A troubling political development for me is the rise of the “news” site called The Bulwark. I have had several conversations lately with people that consider themselves knowledgeable Lefties who say they have turned to this outlet as an alternative to the MAGA hijacked mainstream media, that it better reflects their politics and viewpoints. My response has been, have you done your homework? Let’s not forget that these are the Neocons, the loudest cheerleaders for, and managers of, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They come from various conservative bastions like the defunct Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal.
Disaffected from their party by the rise of MAGA and led by Bill Kristol who, among other destructive endeavors, co-founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). This so-called bulwark is comprised mostly of “former” right-wing commentators masquerading as cool-headed centrists fighting for democracy and social liberalism (taken directly from the Bulwark Substack site). Yet, their godfather Irving Kristol, Bill’s pop, was a prime actor in the smearing of the Great Society programs. His frequent screeds complained that using the government to help underprivileged, underserved, and underrepresented people only created dependency instead of alleviating poverty, destroyed the dignity of hard work, and led to bloated bureaucracy. His aim was to undermine GS social programs- war on poverty, medicare/medicaid, welfare, food stamps, environmental protection etc. That strategy was then effectively co-opted by the ultra-right and has led us to where we are today. I’m surprised that David Brooks and David Frum haven’t joined up. Oh right, they have both resurfaced at that other landing spot for Neocons, The Atlantic. My question to them: FDR or Reagan? Which side are you on? (hint: I already know the answer).
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. Remember, those who sleep with dogs may wake up with fleas. In a world where the goal of the news media has degenerated into an exercise in deceiving rather than informing, be aware and consider your sources. This has been a public service announcement.
If you think military incompetence on the scale of Trump and Hegseth is something new, think again. If you think their hubris driven non-strategy might somehow succeed, think again. If you think the slide toward mob rule and despotism can’t happen here, think again. Polybius (201-117 BC) was already on to them nearly 2200 years ago…
Hannibal correctly judges the character of Flaminius:
“it is mere blind ignorance to believe that there can be anything of more vital importance to a general than the knowledge of his opponent’s character and disposition, —so must a commander of an army look out for the weak place, not in the body, but in the mind of the leader of the hostile force. For it has often happened before, that from mere idleness and lack of energy, men have let not only the welfare of the state, but even their private fortunes fall to ruin: some are so addicted to wine that they cannot sleep without bemusing their intellects with drink; and others so infatuated in their pursuit of sensual pleasures, that they have not only been the ruin of their cities and fortunes, but have forfeited life itself with disgrace. In the case of individuals, however, cowardice and sloth bring shame only on themselves; but when it is a commander-in-chief that is concerned, the disaster affects all alike and is of the most fatal consequence. It not only infects the men under him with an inactivity like his own; but it often brings absolute dangers of the most serious description upon those who trust such a general. For rashness, temerity, and uncalculating impetuosity, as well as foolish ambition and vanity, give an easy victory to the enemy, and are the source of numerous dangers to one’s friends: for a man who is the prey of such weaknesses falls the easiest victim to every stratagem, ambush or ruse. The general then who can gain a clear idea of his opponent’s weaknesses, and direct his attack on the point where he is most open to it (think Strait of Hormuz and skyrocketing prices), will very soon be the victor in the campaign.” – Polybius The Histories. Bk 3 section 81.
The Necessity of Caution in Dealing With an Enemy:
“The conclusion, then, is that those who put themselves in the power of the enemy from want of proper precaution deserve blame; but those who use every practicable precaution not so: for to trust absolutely no one is to make all action impossible; but reasonable action, taken after receiving adequate security, cannot be censured. Adequate securities are oaths, children, wives, and, strongest of all, a blameless past. To be betrayed and entrapped by such a security as any of these is a slur, not on the deceived, but on the deceiver. The first object then should be to seek such securities as it is impossible for the recipient of the confidence to evade; but since such are rare, the next best thing will be to take every reasonable precaution one’s self: and then, if we meet with any disaster, we shall at least be acquitted of wrong conduct by the lookers on. And this has been the case with many before now: of which the most conspicuous example, and the one nearest to the times on which we are engaged, will be the fate of Achaeus. He omitted no possible precaution for securing his safety, but thought of everything that it was possible for human ingenuity to conceive: and yet he fell into the power of his enemies. In this instance his misfortune procured the pity and pardon of the outside world for the victim, and nothing but disparagement and loathing for the successful perpetrators….” -Polybius The Histories. Bk 8 Section 2
Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote in his foundational treatise On War that “War is the continuation of politics (policy) by other means.” The dictum defines war as a political instrument meant to achieve specific national or state objectives. This entry-level military strategy has been taught across the globe to those attending officer training schools since it was published in 1832. One doubts that it is taught to aspiring Fox News anchors. Therefore, to win a war means changing the politics of the enemy such that they must surrender. That is what Iran just did to the United States.
Let’s see how the Trump administration snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in terms of Polybius’ rules above:
Trump has left the US in “the power of the enemy from want of proper precaution.” Militarily, by making the same mistake that his predecessor’s made in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, ie. an over reliance on air power. This strategy, both lazy and cowardly, has no record of success, and knowing that the country has no stomach for ground troops, the sycophantic amateurs now running the military and state department still walked right back into the same old self deluded trap; politically, by failing to recognize, either through ignorance or hubris, that their strategy had several single points of failure, the biggest choke point being the Straight of Hormuz. After surviving the initial sucker punch, the Iranians got to their feet and promptly shut down that transit point vital to world commerce, putting the political pressure back on Trump, who did not have time on his side.
“but reasonable action, taken after receiving adequate security, cannot be censured. Adequate securities are oaths, children, wives, and, strongest of all, a blameless past.” We at one time had an adequate security oath (JCPOA), it was more adequate and less harmful to our interests than the capitulation MOU, but Trump tore it up; we certainly don’t have anything close to a blameless past in the region, beginning with our role in the 1953 coup overthrowing Mohammad Mosaddegh and subsequent installment of the Shah of Iran.
“The first object then should be to seek such securities as it is impossible for the recipient of the confidence to evade; but since such are rare, the next best thing will be to take every reasonable precaution one’s self: and then, if we meet with any disaster, we shall at least be acquitted of wrong conduct by the lookers on.” Trump ignored warnings from those with foreign policy and academic expertise and failed to get buy-in from our allies or congress before launching the ill-fated debacle. When the thing went south on him, he pleaded to no avail for the allies to rescue him, and now that he has surrendered, we have surrendered, he flails wildly on X and TV at the lookers on that refuse to buy into his hastily concocted false narrative of victory. See also: Operation Epic Futility: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose
Polybius Describes When to Assess the Characteristics of Good and Bad Leaders:“In private life if you wish to satisfy yourself as to the badness or goodness of particular persons, you would not, if you wish to get a genuine test, examine their conduct at a time of uneventful repose, but in the hour of brilliant success or conspicuous reverse. For the true test of a perfect man is the power of bearing with spirit and dignity violent changes of fortune.”-Polybius The Histories. Bk 6 Preface
Here George Washington and Abraham Lincoln can be thought of as America’s greatest examples of this rule, along with FDR (IMO). Trump on the other hand, has done nothing but fail miserably during “violent changes of fortune”- covid, 2020 election and denial, Jan 6 insurrection and pardons, and now the Iran catastrophe- his vanity, corruption, racism and jealousy knows no bounds.*
Polybius tells us the best course of action for a conqueror to take: “But the fact is, that whereas the taking and demolishing an enemy’s forts, harbours, cities, men, ships and crops, and other such things, by which our enemy is weakened, and our own interests and tactics supported, are necessary acts according to the laws and rights of war; to deface temples, statues, and such like erections in pure wantonness, and without any prospect of strengthening oneself or weakening the enemy, must be regarded as an act of blind passion and insanity. For the purpose with which good men wage war is not the destruction and annihilation of the wrongdoers, but the reformation and alteration of the wrongful acts. Nor is it their object to involve the innocent in the destruction of the guilty, but rather to see that those who are held to be guilty should share in the preservation and elevation of the guiltless. It is the act of a tyrant to inflict injury, and so to maintain his power over unwilling subjects by terror,—hated, and hating those under him: but it is the glory of a king to secure, by doing good to all, that he should rule over willing subjects, whose love he has earned by humanity and beneficence…For in truth to conquer one’s enemies in integrity and equity is not of less, but of greater, practical advantage than victories in the field. In the one case the defeated party yields under compulsion; in the other with cheerful assent. In the one case the victor effects his reformation at the cost of great losses; in the other he recalls the erring to better courses without any damage to himself. But above all, in the one case the chief credit of the victory belongs to the soldiers, in the other it falls wholly and solely to the part of the leaders.” – Polybius The Histories Bk 5, section 12
We will see whether the victorious Iranians follow Polybius’ advice. It is doubtful, especially towards Israel, but it is an opportunity for them and if they play their cards using Polybius’ instructions they could conceivably set the stage for shedding pariah status. Don’t bet on it. For the Americans and Israelis Polybius’ advice was probably never relevant, conquering was not really an obtainable outcome under the conditions described above, but these ancient words are prescient nonetheless and have echoed down through the centuries, guiding post conflict strategy (the Romans largely followed this advice as did the U.S. post WWII in Europe and Japan, Hannibal did not) and providing a baseline for comparison for those interested in the history and philosophy of such things…
Polybius’ Famous Theory of Anacyclosis: circular cycle of regimes: Polybius believed that human societies naturally cycle through six forms of government in a continuous, repeating loop. Notice that he emphasizes “the violation of women or the forcible appropriation of boys” in the transition from aristocracy to oligarchy. MAGA is clearly engaged in verbal and physical violence toward women, while insidiously working to strip them of their rights; the covering up of pedophilia by it’s leaders and members, and the protection and pardoning of child rapists, is a prominent feature of the movement’s resume.
Polybius on the classification of polities: “Now, it is undoubtedly the case that most of those who profess to give us authoritative instruction on this subject distinguish three kinds of constitutions, which they designate kingship, aristocracy, democracy. But in my opinion the question might fairly be put to them, whether they name these as being the only ones, or as the best. In either case I think they are wrong. For it is plain that we must regard as the best constitution that which partakes of all these three elements. And this is no mere assertion, but has been proved by the example of Lycurgus, who was the first to construct a constitution—that of Sparta—on this principle. Nor can we admit that these are the only forms: for we have had before now examples of absolute and tyrannical forms of government, which, while differing as widely as possible from kingship, yet appear to have some points of resemblance to it; on which account all absolute rulers falsely assume and use, as far as they can, the title of king. Again there have been many instances of oligarchical governments having in appearance some analogy to aristocracies, which are, if I may say so, as different from them as it is possible to be. The same also holds good about democracy.”
Six forms of polity, and their natural cycle: “I will illustrate the truth of what I say. We cannot hold every absolute government to be a kingship, but only that which is accepted voluntarily, and is directed by an appeal to reason rather than to fear and force. Nor again is every oligarchy to be regarded as an aristocracy; the latter exists only where the power is wielded by the justest and wisest men selected on their merits. Similarly, it is not enough to constitute a democracy that the whole crowd of citizens should have the right to do whatever they wish or propose. But where reverence to the gods, succour of parents, respect to elders, obedience to laws, are traditional and habitual, in such communities, if the will of the majority prevail, we may speak of the form of government as a democracy. So then we enumerate six forms of government,—the three commonly spoken of which I have just mentioned, and three more allied forms, I mean despotism, oligarchy and mob-rule. The first of these arises without artificial aid and in the natural order of events. Next to this, and produced from it by the aid of art and adjustment, comes kingship; which degenerating into the evil form allied to it, by which I mean tyranny, both are once more destroyed and aristocracy produced. Again the latter being in the course of nature perverted to oligarchy, and the people passionately avenging the unjust acts of their rulers, democracy comes into existence; which again by its violence and contempt of law becomes sheer mob-rule. No clearer proof of the truth of what I say could be obtained than by a careful observation of the natural origin, genesis, and decadence of these several forms of government. For it is only by seeing distinctly how each of them is produced that a distinct view can also be obtained of its growth, zenith, and decadence, and the time, circumstance, and place in which each of these may be expected to recur. This method I have assumed to be especially applicable to the Roman constitution, because its origin and growth have from the first followed natural causes.”
The origin of the social compact: “What is the origin then of a constitution, and whence is it produced? Suppose that from floods, pestilences, failure of crops, or some such causes the race of man is reduced almost to extinction. Such things we are told have happened, and it is reasonable to think will happen again. Suppose accordingly all knowledge of social habits and arts to have been lost. Suppose that from the survivors, as from seeds, the race of man to have again multiplied. In that case I presume they would, like the animals, herd together; for it is but reasonable to suppose that bodily weakness would induce them to seek those of their own kind to herd with. And in that case too, as with the animals, he who was superior to the rest in strength of body or courage of soul would lead and rule them. For what we see happen in the case of animals that are without the faculty of reason, such as bulls, goats, and cocks,—among whom there can be no dispute that the strongest take the lead,—that we must regard as in the truest sense the teaching of nature. Originally then it is probable that the condition of life among men was this,—herding together like animals and following the strongest and bravest as leaders. The limit of this authority would be physical strength, and the name we should give it would be despotism. But as soon as the idea of family ties and social relation has arisen amongst such agglomerations of men, then is born also the idea of kingship, and then for the first time mankind conceives the notion of goodness and justice and their reverse.”
Origin of morality: “The way in which such conceptions originate and come into existence is this. The intercourse of the sexes is an instinct of nature, and the result is the birth of children. Now, if any one of these children who have been brought up, when arrived at maturity, is ungrateful and makes no return to those by whom he was nurtured, but on the contrary presumes to injure them by word and deed, it is plain that he will probably offend and annoy such as are present, and have seen the care and trouble bestowed by the parents on the nurture and bringing up of their children. For seeing that men differ from the other animals in being the only creatures possessed of reasoning powers, it is clear that such a difference of conduct is not likely to escape their observation; but that they will remark it when it occurs, and express their displeasure on the spot: because they will have an eye to the future, and will reason on the likelihood of the same occurring to each of themselves. Again, if a man has been rescued or helped in an hour of danger, and, instead of showing gratitude to his preserver, seeks to do him harm, it is clearly probable that the rest will be displeased and offended with him, when they know it: sympathising with their neighbour and imagining themselves in his case. Hence arises a notion in every breast of the meaning and theory of duty, which is in fact the beginning and end of justice. Similarly, again, when any one man stands out as the champion of all in a time of danger, and braves with firm courage the onslaught of the most powerful wild beasts, it is probable that such a man would meet with marks of favour and pre-eminence from the common people; while he who acted in a contrary way would fall under their contempt and dislike.”
Which transmutes despotism into kingship: “From this, once more, it is reasonable to suppose that there would arise in the minds of the multitude a theory of the disgraceful and the honourable, and of the difference between them; and that one should be sought and imitated for its advantages, the other shunned. When, therefore, the leading and most powerful man among his people ever encourages such persons in accordance with the popular sentiment, and thereby assumes in the eyes of his subject the appearance of being the distributor to each man according to his deserts, they no longer obey him and support his rule from fear of violence, but rather from conviction of its utility, however old he may be, rallying round him with one heart and soul, and fighting against all who form designs against his government. In this way he becomes a king instead of a despot by imperceptible degrees, reason having ousted brute courage and bodily strength from their supremacy.”
Which in its turn degenerates into tyranny: “This then is the natural process of formation among mankind of the notion of goodness and justice, and their opposites; and this is the origin and genesis of genuine kingship; for people do not only keep up the government of such men personally, but for their descendants also for many generations; from the conviction that those who are born from and educated by men of this kind will have principles also like theirs. But if they subsequently become displeased with their descendants, they do not any longer decide their choice of rulers and kings by their physical strength or brute courage; but by the differences of their intellectual and reasoning faculties, from practical experience of the decisive importance of such a distinction. In old times, then, those who were once thus selected, and obtained this office, grew old in their royal functions, making magnificent strongholds and surrounding them with walls and extending their frontiers, partly for the security of their subjects, and partly to provide them with abundance of the necessaries of life; and while engaged in these works they were exempt from all vituperation or jealousy; because they did not make their distinctive dress, food, or drink, at all conspicuous, but lived very much like the rest, and joined in the everyday employments of the common people. But when their royal power became hereditary in their family, and they found every necessary for security ready to their hands, as well as more than was necessary for their personal support, then they gave the rein to their appetites; imagined that rulers must needs wear different clothes from those of subjects; have different and elaborate luxuries of the table; and must even seek sensual indulgence, however unlawful the source, without fear of denial. These things having given rise in the one case to jealousy and offence, in the other to outburst of hatred and passionate resentment, the kingship became a tyranny; the first step in disintegration was taken; and plots began to be formed against the government, which did not now proceed from the worst men but from the noblest, most high-minded, and most courageous, because these are the men who can least submit to the tyrannical acts of their rulers.”
Tyranny is then displaced by aristocracy: “But as soon as the people got leaders, they co-operated with them against the dynasty for the reasons I have mentioned; and then kingship and despotism were alike entirely abolished, and aristocracy once more began to revive and start afresh. For in their immediate gratitude to those who had deposed the despots, the people employed them as leaders, and entrusted their interests to them; who, looking upon this charge at first as a great privilege, made the public advantage their chief concern, and conducted all kinds of business, public or private, with diligence and caution. Which degenerates into oligarchy:But when the sons of these men received the same position of authority from their fathers,—having had no experience of misfortunes, and none at all of civil equality and freedom of speech, but having been bred up from the first under the shadow of their fathers’ authority and lofty position,—some of them gave themselves up with passion to avarice and unscrupulous love of money, others to drinking and the boundless debaucheries which accompanies it, and others to the violation of women or the forcible appropriation of boys; and so they turned an aristocracy into an oligarchy. But it was not long before they roused in the minds of the people the same feelings as before; and their fall therefore was very like the disaster which befell the tyrants.” (italics are mine)
Which is replaced by democracy: “For no sooner had the knowledge of the jealousy and hatred existing in the citizens against them emboldened some one to oppose the government by word or deed, than he was sure to find the whole people ready and prepared to take his side. Having then got rid of these rulers by assassination or exile, they do not venture to set up a king again, being still in terror of the injustice to which this led before; nor dare they intrust the common interests again to more than one, considering the recent example of their misconduct: and therefore, as the only sound hope left them is that which depends upon themselves, they are driven to take refuge in that; and so changed the constitution from an oligarchy to a democracy, and took upon themselves the superintendence and charge of the state. And as long as any survive who have had experience of oligarchical supremacy and domination, they regard their present constitution as a blessing, and hold equality and freedom as of the utmost value. Which degenerates into rule of corruption and violence, only to be stopped by a return to despotism: But as soon as a new generation has arisen, and the democracy has descended to their children’s children, long association weakens their value for equality and freedom, and some seek to become more powerful than the ordinary citizens; and the most liable to this temptation are the rich. So when they begin to be fond of office, and find themselves unable to obtain it by their own unassisted efforts and their own merits, they ruin their estates, while enticing and corrupting the common people in every possible way. By which means when, in their senseless mania for reputation, they have made the populace ready and greedy to receive bribes, the virtue of democracy is destroyed, and it is transformed into a government of violence and the strong hand. For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbours, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honours, produces a reign of mere violence. Then come tumultuous assemblies, massacres, banishments, redivisions of land; until, after losing all trace of civilisation, it has once more found a master and a despot.”
“This is the regular cycle of constitutional revolutions, and the natural order in which constitutions change, are transformed, and return again to their original stage. If a man have a clear grasp of these principles he may perhaps make a mistake as to the dates at which this or that will happen to a particular constitution; but he will rarely be entirely mistaken as to the stage of growth or decay at which it has arrived, or as to the point at which it will undergo some revolutionary change. However, it is in the case of the Roman constitution that this method of inquiry will most fully teach us its formation, its growth, and zenith, as well as the changes awaiting it in the future; for this, if any constitution ever did, owed, as I said just now, its original foundation and growth to natural causes, and to natural causes will owe its decay.”
“All those changes which I have enumerated come about by an undeviating law of nature; and reflected that every form of government that was unmixed, and rested on one species of power, was unstable; because it was swiftly perverted into that particular form of evil peculiar to it and inherent in its nature. For just as rust is the natural dissolvent of iron, wood-worms and grubs to timber, by which they are destroyed without any external injury, but by that which is engendered in themselves; so in each constitution there is naturally engendered a particular vice inseparable from it: in kingship it is absolutism; aristocracy it is oligarchy; in democracy lawless ferocity andviolence; and to these vicious states all these forms of government are, as I have lately shown, inevitably transformed.”- – Polybius The Histories. Bk 6 sections 1-10.
* Trump has floated the idea of adding his face to Mount Rushmore alongside Washington and Lincoln. Short of that preposterous goal, he now proposes to build an arch worthy of Mussolini directly blocking the view between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington National Cemetery was established on 13 May 1864, during the Civil War after Arlington Estate, the land on which the cemetery was built, was confiscated by the federal government from the private ownership of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. The selection of the location for the Lincoln memorial, with its view of the cemetery and Lee’s Arlington House was explicitly promoted as a vehicle for national reconciliation. To Trump no doubt it is a symbol of Lincoln looking down on Lee, and by association, the Confederacy. Far from “bearing with spirit and dignity,” MAGA’s raison d’etre is the severance of national reconciliation.
On Trump’s 80th Birthday: Nothing says “decline of civilization” like gladiator fights at the Circus for the emperor’s amusement while losing a war at the frontier.
“For our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.” ~Cassius Dio upon the death of Marcus Aurelius and the ascent of Commodus.
A marble bust of Roman emperor Commodus as the hero of Greek mythology Hercules, c. 190-2 CE. (The Capitoline Museums, Rome). Photograph by Mark Cartwright
If you were a Left-leaning college student in the 1960s there is a good chance that you had a copy of Ramparts magazine on the coffee table. From 1964-1969, under the leadership of executive editor Warren Hinckle, Ramparts was arguably the most important anti-war, counter-culture, general circulation magazine in the United States. Closely associated with the New Left political movement the magazine reached an ultimate circulation of 250,000 in 1968. That was a large number in those days, especially for an ostensibly underground publication frequently denigrated by its competitors in the mainstream media. Ramparts was so good at its craft that it became the ire of the CIA, which tried to censor the magazine and then shut it down, failing on both counts, not to mention breaking the law and its own charter prohibiting it from domestic spying.
Why was the CIA so rattled?
In the April 1966 edition Ramparts exposed a program the CIA was running clandestinely out of Michigan State University as part of the Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group (MSUG). Though there were some positive outcomes from MSUG the article revealed that the Agency had infiltrated it early on and was using it as a front for covert operations, including training and arming police interrogators in South Vietnam to spy on and harass dissidents in Saigon. Though not explicit in the record there were almost certainly some classes on torture methods in the curriculum. What we do know is that Diem’s forces had gained considerable expertise in using such brutal practices during the time period in question. Ramparts asked: “what the hell is a university doing buying guns, anyway?” It was one of the early sparks in what would erupt into open confrontations between students and their universities over support for the Vietnam War, most famously at Berkeley, Michigan, Columbia, Wisconsin, Ohio State and Kent State, among many others. Ramparts won the 1966 George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting for the article. The cover is a 60s classic (see below).
Then in March 1967 Ramparts created a national sensation by publishing an embarrassing expose of CIA secret funding of the National Student Association (NSA) which was the largest college student organization in America. A year earlier the New York Times ran a series of articles which began to uncover secret CIA funding of various fronts going back to the late 1940s, including arts organizations, political and cultural journals, radio stations, cultural foundations etc. That operation, known as the Congress For Cultural Freedom, aka the Mighty Wurlitzer within the CIA, was a primary weapon against Soviet influence in what is today known as the Cultural Cold War. But the Ramparts story went one step further by including the first acknowledgement of the program’s existence by a former CIA officer involved in the covert operations, Michael Wood, who had records, not just about the NSA, but other related fronts that the CIA had established. The upstart magazine had once again scooped the big players in the main stream media on one of the biggest stories of the time, pouring more gasoline on the fire on campuses nationwide.
A side note about the March 1967 issue: Hinckle wrote the cover story, “A Social History of the Hippies.” Editorial differences over that story led contributing editor Ralph J. Gleason to resign in protest. Gleason and former Ramparts staffer Jann Wenner, then founded a new magazine, Rolling Stone, later that year.
Below are photos of these two landmark issues of Ramparts, they are two of the more influential magazine editions of any kind from the time period, helping to lay the foundation for the student radicalism that was to follow.
Watched “Freedom Summer” on TV the other night. It was based on Bruce Watson’s excellent book that came out a few years ago. Although the documentary didn’t break any new ground it is nevertheless a worthy treatment of a watershed moment in American history. And there was some footage that I had not seen before, from the personal collection of Richard Beymer, an actor from Hollywood who went to Mississippi with the students and filmed.* But like many other treatments of the civil rights movement, it left out a discussion of the many previous attempts to pass civil rights legislation in the US over the years, attempts that were always squashed by the southern dominated Senate. No civil rights legislation was passed into law in this country between 1875 and 1957! In fact, did you know that LBJ voted against civil rights legislation many times early in his career?
Arguably the most important early event in the chain that ultimately led to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s, now largely forgotten, occurred at the 1948 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. A young Hubert Humphrey, then mayor of Minneapolis and relatively unknown nationally, gave an impassioned and eloquent speech in support of a civil rights plank. He was pressured by the Democratic establishment not to give it, they said it would alienate the south and hurt Truman’s chances. But he was forward-looking and realized that, in addition to being the morally right thing to do, African Americans would soon be a powerful constituency in the north, and one day everywhere, and needed to be brought in to the Democratic tent. So he stood up and gave the speech. It is only 10 minutes long, but one of the great speeches I have ever heard. Much of the South walked-out, they formed the Dixiecrat Party under Strom Thurmond. But it turned out that they couldn’t stop the tide, they did carry a few southern states but not enough to save their cause, and Truman won. It was a turning point as the speech inspired many northern and western legislators who heard it. When Truman won the election, many realized that they could support civil rights and still survive politically.
“The time has arrived for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of state’s rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights”
* In addition to being a film maker, Richard Beymer was an actor of some renown. Among his credits are major roles in West Side Story and The Diary of Anne Frank, and a significant part in The Longest Day. He also starred in the television serial, “Twin Peaks.”
Parallel Narratives 