FunctionalAmbivalent

A History Lesson For Representative King

I understand that there are people who just aren't ever going to approve of gay marriage, just as there are people who aren't ever going to approve of interacial marriage or, for that matter, sport fishing.

But in a recent address, Iowa Rep. Steve King seemed to be lamenting the lack of civil disobedience in fighting gay marriage. He said:

This decision by the [Iowa] Supreme Court puts us in a position where we can either defy the court — which I would prefer to do, but I don’t see the appetite out there to do that. If it were up to me I’d say, ‘You made this decision, so now you enforce it because you stepped outside your bounds.’

This is, of course, the strategy segregationists used in the south. When the courts ordered the city of Little Rock to integrate its schools, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to block the entry of black children into white shools, basically saying to the courts -- to use King's words -- 'you made the decision, now you enforce it.' Repugnant though Faubus's stand may have been, it was at least logical. The court required that white and black children go to school together, and by blocking the black children's entry Faubus believed he could prevent tha trequirement from taking effect.

But the legalization of gay marriage doesnt' require anyone to do anything. Marriage is, after all, an entirely voluntary commitment. It's not like the courts are ordering people into gay marriages, and people could defy the court by refusing to get married. And the First Amendment protects churches who choose not to perform or recognize gay marriages, so there's no reason for anyone to build barricades anywhere.

I suppose King could be advocating that county clerks refuse to grant marriage licenses to gays, a fascinating advocacy of lawlessness from someone who writes laws for a living. If that's what King is in favor of, I suggest he look at what happened to Governor Faubus. The court can, despite King's bravado, enforce the law, at least in concert with other branches of government. Unless everyone up to and including the President of the United States is willing to tolerate lawlessness, eventually someone puts a stop to the kind of foolishness King seems to be advocating. The law is, after all, the law.

President Eisenhower was certainly no civil rights radical, but he nonetheless believed enough in the rule of law that he nationalized the Arkansas National Guard, ordered it back to its barracks, and sent in the 101st Airborne Division to clear a path for the kids to go to school. Faubus was humiliated and is reviled by history; Ike has an entire interstate highway system named after him and is remembered as one of the great heroes of the 20th Century.

King, perhaps, yearns to be remembered as Faubus is: as a lawless bigot. That's fine, and count me among the people who consider him thus. But if he thinks there's anything outside the law that can be done to overrule what is clearly a steady march toward the legalization of gay marriage, he's just flat stupid. 

The Scariest Man In the World Gets Old

Charles Manson is 74, and looks it.

How To Raise Decent Children

I'm doing research for my book proposal and came across this in a letter from Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is writing to his daughter, Martha, asking for her help in raising her sister, Polly:

Teach her above all things to be good; because without that we can neither be valued by others, nor set any value on ourselves. Teach her to always be true. No vice is so mean as the want of truth, and at the same time so useless. Teach her never to be angry. Anger only serves to torment ourselves, to divert others, and alienate their esteem. And teach her industry and application to useful pursuits. I will venture to assure you that if you inculcate this in her mind you will make her a happy being in herself, a most inestimable friend to you, and precious to all the world.

For you sticklers, this good advice is from the Letter to Martha Jefferson, April 7, 1787, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 11, pages 277-8.

Watching the Reruns

I went to the Frazier International History Museum yesterday, which premiered a few years ago as the Frazier Arms Museum but, after not attracting much of a crowd, sought to broaden it's appeal by changing its name. It's in a beautifully restored building downtown and contains the personal weapons collection of local rich guy Owsley Brown Frazier. It's a fine museum, comprehensive and earnest if not exactly fun.

Still, I'm not sure why the Frazier isn't a big hit, especially with the pro-gun crowd. My theory is that they don't want to intellectualize firearms so much as they want to take them out in the country and make them go "boom". I'm not a gun guy myself, but I have a similar feeling about airplanes, so I think I can relate. I don't really care about history and engineering; I just want a jet with it's afterburners on full passing-by low. There's nothing like that thump in the chest when the small noise of an approaching jet turns to the thunderous noise of a jet just passed.

Anyway, up on the third floor of the museum they had a special exhibit on the 1960s. They had a psychedelic Volkswagen and a couch covered with a batik sheet. They had shag rungs. I didn't see a bong, but one belonged there. They had a chronology of the '60s in notes and photos around one room, and it was a fun little bit of nostalgia to read along.

The serious side of the '60s exhibit was a collection of photographs of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy. You can question the taste of a gun museum featuring exhibits on three leaders assassinated with guns, but that's not the point. The point is, in each of the sections they had video running, and the Martin Luther King video was the "I Have a Dream" speech. My wife and I stood there a few minutes and watched. It's a marvelous piece of American oratory, but what's striking in retrospect is how obvious it is. Of course we all want a world where little "Negro" children and little white children can play together. Of course we want a world where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. Who in the world would argue against that?

Of course, lots of people did. It took sit-ins and voter registration drives and mass protests and riots and lawsuits to bring what seems so obvious now to the fore, that all men should be treated equally under the law. The people fighting that self-evident truth, the conservatives of their time, used dogs and fire hoses and guns and rope and fire to keep the Constitution from being enforced, but they used something else as well: the ballot box. Reasonable people, not the kind of people who would throw a firebomb into a church, helped along the way by casting their vote against equality. They did it for a lot of reasons, some of them abstractly ideological, but the bottom line was that they cast their vote in favor of injustice.

So this morning, I come across this:

Nearly five years after the state's Supreme Court ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, the vitriolic battle that brought international attention and apocalyptic fears to Massachusetts is all but dead. Since the first marriages on May 17, 2004, more than 11,000 couples have tied the knot. They're busy mowing lawns and hauling kids to soccer practice, and the sky has not fallen.

Conservatives are, once again, on the wrong side of history. Conservatives -- Republicans this time, though it was Democrats fighting Civil Rights -- are fighting to keep bigotry in power. Anyone who votes for a Republican empowers bigotry, even if they're voting based on taxes or the Pentagon budget, just as anyone who voted for Democrats in the south in the 1960s empowered bigotry by voting for states rights.

You'd think they'd get tired of being on the wrong side of history, but they apparently don't.

64 Years Ago Today

Dwight Eisenhower:

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces:

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

To hear, rather than read, Eisenhower's words, go here.

For photos of the D-Day invasion, go here.

To see Eisenhower's handwritten notes of what he intended to say if the invasion failed -- a very, very real possibility -- click here.

Waterboarding In the Past

Commentor Frank makes good points deep, deep into the longest discussion this blog has ever seen. Primary among his points the difference between waterboarding as practiced by today's enlightened CIA and the "water cure" of World War II. In researching my response to Frank's points, I came across the quote below, from a defender of American torture during the Spanish American War. The quote:

In an article, "The 'Water Cure' from a Missionary Point of View," Reverend Homer Stunz justified the technique. It was not torture, he said, since the victim could stop it any time by revealing what his interrogators wanted to know. Besides, he insisted, it was only applied to "spies." The missionary also justified instances of torture by pointing out that U.S. soldiers "in lonely and remote bamboo jungles" faced stressful conditions.

So, after nearly 8 years of Bush Administration leadership, we're on our way to being as enlightened a nation as we are in 1898. That's before the Geneva Conventions, just by the way, and the defense of abominable behavior today is almost exactly the same as it was then.

What Happens To Former New York Mayors Who Run For President

John Lindsay, mayor of New York from 1966 to 1973, ran for President in 1972 and, like Rudy Guiliani, never parlayed his name recognition into actual votes. Handsome, telegenic and likable in an effete, eastern way, he touted his experience in the "second toughest job in America" but couldn't connect with the folks in the outback. He left politics and worked for a succession of law firms, and at the end of his life found himself unemployed, unhealthy and without medical insurance. Newly elected Mayor Giuliani "hired" Lindsay as a city consultant, paying him $10,000 a year and providing health insurance, a minor corruption that no one really objected to. Lindsay died in South Carolina in 2000.

Why Adolph Hitler Was Like He Was

Farts. Seriously. According to real historians.

It's Not Really One of Those Things You Think of as Being Invented

Vincent DeDomenico, the inventor of Rice-a-Roni, has died.

DeDomenico worked in his family's pasta business when he was inspired in 1958 to create the mix of vermicelli, macaroni and flavorings that millions of Americans came to know by its advertising slogan as "The San Francisco Treat."

Don Your Nicest Sweatsuit For the Funeral

When I got out of college and was driving to California to try my hand as a movie writer, I stopped overnight in Las Vegas.  I had never been there before.  I pulled off the freeway and onto the strip and stayed at the first place that had a name I recognized: The Stardust.  I paid $6 for my room, which was out back of the casino in a low-slung, two story, motel-style buildings.  I ate a $2 gambler's buffet and lost $40 playing at the $2 blackjack tables.  The next morning I left just after dawn to pursue my show business dreams.

The Stardust Hotel, a fixture on the strip almost since the strip's inception, will be blown-up this week. 

The Stardust is one of the few leftovers from the era when Vegas was glamorous and exotic, something more than a shopping mall with slots and mobile home parking available. 

``We wore long dresses and gloves for dinner, Jackie Onassis-type things,'' said Jill Rader, who danced on the Stardust stage. ``Now people slop on through, and they look a mess.''

It's been a few years since I was in Vegas, but last time I was there I spent most of my time feeling like I was walking around the Parallel Universe Galleria.  I was there for three days and didn't see a single mob guy.  Gangsters, yeah.  There were plenty of those, in from L.A. in their pimped-out rides.  But no mob guys.

Mostly, there were middle class Americans having less fun than they were pretending.  That's how Vegas has always struck me.  It's a great place to spend 48 hours.  Any more than that is pointless.

Blow the whole damned place up, I say.  But leave the golf courses.