So the latest news from California is this:
New fires flared up in Riverside, Ventura and San Bernardino Counties on Wednesday and Thursday just as winds eased in the north and firefighters wrangling the state’s largest active blaze, the Kincade fire, managed to contain more than half of its 76,800-acre footprint for the first time.
Mayor Pete:
BUTTIGIEG SAYS THINGS NAMED AFTER THOMAS JEFFERSON SHOULD BE RENAMED
The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” Friday and said he believes removing — not celebrating — Jefferson is “the right thing to do.”
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I was doing some of my more esoteric historical reading this evening when I encountered this little nugget:
In the nations of the civilized world there are two leading forms of government. The supreme power either proceeds from the people, and in this case the government very frequently presents a sad picture of weakness, and the men in power become the mere instruments of ambitious tribunes;
or the supreme power lies in the hands of a monarch or an aristocracy, and then the people are generally an object of spoliation. Periods of history in which a despot, free from egotism, made his people happy, or a majority of people paid due regard to the rights of a minority, are of rare occurrence. For this reason men even now are yet searching a way of balancing the powers in such a
manner that they may prevent each other from doing evil and leave liberty only for doing good. But to this day no one has succeeded in solving the problem, though the greatest minds have made it the study of their lives.
-- The Life and Acts of Pope Leo XIII, Benziger Brothers, 1883, p. 172
PART THREE: The Founding of the National Security State
In the 1930s, the US was still "building out" to its continental dimensions. The Interior Department was on a dam construction spree that tamed wild rivers and brought electricity to the West. The Hoover Dam, built at the bottom of the Great Depression, was the capstone of these civilian projects. It enabled the prolific growth of Southern California, home to much military industry and to a rabidly rightwing electorate that would spawn Richard Nixon.
WW2 kept alive the spirit of gigantic national projects; it just shifted this build out to the military.
The complete disconnect between the Russiagate nonsense and the well-documented history of American spying and militarism all over the world since WW2 is simply too much for me to bear. I am tired of the true history being ignored, tired of having to rebut a Gish Gallop of lies reaching back 75 years. This essay is an account of actual US behavior, as opposed to the deep sociological propaganda that we have been marinating in our entire lives. The narrative that has been erased is that, until WW2, the US government was rather isolated, parochial, and inward looking. Then it inherited the world, only to have had it immediately confiscated by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, and Curtis LeMay.
Quotes to remember
I've always found it interesting that the United States and France both celebrate their independence days, at least in a sense, in July, just nine days apart from each other. Of course, the American and French Revolutions were somewhat different in character. For America it was more a war of national liberation against what had become an imperial master, determined to keep its colonies subservient (the crux of Tom Paine's argument in Common Sense), though there were elements of civil war and social revolution as well. France's revolution, on the contrary, began as a strictly internal affair, an upheaval against a badly outmoded form of government and social system.
(Special Saturday Lecture. Much Larger crowd than Expected. Relocated to Odeon.)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nji5zvkuuFg]
Woah, I'm honestly amazed that you all showed up, but I first of all would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who made it.
(Cascadian National University Lecture Hall)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44FPny8k4DM]
Morning again. Hey, great job on the inter-murals last week to all of our students. Great showing by everybody, and I know it's not easy competing against schools where they have entire funding departments dedicated to sports.
Which is a great way to bring the discussion around to some lighter topics.
