The Navy Way: USS Houston, April 1 1944

As April began, USS Houston (CL-81) was preparing to be deployed to the Pacific. Over the next weeks and months I will try to explain what was involved. 'Round the clock work, training, and cramming stuff into storerooms.

Years ago I concluded that the world would be a better place, at least more effective, if it were run like the Navy. I will explain later. But at least it should be clear that the US Army and the US Navy were very different organizations.

How to explain?

I just came across this passage in a 1941 essay by the British author, George Orwell about what it means to be British:

"It is quite true that the English are hypocritical about their Empire. In the working class this hypocrisy takes the form of not knowing that the Empire exists. But their dislike of standing armies is a perfectly sound instinct. A navy employs comparatively few people, and it is an external weapon which cannot affect home politics directly. Military dictatorships exist everywhere, but there is no such thing as a naval dictatorship. What English people of nearly all classes loathe from the bottom of their hearts is the swaggering officer type, the jingle of spurs and the crash of boots. Decades before Hitler was ever heard of, the word ‘Prussian’ had much the same significance in England as ‘Nazi’ has today. So deep does this feeling go that for a hundred years past the officers of the British army, in peace time, have always worn civilian clothes when off duty."

So. Did you ever hear of a naval dictatorship?

By the way, the dislike of standing armies Orwell refers to already existed in America in 1776. Our constitution attempted three ways of limiting the size of the Army: (1) by limiting the budget for the War Department (Army) to no more than two years at a time. There is no such limit for the Navy budget; (2) by stipulating that "the people's" military will consist of "well-regulated militia." The purpose of the Second Amendment was precisely to prevent a large standing army; (3) by requiriing a declaration of war by the Congress before calling up the militia and sending it off to war.

Most of our military actions from 1776 to 1940 were carried out by the Navy/Marine Corps team. Such small wars were viewed as within the executive power of the president to pursue and did not require a declaration of war.

We abandoned that constitutional arrangement with the so-called unification of the armed forces in 1947.

Good Friday Earthquake Fifty Years Ago - Alaska

I had forgotten that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Good Friday earthquake that devastated Anchorage, Alaska. Until NPR mentioned the anniversary.

I had been stationed at the US Naval Communication Station on Adak in the Aleutian Islands until September of 1963. Liz and I and our two boys landed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, rented a car and took a few days to explore Anchorage, Palmer and the Matanuska Valley and then drive up to Fairbanks to visit my sister and her children.

My previous connection with Alaska is that I lived in Anchorage from 1951 to 1954, graduating from Anchorage High School in 1954.

Anchorage in 1963 was much the same as it had been in 1954.

I haven't visited there since 1963, so I remember it as it was.

Not like this:

Nikogda Ne Zabudite! Kovno, Lithuania, March 27, 1944

There are so many things done during World War II that must never be forgotten, and yet we forget. Who remembers Lidice? Nanking? Kovno?

Here is the story of the action by Germans against Jewish children in Kovno.

Slave Deeds

Some of my ancestors owned slaves - from as early as the 1650's in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and possibly Georgia, Arkansas and Texas.

I never knew how to trace those slaves, if ever I wanted to.

I just learned of a project in Buncome County, North Carolina that shows the way.

It somehow never occurred to me that if slaves were property, there must be some sort of title deed or other government record of ownership and sale. In Buncome County, the records were kept at the Register of Deeds. The county's web site explains:

"The Buncombe County Register of Deeds office has kept property records since the late 1700’s. In our records one can find a wealth of information about the history of our community. On this page, we have compiled a list of the documents that record the trade of people as slaves in Buncombe County. These people were considered “property” prior to end of the Civil War; therefore these transfers were recorded in the Register of Deeds office. The list below shows the book and page number where the deed is located in our record books as well as the seller (grantor) and buyer (grantee) of the “property.” For your convenience, you can view each original document by clicking on the book and page hyperlink.

"The Register of Deeds Office presents these records in an effort to help remember our past so we will never again repeat it."

Here is a link to Buncome County's slave deeds.

We should all be grateful to Buncome County for showing us the way to find and preserve these records and make them available.

Russia And Putin's New Order

Michael McFaul, until very recently our ambassador to Russia, has an article in today's New York Times.

He takes a look at how things came to this pass. "We did not seek this confrontation," McFaul writes. "This new era crept up on us, because we did not fully win the Cold War. Communism faded, the Soviet Union disappeared and Russian power diminished. But the collapse of the Soviet order did not lead smoothly to a transition to democracy and markets inside Russia, or Russia’s integration into the West."

I have a different take on this. Prerevolutionary Russia was always undemocratic, and the state played an enormous role in the economy. 

A century ago, as the German Empire was flexing its muscle and a Serbian nationalist under instructions from Belgrade assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, France and England allied with Tsarist Russia to oppose Germany and Austria. The US remained neutral, in part because President Wilson was uncomfortable making common cause with Autocratic Russia. Even after the Zimmerman telegram (German proposal to Mexico to enter the war against the US in return for the return of territory taken from Mexico in 1846) and German unrestricted submarine warfare and sinking of six US Flag merchant ships, the US did not declare war until after the Tsar was overthrown in March of 1917.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 brought with it the possibility of changes that would bring Russia into the general international system.

"Some Russians," McFaul writes,  "pushed forward on this enormous agenda of revolutionary change. And they produced results: the relatively peaceful (so far) collapse of the Soviet empire, a Russian society richer than ever before, greater protection of individual rights and episodically functioning democratic institutions."

But the transition did not go smoothly. I took part in a minor way in the transition, when I worked on projects by the United States Agency for International Development to assist in privatization. The contemplated transition was unprecedented. The truth is, no one knew how to do it and it was managed in a way that brought severe hardship to ordinary citizens.

The process also laid the foundation for well-connected government officials (the "nomenklatura") to skim great wealth from privatization. The most knowledgable and effective officials were KGB officers who had worked the international scene. They understood the workings of the west better than anyone else in the USSR.

McFaul explains that "the simultaneity of democracy’s introduction, economic depression and imperial loss generated a counterrevolutionary backlash — a yearning for the old order and a resentment of the terms of the Cold War’s end."

McFaul draws similarities between recent developments in Putin's Russia and the conflicts of the last century.

I would go further back. Since at least the time of Peter the Great, there has been a struggle within Russia between the "westernizers," who want to join the world of Europe, and the "slavophils," who see Russia as more pure and worthy. Slavophils oppose adopting the ways of the West.

There is much of that lind of emotion at work in today's Russia.

I recommend reading McFaul's article here.

Freedom Is Just A Word

“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
― William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches & Public Letters

I think what Faulkner is saying here is that we don't become free by insisting on our own rights, but by granting rights to others.

The history of man is not replete with examples of such generosity of spirit.

It is easy for us to see that, though Russia holds elections, Russians are not free. Only a minority of Russians understand this.

How much more free are we?

Russia's Paranoid Schizophrenia and The Clueless West

The West's contribution to the totally unprecedented challenge of conversion of the Soviet Union to a democratic and market-based society was, in my view, spotty at best. I say this as one who was involved in projects in Russia, Ukraine and Poland and very aware of projects in Estonia, Rumania and Moldova.

I also deplored at the time the unrestrained triumphalism that proclaimed: "we're number one - nyah, nyah nyah, we won the cold war." That wasn't helpful. Especially in places like Ukraine where people, especially elderly pensioners, were suddenly plunged into poverty by policies we pushed. So-called "shock therapy," for example, was pushed by policy makers who had no idea what the previous seventy years had put into place. The idea of "privatizing" a complex industrial establishment by issuing coupons to the citizens so they could buy shares in crumbling enterprises was a disaster in the making.

One of the most disappointing viewpoints at the time was that of USAID, whose bureaucracy was certain we knew what to do because, after all, we had privatized railroads and coal mines in the UK under Thatcher, tin mines in Bolivia and such like. They were, in short, clueless.

The folks the big six accounting firms sent out to do this gargantuan task were, for the most part, recent MBA's who didn't speak any local language and who were ignorant of the context. Bright, energetic, but ignorant.

We could have done better. Germany did do better. The Germans managed the conversion of East Germany not perfectly, but well enough. One reason Estonia is doing pretty well these days is that the Germans managed that conversion. Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary had the advantage of pre-war experience in a market-based system.

Not only did the people we sent not have a background in Soviet economics, they had no background in Western Europe. They thought the American Way was the Only Way.

Let's do better next time.

I've been reading the news from Ukraine with dismay.

Didn't we win the cold war? Didn't we do away with Communism? Didn't George W. Bush look into Putin's soul and see someone we can do business with?

The truth is, our cold war conflict with the Soviet Union had little to do with Communism except in the minds of our own paranoid capitalists. In fact, in the opinion of the last Prime Minister of Russia before the October (Bolshevik) revolution, the Soviet Union didn't have a socialist or communist system at all - it was a case of State capitalism.

Anyhow, I wish the Ukrainians well. I have probably read more articles on the developing crisis than most Americans. I have collected links to a number of articles, mostly from the NY Times, but also from other sources. Please take your time and read them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opinion/trudolyubov-putins-honest-brokers.html?hp&rref=opinion

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opinion/mccain-a-return-to-us-realism.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/crimea-through-a-game-theory-lens.html?ref=international

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/04/opinion/la-oe-walker-ukraine-nato-expansion-20140304

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/opinion/getting-ukraine-wrong.html?action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26contentCollection%3DHomepage%26t%3Dqry347%23%2Fukraine%2Bwest%2Bmistakes%2F

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2014/03/24/140324ta_talk_surowiecki

Cox v Town Of Oriental Now On Line

All of the documents for the case of Cox v Town of Oriental are now available on line at the NC Court of Appeals web site: http://www.ncappellatecourts.org/search-results.php?sDocketSearch=13-1222&exact=1

Any of you who are interested in the right of way dispute can now read all of the documents the Court of Appeals will consider.

No one can predict how the Court will rule, but I thinkI have by far the better argument.

Right of Way law is a bit esoteric. For the most part, it is based on Common Law - that is, law made by courts, not by legislators. Statutes can always override Common Law, but often they merely codify or clarify Common Law where there is some ambiguity.

In most cases, people's eyes glaze over when the topic of "right of way" law comes up. Even Linda Greenhouse, a  Supreme Court wonk who writes about the US Supreme Court for the New York Times, missed the significance of the US Supreme Court's ruling in its most recent case, MARVIN M. BRANDT REVOCABLE TRUST, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. UNITED STATES, decided March 10, 2014.

On the face of it, Brand was just another boring right of way case. Greenhouse couldn't figure out what the case was really about until she read Sonya Sotomayor's dissent in the 8-1 decision. The U.S. lost, by the way.

One thing becomes clear from the case: precedents matter. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, explains: “The government loses th[e] argument today, in large part because it won when it argued the opposite before this court more than 70 years ago,” he wrote.

Sotomayor's was the sole dissent. She argued that the 70 year old case shouldn’t govern the outcome of this one because it had involved subterranean rights — the right to drill for oil — rather than the simple surface rights now at issue. In Justice Sotomayor’s final paragraph, Greenhouse at last understood why the decision might matter: “The court undermines the legality of thousands of miles of former rights of way that the public now enjoys as means of transportation and recreation,” Sotomayor wrote, adding: “And lawsuits challenging the conversion of former rails to recreational trails alone may well cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Rails to Trails. Established by Congress with the National Trails System Act Amendments of 1983. A procedure established in the public interest.

My case is not dissimilar. I have not argued that the Town [that is, the municipal corporation which has legal rights like any other corporation] made a bad deal. I argue that they have no statutory right to make any deal at all - that the only thing of value they had to sell or trade was their vote. And that what's at stake is public access to the water.

I'll address our arguments in more detail later, but as the Town's web site says, "it's all about the water."