Current Events, History and Dirty Tricks:

Here we are restricting our consideration to the political arena. Wikipedia definitions are in the form of active links.

Wikipedia: Dirty Tricks. As you can see American political dirty tricks go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. I personally became interested in dirty tricks when Joseph McCarthy used them in the 1950s. See Wikipedia: McCarthyism. As part of my American History course I was encouraged to study recent events that might make their way into the history books. Many of us who did not experience McCarthyism experienced the successor to McCarthyism in the form of Wikipedia: John Birch Society.

These events are now some half a century old. They did occur and they did form the foundation upon which people like Lee Atwater and more recently Karl Rove have built political strategies. Both of these men worked almost exclusively for the Republican Party. In fact when you do a Google search for “dirty tricks” there are only minor references to the Democratic Party. Some might say this is a conspiracy on the part of the liberal press. To this I can only reply get serious.

Dirty tricks in very high places can be best demonstrated by the Nixon Administrations break in to the office of Daniel Ellsberg. Following that there was a more significant Watergate break in conducted at the specific request of a sitting President according to testimony of Jeb Magruder.

The current administration has used dirty tricks as well. As part of the build up to the invasion of Iraq Joseph_C._Wilson was sent to Africa to verify certain facts. When he returned and reported that the facts were in error that information was suppressed. Worse when Joe Wilson published an op-ed document in the New York Times his wife’s identity as covert intelligence agent was leaked to Robert Novak. The last dirty trick of the Republican Party was the swift boat campaign.

The reason I bring this entire issue up is charges during this latest Presidential election campaign. These charges largely come from the Republican Party and accuse the national press corps of bias towards Berack Obama. My reply to this criticism is that perhaps the national press corps has grown tired of Republican Party lies and fabrications.

History and the State of the Nation:

The study of history some say began with the first written history by Herodotus about the Persian Wars. Of course the bible as a written history also provides a complementary view of the historical narrative. More fundamental to history and underlying all of history is the development of a time scale. The Romans were the first of the western cultures to study and codify the rules of time. In fact the calendar western civilization uses still was developed by Roman mathematicians. It is only fitting that many clocks in churches mark their faces with Roman numerals as a tribute to this work.

Oral tradition does not lend itself to what we have come to regard as historical fact. The legend of King Arthur is an example of myth. Of course once one has a time line one realizes that Arthur was 6th century and the Romans, in what was to become Britain, predate Arthur by some six hundred years. Placing events upon a time line helps establish a historical perspective as it were. Unlike perspective in a drawing events can appear larger even though they are further away in time. This is what one can refer to as historical distortion. An engineer would not try to build a device from a distorted blue print. Social scientists feel no compulsion when using a distorted historical representation to “prove” the validity of their point of view.

While distorting history by circumventing time line constraints is rare a more common error is often introduced. This may be called the point of view error. A point of view error is introduced when a subjective judgment is used to comment upon or establish new rules. This can result in what can only be termed false history. The best example of this is the three fifths clause in the American Constitution. Because almost all of the authors of the American Constitution were slave owners they saw nothing wrong in including this 3/5 rule.

The Civil War tested the concept of slavery and indeed the very documents and concepts upon which America was founded. Lincoln sensed the grave error that had been made by institutionalizing slavery. Lincoln’s speech acknowledges this time line by the famous four score and seven years part of his Gettysburg Address. The 87 years refers to the time between 1863 when Lincoln spoke and 1776 when America declared her independence. By adding the three fifths rule to the constitution written and ratified in 1787 slavery became an integral part of American governance.

In fact this error is the reason for the American Civil War though many southern historians deny this even today. Indecently this war was called the “Civil War” in both the north and the south while it was being fought. Yet historical distortion has permitted the civil war to be referred to as the War Between the States a term that was made up years later in the American South. Often both victims and victors hide the bitterness of defeat in such terms. It is akin to the last refuge of a scoundrel being patriotism.

Today America does something much more insidious; we practice political correctness and conflict avoidance. As if by doing so would somehow make things better. I liken this to another old saying “There is none so blind as he who will not see”. As Jefferson said the teaching of political history will teach Americans “how to judge for themselves what secure or endanger their freedom.” Let us look at history openly and honestly.