The Path of Great Nations

Our ongoing debt crisis is raising tempers throughout our political chattering class. Hidden away, however, are several underlying trends that are threatening to crack our political fault lines in ways that should send shudders through our collective consciousness. Instead, it will likely lead to boredom within a matter of weeks, as most people return to their own lives in hopes that the Future will take care of itself. Unfortunately, the cliff we occasionally sense ourselves approaching isn't terribly far away, and we're still heading toward it.

A friend of mine recently commented that Capitalism was, in many ways, an extreme form of economics in that only the financially strong survive. He is, of course, right in many ways, though his prescription (a more socialistic economy and political structure) strikes me as completely wrong.

Cruel as it is, Capitalism seems to reflect the Darwinian world in which we live, where the strongest, most adaptable survive. Socialism, on the other hand, recalls to mind Churchill's observation to the effect that Capitalism was the unequal sharing of prosperity, while Communism was the equal sharing of misery. Hoping to split the difference, Socialism seems to prevent prosperity, while being unable to escape the misery that comes from trying to maintain a perpetual state of equality in an inherently imperfect world.


Equally depressing are Alexander Tyler's observations on the ebb and flow of human forms of government:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

"From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage."

If I had to place America in the early 21st Century, it would be somewhere in Tyler's Stage 5: Abundance, heading toward Complacency (though an argument could be made that we've shot past Companency and are rushing headlong toward Apathy...possibly due to the proliferation of video games in modern times). From that point, I think Rome took about 400 years to fall; though I'm enough of a hopeless romantic to think we might be the first civilization to escape their fate, I'm not sure we'll last as long.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

Another Moment of Truth, or Paying the Piper

In a democracy, by and large the people tend to get the government they deserve. And throughout history, a democracy's moment of truth comes when its citizens discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. Since that discovery, about 50 years ago, we've tended to vote for whoever promised us the most goodies, and have largely ignored the Cassandras in our midst who were warning that nothing in this world is free, and that a day of reckoning would come one day when we'd have to start paying our bills.

The spectacle we're watching this week in Washington on raising the debt ceiling is our modern heritage, and our penance for wanting everything, and expecting others to pay for it all. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid the fiscal and financial pain that is in our future; and listening to those who are promising quick or easy fixes --- whether calling for "taxing the rich" to pay for everything, or cutting spending (except for any that happens to benefit us) --- are simply trying to advance their careers at their country's expense.

It's often said that the first step in getting yourself out of a hole is to stop digging; let's just hope we haven't already sold the ladder to the Chinese.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

The Better Angels of our Nature

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, one of the defining moments in the history of the greatest republic the world has known. So far, it seems to be marked the public largely by apathy and inattention. For nerds like myself, however, with an abiding interest in history and the human condition, it is a time for reflection on any number of things --- from the follies of Mankind to the extraordinary good fortune that has blessed this country from its inception.

My current book is Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her Pulitzer Prize winning study of the unique and self-made genius of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, illustrates the subtle and often-happenstance differences that mark the difference between good men and great ones. Lincoln, blessed with a gifted mind but suffering the handicap of little formal education, shared the same drive toward accomplishment that propels many talented people to make something of their lives. But his kindly, gentle disposition --- and the struggles he had to endure to overcome an impoverished upbringing, hardships that would have crippled most lesser men --- gave him advantages that let him transcend much of the petty partisan bickering that afflicted his era, as well as our own.

Often derided as ignorant and unfit for office by those who did not know him, Lincoln emerges as a forceful and visionary leader with an impeccable sense of timing --- or blessed with incredible luck, which may be another way of saying the same thing. Sweet-tempered and considerate to those around him, he nevertheless possessed an iron will and drive to make himself into someone worthy of the esteem of his countrymen. And it was a profound blessing upon his country that he emerged, virtually from nowhere, at precisely the moment his country needed a hero.

His kindness and magnanimity still shines through the ages, and he was loved by all who came to know him well, including those who felt cheated and betrayed by his nomination: his rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860, whom he wisely invited into his Cabinet. Sensing the the country needed the strongest leaders he could find, his matchless ability to juggle conflicting egos, emotions, and ideologies among the various pro-Union factions held the country together, and brought out the very best in those strong personalities whose help he needed to save our still-young Republic.

Lincoln was roundly criticized by virtually everyone during his day, for failing to adhere to their own prescribed agendas for the country. His election resulted in the South's seccession, but at the same time he was viewed as vacillating and soft by the radicals for his cautious approach to the issue that was tearing the country apart: slavery. Those who knew him, though, saw this caution for what it was --- an unwillingness to push a fractured country further than it was ready to go, even as he struggled to keep the Nation together. A lesser man, or one of more ideological rigidity, may well have pushed the country over the cliff by racing to abolish what was recognized as the American Curse. And as he maneuvered to keep Europe --- whose mills needed Southern cotton rendered unavailable by the Northern blockade of Southern ports --- from intervening in the conflict on the side of the Confederacy Yet he always pressed in the direction of freedom and equality for all, and when he sensed that the shift in public sentiment had matured sufficiently to set the Nation on the course of freedom for all its citizens, he was resolute in his actions, and determined to keep the country he loved from sliding back.

With all the Herculean challenges and sorrows Lincoln had to confront, what comes through most clearly is his humanity and elemental goodness. His sense of humor was legendary, and his generosity, sweetness of temper, and kind-heartedness inspired love and devotion in everyone who came to know him well. He was able to be magnanimous in defeat as well as victory, and seemed unable to hold a grudge, even against people who meant him harm --- traits as sorely lacking in the politicians of today as they were in Lincoln’s time. The difference appears to have been the character and temperament of Lincoln himself.

Oddly enough, one of the things that resonates most about Goodwin’s portrait of the Lincoln Administration is how closely the small and petty minds of his day resemble those of our own. Fortunately for the country, an unknown candidate appeared from nowhere just when his country needed him, with the intellectual gifts and sense of vision that proved to be exactly what was needed to rescue American from its own follies. In our own day --- with follies abounding, and narrow-minded pettiness all but a job requirement for political office --- it is hard to see how a modern Lincoln can ever emerge. Yet though perhaps not as daunting as the challenges facing the country as it confronted the American curse of slavery, those we face today threaten our financial and cultural future in ways we are only now beginning to realize. And if we have really sunk to the level of being unable to produce a leader equal to the challenges that confront us, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

Bulman Farewell

Though our time on Earth doesn't always fall into neat categories, our lives do have discernible chapters.  Some of them are pleasant; others we'd just as soon forget. But for most of us, the events of our childhood have special significance, since what we learn and live through as kids colors everything that comes afterwards.

I spent seven years at Bulman Elementary School in Redford, Michigan.  Looking back, it was the longest chunk of time I spent anywhere, outside of my parents' house, until I began my 30-year career at the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office. Many of those days dragged on interminably --- especially in Sixth Grade, where I confronted Unreasoning Adults for the first time in the person of my sixth grade teacher (who, may she rest in peace, shall remain nameless). But for the most part, my gradeschool days were filled with adventure and fun, of the sort that many kids today miss, owing to the Unreasoning Adults that seem to dominate much of modern-day America.

Learning came between the more important interludes of school:  recess, gym, and lunch, where lessons learned on the playgrounds stayed with us for the rest of our lives.

Parents took a healthy interest in what was happening at school --- with the Mothers Club filled with concerned, caring parents who did what they could to supplement our education with events, field trips, and baked goods.

Year by year, our growth and developing sense of self passed unnoticed --- except by the caring grownups around us, who were gently guiding us along life's early pathways, taking pride in every step of progress we made along the way.

Today, much has changed, and many of those changes are not for the better:

Recess, so necessary for young boys to discharge energy otherwise spent fidgiting and making mischief, is often looked at as wasted time that could be better spent sitting still and listening.

I was fortunate enough to be in an "accelerated" program for the smarter kids in our grade school. This gave the teachers more freedom to experiment, and to move through the basics to a more challenging course of study.  Today, this kind of "tracking" is often frowned up...and even by the time I left Bulman it had been abandoned, due to the protests of parents whose felt their kids were suffering by not being part of the program.

Dodgeball --- a source of playground fun for countless kids through the years --- seems to be going the way of the dinosaur, as grownups seem intent on eradicating anything with a hint of risk from childhood.

Even the free-range childhood I remember growing up --- leaving the house after breakfast for a day of unstructured play and adventure in the woods and fields near home, free from the over-protective eyes of adults --- is on the verge of extinction, sacrificed to the anxieties of the age. Back in the Middle Ages when I was a kid, free play was how we learned about the world, about friendship, and about how to settle our own problems; today, parents who let their kids walk about unsupervised are often called names and viewed as neglectful parents.

Perhaps some of this is simply a reflection of the times. But I think it mostly reflects our own fears and doubts.  In that, we are probably shortchanging the children of today, structuring their lives in ways that prevent them from confronting the small challenges and risks that will help them confront larger ones later in life. Those adult-sized challenges are there, and growing larger by the day; the world they will face will be a daunting one, filled with many problems left them by the grownups of today.  And I don't think we help our kids and grandkids prepare for the future by teaching them that there are no losers on the playing field, or that Mommy and Daddy will always take care of everything.

Bulman School will soon be only a memory. But walking the hallways for one last time brought back memories that were lingering there, in the footsteps of countless children who roamed the hallways over the past sixty-five years. We all have small corners of our lives where the man or woman we grew to be first took root; sometimes, it's nice to return there, even if only in our minds, to see ourselves as we once were:  filled with promise, and eager to experience the adventure that is life.  In this modern world that is changing under our feet and before our eyes, it's often helpful to know where we came from.  And if we can, it's nice to pay our past one last visit, before it disappears forever.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

Soft Despotism, or How Tyranny Creeps Into a Democracy

As students of history know, 150 years ago the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville spent a great deal of time traveling our young and vibrant nation. Among the many insights de Tocqueville had into this country was the recognition that, for all its grittiness and promise, America was not immune from the same follies that have plagued nations since the dawn of time. Among the problems he foresaw was the emergence of a form of "soft despotism" in which a paternalistic government would take control of society from an enfeebled people that was sapped of its own vitality and self-confidence. And all that stood between America and the voluntary surrender of liberty to a state eager to enhance power over an increasingly dependent population was the invigorating "habits of the heart" he saw in our 19th Century ancestors.

Unfortunately, our modern educational system doesn't seem to teach history very well. And among the insights most students of today never read is de Tocqueville's warning about what happens to a society in which citizens look to their government, rather than to themselves, to satisfy their needs and wants:

"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America


JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

In Praise of Heroes

Safe in our modern sophisicated cubicles, we like to think that we are the most enlighted and best educated people in the history of our planet.  Attempting to convince ourselves that we of the Modern Age are free from the mythologies of the past, we have deconstructed most of our history and our heritage:  not content with acknowledging the flaws of our Founders, many modern scholars parse through the history books looking for icons to shatter, much like the vanguard of the Inquisition sought to destroy all vestiges of the past from the lands of the people they conquered.  The loss of the Library of Alexandria, or the Mayan codices, caused incalcuable loss to the history of civilization --- a loss occasioned, in large part, by the belief that the amassed wisdom of an alien population could offer nothing to the modern era...whether that "modern era" was seeking to destroy the lies of the devil, or the culture of a vanquished people.

It is, perhaps, a conceit that seems peculiar to our era that the myths and legends of our own past serve no useful purpose for our Modern Age.  But if we look to the past, we see that each thriving culture nurtures and cherishes those myths that bind people together, and that loss of that common heritage --- whether through conquest or self-denegration --- often precedes the unraveling of a civilization. 

In this country, it has become fashionable to look upon our American legends as little more than lies told to justify the status quo.  But this view of our past overlooks the truth that our own era is less than perfect --- and that if judged by the standards of some future day, by people too small-minded to view us within the context of our own times, it is unlikely that we will measure up nearly as well.

Among our many modern faults is that we often fail to recognize is that each thriving culture needs its heroes, and its legends.  Modern-day America is not different in that regard than ancient Rome, or the Native Americans, whose myths and legends we now see as quaint and charming, without understanding that they were the glue that held their culture together.  And by casting off those that have sustained us for our first two centuries, we are sailing into dangerous waters...having just tossed our compass overboard.

Today marks the anniversary of the event that sparked one such myth:  the "eighteenth of April" was the date of Paul Revere's ride through the countryside to warn the people that British troops were on the march.  Longfellow's poem was not exactly a precise historical account:  he neglected to mention other riders that night, or the various misadventures that beset them along the way.  But it is stirring, and it is patriotic --- and despite the literary license it takes with the facts, it speaks more to what it means to be an American than most of the dreadfully dry and politically correct history books we inflict upon our young.

The poem was once required reading for all schoolchildren; it is a pity that today, so few of us blessed to live in the greatest country Planet Earth has yet produced have ever actually read it.

Paul Revere's Ride
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.