Just as last month; the USS America is still floundering with sails luffing and a tide of red ink threatening to send it upon the rocks of a lee shore. The 2010 budget of $3.6 trillion, that I had previously mentioned, was initially revised to $3.9 trillion, and has currently been negotiated down to $3.5 trillion. These are figures which nobody can comprehend. According to current scientific wisdom the entire universe, after the “big bang”, is supposed to be 13.5-14 billion years old which might serve as a comparison. Republicans are up in arms against the “tax and spend Democrats” who will turn our capitalist country into one of Europe’s socialist democracies or worse and even some “blue dog” Democrats are worried.

            While comparisons with the great depression of the 1930s, which some of us have personally experienced, are en vogue it needed an article by Jill Lepore on Edgar Allen Poe to bring to our attention that a similar disaster had occurred in 1837. It appeared in the April 27 issue of The New Yorker under the title “The Humbug. Edgar Allan Poe and the economy of horror.”  But before dealing with this event a few words about Poe, who literally had a miserable life, are appropriate. Born in 1809, his mother was soon thereafter abandoned by her husband and died in 1911 of consumption, the term used for tuberculosis at the time. The orphans, he had a brother and sister, were separated and Poe ended up with the family of a wealthy Richmond merchant named John Allen. The stepparents apparently never liked the boy very much and did not adopt him. Nevertheless, Edgar at some point took the stepfather’s name and became known as Edgar Allen Poe. He never had what one might call a reasonably “normal” life. Whatever little money he was able to earn usually went on alcohol consumption but he did manage to write memorable poetry and short stories. Lenore’s “nevermore” raven is a classic and so is “The Murders on the Rue Morgue.” Inspector Dupin has become the model for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes who in turn spawned numerous successors who fill the shelves of bookstores around he world. When the rich stepfather parted from this world he didn’t leave a penny to Edgar who eventually succumbed to alcoholism and died in abject poverty. For more on Poe’s miseries, which explain why he wrote the way he did, the interested reader can consult Ms. Lepore’s article.

The relevance at the moment is her depiction of the 1837 “Panic” and its aftermath. Since the causes were entirely similar to what has happened in September of 2008 I shall paraphrase her article and subsequently quote relevant sections here. The problem arose initially over the use of paper money which was not covered by gold reserves. There were two financial crises in Poe’s lifetime, “the Panic of 1819 and the Panic of 1837, the pit and the pendulum of the antebellum economy.” The economic depression which followed the 1837 bank collapse lasted seven years and the 1840s were known in Europe, as “The Hungry Forties.” After his 1829 inauguration President Andrew Jackson engaged in a battle with Nichols Biddle who was in charge of the Bank of the United States. Biddle insisted on federal regulation of the paper currency while some of Jackson’s supporters were against all paper money. In the absence of regulations speculators took over and between 1830 and 1837 three hundred and forty seven state-chartered banks were opened across the US. They printed their own money and by 1836 $140 million were in circulation. These were backed by nothing or as Hitler said, when he found himself in a similar situation 100 years later by “the work of the German people.” Let me now quote extensively from Lepore as to what happened in 1837 because of the similarity to last year’s events.

 “At the end of Jackson’s two terms American banks held six times as much paper money as gold. . . . With all that paper money, speculators had gone wild; in the West, there had been a land grab and in the East a housing bubble – in New York, real-estate values had risen a hundred and fifty percent. When the crash came, in the last weeks of Jackson’s presidency, bankruptcies swept the nation. In New York, riots erupted as the swelling ranks of the city’s poor broke into food shops. ‘Down with the panic makers,’ one newspaper warned, promising, ‘”A bright sun will soon dispel the remaining darkness.’ But the skies didn’t brighten. In April one New Yorker wrote in his diary, ‘Wall Street. The blackness of darkness still hangeth over it. Failure on failure.’ By the fall of 1837, nine of ten Eastern factories had closed. Five hundred desperate New Yorkers turned up to answer an ad for twenty day laborers, to be paid at the truly measly wage of four dollars a month.”

When one reads about the “bright sun” coming up, President Obama’s “glimmer of hope,” which he saw a couple of weeks ago sounds rather similar. The seven fat years and the seven lean years have been known from the Bible and the depression of the 1930’s didn’t end until the war came. We better prepare for the long haul and some Americans are doing just that now. They are arming themselves to the teeth to meet their neighbors with the barrel of a gun in order to protect their property if and when riots were to break out.

 But let us temporarily remain with the 1840’s. In Britain there were crop failures and the potato blight, which drove millions of Irish to America. Continental Europe also suffered from the consequences of the economic depression. The beginning industrialization and speculations had led to serious social dislocations. Poor harvests contributed to higher food prices and the general unhappiness finally expressed itself in the 1848 revolutions. Europe was “haunted by the specter of communism” as Marx and Engels had put it in their Communist Manifesto, which was written for the occasion. It took a World War and the fall of the Russian Empire for that dream to come true. Subsequently it needed another World War, as well as numerous proxy wars to demonstrate to the Russians that the communist model was an unworkable fantasy until they ditched it under Gorbachev.

Yet, there are two important lessons. One is that ideas take decades to come to fruition after they are first hatched and when they do, they won’t work in the way they were intended but have to be modified to meet human realities. The European socialists soon realized this and separated themselves from the communists who never forgave them this act of treason. On the other hand the socialists did manage to initially create stable political parties and subsequently stable democratic coalition governments.

But the propertied middle class, the bourgeoisie as it was derisively referred to, never made much of a distinction between socialists and communists. Both carried the red flag as their symbol, both celebrated May Day as the worker’s day of freedom, and Karl Marx, with his revolutionary, rather than evolutionary theories, was the patron saint of both parties. Educated people had read the Communist Manifesto where the “proletarian,” as the hero of the future was treated to exhortations such as, “You must, therefore, confess that by ‘individual’ you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way and made impossible.” Well, nobody wants to lose whatever little property one has.

 Marx could only write such nonsense because as the offspring of a long line of rabbis, who lived on the charity of the congregation, he expected to be treated in the same manner. Instead of bringing God to the people, he saw himself as the secular prophet of the earthly paradise and as such deserved that his needs were met by others. For his livelihood in London he depended mostly on the good will of his friend Friedrich Engels. The latter lived on his father’s money who was a prominent German industrialist. When dad was no longer willing to pay for his son’s revolutionary ideas Friedrich had to start working for him. He thereby joined the bourgeoisie, while still sending money to Karl.  It is clear that without Engels, Das Kapital, Marx’s main contribution to society, would never have been written. What the communists did not understand was that it takes leisure for a person to work creatively. But somebody has to pay for that leisure and “proletarian” bureaucrats are not trained to see this necessity. Karl Marx is the best example for the communist paradox.

Religious people and foremost the Catholic Church were concerned about the change in social mores which would flow from the principle of Marx’s atheism which the socialists, as the party of humanity, progress and reason, endorsed.   As part of Marx’s program the education of children was to no longer remain in the hands of the Church, but was to be transferred to the State. The property of the Church was to be taken over by the State. Marriage was a relic of the past, because wives are exploited by their husbands who see them as a “mere instrument of production.” The divided Protestant Churches, did not offer appreciable resistance but the Catholic one under Pius IX, of whom more will be said later, put up a stiff although loosing fight.

While America had its Civil War in 1861, ostensibly over slavery, Austria and Prussia followed suit in 1866. The purported reason was minor; the real cause was the question of who was to become in charge of a potentially unified country: Catholic Austria or Protestant Prussia? As in America it was North against South and in both instances the North won.

This ascendance of Protestant Prussia and its German allies under Bismarck was a grave threat to Catholicism and Pius IX tried to rescue the Church which found itself beleaguered on the political as well as societal level. The reunification of Italy, which he had opposed, cost him the Papal States. In 1871 the French, who had supported him up to then, had to put “first things first” when Bismarck invaded their country. This meant that the Pope’s, terrestrial kingdom had permanently shrunk to that of Vatican City as the smallest independent state.

Pius IX (1792-1878), or Pio Nono as he was referred to at the time, had been elected in 1846 and as such was intimately involved in the social upheavals of the times. He was a fighter and did not take these losses with Christian humility. In view of the rapid strides liberal ideas had made in Europe the pope issued a series of Encyclicals, the most important of which was Qunta Cura (1864) which listed in an appended syllabus 80 errors European thinkers were committing in relation to religion and its purpose in society. Among them were: the false belief in absolute reason; socialism; communism; secret societies; the Church and her rights; the relationship to civil society; the difference beween natural and Christian ethics; Christian marriage; sovereignty of the pontiff and modern liberalism. Inasmuch as these “errors” of European society are now being enacted in America I am providing the URL where the complete syllabus can be found http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm. Thus, Pio Nono could also be called Pio No No!

In 1868 he convoked the First Vatican Council from which arose the papal infallibility dogma in 1870. The dogma regarding the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception had already been proclaimed in 1846. The ideas behind the dogmas were not new only their dogmatic expression was. But the infallibility doctrine was too hard to stomach even for some Catholics which led to a split in the Church. Those members who refused to accept it became “Old Catholics” and its influence on my own life has been mentioned in War&Mayhem.

The pope also had an interesting medical history of epilepsy which has been ascribed to a near drowning accident in adolescence. This has led to speculations that he was of unsound mind which directly affected Church history and his penchant for issuing encyclicals as well as the two dogmas. The Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Sirven has recently published an article on the pope’s epilepsy in which he correctly rejects this view, although the likelihood exists that some of his documented erratic behavior in later years, as well as a facial rash, may have been a result of bromide intoxication. Bromide salts were the main treatment method ever since the accidental discovery of their anticonvulsant properties by Sir Charles Locock in 1857. This might have been another example where the cure may have been worse than the disease

 Although Pio Nono’s efforts were a failure in the short run, he did manage to keep the remainder of his flock in line and stem the advance of socialism in most Catholic European countries. For this and the fact that he was longest reigning pope in history he was raised to the status of Blessedness in 2000 and is now being considered to be elevated to Sainthood.

These historical facts are not “ancient history” but are directly influencing American culture. The current debate over the meaning and definition of marriage is a direct outcome of the battles that were fought in Europe more than a hundred and fifty years ago. A few weeks ago Newsweek had a lead article on “Post Christian America” which immediately reminded me of a book published in 1872 by David Friedrich Strauss entitled, “Der alte und der neue Glaube.” The first chapter had the headline, “Are we still Christians?” The book, although well received in some liberal German circles, led to a violent polemic against it by a young philologist Friedrich Nietzsche, who had previously admired and recommended Strauss’ first book, “Das Leben Jesu.” In that one Strauss had declared that the long held beliefs about the “historical” Jesus were nothing but fables and myths. Jesus had been a well meaning, exceptionally gifted human being but to ascribe divinity to him was a serious mistake. Needless to say this opinion created a furor not only in religious but also literary circles which is even more understandable when one considers the publication date of 1835.

Nietzsche’s problem with the 1872 book was not atheism, which he vigorously endorsed in his own later writings, but the “neue Glaube” – the new belief system. For him Strauss had become a “Bildungsphilister;” a highly educated person well versed in the classics, but a Philistine in the sense that he accepted and endorsed the political status quo. In concrete terms this meant support of the new Germany’s militarism and the belief that Science – with a capital S – was now to be the new god that would solve all the world’s ills.

The massive optimism which resulted from scientific discoveries during the 19^th century which revolutionized travel, communications, as well the natural sciences and pervaded all of Europe at the time was regarded by Nietzsche as unfounded because he looked below the surface and saw the cracks in human nature. In addition he had no use for the militaristic type thinking which had swept Germany after the defeat of the French and the re-establishment of the German Empire. He realized that the fundamental problem the world faced was how to live without God, a problem that has not yet been solved and for which lives are lost in current wars. In blunt, sarcastic, polemical, albeit beautifully phrased language, he castigated his contemporaries with ever increasing virulence. I shall deal with Nietzsche and his influence on our time on another occasion because he did have a neurologic disease which had clearly influenced his later literary output and this is not taken into account by a number of his biographers.

For now we have to return to the America of the 21^st century where Europe’s history of the 19^th century is to some extent being re-enacted without most of the our countrymen knowing that this is the case. One sentence from Nietzsche’s polemic against Strauss struck me in particular, “A great victory is a great danger. Human nature can tolerate it less than a defeat; actually it seems to be easier to gain such a victory, than to follow it up in a manner that it will not result in an even greater defeat.” Nietzsche wrote these sentences in the full knowledge that the French would never forgive Germany the harsh financial reparations they had to pay after their defeat, as well as the humiliation they had to endure when the German Empire was proclaimed in their very own cherished Versailles, rather than on German soil. We know of the revenge Versailles dictate of 1919. We also know what happened after Hitler’s victories and Israel’s Blitzkrieg in 1967. The fruits of the latter are the cause of current and future tragedies. America escaped this fate in 1918 and 1945 but succumbed to it in 2001

But Americans are no longer trained to see world history in the total context and will remain ignorant of the causes of world affairs as long as our educational system continues to head for the lowest common denominator. When Nietzsche complained about the Bildungsphilister of his time, he would certainly have shuddered had he seen America’s current high school curricula and the grade inflations. This resulted largely from a philosophical view, contributed to by psychoanalysts and an assortment of child psychologists, that children have a tender psyche and must be raised in their self-esteem. Since life is only going to get progressively better they don’t need to be trained for the rigors the real world will actually confront them with. 

I have discussed the catastrophic state of America’s high school situation in a previous essay (February 1, 2008, Is America Fixable?) and as a result of the current economic crisis the education of our children is becoming a serious concern within the political establishment. This brings up the question: what are we educating or youngsters for? The answer seems to be: docile technocrats who are happy to spend their lives in the cubicles they are assigned to by their different employers, facing a computer screen and typing on keyboards. After work they are to go home to their anthills of high rise apartments and watch sports or soap operas on TV. Last week The Salt Lake Tribune reported on a new school program where four year old tykes are taught to learn the letter A of the alphabet by watching a video of an apple falling on a farmer’s head, which elicited giggles. I don’t think Sir Isaac was mentioned in that context. The debate was not about the educational merit, of getting pre-schoolers hooked to watching computer screens, but about the money that was to be spent on it. One can expect that these children will learn “computering” and “texting,” where grammar, spelling and rudimentary courtesy have become a relic of the past and by the age of 8 or 10 they will be busy visiting a variety of porno sites. But pre-schoolers are not made to sit in front of a video screen; they are supposed to be running around outside playing and learning from nature as it really exists rather than images consisting of cartoon characters.

The current generation of America’s high school and college youngsters has no idea what “Western civilization” really means. The history of religion and philosophy is unknown to the vast majority of them and their mental outlook on the world starts with the day when relatively permanent memories are beginning to get stored in their brains. This is the tragedy of America’s educational system which is not addressed and the only change which is envisioned is more emphasis on math and science. It would need a Nietzsche type polemic to shake up our education planners and bring about a change in direction. The humanities ought to receive the same attention as the natural sciences. This should already be done in high school rather than the students having to wait for college, which is becoming increasingly expensive. Furthermore, colleges can not build on a non-existent foundation that ought to have been laid years earlier. They cannot be expected to teach in two or four years what had been neglected between the ages of 10-18. We don’t want Nietzsche’s type of Űbermensch but we do need well informed – which includes knowledge of the past history of ideas that have shaped the world we live in – well rounded, well meaning citizens who are trained in critical rather than cynical thinking. 

The distinction is important. The well meaning critic says: I don’t believe it; but if you can show me that what you say or do leads to correct results, then I’ll either believe you or investigate to see whether or not you have your facts correct. The cynic on the other hand says, “Hogwash,” and is done with it while continuing to live in his own fantasy world. The ancient Cynics’ initial goal was noble, namely to live a life of virtue in accordance with nature rather than worldly pursuits and the best known example is, of course, Diogenes who supposedly lived in a vat. The original meaning of the name is obscure but since Cynics lived in the street and hurled insults at passing strangers the name was used derisively as kunikos, dog-like. Inasmuch as they also frequently disturbed public order they were intermittently expelled from major cities. The best way to deal with them was recounted by Suetonius in his The Twelve Caesars. When the Emperor Vespasian was accosted and harangued on the road by the banished Cynic philosopher Demetrius, he merely said, “Good dog.”

Currently Americans are bewildered. Some of them are still trying to hang on to the belief that, “we are the biggest and the best,” or Reagan’s, “It’s morning in America,” or the neocons’ “lone superpower,” which must use its military might to remain the top player. All of these slogans no longer apply. We are at present a nation at loose ends. Organized religion no longer suffices for a great many of our citizens, just as in the Europe of the late 1800s, and dreams of military glory with the goal of world domination are also beginning to fade. What is left is the belief in science and technology.

That Science when written with a capital S is likewise a false god was proven by Nazi Germany but this lesson has not yet sunk in. In the US Nazism has been reduced to the Holocaust – likewise written with a capital H to denote its political sacredness – which is a serious mistake. I have discussed the thoroughly “rational” decision making process of the Hitler regime in War&Mayhem but since those thoughts go against our Zeitgeist, they are not to be printed by a major publishing house. As such unpopular, but essentially correct views are relegated to obscurity. But inasmuch as they are correct in their essence they will likely receive a hearing in the future; unfortunately after a great deal more bloodshed and property destruction.

Everything in our personal and socio-political lives depends on Weltanschauung – namely how we see ourselves and the world around us. If we believe in a higher power, above and beyond the State, to which we are responsible different conduct can result than when we live under the assumption of, “what feels good is good.” This is not to say that a belief in God as exemplified by President Bush 43, or “Providence” as exemplified by Hitler, necessarily leads to good policies. Politicians can not only be mistaken, by listening to wrong advice as was the case with President Bush, they can also be dogmatic fanatics as was the case with Hitler. But we always have to remember that politicians are only the expression of their times and will act in accordance of that Zeitgeist. It would be the function of an educated public and the media to bring about a culture that is worthy of its name.

We do not have one at this time although it is to President Obama’s credit that he recognizes the problems and tries to do something about them. But the difficulties are so profound and have arisen over a period of decades that the quick fix, which is expected by the generally short attention span of our citizenry, is impossible. This week the media are preoccupied, apart from swine flu and other nuisances, with grading Obama’s first 100 days in office. All in all he tends to get an A- or B+ for how he has conducted himself so far but the warning signs for the next 100 days are also pointed out. The concerns are that Obama’s attempt to attack all domestic problems on a broad front is likely to misfire and if people do not begin to see an improvement in their lives his currently high approval rating will dwindle. The reforms Obama is trying to achieve in the tax structure, health care system and education are also attacked as an attempt to replace the capitalist system with a socialist type one. This debate relies on an obsolete conservative-liberal type dichotomy when in fact a middle ground between the two extremes must be found.

The rest of the world is also currently looking at Obama for leadership not only in regard to the economic crisis but critical foreign affairs. In the Middle East the situation is worse than it was in 2001 when President Bush took office. Events are threatening to spin out of control and the recent election of Benjamin Netanyahu, or “Bibi” as he is colloquially referred to, as Prime Minister of Israel is not good news. He is opposed to a Palestinian state and simply wants to grant “autonomy” to the Palestinians in certain areas, which would leave Israel free to build further settlements on expropriated Palestinian land. The model, although no one will admit it, clearly is Hitler’s “Reichsprotektorat Boehmen und Maehren,” which he established in March of 1939 from rump Czechoslovakia. I have discussed this aspect previously (April 1, 2002. Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate?) and the situation has clearly gotten worse since then through Sharon’s misguided policies and the Bush administration’s tacit approval.

The immediate and most dangerous question before us is not even the economy but what will the American educated Netanyahu do, in regard to the Iranian nuclear program? Walter Rodgers published in the weekly April 26 edition of The Christian Science Monitor an article where he listed the dangers an Israeli air strike on one of Iran’s nuclear facilities would pose for the world. They include: closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil is shipped; Hezbollah which has enough rockets to do considerable damage to Haifa and Tel Aviv would be unleashed by Iran; a tsunami of anti-Semitism would be triggered around the world and not remain limited to Muslim countries; the US would be regarded as co-responsible and Islamist youngsters would respond en masse to the call for jihad especially in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill Americans.

Mr. Rodgers went on to say that Netanyahu is no fool and knows what is at stake but “What’s worrying is that Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as Prime Minister from 1996-1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of ‘Bibi’ in October 1997 under the headline ’Israel’s Serial Bungler.’ It described his governance of the Jewish state as a ‘calamity’ for the peace process.” Rodgers then wrote, “Obama needs to do Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: ‘No first strike.’ Keep the F-15s and F-16s at home.” A remarkably similar article was sent to me earlier this week by a friend from Austria which had been published in Die Presse. It was written by Dr. Albert Rohan, former general secretary in Austria’s equivalent of our State Department. Furthermore, this week’s Time magazine features an article by Joe Klein on Obama’s first 100 days in office which quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor) as saying, “The one thing Obama hasn’t done in the first 100 days is the big Middle East speech where he says, ‘this is the settlement. This is what we’re for.’ If he doesn’t do that soon Netanyahu is going to set the agenda not us – and that will be a disaster. If we don’t act now, any chance of a two-state solution will be gone. If he does act now, every government in the world will stand with him.

Rodgers, Rohan and Brzezinski are absolutely correct but unfortunately there are political realities which Obama has to consider. What is the balance between his domestic programs and the foreign threat? If he speaks out forcefully, as would be needed so that there remains no shadow of a doubt where America stands, he is bound to alienate the Israel lobby which can doom his domestic agenda. Furthermore, he is only one person. His powers are limited and when it comes to Jewish concerns his efforts can even be quietly sabotaged by members of his own administration. Yet speak he must even if it is limited to Secretary Clinton delivering a personal unmistakable letter to the Israelis.

This is President Obama’s challenge: steering the ship of State between partisan hatreds and fears, in the midst of a massive economic crisis, to a better future. Fortunately, he means well, is young, energetic, well educated and competent. Furthermore, and let us not underestimate this point, he has a loving and equally competent wife who can protect him from excess male vanity. As such he deserves all the help we can provide him with in his monumental task.