1508	The Proclamation of Trent is made.
1783	Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War.
1787	Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising of debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers against the new U.S. government, fails.
1789	Electors unanimously chose George Washington to be the first president of the United States.
1795	France abolishes slavery in her territories and confers slaves to citizens.
1861	Delegates from six southern states met in Montgomery, Ala., to form the Confederate States of America.
1889	Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, “the Sundance Kid.”
1899	After an exchange of gunfire, fighting breaks out between American troops and Filipinos near Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War
1906	The New York Police Department begins finger print identification.
1909	California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren.
1913	Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Ala. Rosa Parks
1915	Germany decrees British waters as part of the war zone; all ships to be sunk without warning.
1923	French troops take the territories of Offenburg, Appenweier and Buhl in the Ruhr as a part of the agreement ending World War I.
1932	Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurates the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.
1938	The Thornton Wilder play “Our Town” opened on Broadway.
1941	The United Service Organizations (USO) was formed.
1944	The Japanese attack the Indian Seventh Army in Burma.
1945	President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a wartime conference at Yalta. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin
1948	The island nation of Ceylon – now Sri Lanka – became an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.
1966	Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins televised hearings on the Vietnam War.
1974	Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
1977	The album “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac was released.
1980	Syria withdraws its peacekeeping force in Beirut.
1983	Singer Karen Carpenter died at age 32.
1986	The U.S. Post Office issues a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.
2000	A coalition government that included Joerg Haider’s far-right Freedom Party came to power in Austria, triggering European Union sanctions.
2003	Yugoslavia was dissolved and replaced with a loose union of its remaining two republics, Serbia and Montenegro.
2004	The Massachusetts high court declared that gays were entitled to marry.
2004	The social networking website Facebook was launched.

Today in History facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.

]]> http://10000hourstobe.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/a-few-of-my-favorite-books/ Sun, 03 Feb 2013 04:13:38 +0000 10000hourstobe http://10000hourstobe.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/a-few-of-my-favorite-books/ Next to the aroma of fresh-roasted coffee, I love the smell of libraries and bookstores best. A reoccurring fantasy of mine was to actually work in a bookstore unpacking new inventory.  Alas, bookstores are shrinking just like newspapers.  When I visit someone’s home for the first time I’m surreptitiously drawn, like a peeping Tom, to investigate their bookshelves–wondering if I’ll discover something new and interesting.  There is hardly a feeling I enjoy more than being engrossed by a great story.

My home contains six bookshelves all scattered around the house—small and large.  The shelves hold certain classics, science fiction, thrillers, spirituality, biography, general history, gardening, art history and art instruction books–and others hard to categorize.  Sometimes, my husband and I have played the game–if you could only take 10 books with you to a deserted island, which would you pick?  Don’t know what I’d do if this doomsday scenario came true.

Today, I spent the morning browsing the internet and stumbled across someone’s  recommended reading page.  As I reviewed their list, it occurred to me that I might like to share my favorite reads, too.  So, here are three to begin…

By Doris Kearns Goodwin:

It’s ironic that we measure how good a book is by the sadness we feel as the end of the story moves closer and closer with each turn of the page.  A Pulitzer Prize winner, I find Kearns Goodwin’s books hard to put down.  She weaves the history of an era along with interesting details to help me imagine what it was like to be alive at a moment in time.

The story of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys begins with the baptism of John Patrick Fitzgerald, an infant less than one day old, on February 12, 1863.  One can imagine the cold, dark,  and filthy Irish tenements of Boston where survival beyond infancy was surely a miracle.  How the Fitzgeralds and Kennedys became  one of the world’s most famous families reads like an exhilarating drama.

No Ordinary Time tells the story of  Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s marriage against the backdrop of the Great Depression, Roosevelt’s presidency, and the events leading into World War II.  With compassion, Kearns Goodwin illuminates their character flaws and foibles and makes these iconic figures come alive.

Her latest book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, is the basis for Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, Lincoln.  Knowing how the story ends—with Lincoln’s assassination, I thought I was prepared to find the story of Lincoln’s life and presidency interesting and enjoyable.  However, once again, I was immersed in the sweeping time and place of nineteenth century United States.  When I reached the end, I found myself weeping for a long-ago dead President, as if he had just been killed yesterday.

We are often tempted to judge history with 20-20 hindsight.  With Doris Kearns Goodwin, the moral tensions and historical complexity become part of the story.  I end up wondering, who would I have been?  Would I have had the moral courage to recognize injustice and take a stand?  And then I ask myself, “What about now?”

Then I ran into a tweet from Texas educator Bonnie Lesley:

4 Freedoms in America That Don't Exist Anymore readersupportednews.org/opinion2/287-1…—
Bonnie Lesley (@EdFocus) January 30, 2013

That in turn led to an Alternet post, displayed at Reader Supported News (RSN), by a guy who claims that, compared to 1941 and the progress made on the Four Freedoms, all four of them are in danger, in America, today.

Could that be right?  In was in his State of the Union address in January 1941 that Roosevelt described the four freedoms he said the U.S. should work to secure around the world — this was clearly a philosophical foundation-laying for going to war on the side of Britain, and against Germany, in the World War that was already raging, but which the U.S. had managed to stay out of for five years in Asia and two years in Europe.

Near the end of the speech on January 6, 1941, Roosevelt explained why freedom needed to be fought for, what was important to us, as Americans in the freedom of others in other nations.

Here is an excerpt of the speech, the final few paragraphs:

I have called for personal sacrifice, and I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my budget message I will recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying for today. No person should try, or be allowed to get rich out of the program, and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.

If the Congress maintains these principles the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom from Fear,” 1943 painting based on FDR’s 1941 State of the Union address, “The Four Freedoms.” This painting was used on posters urging Americans to buy War Bonds.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic under- standings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception — the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution, a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

Posters showing all four of Rockwell’s paintings also were printed for the War Bonds Drive. Image from the digital collection of the libraries at the University of North Texas

This speech inspired Norman Rockwell to create a series of paintings in tribute to the four freedoms, which paintings were used as posters for War Bond drives.

Paul Bucheit argues we’re losing those four freedoms, which we as a nation fought to secure, in the Pacific, in the Atlantic, in Africa, Europe and Asia:

The 2013 version shows how our freedoms have been diminished, or corrupted into totally different forms.

• Freedom from want? Poverty keeps getting worse. . .
• Freedom from fear? The new Jim Crow. . .
  
• Freedom of worship? Distorted by visions of the Rapture. . .
  
• Freedom of speech? No, surveillance and harassment. . .

Mr. Bucheit offers longer explanations.  I don’t think I agree completely, but I’m interested in your opinion:  Are we losing the Four Freedoms we fought for?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Bonnie Lesley, @EdFocus on Twitter.

More:

• There is a Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, off of Manhattan
• Freedom from Fear 2010, a rather brilliant update by Dan Nance (and pricey!)
• A lot more about Rockwell and his paintings, at the Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts
• Great materials on FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech at the FDR Library in Hyde Park, New York; teachers, there’s a fair deal of DBQ source material here

“Say, whatever happened to ‘Freedom from Fear?’” Herblock cartoon in the Washington Post, August 13, 1951, on McCarthyism and the hunt for communists in government jobs. CJR290 image; click image for more information.

FDR and his first ladies: Laura Linney, Bill Murray and Olivia Williams

Never meet your heroes, they say. An addition to this adage should be: never watch bad films about your heroes’ private lives.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the most inspiring human beings to have lived in the past 100 years, but Hyde Park on Hudson’s sin is not that it paints him as a layabout or a womaniser, but worse, it paints him as terribly, terribly boring.

Set in the later years of the Great Depression, the film finds the wheelchair-bound president, played here by Bill Murray, escaping the pressures of office for regular visits to his mother’s estate in rural New York, where he begins a pedestrian affair with his distant cousin, Margaret Suckley (Laura Linney), known as Daisy. The film is based on her private diaries, which were not discovered until her death in the early 1990s and, as it turns out, were not particularly interesting.

Despite the film’s passionate narration by an elderly Daisy, the style of which owes far too much to the old lady in Titanic, the affair with FDR is mundane and soulless. The two enjoy drives across fields of flowers before parking and, like a pair of awkward teenagers, engage in some mutual masturbation. The narration continues to insist that Daisy is falling in love with FDR, but Linney’s purse-lipped, shifty-eyed performance makes her out to be more of an obsessive stalker. FDR indulges her more sexual favours – the film repeatedly implies his wife, Eleanor (Olivia Williams), was a lesbian.

Because the FDR/Daisy storyline is so inherently weak, the film shifts its focus to the preposterous notion that a visit to Hyde Park by the King and Queen of Britain in 1939 secured the freedom of the world by making firm allies of the USA and Great Britain. This is despite the fact the war had not yet begun and would rage for two years before the USA sent anything more than a few supplies.

There is simply no way to get across how inane Richard Nelson’s script is, except to clarify that the emotional crux of the movie is King George VI eating a hotdog. On that note, many of the film’s most desperate attempts at humour revolve around the late Queen Mother’s continued pronunciation of hotdog as if it were two words. The narration, which the film practically drowns in, manages to be both pathetic and patronising. “She was one of mother’s spies,” older Daisy tells us. “Mother had her spies too.” Yes Daisy, we gathered as much from your previous statement.

Linney gets lost with where to go with her role, uncertain whether to play it as wide-eyed love-struck girl or smalltown simpleton – either way, neither suits her. Bill Murray tries to act as FDR, but struggles even with the accent, occasionally lapsing in a Colonel Sanders-style drawl, and fails to find any romance or compassion in this lazy demonisation of the great man.

A royal affair: FDR (Bill Murray) greets the Queen and King of Britain (Olivia Colman and Samuel West)

Samuel West does a fine impression of Colin Firth doing a fine impression of George VI, while Olivia Colman is reduced to portraying Queen Elizabeth as every uptight posh English woman in film history rolled into one. Their scenes together are excruciating, and yet the highlight of the film.

Featuring a lengthy debate about whether or not the moon shining one night is indeed full, Hyde Park on Hudson is an astonishing work, in that it ever got made. Director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Venus), shows a fine eye for landscape imagery and historical set design, but even he can’t convince these actually great actors to drag any life from this stillborn script.

I promise you this, if you go to see Hyde Park on Hudson, you will want to leave, and if you don’t leave, you will regret after that you didn’t.

On the plus side, be thankful that it is only February and the worst film of the year is already behind us. It is only uphill from here.

1/5

(originally published at http://www.filmireland.net)

“I was sure that I could not afford to fail. I thought that would affect other members of my race if I failed anywhere along the line. I was always conscious of that, particularly in midshipman school and any other schools I went to…I tried to set a record of perfect conduct ashore and at sea.” Vice Admiral Samuel Gravely

Things have changed much since 1942 when following the attack on Pearl Harbor a young black college student from Richmond Virginia enlisted in the Navy. Samuel Gravely Jr. was the son of a postal worker and Pullman porter while his mother worked as a domestic servant for white families in Richmond. His mother died unexpectedly when he was 15 in 1937 and he remained to help care for his siblings as his father continued to work. Balancing the care of his family with his education he enrolled in Virginia Union College, a Baptist school in Richmond.

Fireman Apprentice Samuel Gravely Jr

It is hard to imagine for most of us now to comprehend the world that the young Gravely grew up in. Segregation was the norm. Blacks in the south and many other locations faced personal as well as intrenched institutional racism. Violence against blacks was quite common and the Ku Klux Klan was strong.

The military was still segregated and a great gulf existed between white military personnel and blacks. Though the selective service law of 1940 called for the conscription of people regardless of race, creed or color the services enjoyed much latitude in determining how minorities could serve. The Secretary of the Navy at the time, Frank Knox resisted integration. Knox determined that African Americans would remain segregated and serve only as Mess Stewards to “prevent undermining and disruptive conditions in the Navy.” Knox told President Roosevelt in the presence of black leaders that “because men live in such intimacy aboard ship that we simply can’t enlist Negroes above the rank of messman. “

That sentiment was strong in both the Navy and the Marines the leaders of which resisted attempts to broaden the ability for African Americans to serve and urged that blacks serve in the Army, not the Naval Service.  Marine Corps Commandant Major General Thomas Holcomb agreed with this stance. He commented:

“If we are defeated we must not close our eyes to the fact that once in they [Negroes] will be strengthened in their effort to force themselves into every activity we have. If they are not satisfied to be messmen. they will not be satisfied to go into the constriction or labor battalions. Don’t forger the colleges are turning out a large number of well educated Negroes. I don’t know how long we will be able to keep them out of the V-7 class. I think not very long.”

But Roosevelt was not deterred and by April 1942 changes were announced to allow African Americans to serve in other capacities. Even so African Americans selected for ratings other than messman were to be segregated and commanded by White Officers and Petty Officers.

The USS PC-1264 and its crew, Gravely is the lone black officer

Gravely enlisted in the Navy under these conditions. Serving as a Fireman Apprentice after receiving training as a Motor Machinist in San Diego he worked in menial jobs. In 1943 Gravely was one of only three sailors in his unit to be selected for the V-12 officer training program. He was the only black to make the cut. He was commissioned as an Ensign on December 14th 1944 and assigned to train black recruits at Great Lakes though the vast majority of his class went to sea. The was mainly due to the policy set forth by the General Board in 1942 that prescribed:

“(a) the white man will not accept the negro in a position of authority over him; (b) the white man considers that he is of a superior race and will not admit the negro as an equal; and (c) the white man refuses to admit the negro to intimate family relationships leading to marriage. These concepts may not be truly democratic, but it is doubtful if the most ardent lovers of democracy will dispute them, particularly in regard to inter-marriage.”

Despite this by 1945 the Navy was beginning to change. Gravely was chosen to serve on one of two ships assigned to the “experiment” of seeing how blacks in general ratings could serve at sea. The USS Mason (DE 539) and the USS PC-1264 were assigned black crews with majority white officers, except that Gravely was assigned to PC-1264. Though his commander was pleased with his service Gravely, who had been denied admittance to Officer Clubs and many other “white only” facilities resigned from the Navy in 1946. He believed that the inherent discrimination of the Navy left him no place for advancement. He returned to complete his bachelors degree at Virginia Union.

In 1949, following President Truman’s integration of the military Gravely was asked by the Navy to return to active duty. But the end of the old order was foreshadowed by a Navy pamphlet published in 1944 entitled The Guide to the Command of Negro Personnel. That publication included the statement that ”The Navy accepts no theories of racial differences in inborn ability, but expects that every man wearing its uniform be trained and used in accordance with his maximum individual capacity determined on the basis of individual performance.”

Gravely’s commands (top to bottom) USS Theodore E Chandler, USS Taussig and USS Jouett

Gravely accepted the offer to return to active duty and never looked back. He worked hard for respect and used his natural talents, personality and size to command respect. He was a man who would blaze the way for other African Americans, and later women and most recently gays to go on to greater things. Gravely would go on to command three ships. He was the first African American Naval Officer to command a Navy warship, the USS Theodore E Chandler (DD 717), the first to command a Navy ship in combat, the USS Taussig (DD 746) and the first to command a major warship, the USS Jouett (CG 29). Promoted to flag rank he eventually became the first to command a Fleet when he took command of 3rd Fleet. He retired in 1980 and passed away in 2004.

Commander Gravely and his officers on USS Taussig

Gravely gave his parents and conditions of his upbringing much credit for his success. He believed that those conditions which forced him to “capitalize on his strong points, build his weak areas and sustain the positive self-esteem and self-worth that his parents instilled in him as a young child.”

He was a great leader. LCDR Desiree Linson who interviewed him for her Air Command and Staff College project noted that Gravely like many other great military leaders before him learned to manage the image that he presented, be a caretaker for his people, what we would now call a mentor. He said “[If I was CNO] my responsibility would be to make sure enlisted men and families were taken care of. I would do everything in my power to make sure.”

His pursuit of excellence, self confidence and mastery of professional skills empowered him in an institution where he was still an anomaly and where racism still existed. He believed in effective communication, especially verbal communication and in building teams and in being a good follower, listening, learning and proactively anticipating the needs of his superiors. Gravely was also a believer in personal morality and self discipline and preparedness. He said:

“I did everything I could think of to prepare myself. If the opportunity came, I would be prepared for it. [The question would not be] “Why didn’t you prepare for this opportunity.” I would be prepared for whatever opportunity that came. If it came, fine. If it did not, fine, but I would be prepared if it did come.”

The USS Gravely

Vice Admiral Gravely blazed a trail for those that followed him and set an example for all Naval Officers to follow. He did it under conditions that most of us could not imagine. I am proud to serve in the Navy that he helped to make.  His vision, service and memory are carried on in this navy and in the ship that bears his name, the USS Gravely DDG-107.

Peace

Padre Steve+

The socialization of America began in 1899 by the Fabians.  With their ‘New Education’, Marxist Socialism, and John D. Rockefeller’s $11 million moved into the colleges in 1903.  Socialism showed up in the government in Wilson’s Administration, and they already had influence over the media by then.  Franklin Roosevelt, a full blossomed Fabian, set the foundation for socialism to move into the society, that Lorenzo wrote about.  The media created the ‘untold and unknown political history of America’s 20th Century of the undermining of America’s foundation by traitors, treachery and treason.  And America’s socialism moves on.’

Why isn’t it known by now?  A wag said there are three kinds of people; those who watch things happen; those who make things happen; and those who wonder what in the world just happened.  But there is a fourth; those who know, but end up saying ‘I told you so!’.  There is a solution to America’s foreign ideologues.  It needs to become know.  The conservative media doesn’t recognized the fourth kind of people.  They just keep trying to tell the Republicans how to push a rope!

Toby Elster

This morning, I made a quick list of presidential sites I’ve visited since my youth.  My bucket list includes the Harry Truman sites in Independence, MO, the Adams’ sites in Boston, MA, as well as several presidential sites here in Ohio.

1. Washington’s Birthplace
   1. Parents’ graves
2. Washington’s Mount Vernon
3. Jefferson’s Monticello
4. Monroe’s Ash Lawn
5. Jackson’s The Hermitage
6. WHHarrison’s Berkley Plantation
7. Polk’s home
8. Lincoln’s Birthplace
9. Lincoln’s Knob Creek Farm
10. Lincoln’s Indiana Home
    1. Mother’s grave – Nancy Hanks
    2. Sister’s grave – Sarah Lincoln
11. Lincoln’s Charleston, IL home
    1. Parents’ graves
12. Lincoln’s Springfield home
13. Lincoln Presidential Museum & Library
14. Lincoln’s Mother’s home in Kentucky (Nancy Hanks)
15. Lincoln’s Step-mother’s home in Kentucky (Sarah Bush Johnston)
16. Lincoln’s Step-mother’s home in Illinois
17. Mary Todd Lincoln House in Lexington, KY
    1. Parents’ graves
    2. Sites dealing with Mrs. Lincoln’s youth
18. Grant’s birthplace
19. Grant’s boyhood home
20. Haye’s Spiegel Grove
21. Benjamin Harrison’s home
22. Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill
23. Taft’s Birthplace
24. Harding’s Home
25. Franklin Roosevelt’s Springwood (Hyde Park)
26. Carter’s Sites in Plains, GA

Presidential Graves…

1. Washington
2. Jefferson
3. Monroe
4. Jackson
5. WHHarrison
6. Tyler
7. Taylor
8. Polk
9. Lincoln
10. Grant
11. Hayes
12. B Harrison
13. T Roosevelt
14. Taft
15. Wilson
16. Harding
17. F Roosevelt
18. Kennedy

History & Presidential History

By Elizabeth Linehan

From the opening years of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover had hoped for individual and private solutions for the economic difficulties faced by Americans. Many – but by no means all – who have studied his choices have labeled them “laissez-faire” (literally “leave to do” or more commonly “hands off”). Regardless of public christening, there is little doubt that Franklin Roosevelt was elected for exactly the opposite aim – direct, decisive and drastic intervention. He delivered.

Again, history would remember Roosevelt’s New Deal measures in many and varied ways. Considered in equal measure heroic and disastrous, there is little room for argument that many of his measures made vast and immediate differences.

Thousands of Bank Closures

In the first four years following the collapse of Wall Street on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, banks had been closing by the thousands. In 1931 alone, 2300 banks shut their doors. In 1933, that number almost doubled to more than 4000. Panic was universal, and there was no end in sight.

As soon as FDR took office in 1933, he took sweeping action to try to turn around the plummeting economy. One of his first actions in March of that year was to halt massive bank closures by declaring a banking holiday. From Monday, March 6 to Thursday, March 9, 1933, all banks in the US were closed for business. Then, on March 9, in what some would see as retroactive CYA, Roosevelt quickly wrote and pushed to Congress an amendment to the “Trading with the Enemy Act” (TEA) passed during World War I, legalizing the closures he had just enacted. This was the Emergency Banking Act of 1933.

Emergency Banking Act of 1933

Title 1 Section 1 of the Emergency Banking Act confirmed the President’s actions/rules/etc taken since March 4, 1933 under the TEA, also called “Act of October 16, 1917”. In other words, it legalized things the President had already done but without renewing proper legal consent. It extended the President’s powers under the TEA to include persons within US or any place under its jurisdiction, rather than just foreign countries.

Sections 2 and 3 prohibited hoarding, melting, etc, of gold by private citizens and gave the Treasury the right to confiscate all privately held gold, paying for it with cash. That cash was not backed by gold, as it had been before.

Section 4 made doing business with banks during a declared emergency illegal, except by permission from the President of the US.

Title 2, called the “Bank Conservation Act”, provided for a Comptroller of the Currency and essentially put the national banking system in receivership. Of course, the official title for the “receiver” was “conservator”. The controller had the ability to take control over the banks and set the rules for running them, limiting withdrawals and debt payments under the direction of the President in an emergency. Title 2 also gave the rules for reorganizing banks.

According to a Widepedia article, this gave the President absolute control of national finances during a declared emergency.

Title 3 governed the handling of shares of bank stock, common and preferred. It outlined the notification and treatment of shareholders, protecting the interests of the holders of preferred stocks first and foremost over those of common stocks. According to an author for Wikepedia, this title allowed banks to “to disown their debts with the permission of the Comptroller of the Currency and a majority vote of their stockholders.”

Title 4 allowed banks to convert their debts into cash, and any checks or drafts into cash but at only 90% of their value.

Finally, Title 5 set aside $2,000,000 for expenditures incurred by the Treasury in executing this act.

Lasting Effects

It could reasonably be argued that simply to use the “banking holiday” to halt the race to bankruptcy would have been sufficient, that the confiscation of gold and outlawing private ownership of it was unnecessary and unconstitutional. The gold standard which had backed US currency since the founding of this nation was gone, never to return. Fortunately for Americans, the right to privately own gold was restored on January 1, 1975.

One other banking act passed in 1933 that lives on today more appreciated by private citizens. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (not to be confused with the first Glass-Steagall Act, passed in February, 1932), provided for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. At its onset, the maximum amount a single depositor could have insured in a single bank was $2500. Today that amount has grown to $250,000, protecting checking and savings deposits and certificates of deposit, but not mutual funds, annuities, stocks, bonds, treasury securities and other investment products.

Sources:

Documents of American History, Emergency Banking Act of 1933, Web

United States Treasury, Trading with the Enemy Act, Web

Internet Archive, Glass-Steagal Act (1933), Web

Wikepedia, Emergency Banking Act of 1933, Web

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Insured or Not Insured? Web

Copyright Elizabeth Linehan

The British monarchy came to a temporary end on January 30th, 1649, when King Charles the First was beheaded by opponents of royalty. Oliver Cromwell led England as Lord Protector for several years afterward. When the monarchy was restored, after Cromwell’s death, royalists dug up his body and beheaded him in retaliation on January 30th, 1661.

On January 30th, 1933, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as the chancellor of Germany.  Hitler came to power on the 51st birthday of the newly-elected U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was sworn in weeks later.  FDR and Hitler would both die in the same month, April 1945, as the U.S. and its allies were about to defeat Nazi Germany in World War Two.

The sublime work of Louis Kahn for the Four Freedoms Park in New York, opened  to the public a 40 years after it was designed to celebrate the life and work of American President Franklin Roosevelt. The park itself is named after a speech he made in 1941 calling for the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Freedoms as important then as they are today.

The images were photographed by Ty Cole:

http://tycole.com

This building is very familiar to most folks who grew up in Morgan County, Kentucky and have lived there anytime from the 1930′s til now.

Currently this building houses offices of the Morgan County government. Many of us Morgan Countians know this building has the “old” Morgan County High School. This school building was opened in 1937. It was built as part of the Works Progress Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tenure in the White House. His wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, actually came to West Liberty to dedicate the new school.

This school building stopped being used as a high school in 1974, my junior year. We moved to the “new” high school in August of 1974. I was part of the first graduating class of the “new” high school. Now those of you who are good at cipherin’ numbers should be able to calculate that the “new” high school has now been in use longer than the “old” high school. I think it’s time some of us should probably drop the “new” in our description of the current high school.

As was usually the case in years past in small towns in Kentucky and probably America, the school buildings that were built in this era of history housed more than the high school grades of the school system. This was the case at Morgan County.

I started in this building in the fifth grade. It was close enough that I could walk to school with my brother and some friends. This daily ritual changed over the years. My brother, who was four years older, graduated when I entered high school and for some reason my friends wanted to get to school on time so they stopped waiting on me. Evidently my punctuality gene stopped working at about fifteen years of age. I think I was late every day of high school. My leisurely walks to school turned into all-out sprints.

I “stayed back” in the eighth grade with two of my friends. Now for those of you who do not live in eastern Kentucky, this was a fairly common occurrence among boys who thought they had prominent athletic careers ahead of them. Staying back or repeating an early grade would give the young athlete another year to mature and thus be able to dominate those of the proper-aged-in-the-appropriate-grade athlete. It seems this premise only works if the said repeatee would actually grow to be larger than those he was supposed to dominate. In my case that, unfortunately, was not the case.

When I told my wife, who is a product of the parochial schools, that I “stayed back”, she thought a repeat of the eighth grade meant something else entirely so she started speaking slower to me. I knew I had to tell her why I added another year to my education experience so she would not question my intellectual capabilities. However, I was in a quandary. If I told her that I stayed back for an enhanced athletic superiority, she would think it foolish since I obviously had not had much of a career. So I told her the other reason, “that it was to make me more mature as a person.”

“Well”, she replied, “that did not work either.”

If you like this photo, you can see more of my photos here.

<p><img alt=”Lord-Louis-Mountbatten” height=”258″ src=”http://cdn.hankeringforhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Lord-Louis-Mountbatten.jpg&#8221; width=”192″ /></p>

<p>Lord Louis Mountbatten</p>

<p>The worry in some parts of the administration was that American troops, ostensibly committed to fighting Nazism and Italian Fascism, might unwittingly become committed to saving the British Empire, something that there was no appetite for in the USA at all. When US troops later served in Burma under Lord Louis Mountbatten’s South East Asia Command, or SEAC, they re-branded the abbreviation ‘Saving England’s Asian Colonies.’</p>

<p>To Roosevelt, the fight against Nazism would be a straight forward division of labour, the British would fight on the seas, the French with their much larger army would fight on the land, and America would finance much of the struggle with loans, as she had done in the First World War. The idea that France could be over-run in six weeks and Britain threatened shortly afterwards was in the realm of the unthinkable, but by June 1940 the unthinkable had occurred. The British Expeditionary Force was left to escape back across the channel and soon German aircraft were bombarding British airfields.</p>

<p>Roosevelt, by December 1940, knew that this new world that he had not bargained for, one where an increasingly belligerent Japan was also ready to make its move for Asian domination, could not be ignored forever. It was through the medium of his famous ‘Fireside Chat’ radio broadcasts, designed at the height of the Great Depression to re-instill some faith in the American people that they were cared for and protected, that he gave his famous Arsenal of Democracy speech. (Hear the speech below.) He used it to explain to isolationist America that the time for avoiding conflict was coming to an end. Roosevelt did not directly advocate joining the war, but knew that only American industrial output could win it.</p><p> <a href=”http://youtu.be/G7BKvlobfBY”><img alt=”" height=”340″ src=”http://i.ytimg.com/vi/G7BKvlobfBY/0.jpg&#8221; width=”480″ />Watch this video on YouTube</a> Embedded with WP YouTube Lyte.</p>

<p>* For a free six part study course on German History 1890-1945, sign up for the Explaining History Newsletter <a href=”http://www.explaininghistory.com”>here</a></p&#62;

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money, it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow-men.

-Franklin Roosevelt

Link to full speech: http://history.eserver.org/fdr-inaugural.txt

1.  Richard Nixon’s father, Frank, was quite opinionated.  In my first post about Irwin Gellman’s The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952, I said that Frank was a Republican, and yet his Sunday School class inspired author Jessamyn West to lean towards socialism.  I got that part about socialism from wikipedia, which was basing it on something that West wrote in Double Discovery: A Journey.  In my latest reading of Ambrose, I saw what West said.  On page 18 of Ambrose, we read:

“Frank would express his strong political convictions in his teaching; he was, West declared, ‘the first person to make me understand that there was a great lack of practicing Christianity in civic affairs.’ He may have voted Republican, but ‘what Frank had to say about probity in politics pointed…straight to Norman Thomas,’ at least as far as West was concerned.”  Norman Thomas was a six-time socialist candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

I got a taste of Frank’s political beliefs in Gellman’s book.  On page 11 of The Contender, Gellman states: “Frank also believed in the ‘little man’ and opposed the ‘robber barons’ who controlled a large portion of America’s wealth at the turn of the twentieth century.  Despite the connection between big business and the Republican Party, he remained a staunch defender of the GOP.”

Ambrose himself says that Frank could be quite staunch when it came to defending the Republican Party, for Frank alienated customers at his grocery store by debating the Democrats who came in to shop!  According to Ambrose, Frank grew up as a Democrat, but he became a Republican when he was seventeen.  Frank made the switch for at least three reasons.  First, Frank blamed an economic depression on Democratic President Grover Cleveland.  Second, as a hard worker, Frank came to appreciate the value of a dollar, so he supported the Republicans’ policy of sound money.  And third, Frank met Republican candidate for President William McKinley, who was impressed with Frank’s colt!

But that was not the last time that Frank switched his political affiliation, Ambrose narrates on pages 28-29.  Frank’s wife Hannah had a Republican background, but she voted for Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and Frank “chided” her for that (Ambrose’s word).  In 1924, however, Frank voted for the Progressive Party after his disenchantment with the Republicans.  In 1928, he returned to the Republicans by voting for Herbert Hoover.  But he voted for Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.  Ambrose states that “whoever his candidate, Frank was ardent about him, and politics in general” (page 29).

I identified with a lot of this.  I was once a Republican, but I ended up voting for Barack Obama and other Democrats in 2012.  I had my reasons for being a Republican back when I was one, and they were legitimate reasons, in my opinion, but I got to the point where I was disenchanted with the G.O.P. and thus switched.  I’m probably not as opinionated as Frank was, but I used to be.  Like Frank, who confronted and debated Democrats when he was a staunch Republican, I would start political debates with the liberals and Democrats I knew.  If someone made a harmless, innocent comment about how Bill Clinton was a good leader, I’d be right there, ready to argue!  Come to think of it, I sometimes behaved that way after I became a Democrat!  Nowadays, I don’t feel as inclined to get into debates.

2.  Frank’s son, Richard, liked to debate as well.  While Frank raised his voice, Richard focused on facts and logic.  And Richard would take a contrary position on an issue simply to have an opportunity to debate.  Richard did not like girls in his younger years, but as one female acquaintance remarked as she thought back, Richard was eager to debate them!

At Whittier College, Richard was awkward around women, yet he went steady with the most popular girl in school.  Why did she like him?  She said it was because she admired Richard’s mind, and they’d get into political debates.  She liked Roosevelt, but Richard did not.  Conventional wisdom dictates that we should never bring up politics on a date, and there’s probably a lot of wisdom in that: it’s better to inquire about your date’s family, movies he or she likes, etc.  But, in my opinion, it would be cool if I could have a relationship in which my date and I would discuss substantive issues.  That’s part of getting to know what matters to a person.

Will any future president ever write and utter more powerful words than those spoken by Lincoln — and addressed, unambiguously, to the secessionist Confederate State of America — on the eve of the Civil War?

“I am loath to close,” he said at his oath-taking in March 1861. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

But beyond the politics, the occasional poetry, the pomp and the circumstance of these quasi-coronations, there is also the quite obvious fact that for many of the men and women (and sometimes the children) who attend an inauguration, it’s a party. It might not be an intimate party, or a let-it-all-hang-out party; but the opportunity to witness, in person — along with several thousand other folks — the peaceful transition of power in the most powerful country in the world is a rare and even, at times, a moving treat.

[See TIME.com's "Obama’s Inauguration: Who’s Who in the Ceremony."]

It is a spectacle, for sure: but it is a spectacle that, at least in theory, celebrates the notion that the most powerful human being on the planet works for us.

Here, on the occasion of President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, LIFE.com offers a series of pictures — some classic, some that never ran in LIFE — of the inaugural ceremonies from presidents Roosevelt through Nixon. The span of time covered here coincides, more or less, with the years in which LIFE magazine published as a weekly. The photos themselves, meanwhile, offer a fascinating glimpse into the myriad ways that American culture — its politics, fashions, media, etc. — has changed, and how much has remained weirdly, and comfortingly, the same.

— Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com

General Allenby: [leafing through Lawrence's dossier] “Undisciplined… unpunctual… untidy. Knowledge of music… knowledge of literature… knowledge of… knowledge of… you’re an interesting man there’s no doubt about it.” 

Character is a terrible thing to judge. Mostly because those doing the judging also suffer from flaws in their own character.  Yet somehow the temptation is for us to stand as judge, jury and character executioner on those that we find wanting. As a culture we like tearing down those that we at one time built up. It is a rather perverse proclivity that we have as human beings, especially if we can find some kind of religious justification for it.

I think that is part of the complexity of the human condition. As a historian I find that the most exalted heroes, men and women of often great courage both moral and physical, intellect, creativity, humanity and even compassion have feet of clay.

I find that I am attracted to those characters who find themselves off the beaten track. Visionaries often at odds with their superiors, institutions, and sometimes their faith and traditions. Men and women who discovered in themselves visions for what might be and pursued those visions, sometimes at the costs of their families, friends, and in quite a few cases their lives.

Throughout my studies I have been attracted to men as diverse as Peter the Apostle, Martin Luther, T.E. Lawrence, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Erwin Rommel, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy, Dwight D Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Jackie Robinson, Teresa of Avila, Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel and Emir Feisal Hussein of the Arab Revolt. All had flaws. Some involved fits of temper and violence, others sexual escapades, mistresses, affairs, greed avarice, and maybe some that stretched law and morality in their quest to achieve their goals. But all are considered great men and women.

Feet of clay. Who doesn’t have them? But them I think that I would rather have feet of clay than a heart of stone, an an unchallenged mind, or a lack of courage to do the right thing even if it does not directly benefit me.

Tonight I watched for the first time straight through the cinema classic Lawrence of Arabia. Peter O’Toole plays Lawrence in a most remarkable manner, showing his brilliance, courage, diplomatic ability and understanding of the Arabs with whom he served.

There are many people, leaders and others that we encounter in life or that we study. Even the best of the best are flawed and there is no such thing as a Saint who never sinned. But we love destroying them and their memory when to our “surprise” when we find that their hagiographers built them into an idol.

I am a great believer in redemption and the weight of the whole of a person’s life. Thus I try to put the flaws as they are called in perspective and their impact both positive and negative in history. Studying in this way gives me a greater perspective on what it is to be human and to place my own clay feet in appropriate perspective.

It was an interesting film to watch.

However, speaking of feet of clay I will probably be writing about the Baseball Writers who vote for the inductees for the Hall of Fame. Today for the first time in nearly 4 decades no players were selected for induction, mostly due to the steroid era. But that is a subject for another night.

Peace

Padre Steve+

On today’s date in 1941, President Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress. Historians have since named the address, “The Four Freedoms Speech”.  The ideals are timeless and were brought to new life during the harsh realities of the day and age.  It was the end of the Great Depression.  The Axis of dictatorships was in the process of subjugating much of the world, as well.  World War Two was in full swing.

“…The first is freedom of speech and expression, everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants, everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor, anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation….“–FDR January 6, 1941

All four of the objectives stood in stark contrast to the oppressive regimes of communism and especially fascism.  The suppression of free speech, the imposition of theocratic/plutocratic  tyranny, the widespread hunger and poverty, and the iron-fisted propaganda and rule were all too present in much of the world at that time.

The presidential goal included the ultimate defeat of tyrannical dictatorships and thereby eliminate oppression of people everywhere.  Then to ensure that basic humane treatment of the people become universal realities.  When a person no longer must scramble for subsistance and is free of oppression, he or she is free to consider higher thoughts and actions.

A positive, charitable way of thinking is more likely to come about when that person’s existance is not in question.  This state of being leads to us acting less like beasts and more like compassionate, caring beings. This state of being is what meshes with our inate social inclinations.

The speech planted the goals of realizing universal human rights by the United States and many other nations.  In fact, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt worked to see that the ideals of the Four Freedoms become implemented.  These ideals did form the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Resolution was approved by the United Nations’ General Assembly.

We still have a long road ahead to reach the destination of a world that enjoys universal freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.  I have hopes that the freedoms will be attained sooner rather than later.

Ciao

The Blue Jay of Happiness knows that security in these basics will promote happiness and joy everywhere.

So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground – Matthew 25:25a (NIV)

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Do you know what an invisible fence is?  If you live in a suburban or rural area in United States, you likely do.   An invisible “fence” consists of a wire buried around the perimeter of a yard.  The wire transmits a mild static electric shock to a receiver located in a dog collar.  Any time a dog wearing a receiver-equipped collar approaches the fence, the dog receives an uncomfortable, but nonlethal,  shock.  After a short time, with the assistance of a trainer, the dog learns where the boundaries of the fence are located and stays confined therein.

Over the last several days, I’ve been reflecting on 2012.  By some measures, it was a pretty pedestrian year, a cocktail of successes, failures, victories, defeats, breakthroughs and setbacks.  My career went a little sideways, but it was that movement that really caused me to embrace my true passion (see my previous blog entry, Are You Making Tent or Pursuing Your Calling?).  After a previously aborted attempt, I got serious about blogging consistently, writing 26 posts.  I got to travel more for pleasure than I have in recent memory, including a family vacation with my brother and in his family to the St. John in the US Virgin Islands.  (That is certainly not our “typical” family vacation.)

I looked back at the things I failed to accomplish last year for clues as to their root causes.  Was I constrained by other people, finances or health?  No.  In the vast majority of cases the answer was one four letter word beginning with an “f”- “fear.”  I had erected my own invisible fence of fear.   I allowed feelings of anxiety and in some cases dread to keep my within a confined space.  I allowed fear to “train” me like a dog wearing a receiver-embedded collar.  There are several similarities to fear and the invisible fence:

1. While both are extremely uncomfortable, but neither is truly life threatening.
2. Both are confining
3. Beyond both lay freedom.

In 2013 I am committed to push against the limits of my invisible fence.  I am committed to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and run with perseverance the race marked out for me” (Heb. 12:1).   Will I always be successful? No, but that’s where the perseverance part come in. If I set out to do this in my own strength, I will fail miserably, but I serve a God who has promised to displace my fear with his power, love and self-discipline (2 Tim 1:7).

The scripture snippet in the introduction of this post is from a parable that Jesus tells of three servants entrusted with talents (Matt 25:14-30).  Two of the three servants invested their talents wisely and earned a return for their master.  The third servant, motivated by fear, hid his talent, earning nothing.  I don’t know about you, but I want to live in a way that yields a return.

I leave you with this quote that I came across credited to Mark Twain, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

“The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

Btw. Republicans are against each and everyone of these. Which is why, our lives are so screwed up right now…

KANSAS CITY, MO –

PROMISED LAND (R)
RUSS:
MATT DAMON DESPERATELY WANTS US TO BELIEVE THAT NATURAL GAS FRACKING IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. HE MAY BE RIGHT, BUT HIS DRAMA “PROMISED LAND” MAY LEAVE MANY VIEWERS UNCONVINCED. MATT PLAYS A GAS COMPANY REP WHO ENCOUNTERS SOME RESISTANCE FROM RURAL FOLKS WHO WON’T BOW TO HIS COMPANY’S WISHES.

SHAWN:
OK, FROM THE WE’VE SEEN THIS A THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE DEPARTMENT COMES “PROMISED LAND” A HO-HUM INSTANTLY FORGETTABLE FAUX DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH STORY THAT DOES LITTLE AND MEANS EVEN LESS. I LOVE TOAST WITH NO JELLY. RIGHT.

RUSS:
IT’S WELL ACTED AND SINCERE, BUT AN IMPLAUSIBLE TWIST IN THE FINAL REEL SENDS IT OFF THE RAILS.

RUSS:
NOT SURE ABOUT REELS AND RAILS BUT THE ENDING IS WACK. BUT WHEN DID MATT DAMON GO OVER THE CINEMATIC CLIFF? HIS PAST FEW MOVIES HAVE BEEN HORRIBLE. THE ONLY THING PROMISED IS BOREDOM.

RUSS: 3 POPCORN BAGS
SHAWN: 2 POPCORN BAGS

THE IMPOSSIBLE (PG-13)

RUSS:

THIS DRAMA, BASED ON A TRUE STORY, DEALS WITH THE AFTERMATH OF A TSUNAMI AND ITS EFFECT ON COUPLE OF TOURISTS, NAOMI WATTS AND EWAN MCGREGOR, AND THEIR KIDS.

SHAWN:
THE STORM EFFECTS ARE AMAZING. THE STORY IS A BIT MISGUIDED THOUGH. WHY AM I BEING FORCED TO CARE ABOUT A FAMILY OF RICH TOURISTS WHO MOST SURVIVE THE AFTERMATH OF THE STORM. WHAT ABOUT ALL OF THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO LIVED THERE THAT WERE EFFECTED. I WANTED TO SEE THEIR STORY. THEIR STRUGGLE.

RUSS:
THE SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE SPECTACULAR AND THE CAST IS FINE, BUT “THE IMPOSSIBLE” IS EXCRUCIATING TO SIT THROUGH. THE CHARACTERS ENDURE A REAL SLOG…AND SO DOES THE AUDIENCE.

SHAWN:
EVERYTHING YOU SAID IS TRUE. BUT THE FOCUS IS ALL WRONG. IN FACT A BIT INSENSETIVE.

RUSS: 3 POPCORN BAGS
SHAWN: 3 POPCORN BAGS

HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (R)

RUSS:
BILL MURRAY’S SHARP PORTRAYAL OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT AND LAURA LINNEY’S SUBDUED TURN AS HIS COUSIN AND LOVER DAISY, PROVIDE THE SAVING GRACE OF THIS OTHERWISE DULL BIOPIC.

SHAWN:
I THOUGHT THIS MOVIE WAS A VINTAGE SNL SKIT. I DIDN’T BELIEVE FOR A SECOND THAT BILL MURRAY WAS FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT. HIS PERFORMANCE IS A COMPLETE 180 FROM DANIEL DAY LEWIS’ TURN AS ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN “LINCOLN.”

RUSS:
IT’S BEAUTIFULLY PRODUCED BUT NEVER AS COMPELLING AS IT NEEDS TO BE.

SHAWN:
DUDE THIS MOVIE IS TERRIBLE. THE ENTIRE FILM FEELS LIKE A FARCE. IT COMES ACROSS AS FAKE AS “ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER” EXCEPT NOT NEARLY AS FUN. WASTED TALENT. A WASTE OF TIME. NAW, JUST PLAIN WASTE. COULD OF USED A FEW VAMPIRES TO LIVEN THINGS UP.

RUSS: 3 POPCORN BAG
SHAWN: 2 POPCORN BAGS

Serial killers are one thing, but according to psychologist and author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths Kevin Dutton, some of the most beloved presidents were also some of the most psychopathic presidents. This is not to say that any of our presidents were bona fide psychopaths, just that some displayed some personality traits similar to those of psychopaths. However, as evidenced by the title, psychopathic personality is being redefined as potentially helpful in political leadership. Supposedly, we all have something to learn from our more psychopathic commanders-in chief. Unless the lessons to be learned are in how not to behave, then I would guess that there’s little in the way of wisdom to be garnered from Dutton’s book.

On Dutton’s promotional website for his new book, he writes,

In 2010, Scott Lilienfeld at Emory University teamed up with forensic psychologist Steven Rubenzer and Thomas Faschingbauer, professor of psychology at the Foundation for the Study of Personality in History, in Houston, Texas, to hand out a personality test to the biographers of every U.S. president in history. But there was a catch. It wasn’t the biographers who were being tested. It was their subjects. The biographers, based on their knowledge, had to answer on their subjects’ behalf. On the basis of the results, Lilienfeld then estimated the degree to which each president exhibited psychopathic character traits.

The overall ranking list featured below has been compiled on the basis of aggregate presidential ratings on two dimensions of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI): Fearless Dominance and Impulsive Antisociality. As such, it provides an estimate of the true standings of the presidents on the inventory.

Fearless Dominance, which reflects the boldness associated with psychopathy, was associated with higher ratings of presidential performance, leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management, Congressional relations, and related variables. It was also associated with a number of more objective indicators of presidential performance, such as initiating new projects, and being viewed as a world figure.

In contrast, Impulsive Antisociality, and related psychopathic traits were, in general, negatively correlated with highly rated presidential performance. Instead, they were associated with negative indicators of job performance, including Congressional impeachment resolutions, tolerating unethical behavior in subordinates, and unsavoury character.

In the table below, the numbers in the right hand column refer to the average ranking position of each president across both PPI dimensions. John F Kennedy, for example, was ranked second highest (out of 42) on the Fearless Dominance dimension, and sixth highest on the Impulsive Antisociality dimension – which equates to an average rank of 4 across both scales. Bill Clinton – also with an overall average ranking of 4 – came in seventh highest on Fearless Dominance, but enjoyed top billing when it came to Impulsive Antisociality.

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I came across this article on Business Insider, which led me to Dutton’s site, for the simple reason that liberals are often so confident in the rightness and healthfulness of their disposition. Well, so much for that, if Dutton’s list is to be given any credence. Not only do liberal icons like John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton hold the top two slots in Dutton’s list, but liberals hold all of the top six slots, save one. John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt rank as first, second, fifth, and sixth, respectively. And though Teddy Roosevelt was technically a Republican, his penchant for supporting food and drug regulations (e.g., the Pure Food and Drug Act) and breaking up alleged monopolies out of “fairness” to the underdog makes him a liberal icon in critical areas.

It’s no surprise then, given the liberal political proclivities of the intelligentsia, that psychopathy is now being redefined as a potentially beneficial disposition for those aspiring to political life. They say that politicians need the dispassionate boldness and fearlessness that psychopaths are capable of. But what is being ignored is the amorality and craving for power that also happens to be associated with psychopathy, which might explain why serial adulterers like Kennedy and Clinton topped Dutton’s list. It might also explain why some of our most psychopathic presidents, like Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, were some of the most grandiose in their political visions.

The study by Lilienfeld et al. that Dutton uses for his premise was published in this past year’s September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In it, they argue much the same as Dutton that there are some traits of psychopathy that lead to leadership success, but they make a candid admission that boldness could very well lead to recklessness. They write,

Our findings do not address the question of whether the association between boldness and political performance is linear; at extreme levels, boldness may merge into recklessness and become maladaptive.

This admitted blind spot of the study immediately calls to mind our sixth-ranked presidential “psychopath” Franklin Roosevelt and his oft-repeated, “bold” provocations against Japan prior to Pearl Harbor. It’s true that Roosevelt didn’t cower and fret in the corner during his tenure as President, but it’s likely that his bold action was partly to blame for the prolongation of the Depression as well as the precipitation of war. In regards to the latter, journalist William Henry Chamberlin put it this way in his 1950 book America’s Second Crusade:

Of course the United States had no alternative except to fight after Pearl Harbor and the German and Italian declarations of war. But the Pearl Harbor attack, in all probability, would have never occurred if the United States had been less inflexible in upholding the cause of China. Whether this inflexibility was justified, in the light of subsequent developments in China, is highly questionable, to say the least.

The diplomatic prelude to Pearl Harbor also includes such fateful American decisions as the imposition of a virtual commercial blockade on Japan in July 1941, the cold-shouldering of Prince Konoye’s overtures, and the failure, at the critical moment, to make any more constructive contribution to avoidance of war than Hull’s [Secretary of State] bleak note of November 26.

So often people want to believe, and Dutton seems no different here, that presidential success is predicated on how much one “gets done” while in office. But leadership can be exhibited both in stillness and in action and, frankly, I believe that stillness would often better serve this nation than impulsive boldness.

In closing, there are three points that I found interesting about psychopathy and the White House. First, I’m fascinated by this rebranding of certain characteristics of psychopathy as worthy of praise. Only in unregenerate minds would having a psychopath hold power sound tolerable or even pleasant. At this point, the cultural transformation remains incomplete; the culture still largely thinks being labelled a “psycho” is unequivocally negative, but that looks to be changing. Secondly, I’m unashamedly amused by the fact that those presidents most revered by the Left have not only placed high on Dutton’s list, but are crammed into the topmost spots. I guess it just so happens that the presidents equipped with the greatest delusions of grandeur and a paramount desire to reconfigure humanity according to their narcissistic whims are disproportionately adored by liberals. That’s no coincidence, I’m afraid. No wonder psychopathy is being given a facelift. Finally, the belief that bold leadership must result in bold actions is nothing more than a fallacy. Adding countless regulations to the pages of the Federal Register and leading nations into war on impulse is certainly active and bold, but rarely is such action wise. All too often hindsight has enlightened us as to just how unnecessary and wasteful many “bold” political ventures have been.

Maybe I stand alone here, but give me a humble leader (Dt. 17:19-20) who fears the Lord (2 Sam. 23:3) and knows when to be courageous and when to issue restraint and patience (Prov. 25:28), not an egocentric quasi-psychopath who primarily acts on impulse, and fears no one, let alone God. Call me old-fashioned, I guess.