The Melancholy Korean

Part 3

An Open Letter to David Brooks on Haiti:

Dear Mr. Brooks,

In your January 15, 2010 opinion piece in The New York Times, “The Underlying Tragedy,”you present what you seem to believe is a bold assessment of the situation in Haiti and what you certainly know is a provocative recommendation for Haiti’s future. You also offer some advice to President Obama. In order to successfully keep his promise to the people of Haiti that they “will not be forsaken” nor “forgotten” the President, you say, has to “acknowledge a few difficult truths.” What follows, however, is so shockingly ignorant of Haitian history and culture and so saturated with the language and ideology of cultural imperialism that no valuable “truths” remain. Please allow us, therefore, to present you with some more accurate truths.

First, Haiti is not a clear-cut case of the failure of international aid to achieve poverty reduction. For almost its entire existence Haiti has been shouldered with a load of immense international debt. The Haitian people had the audacity to break their chains and declare independence in 1804 but were later forced by France to re-purchase their freedom for 150 million Francs, a burden that the country has had to carry throughout the twentieth century.

What’s more, the “aid” Haiti has received from its powerful neighbor to the North has never been the sort that would help the country reduce poverty or achieve meaningful development. In the early-twentieth century the principle “aid” Haiti received from the United States came in the form of a brutal military occupation that lasted from 1915 to 1934. After “Papa Doc” Duvalier ascended to power “aid” meant assistance to a ruthless (but conveniently anti-communist) dictator. The U.S. gave Duvalier $40.4 million in his first four years in power, briefly suspended military and economic assistance to the dictator in 1963, but resumed shortly thereafter, restoring full military and economic aid to Duvalier by 1969. In the early 1970s and 1980s when “Baby Doc” Duvalier was at the helm, the “aid” the United States and other international agencies contributed failed to reduce poverty but did enrich foreign investors in the newly constructed assembly industry. Economic policies that the U.S. forced upon Haiti decimated its agriculture for the benefit of American farming while driving Haiti’s peasants into Port-au-Prince and other cities where they found few jobs and scarce housing. Four years after Baby Doc’s departure the Haitian people decided to help themselves by democratically electing a new leader, but the United States aided Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s domestic opponents in the coup of 1991 and did so again in 2004. It is no wonder then that that such “aid” from the United States has failed to lift Haiti out of poverty.

Equally unconvincing is your argument about “progress-resistant cultural influences,” which brings us to important truth number two: Haitian culture is not “progress-resistant” as anyone familiar with the examples you yourself provide can attest to. If Vodou or “the voodoo religion” as you put it, “spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile,” how do the majority of Haitians manage to survive on scant resources and less than two dollars-a-day? How do so many Haitians manage to travel abroad, find and maintain difficult jobs, and send money back home if not through careful planning and a fierce defense of precious life? How do the nationwide customers of Fonkoze, the Haitian banking operation that teaches literacy and business practices to curbside marketers to whom it makes small loans, achieve such strong records of loan repayment? In fact, it might be Haitian culture itself (and even Vodou) which allows Haitians to persist. After all, the Vodou spirit Ogou (St. Jacques) is honored as a clever planner and master of skills. So was the champion of Haiti’s war of independence, General Toussaint L’Ouverture, a onetime slave who entered history as a military and diplomatic genius.

The third important truth we have to offer (and we hope President Obama is listening as well) is the opposite of your call for “intrusive paternalism” as the solution to Haiti’s woes: Haiti does not need nor does it want the paternalism of the United States. Haiti is literally dying of cultural imperialism.

Whenever America’s leaders and pundits speak of subordinate peoples, the ideology of imperialism shines through. As it does in your words, Mr. Brooks, so it has done for far too many earlier Americans. President William McKinley, for example, facing the difficult question of how he was to govern the newly-conquered Filipinos worried that

“[left] to themselves they are unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule … [So] there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them.”

Closer to home, those who worried about an earlier form of “progress-resistant cultural influences” decided it was better to remove the children of Native American families than to let them absorb the backwardness of their pagan and uncivilized parents and community. A common refrain by these “reformers” was “kill the Indian, save the man.” And now, Mr. Brooks, you propose to save the Haitians from themselves by replacing Haitian cultural values and institutions with “middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.” Imperialism, whether economic or military, is the primary reason for the conditions that so worsened the impact of the earthquake on January 12. Haitians need less imperialism, not more.

During the Vietnam War an American officer famously stated that “it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Today Haiti is virtually destroyed. The earthquake having done the hard part, Mr. Brooks, you think “intrusive paternalism” will save it. Lacking a foundational understanding of Haitian history and culture, and bearing the familiar colors of American imperialism you and your ilk will do vastly more harm than good.

Tom F. Driver
Paul Tillich Professor Emeritus of Theology and Culture
Union Theological Seminary

Carl Lindskoog
Doctoral Candidate, Dept. of History
The Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York

Part 2

John Dawson, Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 24, 1788:

During the deliberations of this Convention, several gentlemen of eminent talents, have exerted themselves to prove the necessity of Union, by presenting to our view the relative situation of Virginia to the other States: The melancholy representation made to day, and frequently before, by an Honorable Gentleman (Governor Randolph) of our State, reduced, in his estimation, to the lowest degree of degradation, must now haunt the recollection of any gentlemen in this Committee, how far he has drawn the picture to the life, or where it is too highly coloured, rests with them to determine. To Gentlemen, however, Sir, of their abilities, the task was easy, and perhaps I may add unnecessary. It is a truth admitted on all sides, and I presume there is not a Gentleman, who hears me, who is not a friend to a Union of the Thirteen States.

But, Sir, an opinion is gone abroad (from whence it originated, or by whom it is supported, I will not venture to say) that the opponents to the paper on your table, are enemies to the Union; it may not therefore be improper for me to declare, that I am a warm friend to a firm, federal, energetic Government; that I consider a confederation of the States, on republican principles, as a security to their mutual interest, and a disunion as injurious to the whole: But I shall lament exceedingly, when a confederation of independent States shall be converted into a consolidated Government; for when that event shall happen, I shall consider the history of American liberty as short as it has been brilliant, and we shall afford one more proof to the favorite maxim of tyrants, “that mankind cannot govern themselves.”

Benjamin West, Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, 1768. Yale University Art Gallery.

Congress, Sir, have the power “to declare war,” and also to raise and support armies, and if we suppose them to be a representation of the States, the nexus imperii of the British Constitution is here lost—there the King has the power of declaring war, and the Parliament that of raising money to support it. Governments ought not to depend on an army for their support, but ought to be so formed as to have the confidence, respect and affection of the citizens—Some degree of virtue, Sir, must exist, or freedom cannot live—A standing army will introduce idleness and extravagance, which will be followed by their sure concomitant vices—In a country extensive, like ours, the power of the sword is more sensibly felt, than in a small community—the advantages, Sir, of military science and discipline cannot be exerted unless a proper number of soldiers are united in one body, and actuated by one soul. The tyrant of a single town, or a small district, would soon discover that an hundred armed soldiers were a weak defence against ten thousand peasants or citizens: but ten thousand well disciplined soldiers will command, with despotic sway, millions of subjects, and will strike terror into the most numerous populace.

It was this, Sir, which enabled the Praetorean bands of Rome, whose number scarcely amounted to ten thousand, after having violated the sanctity of the throne, by the atrocious murder of a most excellent Emperor, to dishonor the majesty of it, by proclaiming that the Roman Empire—the mistress of the world—was to be disposed of to the highest bidder, at public auction;—and to their licentious frezy may be attributed the first cause of the decline and fall of that mighty Empire—We ought therefore strictly to guard against the establishment of an army, whose only occupation would be idleness, whose only effect the introduction of vice and dissolution, and who would, at some future day deprive us of our liberties, as a reward for past favors, by the introduction of some military despot.

James Joyce, Scylla and Charybdis, Ulysses:

—The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely. Aristotle was once Plato’s schoolboy.

—And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. One can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm…

—That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet’s musing about the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato’s.

John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth:

—Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle with Plato.

—Which of the two, Stephan asked, would have banished me from his commonwealth?

Part 1

Oriana Fallaci interview with Henry Kissinger, 1972:

OF: Let’s talk about war, Dr Kissinger. You’re not a pacifist, are you?

HK: No, I really don’t think I am. Even though I respect genuine pacifists, I don’t agree with any pacifist, and especially not with halfway pacifists: you know, those who are pacifists on one side and anything but pacifists on the other. The only pacifists that I agree to talk to are those who accept the consequences of nonviolence right to the end. But even with them I’m only willing to speak to tell them that they will be crushed by the will of the stronger and that their pacifism can only lead to horrible suffering. War is not an abstraction, it is something that depends on conditions. The war against Hitler, for example, was necessary. By that I don’t mean that war is necessary in itself, that nations have to make war to maintain their virility. I mean that there are existing principles for which nations must be prepared to fight.

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. The plutonium bomb, Fat Man, exploded at 1102 hours, near the largest Christian church in Japan

OF: And what do you have to say about the war in Vietnam, Dr Kissinger? You’ve never been against the war in Vietnam, it seems to me.

HK: How could I have been? Not even before holding the position I have today… No, I’ve never been against the war in Vietnam.

OF: But don’t you find that [Secretary of Defense] Schlesinger is right when he says that the war in Vietnam has succeeded only in proving that half a million Americans with all their technology have been incapable of defeating poorly armed men dressed in black pajamas? 

HK: That’s another question. If it is a question whether the war in Vietnam was necessary, a just war, rather than… Judgments of that kind depend on the position that one takes when the country is already involved in the war and the only thing left is to conceive a way to get out of it. After all, my role, our role, has been to reduce more and more the degree to which America was involved in the war, so as then to end the war. In the final analysis, history will say who did more: those who operated by criticizing and nothing else, or we who have tried to reduce the war and then ended it. Yes, the verdict is up to history. When a country is involved in a war, it’s not enough to say it must be ended. It must be ended in accordance with some principle. And this is quite different from saying that it was right to enter that war.

OF: But don’t you find, Dr Kissinger, that it’s been a useless war?

HK: On this I can agree.

George Kennan, 1960:

How could outright warfare serve to protect against this danger? What could be the specific objective of regular military operations undertaken to this end? To unseat the Soviet government? But how? By occupying all of Russia? I think military authorities would agree that this is not technically feasible even if it were worth one’s while to make the staggering effort. And what would you expect to put in the place of the Soviet government? Do you have a ready substitute? Remember that one of the reasons for the failure of the intervention, in 1918 and 1919, was that there was no unity among the Russian opponents of Bolshevism, and not even any unity of opinion among the Western governments as to which of these opponents one would wish to see succeed. What it be better today?

Besides, even if your military measures were directed, by intent, against the Soviet government, it would be the Russian people who would have to bear the brunt of them. Are you sure you wish to do this to them? And you sure, in particular, that you wish to do this to them in the day of the horrors of the atomic bomb? That fact is that throughout all these years of anti-capitalist and anti-American propaganda in the Soviet Union, the Soviet peoples have remained touchingly well-inclined towards the United States, touchingly unwilling to accept the endless efforts of their government to persuade them that Americans meant them harm. You come here to the profound ambivalence in the relation between people and regime in such a country as Soviet Russia: to the fact that the interests and aspirations of these two entities in some ways differ but are in other ways identical, and that it is impossible to distinguish between the two when it comes to the hardships and injuries of war. Outright war is itself too unambivalent, too undiscriminating a device to be an appropriate means for effecting a mere change of regime in another country.

Hiroshima, unidentified corpse

All these things, I may add, would have been true even had the atomic and other weapons of mass destruction never been invented. The existence of these weapons merely adds another dimension of absurdity to the idea that the devices of outright war would be suitable means of protecting the Western community from the kind of challenge with which Russian Communism has confronted it: suitable, that is, in the sense of being a means to which the Western community might rationally and voluntarily resort. 

Robert Pape, professor, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago and director, Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, 2005:

The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any of the world’s religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more suicide attacks than Hamas.

Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in the service of the broader strategic objective.

‘When have we ever elected the best?’ — Dick Cheney, on the occasion of a long ago personal disappointment

Dante:

Poscia ch’io v’ebbi alcun riconosciuto,
vidi e conobbi l’ombra di colui
che fece… il gran rifiuto.

After I had recognized some among them,
I saw and knew the shade of him
who made… the great refusal.

Pietro di Dante, the poet’s son, commenting on the passage:

Inter quos nominat fratrem Petrum de Murrono, ut credo, qui dictus est Papa Coelestinus V; qui possendo ita esse sanctus et spiritualis in papatu sicut in eremo, papatui, qui est sedes Christi… renuntiavit.

Among them, he places, I believe, Frate Peter da Morrone, who is known as Pope Celestine V. He could have led as holy and as spiritual a life in the papacy as he had in his hermitage: and yet, he… renounced the papacy, which is the seat of Christ.

Giuseppe Tomasi:

Volle fare un ultimo sforzo; si alzò e l’emozione conferiva pathos alla sua voce: “Principe, ma è proprio sul serio che lei si rifiuta di dare il possibile per alleviare, per tentare di rimediare allo stato di povertà materiale, di cieca miseria morale nelle quali giace questo che è il suo stesso popolo? Il clima si vince, il ricordo dei cattivi governi si cancella, i Siciliani vorranno migliorare; se gli uomini onesti si ritirano, la strada rimarrà libera alla gente senza scrupoli e senza prospettive, ai Sedàra; e tutto sarà di nuovo come prima, per altri secoli. Ascolti la sua coscienza, principe, e non le orgogliose verità che hai detto. Collabori.”

Don Fabrizio gli sorrideva, lo prese per la mano, lo fece sedere vicino a lui sul divano: “Lei è un gentiluomo, Chevalley, e stimo una fortuna averlo conosciuto; Le ha ragione in tutto; si è sbagliato soltanto quando ha detto: ‘i Siciliani vorranno migliorare.’ Le racconterò un aneddoto personale. Due o tre giorni prima che Garibaldi entrasse a Palermo mi furono presentati alcuni ufficiali di marina inglesi, in servizio su quelle navi che stavano in rada per rendersi conto degli avvenimenti… Vennero a casa, li accompagnai lassú in cima; erano dei giovanottoni ingenui malgrado i loro scopettoni rossastri. Rimasero estasiati dal panorama, della irruenza della luce; confessarono però che erano stati pietrificati osservando lo squallore, la vetustà, il sudiciume delle strade di accesso. non spiegai loro che una cosa era derivata dall’altra, come ho tentato di fare a lei. Uno di loro, poi, mi chiese che cosa veramente venissero a fare, qui in Sicilia, quei volontari italiani.

‘They are coming to teach us good manners’ risposi, but won’t succeed, because we are gods.’

He decided to make a last effort. As he got up his voice was charged with emotion. “Prince, do you seriously refuse to do all in your power to alleviate, to attempt to remedy the state of physical squalor, of blind moral misery in which this people of yours lies? Climate can be overcome, the memory of evil days cancelled, for the Sicilians must want to improve; if honest men withdraw the way will be open for those with no scruples and no vision, for Sedàra and his like; and then everything will be as before for more centuries. Listen to your conscience, Prince, and not to the proud truths that you have spoken. Collaborate.”

Don Fabrizio smiled at him, took him by the hand, made him sit beside him on the sofa. “You’re a gentleman, Chevally, and I consider it a privilege to have met you; you are right in all you say; your only mistake was saying that ‘the Sicilians must want to improve.’ I’ll tell you a personal anecdote. Two or three days before Garibaldi entered Palermo I was introduced to some British naval officers from one of the warships then in the harbor to keep an eye on things… They came to my house, I accompanied them up on to the roof; they were simple youths, in spite of their reddish whiskers. They were ecstatic about the view, the light; they confessed, though, that they had been horrified at the squalor and filth of the streets around. I didn’t explain to them that one thing was derived from the other, as I have tried to with you. Then one of them asked me what those Italian volunteers were really coming to do in Sicily.”

The most ancient family in Rome, Prince and Princess Massimo in their residence, Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne. An ancestor of the prince, a previous Prince Massimo, was defeated during the Napoleonic Wars. After he was captured he was brought before Napoleon, who said to him, “My dear Prince, I gather that you are descended from Fabius Maximus, who led the armies of Rome against Hannibal in 217 B.C.” The Prince replied, “My dear Emperor, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that statement, but it has been a rumor in our family for a thousand years.”

Jesus of Nazareth: 

μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί, ὅτι αὐτοὶ υἱοὶ θεοῦ κληθήσονται.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Colonel Herbert Schandler, professor, Department of Grand Strategy, National Defense University, Washington, DC:

The claim most often made by military analysts and historians since 1975 is that the military was denied victory because of constraints placed on U.S. military power by political leaders in Washington. This view may be summarized as follows: The war in Vietnam was a war of aggression by communist-controlled North Vietnam against our noncommunist ally, South Vietnam. According to this view, more than sufficient U.S. military might and strategy were available to stop that aggression, to defeat North Vietnam, and thus preserve the independence of South Vietnam. That this did not occur is due to U.S. political leaders having ‘tied the hands’ of the military. Military leaders and historians holding this view have bitterly denounced the policy of limited and gradual application of military force (in the air and on the ground, in both North and South Vietnam), as the principal cause of our failure to defeat the enemy and achieve a military ‘victory.’

Had the U.S. military been allowed to attack at will and without limits, many believe, the U.S. victory would have come quickly and decisively. In this way, Hanoi’s aggression would have been halted, and the territorial integrity of South Vietnam would have been maintained as a bulwark against the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.

Now, nearly twenty-five years after the end of the war, and nearly a half-century after the United States first became involved, the evidence points to the conclusion that to believe that the U.S. military was denied a victory it could have and should have won in Vietnam is an illusion—a dangerous illusion if acted upon in future U.S. conflicts.

***

In the end, no matter what it came to be called, the U.S. ground war in Vietnam was a war of attrition. Success in this kind of war did not depend on the ability of American forces to inflict a decisive defeat on the enemy in South Vietnam. It depended instead on how long the North Vietnamese were willing to feed the war pipeline with men and material. If they were willing to pay the price, the enemy could keep large numbers of American forces tied up indefinitely and continue to inflict casualties on them.

Robert Fisk, journalist:

The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve of 1979, but when I arrived two weeks later their armour was still barrelling down through the slush from the Amu Darya River, the Oxus of antiquity, which Edward Durand had agreed with the Russians should be the northern frontier of this frost-covered land. Save for a few isolated cities, the Soviet army appeared to have crushed all resistance. Along the highways south and east of Kabul, Russian military encampments protected by dozens of tanks and heavy artillery controlled the arteries between the rebellious provinces of south-eastern Afghanistan. An ‘intervention,’ Leonid Brezhnev had called his invasion, peace-loving assistance to the popular socialist government of the newly installed Afghan president Babrak Karmal.

Otto von Bismarck, Imperial Chancellor of the German Empire and Prussian Foreign Minister:

Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death.

E. Digby Baltzell:

When, in any society, there is an upper class which protects its privileges and prestige but does not continue (1) to contribute leadership or (2) assimilate new elite members, primarily because of their racial or ethnic origins, I shall refer to the process of caste. If an upper class degenerates into a caste, moreover, the traditional authority of an establishment is in grave danger of disintegrating, while society becomes a field for careerists seeking success and affluence. The caste process is the very antithesis of the aristocratic process and inevitably, in the long run if not immediately, leads to the decline of authority and a crisis in leadership.

Tocqueville:

Whenever the feudal system established itself on the continent of Europe it ended in caste; in England alone it returned to aristocracy. It is curious to note how the English nobles, pushed by their ambition, have known how, when it appeared necessary, to mingle on familiar terms with their inferiors… Most certainly the English aristocracy was by nature more haughty than that of France and less disposed to mingle on familiar terms with the lower classes, but it was reduced to do so by the necessities of its position.

It was prepared to stoop to conquer.

E. Digby Baltzell:

Entitled “Let’s ask Sidney Weinberg,” this article was a warm and friendly outline of the business career of one of the nation’s leading investment bankers, director at one time or another of some thirty-five blue-chip corporations, dollar-a-year public servant for many years, leading fund-raiser for both Roosevelt and Eisenhower, and “personal friend” of Ike (who was supposedly to have offered him a Cabinet position), Henry Ford II (who is supposedly devoted to him, especially after he was responsible for blueprinting the family’s transfer of stock to the Ford Foundation), Amory Houghton (brahmin president of Corning Glass, whose daughter is now married to Weinberg’s son), and a host of other other men who fill vital executive suites across the nation.

left to right: Walter Cabot, Sidney Weinberg, JFKMoreover, here was a man, who exhibited none of the socially offensive and aggressive traits of the newly rich which are so often given as an excuse for not accepting the Jews; here was a man who has often set an example of noblesse oblige within the American business community; a man apparently not given to vulgar display and status seeking, who has lived, since 1923, in the original, unpretentious house he bought for his wife in Scarsdale; here was a good family man who had brought up two sons who have done well in business after good educations at Deerfield and Princeton; here was a man, who was “not after superficial contacts or cultivation, but was apparently more sought after than seeking.”

Perhaps as a matter of conventional tact mixed with a bit of moral myopia, the Fortune article on Weinberg did not mention the fact that, even though he was a “personal friend” of so many of the leading members of the nation’s business establishment, he had never been asked to join any of their top-flight clubs, such for instance as the Links in New York City, where most of the prominent men cited in the article as his intimate friends often dine and discuss shooting, boating or golf, and perhaps high policy.

Mrs. Nicholas Biddle

All over America, membership in such men’s clubs as the Links is a major requirement for eventual assimilation into the establishment. The Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh, for example, does not consider anyone of Jewish origins for membership… Whatever friendship may mean at this level of leadership in American business, it apparently does not mean what it did for Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who resigned from New York’s most exclusive women’s club, the Colony, after her clubmates blackballed her friend Mrs. Henry Morgenthau.

Ford Madox Ford:

Mark said: 

“Then you haven’t got a girl and don’t need money to keep her… You could have what you liked. There’s no reason why a man shouldn’t have a girl, and if he has he ought to keep her decently…”

Christopher did not answer. Mark leaned against the half-buried cannon and swung his umbrella by its crook.

“But,” he said,” if you don’t keep a girl what do you do for…” He was going to say “for the comforts of home,” but a new idea had come into his mind. “Of course,” he said, “one can see that your wife’s soppily in love with you.” He added: “Soppily… one can see that with half an eye…”

Christopher felt his jaw drop. Not a second before — that very second! — he had made up his mind to ask Valentine Wannop to become his mistress that night. It was no good, any more, he said to himself. She loved him, he knew, with a deep, an unshakable passion, just as his passion for her was a devouring element that covered his whole mind as the atmosphere envelops the earth. Were they, then, to go down to death separated by years, with no word ever spoken? To what end? For whose benefit? The whole world conspired to force them together! To resist became a weariness!

His brother Mark was talking on. “I know all about women,” he had announced. Perhaps he did. He had lived with exemplary fidelity to a quite unpresentable woman, for a number of years. Perhaps the complete study of one woman gave you a map of all the rest!

Christopher said:

“Look here, Mark. You had better go through all my pass-books for the last ten years. Or ever since I had an account. This discussion is no good if you don’t believe what I say.”

Mark said: 

“I don’t want to see your pass-books. I believe you.”

He added, a second later: 

“Why the devil shouldn’t I believe you? It’s either believing you’re a gentleman or Ruggles a liar. It’s only commonsense to believe Ruggles a liar, in that case. I didn’t before because I had no grounds to.”

Christopher said:

“I doubt liar is the right word. He picked up things that were said against me. No doubt he reported them faithfully enough. Things are said against me. I don’t know why.”

“Because,” Mark said with emphasis, “you treat these south county swine with the contempt that they deserve. They’re incapable of understanding the motives of a gentleman. If you live among dogs they’ll think you’ve the motives of a dog. What other motives can they give you?”

Enormous bets were placed on these various ladies, odds lengthening and shortening according to the day’s rumors; the Court seemed to be living on the eve of some important race. At last the choice fell upon a very dark horse indeed, Marie Leczinska, daughter of the penniless, exiled Stanislas Leczinski, King of Poland. A princess who knew no cosmetics but water and snow and who spent her time embroidering alter cloths was not at first sight a very suitable person to reign at Versailles. No doubt M. le Duc and Madame de Prie thought that, since she would owe everything to them, she would help them keep their position. In fact, the marriage, regarded as a final proof of their incompetence, greatly facilitated Fleury’s efforts to get rid of them. Indeed it was a poor marriage for the King of France, this lady, “dont le nom est en ski,” being endowed with neither worldly goods, nor powerful family connections, nor beauty, nor even youth, since she was seven years older than the King. But she had a sweet nature and a regal manner, as even the most disagreeable of her subjects were obliged to admit, when they knew her; above all she was healthy.

When Stanislas received a letter asking for her hand he could not believe his luck. He rushed to his daughter’s room crying: “Kneel, kneel and give thanks to God Almighty!”

“What has happened—are you going back, as King, to Poland?”

“Far better than that, you are going, as Queen, to France.”

Boucher, Madame de Pompadour

As soon as she arrived at Versailles the King fell in love with her and fell into bed with her; on their wedding night he gave proof of his love seven times. The courtiers were delighted, and Maréchal de Villars said that none of his cadets at St. Cyr could have done better. Nine months later she produced twin daughters, Madame Première and Madame Henriette; by the time the King was twenty-seven they had ten children, of which six daughters and a son reached maturity. He thought, and continually said, that his wife was the most beautiful woman at Versailles, and for years this marriage went very well. They might have been happy ever after, that is to say, Marie Leczinska might have played the part of mistress as well as that of wife, if she had had more character.

Louis XV was a man of habit, a faithful man at heart, so shy, too, that he found it very difficult to make advances to any woman; he disliked new faces, and beautiful faces intimidated him. His little love affairs with girls of easy virtue, found for him by valets, meant nothing at all to him, and his family meant a great deal. Unfortunately, the Queen, though an exceedingly nice woman, was dowdy and a bore; she was incapable of forming a society that would attract a gay young husband, and she surrounded herself with the dullest, stuffiest element at the Court. After the birth of her children she settled comfortably, and rather selfishly, into middle age; she made no effort to remain attractive to her young husband, to share his interests or to entertain his friends; fashion and fun meant nothing to her. She had no temperament at all, complaining that she was for ever “in bed, or pregnant, or brought to bed,” and any excuse was good enough to keep the King out of her bed. As she was extremely pious, he had never been allowed there on the days of the major saints. By degrees the saints for whom he was excluded became more numerous and less important; finally, he was kept out by one so utterly unknown that he flew into a temper. He told Lebel, the palace concierge, to bring him a woman. Lebel went off and found a pretty housemaid, and the result was “Dorigny le Dauphin,” who became an art dealer of some distinction.

Wedding of Peter Rodd and Nancy Mitford, 4 December 1933

No one quite knows when the liaison between Louis XV and the Comtesse de Mailly began, but the King himself cannot have thought it very serious until 1739. That year he refused to go to his Easter duties. Asked by the bishop whether he would touch for the King’s Evil as usual on Easter Day, he said no, since this ceremony could only take place after communion and he did not intend to communicate. His Jesuit confessor, Père de Lignières, wishing to avoid a scandal, suggested that Cardinal de Rohan might say a Low Mass in the King’s cabinet, after which nobody would know for certain whether he had or had not confessed. The King absolutely refused to lend himself to such a fraud. He was living in adultery and had no intention, for the present, of mending his ways; but at the same time he was not going to make a mockery of his religion.

(Nancy Mitford)

Philadelphia, April 22, 1793

The favorable wishes which your Lordship has expressed for the prosperity of this young and rising Country, cannot but be gratefully received by all its Citizens, and every lover of it. One mean to the contribution of which, and its happiness, is very judiciously portrayed in the following words of your letter “to be little heard of in the great world of Politics.” These words I can assure your lordship are expressive of my sentiments, on this head; and I believe it is the sincere wish of United America to have nothing to do with the political intrigues, or the squabbles of European Nations; but on the contrary, to exchange commodities and live in peace and amity with all the inhabitants of the Earth.

George Washington, portrait by John Trumbull, 1793, Yale University Art Gallery

And this I am persuaded they will do, if rightfully it can be done. To administer justice to, and receive it from every power with whom they are connected will, I hope, be always found the most prominent feature in the Administration of this Country; and I flatter myself that nothing short imperious necessity can occasion a breath with any of them. Under such a system, if we are allowed to pursue it; the agriculture and Mechanical Arts; the wealth and population of these States will increase with that degree of rapidity as to baffle all calculation and must surpass any idea your Lordship can, hitherto, have entertained on the occasion.

(George Washington, letter to the Earl of Buchan)

Part 2

Jack Welch:

I’m sure you’ve noticed the hand-wringing and hyperventilating about change out there. For more than a decade, there has been a whole industry devoted to the topic, all of it selling pretty much the same line: change or die.

Well… it’s true.

Change is an absolutely critical part of business. You do need to change, preferably before you have to.

What you’ve heard about resistance to change is also true. People hate it when their bosses announce a ‘transformation initiative.’ They run back to their cubicles and frantically start e-mailing one another with reasons it’s going to ruin everything.

Frankly, most people hate it when they find out their favorite coffee shop is closing. The Times of London changed to a tabloid format, and the editor told me he received a letter asking him how it felt to be the person responsible for ending Western civilization.

Oriana Fallaci interview, 1972:

I think that my playboy reputation has been and still is useful because it serves to reassure people, to show them I’m not a museum piece.

Mao Zedong and Kissinger, 1972

For me women are only a diversion, a hobby. Nobody devotes too much time with his hobbies.

Part 1

Jack Welch:

Forget the arduous, intellectualized number crunching and data grinding that gurus say you have to go through to get strategy right. Forget the scenario planning, yearlong studies and hundred-plus-page reports. They’re time-consuming and expensive, and you just don’t need them.

In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.

Jack Welch, first official portrait as chairman of General Electric, 1981

Yes, theories can be interesting, charts and graphs can be beautiful, and big, fat stacks of PowerPoint slides can make you feel like you’ve done your job. But you should just not make strategy too complex. The more you think about it, and the more you grind down into the data and details, the more you tie yourself in knots about what to do.

That’s not strategy, that’s suffering.

If you want to win, when it comes to strategy, ponder less and do more.

Walter Isaacson:

In Harvard’s 350-year history, it has learned to take in stride the particular combination of intellectual brilliance and quirkiness that occasionally blossoms among its undergraduates. Even so, Henry Kissinger’s senior thesis is still described in awed tones.

First of all there was its sheer bulk: 383 pages, longer than any previous undergraduate thesis—or, for that matter, any subsequent one, since it prompted the ‘Kissinger rule’ limiting any future tomes to about one-third that length. There was also its scope, nothing less than ‘the meaning of history.’

Kissinger with Jan Golding Cushing, Paris 1972

Having bitten off more than he could chew, Kissinger then proceeded to chew more than he had bitten off. He packed his pages with turgid, closely argued, and often impenetrable prose. Topping it off was his decision to focus on an incongruous trio of thinkers: he put the towering philosophical giant Immanuel Kant alongside two twentieth-century historical analysts, Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. Along the way, he roped in Descrates and Dostoyevski, Hegel and Hume, Socrates and Spinoza, the radical empiricists and their cousins the logical positivists. At the very end, having not quite satisfied himself, he tossed in a section called “A Clue from Poetry,” featuring Dante, Homer, Milton and Virgil. Those who found it all quite daunting (including his examiners) had a small consolation: in a feeble stab at making the opus more manageable, he omitted chapters he had written on yet another unlikely pairing: Georg Hegel and Albert Schweitzer. 

Differentiation comes down to sorting out the A, B and C players.

The As are people who are filled with passion, committed to making things happen, open to ideas from anywhere and blessed with lots of runway ahead of them. They have the ability to energize not only themselves, but everyone who comes in contact with them. They make business productive and fun at the same time.

From the autobiography of Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO of General Electric

It’s this passion, probably more than anything else, that separates the As from the Bs. The Bs are the heart of the company and are critical to its operational success. We devote lots of energy toward improving Bs. We want them to search every day for what they’re missing to become As. 

The C player is someone who can’t get the job done. Cs are likely to enervate rather than energize. They procrastinate rather than deliver. You can’t waste time on them, although we do spend resources on their redeployment elsewhere.

The vitality curve is the dynamic way we sort out As, Bs and Cs, the most important tool of the Session C. Ranking employees on a 20-70-10 grid forces managers to make tough decisions.

Managers who can’t differentiate soon find themselves in the C category. 

Nancy Mitford, describing an important, often misunderstood, difference:

Closer acquaintance with their new in-laws did not make either the Radlett or the Kroesig families change their minds about each other. The Kroesigs thought Linda eccentric, affected, and extravagant. Worst of all, she was supposed not to be useful to Tony in his career. The Radletts considered that Tony was a first-class bore. He had the habit of choosing a subject, and then droning round and round it like an inaccurate bombaimer round his target, ever unable to hit; he knew vast quantities of utterly dreary facts, of which he did not hesitate to inform his companions, at great length and in great detail, whether they appeared to be interested or not. He was infinitely serious, he no longer laughed at Linda’s jokes, and the high spirits which, when she first knew him, he had seemed to possess, must have been due to youth, drink, and good health. Now that he was grown up and married he put all three resolutely behind him, spending his days in the bank house and his evenings at Westminster, never having any fun or breathing fresh air: his true self emerged, and he was revealed as a pompous, money-grubbing ass, more like his father every day.

Poor Linda was incapable of understanding the Kroesig point of view; try as she might (and in the beginning she tried very hard, having an infinite desire to please) it remained mysterious to her. The fact is that, for the first time in her life, she found herself face to face with the bourgeois attitude of mind… Inwardly their spirit was utterly commercial, everything was seen by them in terms of money. It was their barrier, their defence, their hope for the future, their support for the present, it raised them above their fellowmen, and with it they warded off evil. The only mental qualities they respected were those which produced money in substantial quantities, it was their one criterion of success, it was power and it was glory. To say that a man was poor was to label him a rotter, bad at this job, idle, feckless, immoral… they had placed large sums of money in a dozen different countries; they owned ranches, and estancias, and South American farms, an hotel in Switzerland, a plantation in Malaya, and they possessed many fine diamonds, not sparkling round Linda’s lovely neck to be sure, but lying in banks, stone by stone, easily portable.

Nancy Mitford

Linda’s upbringing had made all this incomprehensible to her; for money was a subject that was absolutely never mentioned at Alconleigh. Uncle Matthew had no doubt a large income, but it was derived from, tied up in, and a good percentage of it went back into, his land. His land was to him something sacred, and, sacred above that, was England. Should evil befall his country he would stay and share it, or die, never would the notion have entered his head that he might save himself, and leave old England in any sort of lurch. He, his family and his estates were part of her and she was part of him, for ever and ever. Later on, when war appeared to be looming upon the horizon, Tony tried to persuade him to send some money to America.

“What for?” said Uncle Matthew.

“You might be glad to go there yourself, or send the children. It’s always a good thing to have—”

“I may be old, but I can still shoot,” said Uncle Matthew, furiously, “and I haven’t got any children—for the purposes of fighting they are all grown up.”

“Victoria—”

“Victoria is thirteen. She would do her duty. I hope, if any bloody foreigners ever got here, that every man, woman and child would go on fighting them until one side or the other was wiped out. Anyhow, I loathe abroad, nothing would induce me to live there, I’d rather live in the gameskeeper’s hut in Hen’s Grove, and, as for foreigners, they are all the same, and they all make me sick.”

Ortega y Gasset, on the Self-Satisfied Age:

This type which at present is to be found everywhere, and everywhere imposes his own spiritual barbarism, is, in fact, the spoiled child of human history. The spoiled child is the heir who behaves exclusively as a mere heir. In this case the inheritance is civilisation—with its conveniences, its security; in a word, with all its advantages. As we have seen, it is only in circumstances of easy existence such as our civilisation has produced, that a type can arise, marked by such a collection of features, inspired by such a character. It is one of a number of deformities produced by luxury in human material.

Hendrik Hertzberg, September 1988:

The Bush-Quayle ticket is a powerful symbol of the moral decline of the American ruling class. Consider the response of each half of this generationally balanced ticket to its generation’s war.

In 1941, George Herbert Walker Bush, scion of a rich and politically influential family, was a seventeen-year-old senior at a prestigious New England prep school. A secure and idyllic childhood, spent in the bosky suburban towns of Milton, Massachusetts, and Greenwich, Connecticut, and in summerhouses and sailboats on the Maine coast, was behind him. An equally secure future beckoned, first at Yale and afterward in some appropriate branch of business. Then his country called—but let Bush take up the story: 

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, there wasn’t any doubt about which branch of the service I’d join. My thoughts immediately turned to naval aviation. College was coming up the following fall, but that would have to wait. The sooner I could enlist, the better.

Six months later I got my diploma from Phillips Academy Andover. Secretary of War Henry Stimson came from Washington to deliver the commencement address. He told members of our graduating class the war would be a long one, and even though America needed fighting men, we’d serve our country better by getting more education before getting into uniform.

After the ceremony, in a crowded hallway outside the auditorium, my father had one last question about my future plans… ‘George,’ he said, ‘did the secretary say anything to change your mind?’

‘No, sir,’ I replied. ‘I’m going in.’

Dad nodded and shook my hand.

Republished by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, in 2008. First published in 1936:

Don’t lose sight of the fact that, once a man is married, the only sensible thing for him to do is to make the best of the circumstances. If his wife has faults, he should try to shut his eyes to them. It may be that he is not entirely perfect.

Don’t allow yourself to grow indifferent to your wife. You once thought she was everything in the world and she is still the same person. A little encouragement from you will generally act like magic and draw you both together again.

Of course, you must not expect your wife to be perfect. There are no perfect wives and no perfect husbands, and even perfection would be a little tiring, if it did exist.

Don’t be the type of husband who has no time for his wife. If you work all day and dash off somewhere at night by yourself, she will eat her heart out and, when it is all consumed, you will be just the one to cry out about her departed love.

Don’t tell your wife terminological inexactitudes, which are, in plain English, lies. A woman has a wonderful intuition for spotting even minor departures from the truth, and however much she has an aptitude for indulging in them herself, she scorns the male who utters them. Lying to her is a sign of weakness and weakness in a man she regards as a crime.

left to right: French President M. Pompidou, Bunny and Paul Mellon

Things have got to a pretty bad pitch if a wife’s eyes do not sparkle, when her husband brings her home some unexpected trifle. So don’t forget, a bunch of flowers, a box of sweets, a bottle of scent, or something quite personal, every now and again.

Don’t be a musty sort of fellow with nothing bright and fresh in your outlook. It must be a dreadful blow to a woman who pictures her husband as a knight in shining armour to have to realise that he is a dull sort of individual without aims and ambitions.

David Halberstam on McGeorge Bundy: 

At Groton, Bundy was something of a legend in his time, as he would be everywhere he went. Besides capturing every available honor, he could have been a good second-team quarterback—excellent play calling—but he thought that athletics took too much time, so he played club football instead. He was a brilliant debater when debating still meant something, and won the Franklin D Roosevelt Debating Trophy three times, a prize named for an old boy. Louis Auchincloss, a contemporary at Groton, has said that Bundy was ready to be dean of the school at the age of twelve. Richard Irons, the school’s best history teacher, said that even then it was astonishing to read Bundy’s essays, they were always better than the books he had used as reference.

Bundy graduated from Groton when he was sixteen—summa cum laude, of course… he went to Yale.  The very choice of Yale was somewhat unorthodox, since Bostonians usually sent their children to Harvard after Groton, but the Bundys had decided that after both Boston and Groton, Yale might be somewhat broadening. On arrival, the freshman were summoned to a mass meeting where the dean announced that there were two distinguishing features about the class: first, it comprised 850 students, which was the desired result; second, one member of the class was the first Yale student to get three perfect scores on his college entrance exams. Bundy of course. 

Wikipedia: “Bundy was one of Kennedy’s ‘wise men,’ and noted professor of government at Harvard University, though he did not have a PhD (actually he only had a bachelor’s degree). In 1953, Bundy was appointed Dean of the Faculty at Harvard at the age of thirty-four, the youngest in the school’s history.”

The final reason why American congregations do not have a serious and competent program for activism is that the leadership is spread so thin that it often ends up just running in place. By the time this distracted leadership has finished organizing to the worship, maintaining the physical plant, providing social services to the needy, educating the young and pleading with members for funds, any attempts at activism are quickly relegated to the “social action” committee for prompt and ineffective disposition.

Using “good leaders” on activities “outside the congregation” is viewed as a waste of resources.

To overcome this dearth of leadership, many congregations take off on a talent search for the undiscovered leaders in their midst as if they were a mineral to be mined. In so doing, the congregation puts itself in direct competition with political parties, neighborhood associations, volunteer agencies, their own denominational bodies and even people’s extended families—all of which are desperately searching for the same thing: the talented volunteer.

Turn the question on its head: How should a congregation not go about finding and developing leaders? The answer, in most cases, is by continuing whatever is presently being done in leadership development—and proof is in the results.

What the congregation should not do is ask for volunteers. And, when it gets them (if it does), it should not expect them to be competent leaders nor expect a crash course in technique to turn them into leaders overnight. 

To see how ridiculous this approach is, imagine that it was the method used by American corporations to determine their leadership:

Wanted: Volunteers willing to assume the top leadership of American Conglomerate, Inc. No training or experience necessary—company will provide six-evening intensive course. No screening process, no one rejected. Must have loads of good will. Move immediately into top level of power and stay as long as you wish.

Obviously not a way to inspire investor confidence. Yet the same advertisement run in a monthly newsletter by an American congregation would seem to many not only acceptable but desirable in the spirit of equality and openness. What it would really mean, however, is that the congregation did not take itself seriously as an organization for the protection and propagation of values. No one who is serious about success turns an organization over to untried and untested leaders.

March 18, 1968

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but that GNP -- if we should judge America by that -- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

You voted for him.  Hell, you even worked for him.  Maybe you’re a Republican, but you decided enough was enough and donated to the campaign.  Because if there’s one thing a Republican knows about, it’s how to handle money. You thought he was a good investment.  Good for the country.  

You hate to admit it now, but you’re wondering, was it a sucker’s bet?  You think he’s starting to show that characteristic you find most contemptible about Democrats:  cowardice.  That wishy-washy, mealy-mouthed, every-statement-is-laden-with-qualifications attitude (well, Fran, when we said that we were for the public option before we were against it, we meant that we were in favor of nonprofit health cooperatives) that made you retch whenever you had to listen to Monica’s Boyfriend spout his bullshit.  

But he was supposed to be different.  No getting away from the truth: deep down, in a place none of your Republican friends know about, where a small flame of idealism still flickers, you believed he was going to change things. Some change, right?  Bank bailouts that even the guys you know on the Street hated (for the love of God, why couldn’t they ZERO out the equity as a precondition for opening the public purse—a bank needs money, it’s bankrupt), stimulus funding going to the politically connected, more troops in Afghanistan, and so on.

But health care?

Sucker.  Fooled again.  But come on!  How could you not have allowed yourself to feel hope? This was the issue he campaigned on, the one that mattered most to him (who can forget the touching story about his mother’s struggles with cancer?), the one on which he would stake his entire presidency.  He was going to go all in.  

So how come he’s hoarding his chips?  

Think about this:  WWDCD?  What Would Dick Cheney Do?  Do you think he would hesitate for a second before jamming his agenda through Congress, using whatever means necessary?  Lies, threats, strictly managed “town hall” meetings, heavy-handed media manipulation, hysterical appeals to the dark side of the American spirit, which Richard Nixon was so good at, or a distracting and unnecessary war to rally the country.  

Mr. President, these tactics are not beneath you.  Health care reform is bigger than your need to be an admirable guy, or bipartisan, or post-partisan, or whatever.  

Don’t listen to the hopeless David Brooks: 

Some now argue that the administration should just ignore the ignorant masses and ram health care through using reconciliation, the legislative maneuver that would reduce the need for moderate votes. This would be suicidal. You can’t pass the most important domestic reform in a generation when the majority of voters think you are on the wrong path. To do so would be a sign of unmitigated arrogance. 

If Brooks had been able to get into Yale, instead of Chicago, he might have learned not only the right way to wear a tie, but also the meaning of irony. Definition of irony: when a Committee on Social Thought Straussian speaks approvingly of the “ignorant masses.”  Unmitigated arrogance, indeed.

60 seats in the Senate.  51 to pass the bill through reconciliation.  Sure, reconciliation is the nuclear option.  Sure, you piss off Republicans and scare the pee-pee pants off the Dems.  But Republicans are always pissed, and have Democrats ever shown themselves to be anything but cowards?  

Mr. President, take courage.  Forget about reelection, ignore public opinion, which is fickle and only respects success, and be prepared to do anything—make promises, frighten, bully, humiliate, or beg—to get 51 votes. This is the defining moment you spoke of so eloquently during the campaign.  The moment to prove yourself equal to the high hopes you raised.  Equal to the trust bestowed on you by the people.