in the war of the Rebellion, and the sacrifices he had made for and shared with the people, my competitor said he had nothing against me — that I was a decent man, for my color, but that he knew me when I was a boy, that I had been a slave and performed menial offices, and therefore was unfitted to fill the high office of Sheriff. 

“I hardly knew how to meet this logic and divert its force, considering existing prejudices. The only method seemingly open to me was to try to turn the laugh on my adversary, and fortunately I succeeded. When my turn came to speak I frankly admitted that I had been a slave, but it was a misfortune for which I was not responsible! True, as a slave I had been compelled to perform menial offices, but I had served my master honestly and faithfully. Now, however, I had managed to rise to a better position. I had outgrown the degradation and ignorance of slavery, and was now a free man and a good citizen; but the difference between my adversary and myself was clear and well-defined. Had he been a slave and performed menial offices, probably he never could have risen superior to his original condition, and would be performing menial offices even now. This sally was so well received by my opponents that my competitor never invited me thereafter to debate jointly and divide time with him. 

“A SINGULAR INCIDENT, worth relating, occurred when I was a member of the Senate. I had never exchanged a word with Mr. Bogy, then a Senator from Missouri. We knew each other merely by sight. One day, to my surprise, Senator Bogy came to my desk and explained that he was much interested in the passage of a certain bill. There was nothing in it of a political nature, and he invoked my active assistance to help him pass the measure. He did not then realize that we had ever met before, but I well remembered the circumstance. I listened to his statement, and then replied about as follows : 

‘It will afford me pleasure, Senator, to oblige you in any way, but really, you used me so shamefully in the last business transaction we had together, I am suspicious of you.’

‘Why, sir, what do you mean?’ excitedly replied the Missouri Senator, ‘we have never met before that I can recollect, and certainly have never had any business transactions together of any character.’ 

‘Let me see, I replied, ‘whether I cannot recall a certain transaction to your memory. Some twenty years ago a gentleman was hurrying through the streets of St. Louis one day, endeavoring to catch and board a river steamer. He was embarrassed with a heavy valise, and noticing a colored boy near by, asked if he did not want to earn a quarter. The boy replied affirmatively, and the valise was handed him to carry. The gentleman and the colored boy ran to the river together, and the gentleman jumped on board the boat just as the gang-plank was being drawn in. He halloed to the boy to throw the valise on board, but the boy halloed back to first give him the promised quarter. This the gentleman refused to do, and the result was the boat, which had drifted far out into the stream, was put again to shore. The gentleman, thereupon, somewhat unwillingly, handed out the quarter, and the boy gave up the valise, not, however, without escaping a round denunciation and fist-shaking from the angry gentleman, in which the words ‘black rascal’ were freely uttered in terms more forcible than polite.’ 

‘Yes,’ replied Senator Bogy, ‘I remember the incident as well as if it had occurred yesterday. I was the gentleman, and we had quite a scene of it. But what has that do with any business transaction between us?’ 

‘Very much!’ I replied laughingly, ‘since you were the gentleman and I was the colored boy whom you endeavored, while in haste to catch the boat, to beat out of a quarter of a dollar he had fairly, earned.’ Senator Bogy laughed heartily at the reminiscence, and we shook hands. I helped him pass his bill just to demonstrate that strange things frequently happen in this world, and that I bore him no malice. Who could have foreseen that the irate gentleman and the colored slave boy would have met years afterward as peers and colleagues in the Senate of the United States!”

A COLORED LECTURER. 

Mr. Bruce is now engaged exclusively in the lecture field, which he finds more profitable and certainly quite as congenial as holding public office. He states he is out of politics until 1888, when he will probably take the stump for the Republican Presidential nominee. Mr. Bruce is in his forty-sixth year, is reasonably portly and has quite a taking presence. His color is light, and it is the tradition that he is the offspring of one of the most distinguished of Virginia’s sons. He is studiously polite, well-poised, and of unobtrusive habit. As a consequence, he merits and receives universal esteem. He owns a large and well-cultivated plantation in Mississippi, and his wealth is estimated at nearly one hundred thousand dollars. Several ladies of the best Mississippi families, who were impoverished by the war, now hold clerical positions in the several departments through Mr. Bruce’s intercession while a Senator. 

—Daily Alta California, Volume 41, Number 13563, 18 October 1886
https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18861018.2.21&srpos=1194&e=——-en–20–1181–txt-txIN-Bogy——-1

In 1966 I was fourteen years old, living in Southern California, and just beginning to understand the world around me. Occasionally we would cross the border for a day-trip to Tijuana, where I saw poverty that I had never seen before. Everything in Mexico was cheaper—much cheaper—but at what a price! Street kids in rags and bare feet; dusty, unpaved streets filled with an obstacle-course’s worth of potholes; wizened old men selling donkey rides or piñatas; wizened old women selling flowers or tortillas; an indescribable cocktail of odours both delicious and disgusting. And that was in the “nice” parts of Tijuana, where my mother took us.

Even then, there were more or less constant stories of Mexicans trying to cross the border. They were called “wetbacks” because some of them crossed by swimming a river, but I suspect a lot more of them were driven across in vans and trucks. At fourteen, I thought to myself, “If I were stuck in poverty like that, I would be a wetback, too.” It was clear to me then, and it is clear to me now: if the richest nation on earth shares a border with a country plagued by poverty, corruption, and violence, only one result is possible.

I had learned in school about the Marshall Plan. After World War II, the nations of Western Europe were in ruins. The U.S. feared that without significant aid their economies would struggle badly, depriving the U.S. of trading partners and inviting the growth of political movements friendly to the Soviet Union. The Marshall Plan’s actual impact on Europe’s economic recovery is still being debated, but Europe did recover. To my 14-year-old mind, the connection with Mexico was obvious. “We need a Marshall Plan for Mexico!” I thought.

Instead, we built fences and turned the border into a Berlin Wall. In this case, however, people were not being shot at as they tried to escape. Instead, they were rounded up and sent back to Mexico. Some of them, anyway. Others crossed successfully and found that Americans were delighted to employ them at wages no American would accept, often doing work that few Americans would do. Like so many immigrants, they worked non-stop, sent money back home, saved all they could, and in many cases built better lives for themselves and their children.

Many Americans are outrageously hypocritical about “undocumented workers.” They love the cheap vegetables the undocumented harvest, they love the cheap chickens they process, but they don’t like them. Racism is a big factor, of course. Personally, I’m with Walt Whitman and Emma Lazarus: let them all come in! If there is work for them, if they can build a better life, they will come and they will stay. If not, they will either leave, or not come at all.

On the other hand, it would be cheaper and more humane, even at this late date, to bring back the Marshall Plan idea, on a much bigger scale (it’s not only Mexicans, now) so that millions of people don’t have to leave their homelands just to have a decent life. Imbalance never lasts in nature. If poverty is on one side of a permeable membrane called a “border,” and wealth is on the other side, osmosis will take place until a balance is reached.

To imagine that walls and fences and border cops will overturn the laws of nature is . . . madness.

America in 2020-21, it turns out, is a lot like America in 1876-77.

The disputed presidential election of 1876 finally resulted in a back-room deal that put the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, in the White House. In return, federal troops were removed from the states of the Confederacy, thus ending Reconstruction and marking the start of the Jim Crow era in which Southern whites reasserted political domination of their states through a campaign of terror, intimidation, and racist legislation.

In the following newspaper dispatch from January 1877, Senator John Sherman of Ohio, brother of the Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, debates with . . . my great-great-uncle, Senator Lewis Vital Bogy (1813 – 1877). Bogy—whose own election three years previously was widely reported to have resulted from bribery of the electors—was a Missouri Democrat whose grandfather, Joseph Baugis, was a French-Canadian who had left Quebec at the age of 14 and arrived in the Mississippi River Valley, where he engaged in the fur trade and eventually became the owner of eleven slaves on his property in Arkansas. Senator Bogy would die just months after this debate, in September 1877. His brother, Benjamin Ignace Bogy, was my great-great-grandfather. Most of the family (whose name is pronounced with a soft g or zh sound) subsequently became staunch bourgeois Republicans.

The capper to Sen. Bogy’s argument comes when he claims that Southerners “had been forced to resort to violence” and that “Southern whites had a right to rebel against State Governments forced on them by the Federal Government and sustained by Federal bayonets.” Oh, boy. I cannot say I am sorry to have missed those family gatherings with Uncle Lewis.

[It should be noted that Sen. Bogy’s older brother, Joseph Bogy III (1808 – 1881) ran for Congress (unsuccessfully) in 1863 as an “Unconditional Unionist” and did not share the Senator’s political views, at least. On the other hand, his younger brother and, alas, my great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Ignace Bogy (1829 – 1900) joined the Confederate calvary under General Marmaduke.]

CONGRESS.

Washington, January 9th.—SENATE.—By unanimous consent, the House bill absolutely abolishing the District of Columbia Police Commissioners, and to transfer their duties to the District Commissioners, passed. 

The resolution ordering the arrest of the recusant witness Runyon passed without division. 

Wallace’s resolution concerning the Electoral count was then considered. [Sen. John] Sherman [R-Ohio] spoke at length, and claimed that the evidence before the Louisiana Returning Board justified their action. 

The Senate discussed the resolutions of Wallace, in regard to the count of the Electoral vote, during the whole afternoon, when they were laid aside, and the bill to perfect the revision of the Statutes of the United States was taken up, so as to come up as unfinished business to-morrow. 

Sherman said the Louisiana Electors had already voted for Hayes and Wheeler. The vote was duly authenticated and delivered to the President of the Senate, and was entitled to credit. Hayes and Wheeler were legally entitled to that vote. He reiterated that Hayes had not sought the office, and would gain no honor by receiving it wrongfully, but if Constitutionally preferred, he was not to be tricked. He (Sherman) would accept any plan for an honest count of the vote. He read from the Louisiana law requiring the Returning Board to reject the votes in parishes where fraud and violence prevailed. He paid a tribute to the honesty of the Board and their respect for the law, rather than the Influence which was brought to bear on them. He reviewed the character of the evidence before the Board, which, he said, compelled them to act as they did about throwing out returns. This violence, he asserted, was to compel men to vote the Democratic ticket and elect Tilden. The intimidation extended to Mississippi, and these votes were to be counted for S. J. Tilden. The evidence before the ; Senate I Committee would show that Henry Pinkston owed his death to cheers uttered at a Republican meeting. If such intimidation extended to other States North and West, law would end. Tilden’s inauguration would be the greatest misfortune that could befall the country. He did not fear Tilden and his four years’ of power, but did fear such means of electing him. Tllden’s term of office would be dishonored from the beginning. The blood of hundreds of men would be on his garments. In Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia improper means had prevented Republicans from voting. In closing, he denied that the Government paid the expenses of the Republican Visiting Committee to New Orleans. Gov. Hayes did not know he was going, nor did Hayes make a suggestion concerning his course there. He was proud of the willingness of the country to acquiesce in the result. 

[Sen. Lewis V.] Bogy [D-Missouri] said he had heard the most humiliating effort ever made upon the floor of the Senate. Sherman’s speech amazed him. It was incomprehensible. If Sherman spoke truly of the condition of things in Louisiana, then the country had retrograded to the darkest ages of barbarism. If Louisians were assassins, it, disgraced the country as well as that State. He denounced the testimony alluded to by Sherman as that of villains and perjurers. He would, in the future, explain how the crimes in Louisiana were brought about, on account of the recent emancipation of a race not yet in a condition to enjoy the privileges given them by the Constitution. Kellogg, Packard and other men were responsible for the condition of things in that State. Whites there were as peaceable and law-abiding as anywhere. Tilden should not be inaugurated, if elected as Sherman claimed; but he was honestly elected. 

Boutwell and Bogy engaged in a discussion of some length, involving the question of outrages in Mississippi, Bogy claiming that the Mississippi Committee last year had greatly exaggerated the facts, and had the worst witnesses before them.

Boutwell denied this. He wondered that a people who had spent so much money and lost so many lives for the perpetuity of the Union would calmly see such outrages in the South. 

Bogy retorted by alluding to the carpet-baggers sent South by Boutwell and his friends to administer Governments. He particularly denounced the Ames Administration as an outrage and disgrace to the country. The negroes in Mississippi were now treated with more respect than in Massachusetts. Southern whites had been forced to resort to violence, as the people of San Francisco had some years ago. It was the great American common law of self-defence.

Boutwell and Sherman said that was admitting that violence prevailed there. Sherman said the people of New York, when Tweed stole his millions, did not resort to violence. 

Bogy said the Southern whites had a right to rebel against State Governments forced on them by the Federal Government and sustained by Federal bayonets. . . .

—Daily Alta California, Volume 29, Number 9774, 10 January 1877

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18770110.2.33&srpos=129&e=——-en–20–121–txt-txIN-Bogy——-1

Senator Bogy’s character is further illuminated by this 1881 piece recalling his interaction with a fellow Senator, Blanche Kelso Bruce.

Senator Bruce (1841 – 1898) was the first African-American elected to the Senate to serve a full term. He was defeated for re-election in 1880 by a white Democrat and former Confederate officer in the Civil War. Bruce was just one of many black politicians who lost their offices after Reconstruction ended in 1877. The son of a white plantation owner and one of his house-slaves, Bruce studied at Oberlin College for two years. When the Civil War began he deliberately went to Kansas, a “free state,” to gain his freedom (and almost lost his life in Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, Kansas in 1863—see the link to his 1886 newspaper interview, below). In 1864 he opened a school for black children in Mark Twain’s hometown, Hannibal, Missouri.   —Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Bruce.

A Story of Two Senators

The late Senator Bogy of Missouri was anxious to have a pension-bill passed one day for a constituent, and came over to the Republican side to ask support for it. He approached the colored Senator from Mississippi [Sen. Blanche Bruce, elected in 1874, the same year that Bogy was elected], and said: 

“Now look here, Bruce, vote for this, won’t you? I only want another vote or two, and you can carry it through for me. It is a meritorious case.” 

“Certainly,” said Senator Bruce. “You know, Senator, that I have always been willing to do you any favor you asked.” 

“Sir,” replied the Missouri Senator, “I never asked you a favor in my life till this moment.” 

“Oh, yes, you have,” replied Bruce. “You may remember once, many years ago, that you were going from St. Louis down the river on a steamboat, and you were hurrying along to catch the boat with a big valise. You passed a little barefooted mulato, and said: ‘Here, you little black rascal, take this valise and come on with me.’ The boy took the hand-bag, and when you came near the boat, you saw it was about to push off, and you ran on ahead and just crossed the gang-plank when it was drawn in. The boy, however, had not been able to keep up with you, and arrived too late. You stood on the lower deck and yelled: ‘Throw that valise aboard, you black rascal; I can’t go without my valise.’ But the boat moved out till the boy was afraid it would fall into the river if be tried to throw it, and, besides, he expected to receive a quarter for carrying it, and you had, apparently, forgotten all about that. The valise was not thrown and you made the captain of the boat come back to the dock again to get it, and the boy collected the quarter. Now do you remember that circumstance, Senator?” concluded Bruce. 

“I do,” admitted Senator Bogy. 

“Well,” said Bruce, “I was the little mulatto-boy that carried your valise, and I am just as ready to accommodate you to-day as I was then. I’ll vote for your bill.”

—The Weekly Calistogian, Volume IV, Number 16, 6 April 1881

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=TWC18810406.2.6&srpos=241&e=——-en–20–241–txt-txIN-Bogy——-1

Twelve years after that story was published, Frank G. Carpenter re-told it rather differently in the San Francisco Call:

Returning to Senator Bruce: He had a number of curious experiences during that first term in the Senate, and one of the queerest of these was when old Senator Bogy asked him to vote for a bill which he had before the Senate. Bogy was one of the most aristocratic of the Senators. He came from an old St. Louis family, and as he asked Bruce to do this, he sat down beside him. Bruce laughed as he made the request, and said, “Senator Bogy, I think we can arrange this transaction better than we did our last business matter.” 

“What do you mean?” said Bogy. “I never did any business with you before.” 

“Don’t you remember meeting me before coming to the Senate?” said Bruce. 

“No, I do not,” replied Bogy. 

“Well,” said Bruce, “I am not surprised at that, for it was more than twenty years ago. You were trying to catch a steamer at St. Louis and you had a heavy bag with you. The day was hot and the perspiration was rolling off you in streams. A colored boy ran up to you and grabbed the bag, and he carried it for you to the wharf. You got there just as the boat was about to start. You jumped on and called for the valise. The colored boy stuck to the valise and called for his quarter. You had to go through every one of your pockets before you could find a quarter and throw it ashore. Then the boat was too far out for the boy to throw the valise. The captain had to stop the boat and come back to the wharf for you to get your valise. Now, do you remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” replied Senator Bogy; “but I don’t see where you come in.” 

“Oh,” replied Bruce, “I was the colored boy who got the quarter.”

—San Francisco Call, Volume 74, Number 151, 29 October 1893

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC18931029.2.132&srpos=462&e=——-en–20–461–txt-txIN-Bogy——-1
 

In an 1886 newspaper interview, Bruce told the story himself, again in a slightly different way:

A SINGULAR INCIDENT, worth relating, occurred when I was a member of the Senate. I had never exchanged a word with Mr. Bogy, then a Senator from Missouri. We knew each other merely by sight. One day, to my surprise, Senator Bogy came to my desk and explained that he was much interested in the passage of a certain bill. There was nothing in it of a political nature, and he invoked my active assistance to help him pass the measure. He did not then realize that we had ever met before, but I well remembered the circumstance. I listened to his statement, and then replied about as follows : 

“It will afford me pleasure, Senator, to oblige you in any way, but really, you used me so shamefully in the last business transaction we had together, I am suspicious of you.”

“Why, sir, what do you mean?” excitedly replied the Missouri Senator, “we have never met before that I can recollect, and certainly have never had any business transactions together of any character.” 

“Let me see,” I replied, “whether I cannot recall a certain transaction to your memory. Some twenty years ago a gentleman was hurrying through the streets of St. Louis one day, endeavoring to catch and board a river steamer. He was embarrassed with a heavy valise, and noticing a colored boy near by, asked if he did not want to earn a quarter. The boy replied affirmatively, and the valise was handed him to carry. The gentleman and the colored boy ran to the river together, and the gentleman jumped on board the boat just as the gang-plank was being drawn in. He halloed to the boy to throw the valise on board, but the boy halloed back to first give him the promised quarter. This the gentleman refused to do, and the result was the boat, which had drifted far out into the stream, was put again to shore. The gentleman, thereupon, somewhat unwillingly, handed out the quarter, and the boy gave up the valise, not, however, without escaping a round denunciation and fist-shaking from the angry gentleman, in which the words ‘black rascal’ were freely uttered in terms more forcible than polite.” 

“Yes,” replied Senator Bogy, “I remember the incident as well as if it had occurred yesterday. I was the gentleman, and we had quite a scene of it. But what has that do with any business transaction between us?” 

“Very much!” I replied laughingly, “since you were the gentleman and I was the colored boy whom you endeavored, while in haste to catch the boat, to beat out of a quarter of a dollar he had fairly, earned.” Senator Bogy laughed heartily at the reminiscence, and we shook hands. I helped him pass his bill just to demonstrate that strange things frequently happen in this world, and that I bore him no malice. Who could have foreseen that the irate gentleman and the colored slave boy would have met years afterward as peers and colleagues in the Senate of the United States!

—Daily Alta California, Volume 41, Number 13563, 18 October 1886

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18861018.2.21&srpos=1194&e=——-en–20–1181–txt-txIN-Bogy——-1

For the full interview with Senator Bruce, see “Senator Blanche K. Bruce’s story, in his own words.”

Having characters like Senator Bogy in my family tree, and growing up where I did, made me wonder how I ever turned out so differently. For my answer, have a look at Dear Maury.

We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.

—Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876)

From “Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism”, presented by Bakunin as a Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom, at the League’s first congress held in Geneva (September 1867). Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin

On January 6th, 2021, Donald Trump led a conspiracy to assassinate Congressional leaders and the Vice President.

The aim was to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, either directly or by creating a crisis that would serve as an excuse for Trump to declare an emergency and seize power.

Like everything else Trump has done his entire life, this was a criminal enterprise from the beginning, it was inept, and it failed.

Trump and his co-conspirators in the Congress, in the media, in his family, and in the corporate world must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Because if they aren’t, they will try again.

We hate uncertainty.

We want clear, definite answers.

We want simple stories that explain everything.

We become Fascists so easily.

Hammers think everything they see is a nail.

Capitalism thinks everything it sees is a commodity.

“Bribery, the corruption of government agents, the debauch of red Americans, murder, theft, piracy, hijacking, the liquor traffic, private war, the employment of public force in private war, and other criminal practices characterized the Western fur trade. (As they had characterized the French, Canadian, and British fur trade.) They were deplorable. But they must be seen in relation to such facts as the West itself. . . .

“Before legal responsibility could be possible in the West, it was necessary to settle the West.

“The West being settled . . . a rudimentary legal justice, and a rudimentary social justice could not be established till the settlers of the West so changed the sentiments they brought along as to desire them.

“The development of the American social pattern had given the East a powerful money interest in preventing rudimentary legal and social decency from being established in the West. . . .

“The West . . . has always been exploited by absentee owners and managers under the sanction of imported law. . . . The Indians . . . were the first victims of a developing system whose later and successive victims have been white. As such they must be seen in relation to . . . a system of financial control which converted property, manipulated credit, and stripped the resources . . . to the sole end of canalizing eastward whatever wealth the West might produce.”

This report to the government of The Netherlands, published in September 2020, reaches conclusions that contradict common anti-nuclear talking points heard in the media.

Nuclear is a safe, secure and emission free energy with a low carbon footprint, which is able to supply a continuous and secure flow of electricity for generations to come. The main hurdle nowadays remains the economics of new nuclear power. . . .

Nuclear should not be viewed as being in competition with “renewable” sources of energy, such as wind or solar. Nevertheless, as the reduction of carbon emissions becoming a top political and public opinion priority, both nuclear and renewable sources could have much larger roles to play. The problem is that no “renewable” source has been demonstrated to have the capacity to provide the “baseload” electricity at all times of power needed to replace large fossil fuel plants. . . . 

Nuclear is a high investment/low fuel costs generation technology. . . . 

Another advantage is that the land‐use for nuclear power plants is negligible. Nuclear is by far the most concentrated way of generating electricity. . . . 

On the question, asked by the Ministry of Economy of The Netherlands, as to whether nuclear could play an important role in the future energy mix of the Netherlands, the answer is affirmative. Nuclear energy, both large units and SMRs, when compared to VRE [Variable Renewable Energy, i.e., wind and solar] by using the same metrics, are cheaper, able to deliver dispatchable electricity to the grid (and stabilise the grid when needed) in a reliable fashion independent of weather conditions, while having the orders of magnitude smaller land‐ footprint than any other source of electricity, in particular, VREs. . . . 

Read the full 88-page report. Thanks to John Quakes (Twitter: @quakes99) for pointing me to this important study.

From the Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman (1885), Chapter IX:

[After the First Battle of Bull Run, which ended in a headlong retreat by the undisciplined Union army of volunteers, Sherman tries to restore order among the soldiers of his brigade.]

The Sixty-ninth still occupied Fort Corcoran, and one morning, after reveille, when I had just received the report, had dismissed the regiment, and was leaving, I found myself in a crowd of men crossing the drawbridge on their way to a barn close by, where they had their sinks; among them was an officer, who said: “Colonel, I am going to New York today.  What can I do for you?” I answered: “How can you go to New York? I do not remember to have signed a leave for you.”  He said, “No; he did not want a leave.  He had engaged to serve three months, and had already served more than that time.  If the Government did not intend to pay him, he could afford to lose the money; that he was a lawyer, and had neglected his business long enough, and was then going home.”  I noticed that a good many of the soldiers had paused about us to listen, and knew that, if this officer could defy me, they also would.  So I turned on him sharp, and said: “Captain, this question of your term of service has been submitted to the rightful authority, and the decision has been published in orders. You are a soldier, and must submit to orders till you are properly discharged.  If you attempt to leave without orders, it will be mutiny, and I will shoot you like a dog!  Go back into the fort now, instantly, and don’t dare to leave without my consent.”  I had on an overcoat, and may have had my hand about the breast, for he looked at me hard, paused a moment, and then turned back into the fort.  The men scattered, and I returned to the house where I was quartered, close by.

That same day, which must have been about July 26th, I was near the river-bank, looking at a block-house which had been built for the defense of the aqueduct, when I saw a carriage coming by the road that crossed the Potomac River at Georgetown by a ferry.  I thought I recognized in the carriage the person of President Lincoln.  I hurried across a bend, so as to stand by the road-side as the carriage passed.  I was in uniform, with a sword on, and was recognized by Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, who rode side by side in an open hack.  I inquired if they were going to my camps, and Mr. Lincoln said: “Yes; we heard that you had got over the big scare, and we thought we would come over and see the ‘boys.'”  The roads had been much changed and were rough.  I asked if I might give directions to his coachman, he promptly invited me to jump in and to tell the coachman which way to drive.  Intending to begin on the right and follow round to the left, I turned the driver into a side-road which led up a very steep hill, and, seeing a soldier, called to him and sent him up hurriedly to announce to the colonel (Bennett, I think) that the President was coming . . . .

Lincoln visits the various groups under Sherman’s command, one by one, and gives a brief, well-received speech to each group.

At last we reached Fort Corcoran.  The carriage could not enter, so I ordered the regiment, without arms, to come outside, and gather about Mr. Lincoln, who would speak to them.  He made to them the same feeling address, with more personal allusions, because of their special gallantry in the battle under Corcoran, who was still a prisoner in the hands of the enemy; and he concluded with the same general offer of redress in case of grievances. In the crowd I saw the officer with whom I had had the passage at reveille that morning.  His face was pale, and lips compressed.  I foresaw a scene, but sat on the front seat of the carriage as quiet as a lamb.  This officer forced his way through the crowd to the carriage, and said: “Mr. President, I have a cause of grievance. This morning I went to speak to Colonel Sherman, and he threatened to shoot me.”  Mr. Lincoln, who was still standing, said, “Threatened to shoot you?”  “Yes, sir, he threatened to shoot me.” Mr. Lincoln looked at him, then at me, and stooping his tall, spare form toward the officer, said to him in a loud stage-whisper, easily heard for some yards around: “Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do it.”  The officer turned about and disappeared, and the men laughed at him.  Soon the carriage drove on, and, as we descended the hill, I explained the facts to the President, who answered, “Of course I didn’t know any thing about it, but I thought you knew your own business best.”  I thanked him for his confidence, and assured him that what he had done would go far to enable me to maintain good discipline, and it did.

Democratic policy wonks had better be drafting legislation to reverse the damage done by Trump and McConnell:

1. Obamacare+, after the Supreme Court’s imminent overturning of Obamacare.

2. Federal abortion rights legislation after Roe v. Wade is overturned.

3. Anti-gerrymandering legislation.

4. Genuine campaign-finance legislation to take the money out of politics, to the greatest degree possible.

5. Re-enactment of the Fairness Doctrine to mandate equal time for opposing views on TV and radio.

6. Legislation to replace all the “norms” ignored by the Republicans in the Trump era, e.g.,

•Appointment of Supreme Court judges
•Separation of Attorney General and Dept of Justice from politics
•Beefed up Hatch Act
•Laws to put teeth into the Emoluments Clause
•Laws to require government officials to testify when called by Congress
•A law specifying the conditions under which a sitting President may be prosecuted

. . . and so on!

The rise of Trump and the modern Republican Party—soul-less and unprincipled—was made possible by institutional and structural flaws in American politics that have remained unchanged since 2016:

• A news media establishment that depends on advertising revenue and therefore seeks, above all else, attention—and is thus easily exploited by a master of distraction and sensation like Trump.
• A comfortable and smug Democratic Party establishment that has ignored systemic injustices, both racial and economic.
• The Electoral College, a remnant of the undemocratic features of the U.S. Constitution designed to protect established interests, including the slaveholding states of the South.
• The filibuster rule of the U.S. Senate, another anti-democratic tool used by those seeking to thwart reforms.
• A plethora of political and governmental “guard rails” that are simply norms, accepted practices with no basis in law, and which are therefore easily ignored without consequences for the offenders.
• A system of public education funded by local property taxes and therefore designed to maintain existing inequalities of wealth and class.
• A federal election system that is privately funded and wide-open to the most egregious abuses, effectively making all federal office-holders more or less beholden to their campaign donors.

Until these institutional features of U.S. government and politics change, American democracy will continue to produce chaos instead of good governance.

The embrace of Donald Trump’s shameless serial lying by the Republican Party did not fall suddenly out of the sky. It began in the first term of George W. Bush’s presidency, and first surfaced in an article published in the New York Times Magazine. Wikipedia:

The phrase was attributed by journalist Ron Suskind to an unnamed official in the George W. Bush administration who used it to denigrate a critic of the administration’s policies as someone who based their judgements on facts. In a 2004 article appearing in the New York Times Magazine, Suskind wrote:

The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.

International relations scholar Fred Halliday writes that the phrase reality-based community (in contrast to faith-based community) was used “for those who did not share [the Bush administration’s] international goals and aspirations”. . . .

The term was used to mock the Bush administration’s funding of faith-based social programmes, as well as a perceived hostility to professional and scientific expertise among American conservatives.

This attack on reality by the political Right developed further as “post-truth politics,” a

term . . . used by Paul Krugman in The New York Times to describe Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign in which certain claims—such as that Barack Obama had cut defense spending and that he had embarked on an “apology tour”—continued to be repeated long after they had been debunked. Other forms of scientific denialism in modern US politics include the anti-vaxxer movement, and the belief that existing genetically modified foods are harmful despite a strong scientific consensus that no currently marketed GMO foods have any negative health effects. The health freedom movement in the US resulted in the passage of the bipartisan Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which allows the sale of dietary supplements without any evidence that they are safe or effective . . . .

So after Trump is gone and Republicans want to blame him for everything, don’t let them off the hook. And don’t let the Democratic establishment off the hook, either, for their support of elitist policies that enriched Wall Street, drained the middle class dry, and turned vast swaths of rural America into a desperate, meth-lab-strewn wasteland.

You’ve heard about the “Greatest Generation” and how Americans all pulled together in the 1940s to win the war against fascism, right? Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book No Ordinary Time (1994) tells a different story.

As Hitler occupied most of France and began attacking England, FDR appealed to business leaders to shift their production to defense materials. They refused unless they would be given preferential status in bidding for defense contracts. In the end, FDR gave in.

When the revenue bill [giving favorable terms to corporations taking on defense contracts] finally passed later that fall, the capital strike [by big business] came to an end and war contracts began to clear with speed.

. . . In the months ahead . . . new legislation would be enacted to try to increase the relative share of small business in total army procurement. But by then, the basic pattern—the link between big business and the military establishment, a link that would last long into the postwar era and lead a future president to warn against the “military-industrial complex”—was already set.

[pp. 158-59]

A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings.

—Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

As COVID-19 wends its way through North America, I have been noticing recurrent news items regarding the behaviour of young people in the early stages of this massive public health crisis: continuing to go out to bars, movies, and restaurants; thronging beaches in Florida; and so on. Most young people, it appears, don’t vote, even when inspired by old socialists like Bernie Sanders. They like the rallies, but they don’t vote. And they don’t follow the news, which seems to account for some of their recent clueless activities. 

Most of them haven’t stopped eating meat or driving cars, either, or done much of anything else to reduce their “carbon footprint,” as far as I can tell.

All of which reminds me of that internet meme, “Okay, Boomer,” mocking my generation, telling us to get out of the way since we’ve made such a mess of things. Let the younger generations take over and try to repair the damage before it’s too late.

But it’s not about generations. It has never been about generations. When my friends and I were protesting the Vietnam War and marching for civil rights and advocating for gender equality, we were always a minority among our generational peers. When we were educating ourselves about the imperialist crimes committed by the U.S. government, and becoming conscious of the racist and sexist ideas we had grown up with, and learning to prepare vegetarian meals and grow our own food, we were always a minority. Most of our fellow “Boomers” were always unenlightened, materialistic, and conventional. 

In every generation, the enlightened minority sees most clearly, pays attention, raises the alarm, protests against injustice, agitates for necessary change. The majority, as Thoreau wrote in his great essay, “On Civil Disobedience,” lags always at least a step behind. 

To those “woke” young people tempted to mock the Boomers: have a look first at the majority of your peers, who are just as unenlightened and clueless in the face of climate change or COVID-19 as most of my peers were in the face of Vietnam, segregation, and CIA coups all across Latin America and beyond. 

Boomers are not the problem. The problem is the clueless majority—of all ages.

So, summing up, we have a situation with multiple baked-in weaknesses:

• Major media, easily manipulated
• Social media, a cesspool of propaganda and disinformation
• A public divided into tribes
• An anti-democratic Electoral College
• An anti-democratic U.S. Senate
• An election process that costs each candidate millions and millions of dollars, i.e., an open invitation to corruption

And who, looking at all that, could possibly foresee a good result?

Rules for following the U.S. presidential election on social media:

1. Any message on social media that makes you think, “That’s it, I will NEVER vote for THAT Democrat!” is, until proven otherwise, part of a disinformation campaign, and should be ignored.
2. And people described as “progressive activists” who do & say disgusting things should be regarded as provocateurs working for Republicans, until proven otherwise.

If you are wondering whether the best strategy to defeat Trump is “move to the centre” or “go left!” this podcast conversation with data-nerd political scientist Rachel Bitecofer will interest you:

Why are crimes not called crimes if they are committed by the US government?

Can we stop calling the murder of Qasem Soleimani a “mistake” or a “blunder”? It was a crime. Murder.

Those who refuse to call it murder are complicit in excusing it.

Soleimani, we are told, deserved to die because he was a bad man who committed terrible crimes. Fine. The proper response to crime is arrest, indictment, and trial—not summary execution.

Imagine if nations behaved like citizens governed by the rule of law, instead of organized crime families trying to maximize their power and putting out hits on their rivals.

How many stupid things can a nation do, and how stupid can its leaders and its people be, before the nation falls into an irreversible spiral of decline?

The underlying factor behind the stupidity is addiction. Modern society is an addiction culture. Everything that drives economic activity involves some kind of addiction, and addiction makes people stupid. Try using charts, data, and facts to explain to a junkie why he should stop using heroin. Now do the same and try to convince people to give up junk food and junk entertainment and junk consumerism.

Neil Postman was right in 1985 in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: in the television age, everything is entertainment. In the internet age, all the factors Postman identified have increased geometrically. So we are told that in the UK people are “tired” of hearing about Brexit, and that in the US people are “fed up” with talk about impeachment. Low entertainment value. Change the channel.

Timothy Leary’s 1960s call to the hippie generation to “turn on, tune in, drop out” has been co-opted by the commercial addiction juggernaut—as has been everything else that dissidents of any sort have put forward. The society as a whole has turned on to addictions of all sorts, tuned in to culture as entertainment, and dropped out of any serious engagement with political life.

Decline and fall, baby.

For a more technical and data-based version of this analysis, read “This is How a Society Dies,” by Umair Haque.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

—John Adams, Letters to John Taylor (1814)

From “Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War” (1942):

The broad truth about the war is simple enough. The Spanish bourgeoisie saw their chance of crushing the labour movement, and took it, aided by the Nazis and by the forces of reaction all over the world. . . .

The Fascists won because . . . they had modern arms and the others hadn’t.

. . . the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. . . . Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time . . . .

. . . the people who support or have supported Fascism . . . are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. . . . the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them. . . .

All that the working man demands is what these others would consider the indispensable minimum without which human life cannot be lived at all. Enough to eat, freedom from the haunting terror of unemployment, the knowledge that your children will get a fair chance, a bath once a day, clean linen reasonably often, a roof that doesn’t leak, and short enough working hours to leave you with a little energy when the day is done.

From the “History Doesn’t Repeat, but Sometimes It Rhymes” Dept:

In the early days of France’s Third Republic (ca. 1870 – 1890), the major political divide was between monarchists, who wanted a king again, and republicans, who favoured parliamentary democracy.

The moderate republicans, called “opportunists” because they thought new laws should be introduced only when they were expedient, wanted to avoid disruptive issues, to limit the scope of reform, and to deal with one problem at a time. “Nothing must be put in the republican program that the majority of the nation cannot be induced to accept immediately,” Gambetta had said, as spokesman of the opportunist point of view. The radicals, on the other hand, wanted to carry through sweeping reforms at once. . . .

Meanwhile, the mass of the French people remained indifferent to the republic or were becoming increasingly radicalized as a result of the government’s resistance to programs designed to improve the lot of industrial and agricultural workers. . . .

Meanwhile, in the Austro-Hungarian empire,

In 1890 militant German and Slavic nationalists combined to prevent . . . compromise on the nationalities question. In 1891 both Czech and German moderates were routed in the parliamentary elections. . . .

[Prime Minister Taafe failed] to solve the serious financial problems of the empire. . . . Instead of meeting the problem with a large-scale program of tax and financial reform, Taafe simply increased the rate of state borrowing, thereby raising the cost of servicing the national debt.

. . . [His] efforts at social reform were also ineffective. . . . Taafe’s proposals for universal suffrage and labor reform offended every vested interest in the country. . . .

The political response . . . was the spectacular growth of the Christian Socialist movement [led by Vienna mayor] Karl Lueger (1844 – 1910) [who] championed the rights of the worker, peasant, and small businessman against big business and “Jewish” capitalism. He advocated a socialist welfare state . . . where Slavs, Jews, and Protestants would not be welcome. Lueger was enormously popular and was repeatedly elected mayor of Vienna.

—Norman Rich, The Age of Nationalism and Reform, 1850 – 1890  (1977)

The obvious parallels with current events in Europe and the U.S. should concern all of us. The Industrial Revolution, the growth of the middle class, and the rise of Western democracies are not finished stories. Neither is the U.S. struggle over slavery and its transformation after 1865 into a struggle over racial equality. These stories continue; the history continues. Our era did not begin in 1945, or in 1900, but in Paris in 1789, and we still do not know how the political, economic, and racial issues unleashed in the French Revolution will finally sort themselves. A racist, authoritarian triumph is not out of the question.

The failure of genuine parliamentary government . . . was due . . . to the absence of the feature most necessary for its successful operation: broad agreement among the main power groups in a country about fundamental issues.

. . . The crucial power to determine government policy remained in the hands of the executive leadership. Hence the quality of leadership in every country was at all times of paramount importance.

—Norman Rich, The Age of Nationalism and Reform, 1850-1890 (1977)

In England and the United States, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, in Switzerland and Canada, democracy is today sounder than ever before. It has defended itself with courage and energy against the assaults of foreign dictatorship, and has not yielded to dictatorship at home. But if war continues to absorb and dominate it, or if the itch to rule the world requires a large military establishment and appropriation, the freedoms of democracy may one by one succumb to the discipline of arms and strife. If race or class war divides us into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate, one side or the other may overturn the hustings with the rule of the sword. If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all; and a martial government, under whatever charming phrases, will engulf the democratic world.

—Will Durant, The Lessons of History (1968)