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For my family and me, this will always be the summer my daughter died, a few days after her 16th birthday.
Katie was born severely handicapped, and she always needed a lot of nursing care just to stay fairly comfortable. Yet she had some good days, and everyone who worked with her came to recognize her personality--a bit bossy, a fighter (as she showed when she got through some severe medical crises), making her wishes known, yet sometimes curious, gazing around her, taking in sounds.
Her memorial service was about as good as it could be, as far we were concerned. We planned the music, and a minister in the Salvation Army presided. There was a good turnout.
We are still in mourning, and I guess we always will be. My wife doesn't like me suggesting that our grief is less because Kate's life was so difficult. I guess we are mourning not only her death, but her birth. As one of the books on life with a handicapped child says, you have to mourn the child you were hoping for, because this child is not that child; then, or simultaneously, do everything you can for the child who has been born. We did.
On our life with Kate, I contributed an article to this volume some years ago. As my wife says, other fathers stress the positive, the good things they have discovered through their handicapped children; then there is angry me.
Our 14-year old son starts Grade 9 (High School in Ontario). He got his Bronze Medallion early in the summer, and he was absolutely great in the way he handled his sister's death.
My wife will once again be baby-sitting at the home of two teachers. The oldest child will be in full-time kindergarten; the two younger twins are at home.
I will once again be teaching American Constitutional Law at the University of Toronto, where I got my Ph.D. in '93 after 6 glorious years as a grad student (81 to 87) and then a rather halting process of writing a dissertation while teaching. My day job continues with the Government of Ontario.
I'm trying a new textbook this year, in order to be as up-to-date as possible on cases: Mason and Stephenson, published by Pearson/Prentice Hall. One complication is that I'm going to have to refer to comparable situations in Canada every so often, and this text seems to make no mention of such things. I'll be sorely tempted to photocopy from another copyrighted textbook, such as Kommers et al, published by Rowman and Littlefield. But, to paraphrase Richard Nixon, that would be wrong.
We've had a chilly summer on the whole, and today it really feels like fall. Fall is usually the best season here, and that's what I'm hoping for again.
Since I have touched on Lincoln vs. Polk before the U.S. Civil War, maybe I can tie some thoughts together.
Lincoln opposed Polk and the Democrats not so much over western expansion (or the grabbing of land) itself, but because it would exacerbate the slavery issue, and bring it to some kind of showdown. This would do great harm to the country, arguably outweighing the benefits (at least in the short term) of acquiring a lot more land.
As a Congressman, Lincoln spoke against the Mexican War (although I believe he voted for supplies for the troops--the same debates keep coming up). What is even more memorable now, however, is that he voted several times for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prevented slavery from spreading into any of the new territories. Lincoln always thought this was the only position consistent with the nation's founding, including Jefferson's strong support for the Northwest Ordinance, one of the first Acts of Congress.
President Polk (1845-49), a staunch supporter of Andrew Jackson in earlier times, worked for territorial expansion while trying to remain neutral on the Wilmot Proviso. In 1850 there was yet another compromise, this time to keep California free of slaves, but as Lincoln saw, all the compromises were unravelling. Polk, a slave owner, simply doesn't seem to have seen the force of this issue. The abolitionists began to leave the Democrats; the Democratic rump became more pro-slavery; this antagonized much northern opinion; and the Civil War came about in just a few years.
Isn't there an intelligent view that with the slavery issue now totally resolved, and even racial discrimination, while not solved, managed within certain legal arrangements that are more or less accepted, we need to take another look at "Manifest Destiny"? This phrase has long been associated with Andrew Jackson, who used it in supporting Polk for the Democratic nomination for president. (The other Democratic candidates that year, thinking the slavery issue more important, tried to stay neutral on territorial expansion). The argument was/is that the U.S. is going to expand, and take land and other things it needs, sooner or later, and everyone else should just accept that fact. International law will not be directly relevant during some of the, let's say, awkward episodes that will occur. The good news is that the regime the U.S. is nurturing and spreading is not only a law-abiding one, but a liberal democracy--a regime which has the potential to liberate people, especially the long-suffering masses, all over the world.
Maybe Bush defenders are correct in saying the U.S. needs to revive a version of this view today. (Tennessean Glenn Reynolds says he is not a great admirer of Tennessean--at least by adoption--Jackson; he doesn't mention Polk (also from Tennessee), but he is giving a lot of play to "Jacksonianism"). It is not simply that certain people attacked the U.S. on 9/11, and the U.S. needs to deploy force as well as diplomacy against "those people," their sponsors, hosts, and fund-raisers, until such threats are eliminated as much as possible. The problem is bigger: 9/11 was a wake-up call, reminding all of us that many people in the world labour and suffer under the oppressive yoke of ignorance and brutality. Some of the brutality is carried out in the name of Islam, or the liberation of specific ethnic minorities. But in a deep sense it all simply pre-dates the enlightenment that is brought by liberal democracy. It is in the self-interest of the U.S., but it is also a high calling, to push back the ignorance, and spread enlightenment. The Statue of Liberty's formal name: "La Liberte Eclairant Le Monde" (I think). "Liberty Enlightening the World."
The best argument for the invasion of Iraq might be simply that it was necessary to try to establish a pro-Western regime, that might become a liberal democracy, somewhere in the Middle East; Iraq was, on the whole, a promising candidate.
Partly this is suggested by two great articles in Atlantic. P.J. O'Rourke interviews Colin Powell (O'Rourke identifies himself during the interview as a humorist; it's never really explained how he got this gig). Among other things Powell says: "The United States believes it has worldwide obligations. Our European friends have never felt that that was their destiny or their obligation. The American people have always been more willing to shoulder this burden." And Reuel Marc Gerecht writes on "Ayatollah Democracy"--more or less assuring us that Sistani really does have a vision for Iraq which is different from the mullocracy in Iran: respectful of Islam, but with some real separation between church and state.
Lee Smith in Slate quotes William McCallister, a U.S. Army major who recently retired from active service after his tour in Iraq, saying there is real hope of democracy in Iraq--but it will take time:
It's not going to look like a Western parliamentary government; it's going to be Iraqi. But there were already a number of democratic-style institutions in place on the local level. This is what the tribal meetings are, like when the sheik just keeps quiet and listens to everyone in the group for a while as a consensus is being built. The sheik interjects every once in a while, but after some time, the meeting murmurs to a balance, and he restates what the group has already decided. Everyone votes by discussing it out. It's not our democracy, but it's a kind of democracy, and down the road, the Iraqis will find what their own democracy looks like on a national level.
This may be crucial for the U.S. plans for the Moslem world. Historically and logically, it seems that there must be a kind of indifference to religion, or to the alleged literal truth of certain texts, before there can be toleration. If so, it makes sense that toleration leads to a lessening and even disappearance of faith, as in the mainline Protestant churches and perhaps secular or cultural Catholics. Yet the United States, the most successful of all the liberal democracies, has a thriving evangelical movement which, yes, takes part in politics, but claims it wants only respect for faith, not theocracy.
It may be of the greatest importance to see if this can work or not.
There may still be too much pure crackerism about the pro-war movement--Reynolds can't resist macho touches like: if there are enemy casualties, that's the enemy's problem. But again, realistically, maybe if you actually have to go to war, for whatever reason, you need a critical mass of people who think that way--who like war, and are good at it. Reynolds defends Zell Miller and (some) Southern Democrats who were not Dixiecrats or (I would say) crackers, saying they can be tough and patriotic without being in any way racist.
Bush himself has been remarkably inarticulate about all this, and people close to him have not been much help. Their operation in Iraq has been clumsy at best. The "detainee" situation, affecting both U.S. citizens and others, raises a number of issues--including the possibility that the U.S. will export its brutal prison system around the world, the way Lincoln feared it might export slavery. But Kerry doesn't seem to have one clue about the larger issues. He needs to address both the self-interest, and the idealism or sense of mission or destiny, of the United States.
"I remember watching the Nixon and Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend who spoke German and English, translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism which is what I had just left," Schwarzenegger said.
"But then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes, and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.
"I said to my friend, 'What party is he?' My friend said, 'He's a Republican.' I said, 'Then I am a Republican."
Great work, Arnold. I'm a great admirer of Nixon myself. Like a wiseacre, I recently wrote that Nixon was one president the Republicans would not dare to mention at a convention of theirs; and there you go.
My theory, borrowed from Eleanor Clift on McLaughlin, was that other than Reagan, Truman was the only president the Republicans could really name.
Now they've discovered FDR (See McCain, Miller, Cheney)--obviously because he fought the Axis with one hand tied behind his back--or even worse, a disabling case of polio. (Or possibly Guillain-Barre?)
Wasn't FDR a Democrat, in some ways more of a socialist than Humphrey? But I guess when you're in a world war--or perhaps, in the one never-ending world war, none of that matters.
But Nixon a breath of fresh air? Somehow that doesn't fit. As enjoyable as the transcripts are, it is words like paranoid, crazy, and claustrophobic that come to mind. A high IQ, sometimes funny, but still dark, dank, and wait: isn't that a bodily secretion I smell?
The new Atlantic, which has a lot of good stuff, has a few more Nixon transcipts. Once again it is easy to say that with so much sycophancy going on, any of us might lose our heads. After Nixon spoke on TV about Laos and Vietnam, Kissinger said: "Well, you gave a speech that we...can all be proud to have had the privilege to be associated with." RN: "Well, I'm glad you feel that way." HK: "It is--it was also magnificently delivered. It was the best delivery--" RN: "Well, it was a goddam good little speech, actually." HK: "Deep down they all know you're right. That's the end of it."
Speaking to Secretary of State William Rogers on Ireland, Nixon says wisely that whether the British are now mishandling the situation or not--and they're probably not--they "always" mishandled it in the past, and "the historical record is so bad that they now just can't look good, anything they do."
Then for some strange reason, this: "...let's face it, the Irish are--these people, the Irish, are pretty goddamn bad here. They're the Kennedy type, out raising hell, blowing up the place, burning down the embassy and all that."
On Burundi, Kissinger and Nixon are both interested in helping British subjects who are trapped during a civil war--even though, or especially when they find out, that the State Department would rather ignore the Brits--presumably in order to be on good terms with the rebels. Somewhere in here Nixon says he wants to help, people are people; but elsewhere he makes it clear he wants to help white people, and he doesn't trust blacks. "I'm tired of this business of letting these Africans eat a hundred thouand people and do nothing about it."
Mayor Mel Lastman of Toronto got in trouble for saying something like that.
Didn't Perle's mother tell him not to associate with morally dubious characters? Or possibly the other kids' mothers should have warned them about him?
Most recently: Conrad Black: the only living interesting Canadian. (Perhaps one of two interesting Canadians of all time--the other being Trudeau; one might make a case for Mackenzie King). Apparently a pathological crook, with Perle competing with him to see who could grab the most loot before the cops showed up and the poor stockholders were left holding--shall we say the sack, to honour the U.S. setting of these events?
For some time now, and still ongoing: Doug Feith, who may have a rather unique foreign policy approach that is intended (whether it succeeds or not is, of course, a question) both to help Israel and make him rich.
And shining above them all: Ahmed Chalabi, who will (Perle tells us) emerge as one of the world's great statesmen--a true lover of his country, who would make any sacrifice (well, some sacrifice--let's be reasonable) to bring democracy to his tear-drenched homeland--if only he and his nephew could shake off those pesky fraud and murder charges.
Josh Marshall on all of these episodes; Daniel Gross in Slate, on the Hollinger/Conrad Black piece, with some of Black's hilarious commentary on how Perle is a bit too low and cunning for his (Black's!) likiing.
Somewhere I've read that George Will and another luminary were willing to work for Hollinger for mere thousands; Perle was prudent enough to take millions.
Possibly getting warmer.
Churchill on Neville Chamberlain, written after WWII:
...we now had a narrow, sharp-edged efficiency within the limits of the policy in which he believed. Both as Chancellor of the Exchequer and as Prime Minister he kept the tightest and most rigid control upon military expenditure. He was throughout this period the masterful opponent of all emergency measures....His all-pervading hope was to go down to history as the great Peacemaker, and for this he was prepared to strive continually in the face of facts, and face great risks for himself and his country. Unhappily he ran into tides the force of which he could not measure, and met hurricanes from which he did not flinch, but with which he could not cope.
Underneath the damning with faint praise, this may not be too far from Bush's view of Kerry. Churchill was infatuated with himself, and liked violence a little too much. Are those the similarities the Bush defenders have in mind? But of course the Churchill passage is thought out, and expressed, masterfully--and there is real generosity here.
Er, no.
[blockquote]I am now through the whole of the President's evidence; and it is a singular fact, that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people, who had never submitted, by consent or by force to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and that there, and thereby, the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said, would either admit or deny the declaration. This strange omission, it does seem to me, could not have occurred but by design....I have sometimes seen a good lawyer, struggling for his client's neck, in a desparate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog,and cover up, with many words, some point arising in the case, which he dared not admit, and yet could not deny.[/blockquote]
[blockquote][If the President won't answer whether bloodshed began on U.S. soil, on uninhabited territory, or on territory whose people had submitted to the jurisdiction of Texas] I shall be fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong.... That originally having some strong motive--what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning--to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood....he now finds himself, he knows not where.[/blockquote]
....Again, it is a singular omission in this message, that it, no where intimates when the President expects the war to terminate.
- Speech on Mexican War, January 12, 1848.
Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses north and south....
- First Debate with Douglas, Aug. 21, 1858.
A funny piece in the Globe and Mail: weather forecasts for Canada have been completely wrong all summer.
With temperature, there are really only three predictions: it will be normal, above normal, or below normal. Absolutely random guessing will make you correct one-third of the time. The record of Canada's government meteorologists this summer? Probably in the range of 37% to 40%.
"That means Canadians got nearly as much accurate weather information this summer as they would have had without any forecast at all."
"'Never have we been so wrong for so long in so many parts of the country,' said David Phillips, the senior climatologist at Environment Canada." Thanks Dave. Your candour is refreshing.
"And that's just for the temperature. What about precipitation? 'It's hopeless,' Mr. Verret said. 'There, we have no skill at all.'"
Needless to say, a good deal of public money is spent on this more or less pointless activity.
Still, my very favourite part is this.
"'Luckily, Canadians are very forgiving,' he said. 'They'll ask you what went wrong with the forecast, and their next question will be, "What's the winter going to be like?"'"
No matter how many times the sages are wrong, no matter how disastrous the consequences, Canadians still turn for help to ... the same sages. Is there a parable here about the history of journalism? punditry? the blogosphere? Religion?
1. Is Canada disgracing itself compared to other countries? Canada's population about 30 million, U.S. population about 280 million. Canada a bit more than one-tenth. Medals as of a few minutes ago: Canada 12, U.S. 94--a bit more than 10%. Golds: Canada 3, U.S. 30--10% exactly.
OK, there's Australia: less than 20 million people, 47 medals, 17 of them gold. But, but...I believe Australia takes no part in the Winter Games--maybe we're spread too thin.
2. If we are under-performing, why might that be? For one thing, we are a hockey mad country. Both Toronto and Montreal, our biggest cities, have NHL teams which sell out consistently and get good TV revenue as well--pretty well regardless of the product on the ice. Other sports can hardly sell tickets at all, even if they do well. You have to go to smaller cities such as Vancouver and Edmonton to find roughly equal support for more than one pro team.
In my days as policy advisor on science and tech, I was told we need to support science and tech with all ages of kids, just as we do hockey. Volunteers do much of the work, including coaching; families are willing to billet players in order to build talent; entire communities support arenas, etc. Besides hockey, does Canada do that for anything at all?
Our focus on hockey pays off. At least for the moment, we still seem to be No. 1 in the world, whereas (ahem) it has become questionable whether the U.S. is #1 in basketball. In baseball, the U.S. didn't even field a team at the Olympics. Presumably a "dream team" from the big leagues would win, but more and more big league players are "foreign born," just as in the NHL.
UPDATE Aug. 29: OK, so Canada didn't win any more, while the U.S. did. Finals: Canada 3 Gold, 12 total; U.S. 35/103. We're a bit under 10% in Golds; a bit over in total. Australia: 49 medals, 17 of them gold. Amazing.
I can't find the piece, but Professor Bercuson apparently took advantage of the wailing and gnashing of teeth about Canada's results to argue that this proves we love mediocrity, etc. The standard National Post line. But the usual golden comparison is: the U.S.
UPDATE:
2002 Winter Games, Salt Lake City: US 34 medals, 10 Gold; Canada 17, 7 Gold (50% overall, 70% Golds); Australia 2 Golds only.
Total 2002 Winter, 2004 Summer: USA 137 medals, 45 Gold; Canada 29 medals, 10 Gold: more than 25% total, 22.5% Golds. Australia 51 total, 19 Gold: say 40% of the US total, close to half of the golds.
I bought Norton Anti-Virus 2004 on the Internet, and tried to install it. OK, I got a bit impatient when I was trying to open Outloook after (I thought) installation was done. Anyway, everything froze, and we're getting the hard drive wiped again.
E-mail back up Monday? We'll see.
Juan Cole is generally critical of Bush. In an overview of Afghanistan and Iraq, in which he insists that both have serious problems, there is no sign of genuine democracy, etc., Cole says this about Afghanistan: "The human rights situation is infinitely better now than under the Taliban."
Infinitely better? Surely any politician would accept that as an epitaph.
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