CasGrave

The European Commission has released a statement on their plan to clamp further down on speech with the help of the various IT companies.

This agreement is an important step forward to ensure that the internet remains a place of free and democratic expression, where European values and laws are respected. I welcome the commitment of worldwide IT companies to review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.“

The online memory hole becomes quite official in this statement. Such over encompassing laws are a very great risk to abuse to be reasonable in any case I feel. This frightens me, there are not many cases where something enacted is unenforced and even fewer cases where something enacted is withdrawn later to safeguard everyone’s freedom.

The IT Companies [are] to provide regular training to their staff on current societal developments and to exchange views on the potential for further improvement.

The IT Companies and the European Commission, recognising the value of independent counter speech against hateful rhetoric and prejudice, aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives, new ideas and initiatives and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking.

People will be conscientiously employed to sift through speech and to take the job of censor seriously. The least I can say is that this does not bode well for the future.

The fight against cultural appropriation is a fight against freedom of expression

Everything is explained in terms of physical characteristics, identity, purity, and difference. And this is a racism that is all the more certain that it is right because it is regarded as a legitimate reaction on the part of the persecuted. Now we see the obsession with the pedigree and the old distinctions derived from slavery being revived, and prejudices accumulating in the name of racism. This is the end of the concept of humanity as union in diversity and triumph of the human species incompatible with each other. - Pascal Bruckner

From Wikipedia

“Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture.[1] Cultural appropriation is seen by some[who?] as controversial, notably when elements of a minority culture are used by members of the cultural majority; this is seen as wrongfully oppressing the minority culture or stripping it of its group identity and intellectual property rights”

Identity politics has permeated our entire discussion of what we regard as political thought and what it’s goals should consist of. Especially young people today have become disaffected by the political sphere and turned to the old classifiers of cultural and ethnic identity to play out their idealistic battles. The language of rights and decency has sadly been inverted for a new ideological struggle characterised by its nasty divisiveness in the face of what should be rightly called and celebrated as cosmopolitanism that we have managed to nurture and enjoy so much. There are no singulars in this debate one can notice. We have reverted to a kind of class struggle marked by “culture” and this is a very bad indicator in light of the past.

There is a conflation of motives to individuals & their separate backgrounds that are held to be interlocking. People are held to the merit or demerits of their background on what is apt or inapt at any time (from criticism to creativity). This in turn reflects onto their culture at large and which groups are at anytime apt to take action in any case lest they oppress one another in some “harmful” way.

In liberal academia today one can expect to encounter students who peddle this same invective against anything they consider to take up the mantle of “Cultural Imperialism” They subsume in a strange antithesis the victorian puritans of old when they imply that the miscegenation of culture should halt in the name of what is good.

I’m afraid that de facto cultural segregation is slowly becoming the point of order in liberal academia in the west. One could even say that a new form of racialism is appearing out of the activism of this left intersectional ideology. Here is a new (yet ancient adaption of) racialism where your origin or perception of origin is supposed to dictate your motives, thoughts, validity and even harm & offence as it regards other individuals and society at large.

We are being asked (again) to value the things that make people different from one another and not what could be uniting them in a pluralistic attitude that works towards a cohesive and a free society. In that regard individualism & free expression is on a routing turn as a dialectic in how to improve a free society in western academia. The new rhetoric being brought to bear against “minority oppression” is the collective blame of the majority cultures residing in the west. A blame not just rooted in the very real crimes of the past but also in a conspirational line of thinking that implies that it is ever-enduring still behind a facade of “Liberalism & Enlightenment”

Therein not just the crime of oppression but the double crime of coverup that kindles the ideological flame of these activists further.

There is currently a hyperbolic derision on the part of these people towards “white imperialist capitalist hegemony” as they term it - where in one swift rhetorical move an ethnic background and a system of economic organisation has been subsumed under what should be in their minds perceived as a dangerous system of conspiracy to colonialism (not “neo” as the oppression from the west has in their mind never ended) and theft to benefit the hegemony and supremacy of that sole cultural group.

The argument is constructed in a way that is supposed to appeal to our base tribal emotions for the underdog and to our sense of historical guilt that permeates the modern era after the renunciation of imperial colonialism. While not always wrong on its face this line of argument is if I can put it in this way “deeply problematic” and rooted in historical revisionism.

[I’m of the mind to delve deeper into the final point in the paragraph above. It would make this essay far too long for form though to delve deeper at the moment.]

Cultural Appropriation is one of the heads of this regressive hydra that bothers me the most as it regards art and creativity. Cosmopolitanism currently remains a bedrock of art and creativity throughout the world. In a story by Alexis Okeowo that was run in the New Yorker in the latter months of 2015 titled “Handel In Kinshasa” There is a moment where criticism was levelled on part of the orchestra for their love of classical “western” music

“In the beginning, only a fifth of the audience at the concerts was black, and some Congolese complained that classical music put them to sleep. Mayimbi, the violinist, said, “They used to tell us it’s not African music, it’s not our culture.” Mayimbi rejected that idea. What was Congolese music, anyway? Even Congo’s best-known music, its effervescent version of rumba, incorporated influences from the Caribbean, Europe, and the rest of Africa”

Another example (of another writer from the New Yorker, sorry to be so particular) is given to us by Adam Gopnik. This time writing for the BBC in the light of the kerfuffle at the Boston Museum of Arts where students were accusing the museum of a particularly egregious example of cultural appropriation by allowing museum goers to pose in Kimonos for selfies in front of a Monet painting (Le Japonaise) depicting a french woman wearing the attire. I will quote him here at length to illustrate just how much the demarcation of culture cannot apply to human creativity and should never be allowed to.

“ You know those beautiful 19th Century Japanese prints, by Hiroshige or Hokusai or their friends, poetically depicting everyday events, or favourite places, all in charming comic book colour, with Mount Fuji often delicately if secretively included in every view (like a kind of sublime Where’s Wally). Those delicate black-edged figures and long almost cartoonish faces, those startling juxtapositions of foreground and distance, that informal and haiku-like lyricism - Japanese prints had, as everybody is taught in class, an enormous influence on French Impressionist art in the middle of the 19th Century. They were, exactly, an exotic appropriation. Well, it turns out that they weren’t really exotic at all. They were the product of the Japanese infatuation with Western perspective drawing and graphics, which had only recently arrived in Japan on ships and boats as part of the Japanese opening to the West. The Japanese artists saw them, and saw expressive possibilities in them that the Western artists were too habituated to the system to notice. The Japanese appropriated Western perspective in ways that Westerners would never have imagined. Then the Japanese pictures got sent back to Europe, where they looked wonderfully exotic, and re-made the Western art they originally hailed from.”

The Japanese far from being thieves of the cultural realm in regards to artistic style made something more out of and enriched the culture that they lived in while also exporting it beyond its borders. The implication of adhering to the maxims of cultural appropriation (or rather cultural misappropriation as its users intend it to mean) as a moral crime is to demand that race & culture should be given extra importance in our society and that one should stick to “their own” in matters of culture lest one commit a crime of misappropriation or imperialism that in their eyes “diminishes” an entire group.

If one where to take the argument seriously and as an invective against the moral crime of “cultural misappropriation“ one would instantly become mired in a trapping of identity politics from which there is no escape but to repent. If one where to defend as a part of a minority (as I am and why this matter is of great importance to me) a case of artistic expression made by a “other” that would borrow heavily from one’s own culture in a way that one would admire there could potentially be a group within your community where your opinion is not shared. Struggle would ensue over every matter which would straddle the division between two or more cultures. One could be accused of being a collaborator to the “crime” of misappropriation if one where to deviate from the prevailing groupthink on any specific matter. One could be looked upon as Jim Sleeper puts it succinctly [as] “A scab in an ethnic labor union“ and could be denounced from one’s strata for beginning an act of creativity in the same pluralistic vein.

For all their good intentions the arbiters of “Cultural misappropriation” can only lead to the road of de facto segregation where there is a stifling of creative thought borne of the individual. An individual who now perceives himself being unjust or in some way morally depraved if he takes a pluralistic attitude to the worlds cultural treasure is likelier to take the path of least resistance in an effort to not “offend” anyone.

Inevitable this line of argument cannot be backed up to its logical conclusion of never shall the twain cultures meet. Here is where regressives will speak of “borrowing” or “appreciation” — Ultimately this means that there is a final arbiter of artistic merit to any act of creativity that treads upon the world’s cultural boundaries.

I have no interest in seeing a cadre of people christening themselves as such arbiters in an attempt to thought police creativity and human endeavours. One can though see now that the mere criticism of this regressive movement is being labeled as a “hate crime” somehow spouted in the general direction of all minorities. This is an attempt to shut down a discussion which is important to the future of Pluralism. It is a direct threat to the freedom of expression we already enjoy in these matters and that we are slowly losing our grasp of as the 21st century marches on.

Its come to pass that Saudi Arabia executed 47 people in December. Among them the prominent Shiite Cleric Nimr al-Nimr that demonstrators in Iran managed to torch a Saudi embassy over. The Saudis have as of now severed all diplomatic ties with Iran and expelled all of their embassy staff in the Saudi kingdom. Pretty momentous news one could say if those diplomatic channels are never restored or not restored for long.

This polarises further the relations between the sunni and shia votaries of Islam. One also has to imagine now the threat of a regional war in the near future. In say the next 30 years for instance things could be a lot different and in my opinion are bound to be. As far as we can hope the talks to keep the Iranian regime from sinking its economy in the reach for atomic weaponry has probably been delayed for about 10 to 15 years it can be hoped. In the very near future though they will be out of the shackles of the sanctions regime imposed on them for misleading the international community on these nuclear proliferation matters. And with it the restructuring of an economy that has been dire for a long time.

On the Saudi end they seem to think they can decapitate people until they reach political & internal stability. There is an edge they seem to be coming up onto where the rule of their laws is self-evidently debasing to its own citizens who can witness the world across their borders from their computer and television screens.

Raif Badawi and other dissidents languish in prison and one feels as if the other shoe is just about to drop in this case and that this steady decline in authority will lead into their fall and most probably a civil war reminiscent of the Arab Spring that could be extrapolated further by the religious nature of the state.

If one were to imagine the end of the Saudi monarchs then the next bit becomes a bit easier to imagine. A new regime within the borders of Saudi Arabia one has to wonder what it would be like and if its existence would crack the religion of Islam that the current regime so profoundly sponsors into the world around it in its Wahhabist and Salafi forms.

If there were to be a revolution and perhaps a civil war as so often follows with entrenched power structures how long will it be until the holy sites get blown up in the struggle and the haji pilgrimage becomes near impossible? Surely some psychological effect is bound to appear amongst the followers of Islam and in the way they would take sides in such a struggle. A second order of thinking would be the geo-political consequences and upon the worlds oil-based economy. Which side would the western democracies take if a real democratic struggle took place to overthrow the monarchy? Would they dare stand against it in the support of the old all crushing rule of the monarchs or favour the revolutionaries unknowing where that support would get them to politically and the effects of that? The same thinking applies to Iran in this matter. What happens next?

Two of the worlds worst autocracies seem to be intent on goading the other on in a struggle for regional superiority and worse ultimately over their mutual but diverging religion.

kingofdawah:

Controversial controversialist, the so-called Maajid Nawaz, says things many people disagree with. So how can he be allowed to say things? David Shariatmadari investigates the enigma of a former extremist who now believes things he didn’t used to, and what this means for people already being persecuted by what he says.

(moustache imported from Nepal)

Unexpectedly, for someone who claims to be the greatest man who ever lived, the choice of venue for our interview isn’t authentic for someone who is supposedly an expert in things which community activists and leaders disagree with. He greets me with a ‘hello’, his handshake simultaneously shifty and dishonest. His reptilian eyes remind me of a snake I once saw in a dream, its sibilant hiss warning me of the destruction of the universe, if it were ever to be trusted.

(a representation of how Maajid Nawaz, on the left, entices innocent Mowgli’s with his arguments)

“Can I buy you a coffee? An esspressino perregrino perhaps? I highly recommend it with an effulgence of Perugian cream. The trick behind its exquisite flavour is that Italian milkmaids massage the udders of the cow for three days before extracting it. Lick a spoon of Tuscan truffle-teat sugar with it. Sensational.”

(Unbelievable. Who does he think he is, inviting me here?)

I watch him suspiciously, amazed that a man who claims to be opposed to religious extremism could ever drink such ostentatious coffee. I accept his offer, full of disgust that a man like this, who offends so many community leaders, drinks so-called coffee with Perugian cream, alienating so many extremists. The coffee is delicious.

(King Herod had babies killed. Maajid Nawaz offends community activists and leaders. Same thing.)

Before interviewing Nawaz, I speak to some anonymous people who know him. One of them, an anonymous source who wants to be anonymous, says ‘Maajid thinks he’s amazing, but he’s not. Instead of writing and debating things in order to confront bad ideas, he should be sticking his head in the sand, which is the only way the extremists won’t be offended’.

I ask him about his pompous opinions, and whether expressing them actually increases extremism by increasing it. Predictably, he is dismissive of my brilliant, amazing point, disagreeing with it arrogantly in a manner that would alienate people and thus increase the chances of innocent people being harmed by extremists, probably.

(anonymous source spoke only on condition of being represented as a silhouette against a moody, artistic city light skyline)

Another person I spoke to, who wanted to remain anonymous, but knew Nawaz years ago, and coincidentally happened to have the exact view of the shifty collaborator as I do, said 'Maajid claims to be a normal human being who believes in liberalism and secularism. But how can he go from one extreme, believing in a supremacist caliphate, with most of humanity inferior to him, to the other extreme, believing in equality, secularism and liberal ideals? It just doesn’t make any sense. Both these positions are as extreme as the other. I hate him.“

We sip our coffees. I look around the fashionable hotel we are in. I feel disgust. Authentic people who claim to be against extremism whilst also pointing out that its all relative so don’t worry about it, would be meeting me in authentic places that are edgy and in touch with the people on the streets. For example, in the Guardian newspaper office in swish north London. 

(authentic)

As he is talking narcissistically about what his views are, as if his views are correct, I recall someone I spoke to, anonymously, about him. A Muslim woman who wanted to stay anonymous, for anonymous reasons.

“Maajid thinks he’s so special. But he’s really not. He thinks he’s so amazing. But he’s not. He’s so arrogant, with his opinions. But they’re not his opinions. They’re the opinions of white people who he just wants to entertain by saying things. I know so many people who say he doesn’t even grow his own moustache. He has moustache hair imported from Nepal, and he has a butler apply it every morning, to try and make himself look like he’s something special. But he’s not. And he’s just alienating everyone to become extremist, even though there’s no problem of extremism’.

(the root cause of all extremism – this face)

I look at Maajid’s face, and I want to puke. It reminds me of something else someone else said about him, who wants to remain anonymous.

"Maajid Nawaz smells. He smells of poo. He looks like he smells. Really, really badly.”

I’m reminded of a comment someone made to me about him. Someone who is really authentic, and whose opinion really, really counts. Because they are amazing authentic and great, unlike the supposed Maajid Nawaz.

“He wears nice clothes. Tweed jackets, for example. And he looks like he wears shoes from a shop on Savile Row. What is he trying to hide, by wearing suits and ties? How can authentic people relate to him, and not be alienated, when he wears natty clothes? What a coconut bastard.”

(a picture of Maajid Nawaz when he is at home and has removed his mask)

I feel like vomiting again as I look at the face of this nemesis of decency and multiculturalism, and I pray to the heavens that Jeremy Corbyn should one day reign and squat over him and dissolve him with the spirit of anti-Uncle Tom disinfectant.

I return to the office needing to take a shower. Aisha Ghani asks me if I need to see a doctor. Nesrine Malik suggests I may have to go into quarantine, in case I am carrying any parasitical spores from 'Maajid Nawaz’, which are more deadly than ebola. But I tell them I’m OK. I commission some articles on how sharia law is like being tickled with a feather, and why ISIS are innocent victims of British society. 

(Abdul Khalifa, moderate leader of ‘extremist’ group  Caliphate-über-Alles, indicates how many times Maajid Nawaz should be whipped, every hour)

I speak to some authentic people. Peter Trombone puts me in touch with his friend Abdul Khalifa, of the supposedly 'extreme’ group Caliphate-über-Alles”. I ask him about 'Maajid Nawaz’, and he replies, amazingly authentically and truthfully,

“Yes, he was once a member of our organisation. So of course he shouldn’t be trusted. But please trust us anyway. If you don’t, people may become alienated and extreme.”

As a journalist with great integrity, I have to be objective, and I ask him about scurrilous allegations that Caliphate-über-Alles believes in a racist, supremacist, violent ideal Islamic state that would put to death Maajid Nawaz and millions of others in a theocratic theocracy. Is that true, I ask him?

“Yes. But we would do so peacefully, in a moderate way, fully in line with principles of diversity.”

I am relieved. He does believe in peaceful supremacist fascism, after all, which is an authentic cry of the oppressed. He deserves a column in the Guardian. Clearly his values are synonymous with those of the true liberal-left in Britain, unlike some people who think they’re so smart and clever.

(true progressives)

As I get ready to leave the office to chair a discussion on how Islamism is an anti-capitalist anti-austerity movement, and how forced marriage is a feminist statement, I speak to Mozarella Bogg and Youseem Crazy of the progressive beheading rights group DECAP. They confirm to me that Maajid Nawaz is responsible for everything bad, and I believe them, because they are so misunderstood and peaceful.

“One day someone is going to behead Maajid Nawaz, and it will be his own fault for provoking it. In fact he wants to be beheaded, so that he can claim that those who do so are beheaders. And then we will be the true victims of this extremism caused by those who oppose extremism without permission of community leaders, community activists, and journalists from the Guardian.”

(also Maajid Nawaz’s fault)

I look out of the window towards the lights of north London and fear for the future, where extremist anti-extremists cause extremism and alienation, and then make things worse, by opposing ideas that we don’t want to be talked about. Because we are progressives, and we must progress by embracing the regressive and not the aggressive who say things that may offend and alienate. The future of Britain as a peaceful society depends on not upsetting anyone, or else.

Above the sky the moon is full and shining. As dark clouds cover it, I see the face of 'Maajid Nawaz’ in them, turning light into darkness, and making people cry.

This is the best thing I’ve read in a long time.

The Reactionaries are out in force after the Supreme Court of the U.S. ruled in a 5-4 majority in legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states. The Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and one of the contenders for a shot at the 2016 Oval office residency released a statement decrying the ruling and printed below here in full. [Italics are mine]

”The Supreme Court decision today conveniently and not surprisingly follows public opinion polls, and tramples on states’ rights that were once protected by the 10th Amendment of the Constitution. Marriage between a man and a woman was established by God, and no earthly court can alter that. This decision will pave the way for an all out assault against the religious freedom rights of Christians who disagree with this decision. This ruling must not be used as pretext by Washington to erode our right to religious liberty. The government should not force those who have sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage to participate in these ceremonies. That would be a clear violation of America’s long held commitment to religious liberty as protected in the First Amendment. I will never stop fighting for religious liberty and I hope our leaders in D.C. join me.”

In the category of things that can’t be left unmentioned there are a few humbugs concerning his thoughts here. The first is that monogamy was divined to us by God. This is an easy point to want to agree with as a conservative christian I suppose, if you are ready to discard everything the bible has to say about polygamy and that some characters had up to several hundred wives at once. Funnily God never seemed to admonish that behaviour in his earliest followers. This is a fun but in the end cheap point. Though there is a warm gushy feeling in preserving a tradition such as marriage in ones soppy heart. Maintaining it as exclusive for one set of society is deeply illiberal in the basic sense of that word.

Second is the harping on the term religious liberty in an effort to push a restriction as if their liberty is impinged upon by another groups freedom to live their lives according to their own rights & convictions. How one can make this point utterly confounds me.

Yet what is more disturbing than this strain of illiberalism in modern Christianity is the ink of faith based populism that rides currently in the GOP on a deep swell of emotions and anti-reason. The party of Lincoln seems to have hitched its wagon on the back of the most reactionary forces in America who long for a mirage of the 1950’s with its God, Country & Status Quo trio.

Mr. Jindal is far from alone in jestering in the court of this populism. Mike Huckabee compared the ruling to decrees handed down by Imperial Britain which he would not acquiesce too and left a wonderful statement for people in the future to read from the year 2015. One would think on account of the fervour that the right to a private life had been struck down and not that citizens who wanted to bind their foreseeable future together in a ceremony had been allowed to do so.

“The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do — redefine marriage,” … “We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat.” …“The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature’s God on marriage than it can the laws of gravity.”

Gov. Scott Walker also made an appearance in the perfect sublimation of the word double-think

“The states are the proper place for these decisions to be made,” he continued. “As we have seen repeatedly over the last few days, we will need a conservative president who will appoint men and women to the Court who will faithfully interpret the Constitution and laws of our land without injecting their own political agendas.”

In my mind when one looks at it there is nothing actually “Conservative” about the current GOP. And it gets under my skin when people flaunt it for all manner of nut jobs and reactionaries. This is not because I feel especially endeared to the term but because its meaning seems to have been utterly lost. As the word conservative & neocon has now become synonymous with “every bad thing you can imagine” its classical meaning of strong cultural institutions, the devotion to personal liberty, the maximum amount of freedom in speech and markets has been lost. This description might well be naive, my point is simply that it has lost its meaning and become a catchphrase for journalists and most importantly co-opted by these varying tea-party esque movements where conservatism equates to stagnating status quo dependant on a discredited iron age text hostile to free thought.

The idea has been allowed to fester that marriage is and has been a religious service only for the straight & godly. In the past it was a power structure in which to strategically maintain social alliances. Through its modernisation and secularisation it is now a marker of filial connection and love to one another. That is the reason why we cannot in our love for freedom deny it to anyone and we certainly cannot allow it to be rolled back by the eschatological hand of religion.

Yesterday in Australia this bit of news popped up: ‘Honour killings’ speech prompts boycott of Festival of Dangerous Ideas. How interesting it would have been to hear Mr. Uthman explain to us how the (white) secularist liberals have got it all wrong when it comes to “honor killings”

This morning the Guardian’s CIF page opens up with an article by Carolyn Strange–who has actually written a book on the subject: 'Honour’ Killing and Violence: Theory, Policy and Practice She arduously defends his freedom to free speech which I applaud her for but then tries to rescue Mr. Uthman’s public image– an act I think he needs no extra help in accomplishing. His record should be more fully known and criticized. Here is a post by Futile Democracy which is a good starting point: Uthman Badar: Rationalising the irrational.

Alas I would have loved to hear Uthman from the 'brilliant’ Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir group expound in his delusions all the better for us to pick apart. So I cant agree with the conclusion of disallowing him from doing so. Maybe he can post it for us all to see when he is done being “Oppressed” by westerners. I sincerely hope he does not let us suffer.

Here is a cached copy of the pulled intro page for FODI and his opening statement:

Honor Killings Are Morally Justified: For most of recorded history parents have reluctantly sacrificed their children—sending them to kill or be killed for the honour of their nation, their flag, their king, their religion. But what about killing for the honour of one’s family? Overwhelmingly, those who condemn ‘honour killings’ are based in the liberal democracies of the West. The accuser and moral judge is the secular (white) westerner and the accused is the oriental other; the powerful condemn the powerless. By taking a particular cultural view of honour, some killings are condemned whilst others are celebrated. In turn, the act becomes a symbol of everything that is allegedly wrong with the other culture

Freedom of Speech means allowing yourself to hear what others are thinking. I would have loved to find out how he was going to justify “honour” murder. Though his past writings & advocacy for Hizb haven’t left me with anything other than the impression that he is a fundamentalist muslim conservative biding the day when sharia rules the land.

A review of Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 by Lynne Olson

You can always count on America to do the right thing–after they’ve tried everything else - Winston Churchill

Lynne Olson gives a look into the personalities and not merely the politics of the tumultuous years regarding what the response should be towards the Axis powers by the U.S. Establishment facing another war in Europe. The imminent defeat of Britain is on the horizon and FDR feels haunted by his citizens after promising not to get directly involved. His fear rests that democratic world as we know it on to the brink towards fascism and asks if we should fight for it by all means.

Those Angry Days also raises the question on what can occur when a particularly divisive matter is faced by a liberal society. The political mudslinging revealed throughout gives a less than exemplary view of how we feel a principled democracy should be operating through good-natured and reasoned debate in which careful analyses of the pros and cons are heeded. This occurs at certain points yet not most on if material or military aid should be given to the British–albeit still an empire though in steep decline–that faces certain defeat on all points against a occupied europe if it decides to careen straight towards it.

Public opinion is mangled by denouncements and emotional blackmail at most times by the leading newspapers of the nation. The New York Times is at much as war with the Chicago Tribune as Charles Lindbergh is with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Statesmen use all means available to them to sway the public discourse and at times it seems the debate is overtaken by the debate rather than the choice facing the nation being deliberated on. That debate was hinged on the level beneath civility since inception going as far as making enemies out of family members.

Olson also tells the story of war preparedness in the US as the scene is being unraveled. In 1939 the U.S. Armed forces were at a very low preparedness level with many parts of the machine necessary to confront Hitler being totally missing or disorganized. A chilling passage is recorded on the proceedings of extending the draft so that the army could resemble a fighting force in late 1941:

After reading all the members’ names, the clerk went back through the list a second time, repeating the names of those who had not yet voted. When he was finished, he wrote the numbers on a piece of paper and handed it to Rayburn. But before the Speaker could announce the results, a Democratic member rose, asking to be recognized. When Rayburn called on him, the congressman changed his vote from aye to nay—a step that is permitted until the final tally is announced. Rayburn looked down at the paper; with this change, the vote stood at 203 for the bill and 202 against. Just then, another member jumped up. Realizing that the measure’s fate was in the balance, Rayburn ignored the man, who was now frantically waving his arm, and recognized instead a Republican deputy whip, who asked for a recapitulation of the vote (a routine motion to determine that each member’s tally had been recorded correctly). The motion was Rayburn’s lifeline, and he grabbed it. He quickly announced the tally, declared “the bill is passed,” and ordered the recapitulation. Only then did the legislation’s opponents realize that they had been outsmarted. Under House rules, once the vote is announced and recapitulation is under way, no member may change his or her vote. The recapitulation showed no errors, and pandemonium reigned in the chamber. Angry Republicans rushed to the well of the House, demanding that Rayburn order a reconsideration. The bill’s advocates erupted in cheers and applause, while, in the galleries, the “mothers” screamed in fury. In the midst of the cacophony, the Speaker serenely banged his gavel and called for order. Thanks to Rayburn’s mastery of arcane House procedure, the 1.4-million-man army had been preserved. Four months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor

Was Rayburn’s conduct morally right in the least? That depends on a few factors of hindsight and on knowing the course of history that followed it. His blocking of a dissenting vote is not admirable conduct for those that respect the democratic process. Yet do the means justify the ends if it means you can effectively combat aggressive fascism or other existential enemies at that moment or in the future? Uncomfortable notions dwell on your mind as you read through the chapters and you find yourself asking where you yourself would have faced that discourse and your own responses to the questions fielded by your opposition. If Rayburn had not acted as he did the army would only have numbered a couple hundred thousand men and would have been totally overwhelmed in facing the Japanese. Mounting an invasion into Europe in any number of years counted as close to 1941 would have been a far flung fantasy.

That is the part that makes this volume hard to put down. War is looming and the response is being formulated for your very eyes as December 7th comes creeping over the horizon. A confrontation with Fascism seemed inevitable. Lives would be lost but when was the question facing everyone. And the response: The isolationist Fort Columbia or the active Arsenal of Democracy willing to aid any in need and intervene when needed. This was always merely a few signatures away. The man holding that pen had his hand forced by the Japanese in 1941. What this anthology reveals is that nothing was truly certain about the American response before that infamous day.

FDR was heavily bruised after the defeat of his 1937 Procedures Reform Bill where he tried to obtain favorable rulings for New Deal legislation that had been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This “Court-Packing” would allow him to pick six new members for every Chief Justice over the age of 70. The scalding effects of the failed legislation made him timid in taking the lead after his 1940 Re-election. After 1940 the public support for aiding the allies grew exponentially yet the president was unable to lead on a comprehensive strategy to arm the nation and follow through with is own instincts in what needed to be done to aid the British and defeat the aggressive rise of Hitler’s Germany and its bond with the Soviet Union.

Here were two ‘superpowers’ allied in the holding of an entire continent while Britain and its home islands rested on the edges of that empire at war with it. Its colonies were a certain liability and would be of no help if Britain was invaded.

FDR’s dithering mood ever since 1937 made Churchill desperate in trying to seek support from the Americans. The Lend-Lease bill would allow for transfers and sales of arms and transports to the them. It was the first real step towards an Allied support and yet FDR was still timid in his proposition of it even in recognition of the fact that if Britain were subjugated the United States would effectively stand alone as a democratic republic with would be enemies on all sides–Japanese imperialism to its west and Germany and the Soviet Union to its east separated by two oceans.

Complicating this situation was a strong belief among the American military establishment that any materiel support would be doomed into the hands of their enemies and used against them as Britain crumbled and was captured by Germany. In a letter to the British ambassador in Washington, Churchill remarked:

“Up till April, [U.S. officials] were so sure that the Allies would win that they did not think help necessary. Now they are so sure we shall lose that they do not think it possible.”

The five saddest words in the english language still remain as “Too little and too late”. The “Aid or Break” tautology is explicitly self-fulfilling if you are convinced that your recipient will lose. No one will fight a battle they are convinced they have already lost. At that point the end is predetermined for you and you have been defeated in the 'mind’ before the ultimate confrontation even takes place.

The life and relationship of Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh (the daughter of business magnate Dwight D. Morrow) is an anchor throughout the book reflecting the struggles of the nation as an allegorical 'House Divided’ portraying two Americas forced to act in cohesion to survive the challenge of the time.

This is a narrative you want to share with your friends if they have even an inkling towards 20th century history. Its compelling, well crafted and craves a debate to mirror the one it describes.