The Noble Pundit

A Fight Over Jesus

Ha'aretz is reporting on a dispute over an inscription of a burial box, or ossuary that supposedly was that of James, brother of Jesus. The inscription, if authentic, would be the oldest known physical mention of Jesus as the ossuary itself does date back to the first century AD.

Interesting stuff.

A Day That Still Lives In Infamy

Dec. 7. Pearl Harbor. The entrance of the United States into World War II. It was and still is one of the turning point events in our national history. So what kind of things are being said about that Sunday in 1941?

Lessons learned? Pearl Harbor was easier than Sept. 11 - The Manchester Union Leader looks at the war on terror through the looking glass of 1941. It is really pretty good, not at all what I expected from such a clichéd topic.

Dec. 7 memories never fade - The Arizona Star Daily tells the story of petty officer second class Rex Bridgemon of the light cruiser USS Helena.

Pearl Harbor smoke burns in his memory - The Huntsville Times tells the story of Rob Robley who was a child growing up in Palama, Hawaii. Along the way, he points out that many people forget the casualties among the civilian residents of the island that headed out to Pearl to help.

The Pearl Harbor story: In the complexity of the Pearl Harbor story, one thing is certain: America was attacked and had to defend itself - The Austin American Statesman looks at the events of Dec. 7, 1941 and also the current movements to "balance" the story of Enola Gay and Hiroshima. Along the way they point out that we already have many, particularly amongst the historian sect, trying to rewrite history and how they are willing to dismiss the sanctity of a date such as Dec.7 in their effort to discredit the efforts and sacrifices of the American soldier in their quest for moral relevancy - "to tell the other side of the story."

As the number of survivors of that day dwindles, it will become more and more important to defend the memory of their actions and the immensity of their sacrifice. We cannot allow the appeasers and the relativists to marginalize and minimize their efforts in the name of political correctness. Pearl Harbor was not an event. It was (and still is) a seminal event in our history. It was AN EVENT. It cannot be allowed to be relegated to the status of an afterthought. It should be remembered with the great battles of American history like Yorktown, and Gettysburg It is the ultimate example of the resiliency of the American people. We were bloodied and down, but got off the mat not only to win, but to win twice simultaneously, both with full knockouts.

Dec. 7 is still a day that lives in infamy.

More Interesting History

I'm thinking of maybe starting an additional site for history articles like this and maybe even a third for railroad type articles (two of my other interests). If you're interested in helping, send me an email at blog - at - cbnoble.com

Earliest Stone Tools and Bones Site Discovered - 2.6 million years old. I have trouble with the idea that I have things 2500 years old in the house with me, I just can't fathom 2.6 million years. Incredible.

A Short Version Of The History Of Halloween

While perusing the web this morning instead of doing anything productive at work, I came across this article on the history behind halloween.

OK, so not every detail is perfect (potato lanterns?), but it is interesting nonetheless. I always find it amazing how superstition plays such an important part of our everyday lives, even now.

Guess I need to go back to pretending to work.

Perspective On Jihad And Persecution

It's always interesting to me to look back at how we've come to a certain point in history. What has made up our path and what might it tell us about where we're going?

I found this rather interesting article from the Church and Israel Forum which gives a historical perspective to the life of the dhimmi or the Jews and Christians under the rule of Islam and looks at how that lifestyle relates to the concepts of jihad and persecution.

On the whole, for the big concepts like oppression, there wasn't much in the way of new stuff. The interest comes in the details - how Muslims oppressed the Jews and Christians. The details of how the dhimmi lived was particularly interesting.

But I think the nicest aspect of this article was that it wasn't trying to justify. The author made it clear that he's looking at things from the point of view of dhimmi people, but at no point does he try to justify any violence against the Muslims. Instead he only looks at how the conditions under which the dhimmi lived affected both sides - to this day.

There are no great revelations in this article, but it is great for learning a little more about the world around us today.

The American Empire - Again??

There are a few things that get me really, really ticked off. Complaining about the "American Empire" is one of them.

If you look at my other site, you'll notice that most everything I have for sale is related to a real empire. The Romans knew how to run an empire. Even the Byzantines had a pretty decent empire for a while. But the United States has never even come close to acting similarly.

We are not out conquering for pride. We are not out conquering for tribute. We are not out conquering for food. We are not trying to support the social structure of a failing state.

The author contends that every empire has some great cultural idea to spread. That is false. The spread of a cultural idea is just a side effect of empire building. Rome didn't conquer Egypt to spread the idea of Republicanism or aqueducts, they conquered Egypt for food.

Food, tribute, security and pride are the foundations of any empire. The US has food, has the ability to provide for our own security (if we would ever put our minds to it), we don't need tribute - we actually pay other states, and if pride were a real issue for us we would have completely conquered the entire Western Hemisphere by now.

But we do have a great cultural idea to spread, one that is relatively unique in history. Liberty.

Not democracy. Not republicanism. Liberty.

Our great idea is more powerful than Islamic fundamentalism. It is more powerful than communism. It is an ideology that believes in humanity. Instead of trying to repress certain traits or to make everyone equal in outcome, liberty allows every person to make their life the way that they want. The other ideologies all presuppose that man is evil and must be given rules and controls to prevent him from hurting himself or others. Liberty presupposes that man is good and able of making rational decisions that will benefit both himself and others.

Neither absolute is completely true, but I believe that the basic assumptions of liberty are closer to the truth. And so do most other people. If man is evil, why would Iranian students be calling for liberty's twin sister, freedom? Fundamentalism runs contrary to the human spirit; liberty quenches the thirst of the spirit.

We must remember that our great idea is not a form of government. Our government, our economy, our way of life are all derived from that basic idea of liberty.

As I read the article on Free Republic this morning, I was reading through the comments after the post and noticed that some people were keying in on this phrase:

"...but democracy is a vehicle for resolving disputes. It is not an ideology like communism or Islamic fundamentalism..."

Democracy (by which most people actually mean republicanism) is a product of our idea - liberty. Liberty and totalitarianism don't go together. A liberal form of government is required to most fully realize our idea. Therefore, we ended up with republicanism as the best way of protecting our liberty from the whims of tyrants and from the tyranny of the majority.

When we engage in nation building around the world, everyone looks at what tangible traits we bring to the table and then they decry of imperialism. They never realize the power of the intangible we bring. If liberty is such a bad thing, why do the nations of Europe still have, for the moment, representative forms of government? Why hasn't Japan reverted back to the reign of the Emperor? Why did the nations of Eastern Europe all change to representative forms of government?

Because liberty is a more powerful idea than communism, fundamentalism or any other -ism that's out there. Liberty speaks to the soul. The -isms speak down to the mind.

In Iraq, they are just beginning to find out about the idea again. They have not reached the point of unfettered liberty yet, but economically, they're experiencing it. And they're loving it. Their standard of living is already on the way up. But notice, that they are currently paying no taxes. What real empire doesn't collect taxes (also called tribute)?

We are not an empire. To become one, we would have to sacrifice our national foundation - liberty. As a people, we're not ready to do that.

We want to spread our idea because we, as a people, believe in the basic goodness of man. But we cannot impose it, we can only expose it. It is up to the other party to embrace liberty as their own.

Iraq was/is an exercise in ensuring our security. Afghanistan is also. Iran, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, wherever our travails take us next, we will bring our idea with us. If the people decide that they want to embrace it, we will support them in every way possible. If they don't want to, we will let them go the way of Western Europe, allowing them to establish a non-representative government. The choice is theirs, just as it always has been.

The American Empire. Great expansionist emperors like Augustus, Vespasian, Trajan and Hadrian would laugh at the "American Empire." They would be amazed at the empire building potential of the nation. They would be dumbfounded that we could let a little idea like liberty stand in the way of total domination of the known world. They didn't. They knew how to build and run an empire.

Like the author of the first article, they would never comprehend that we don't want an empire.

America is an idea, not an empire.

The Third Amendment

OK, I've tried three times to write some great insightful commentary about this article on the Third Amendment, but I just can't get anything that sounds good.

So instead, I'm going to just let you know that this is a great article that will probably give some excellent insight into the, largely forgotten, Third Amendment.

This Day In History

Famous events this day:

1495 1st written record of Scotch Whiskey appears in Exchequer Rolls of Scotland. Friar John Cor is the distiller

1861 1st skirmish in the Civil War, Fairfax Court House, Va

1869 Voting Machine patented by Thomas Edison (still in use in Palm Beach County, FL and they still don't know how to use it right.)

1911 1st US group insurance policy written, Passaic, NJ (It was also the last affordable insurance policy written in the US)

1980 Ted Turner's Cable News Network begins broadcasting

Famous Birthdays Today:

1907 Frank Whittle inventor (jet engine)

1926 Andy Griffith Mount Airy NC, actor (Andy Griffith Show, Matlock)

1926 Marilyn Monroe [Norma Jean Baker], actress (Some Like It Hot)

1937 Morgan Freeman actor (Driving Mrs Daisy)

Sometime in in early '70s - ME!

"Sound Bites"

Couple of quickies before I get to bed:

Legends:

Why do have this great need as a society to disprove some of our most enduring legends? Take this article from the Telegraph. Apparently we aren’t satisfied with the legend that says Rome was founded by Romulus. Now some historians are trying to literally personify the goddess Roma to discredit the original legend.

Probably neither legend is exactly true and certainly neither can be proven one way or the other. Why not just let it be? The legend of Romulus has always been satisfactory in the past (it is the subject of one of the most collectible ancient Roman coins). It’s never hurt anyone and it can’t be completely discredited. Why must we tear down all of our heroes, institutions and legends? Life without mythology, religious or legendary, isn’t really all too exciting. Let some things be a pleasant mystery.

Stupid Pilot Tricks:

Speaking of heroes, is there a kid out there that doesn’t look at pilot at least once in their life and say “I wish I could do that.” For those of us lucky enough to have actually piloted an airplane, there is an appreciation of just how special a pilot’s job really is. And then to see one throw their special career away, it really makes me wonder if some people have any capacity to think. There, because of the grace of God, goes he.

Tony Blair:

Tony Blair continues to impress me. During the Clinton years, I really didn’t like Blair too terribly much, but after 9/11 he really proved himself to be leader up to the challenge of the time. I really don’t think that any British leader since Churchill (Thatcher excluded) would have been able to exhibit the leadership that Tony Blair has since November of last year.

Now, asking critics to hold their judgment to see how the rebuilding of Iraq goes. Blair believes that our true legacy in Iraq won’t be the prosecution of the war, but the establishment of a just and fair peace. I got to say, I agree with him here, too.

It’s hard to believe that this is the same man that used to pal around with Slick Willy.

More on the Decline of Civilizations

I was thinking about the post I wrote last night about the decline of civilizations through he expansion of leisure. I was feeling pretty good about it and then I had an interesting thought that kind of threw a different light on the issue.

As I was pondering everything, I noticed that the three main civilizations I talked about all shared a key common factor – they were long-lived. The life cycle of each civilization was measured in centuries, not decades. And that lended more strength to my belief that American civilization still has its best years to come. And as I was feeling all nice and proud and thinking how the American rise coincided so nicely with the British fall, I suddenly realized – the British haven’t really fell. They’re not as dominant as they once were, but they haven’t completely collapsed. So what happened to make the British so resilient and defiant of the trends of history?

It took me a while to identify what I see as the true root cause of the downfall of civilizations. Leisure is still a root cause, but what is the true underlying reason that causes the expansion of leisure?

Now I’m not a sociologist and don’t even play one on TV, but I think that experience has shown the way to at least some of the answers. Expanded leisure is a function of getting older. In our early years, we work to learn and to earn so that as we age we can do more that we want and less of what we have to. In other words, younger people work harder and older folks take more time to appreciate life. There are of course exceptions on both ends of the spectrum, but I think that it’s a pretty fair and accurate generalization.

In all three civilizations, an aging population left the productive workforce and as the younger generations had to devote more and more resources to supporting the elderly there became a disincentive to work. As fewer people worked to their potential, it increased the efforts required of the others, which was another disincentive to work. And so began a vicious cycle that could be broken only by altering the demographics of the nation. The population had to begin getting progressively younger in order to present an incentive to work. In Greece and Rome, this was achieved by a collapse of the civilization and a corresponding reduction in lifespan, which helped to lower the average age of the population. France is looking more and more like it will require a revolution to change the welfare state, but it will not achieve any greatness again until it experiences another baby boom that will help to lower the average age of the population.

This makes me worry some about the state that America is really in. We have an aging population also. They main difference, and what I see as being our saving grace, is that our elderly population is much more willing to put in a full day’s work. That desire to continue to contribute should be enough to put us over the hump. Unfortunately for me, I think that the “Generations X & Y” are going to have a little trouble achieving a higher standard of living as the demographics won’t be favorable until late in our working lives. But I also think that this period will end up being a one-generation aberration in the growth of American power.

So how did the British avoid these aging population issues? People get old and want to relax in the later years even in England. The British have an element of their population that does it’s best to avoid work – just like every nation. So how were the Brits able to pull it off?

The British, I believe, pulled it off through emigration. Just as immigration has helped us in the States to avoid the issue up until now, the British were able to send away enough of the right elements of their population to pull this off. Some people, like the convicts were forced to leave, while others left of their own free will. They went to America, Canada, Australia, Ireland and many other nations. But the ones who left tended to be older (they had to acquire the resources to leave) or the derelicts that didn’t add much to the state of civilization anyway. The removal of these elements of society allowed England to maintain a fairly low average age.

The maintenance of a low average age and its corresponding high productivity led to the survival and strength of British civilization.

It’s interesting to look at the fates of the Americans, Germans, French, and British since WWI in respect to this theory. Germany, France and England all had entire generations wiped out in the trenches of WWI. The resulting age gap allowed the average age of the population to drop in those three nations as they headed into WWII (the US was still expansionist within its own borders and was able to decrease its average age just through natural population expansion). During WWII, the Americans, Germans and British all lost sizable chunks of their populations, while the French basically sat the war out and didn’t see too much of an effect of their population. After WWII, the three affected nations underwent population booms which led to a strengthening of influence in the 1960s and 1970s as those baby boomers started to come of age. French influence and power declined at the same time, as their population just simply got older and more leisurely.

Is this a well-researched study? No, everything here is based on personal (and possibly flawed) observations and readings. Am I saying that this is the end all answer for why civilizations fail? No, it’s just my theory. If you have a different idea or a reason why I’m wrong, post a comment and let me know.

France and Imperial Rome

Brian Chapin over at American RealPolitik has made an interesting and accurate observation of the on-going decline in nations like France, Germany, and Belgium. He has essentially made the connection between an expansion of leisure and a decline in the host civilization.

As we look back through history, in the Western civilizations we really have two clear examples of leisure undermining the nation-state: Greece and Rome.

The great cities of ancient Greece established themselves first of great military powers. Their militaries were built up by a cooperative effort on the part of the population. During the Golden Age of Greek power, everyone was contributing to the success of the nation-state.

But after each city established its dominance over an area, certain elements of the population turned to leisure activities. The writing of plays and philosophizing went from being simply an important contribution in the quest for civilization to being the primary purpose of people's lives. To expand their leisure time the citizens would turn over the responsibilities of basic life to others - people who did not have the same stake in the city as the citizens. As a result the quality of the economy went down as the quality of life for the citizens rose. As time went on, the economy could no longer support the leisure and the city-states of Greece fell into a decline from which they never fully recovered.

Rome, the great adapting nation, conquered the Greeks and discovered many excellent ideas in the process. They learned of philosophy and education. They also learned of architecture and art. But with the multitudes of wonderful and good ideas, the Romans also learned the seeds of their decline (in the Western portion of the Empire, at least).

The leisure problems the Greeks had perfected on a city scale, the Romans took to an imperial scale. The cause of Rome's greatness was the integration of the aristocracy into the government of the nation during the first and second centuries. But as Rome's influence expanded and more non-Latins began to hold positions of power, the landed aristocracy of Italy began to seek out leisure at the expense of work. As the years went on, Rome found itself facing many of the same problems in the Western Empire as the Greeks had faced. And eventually the Western Empire fell to the barbarians because the people didn't care to fight - after all it wasn't their land.

Interestingly enough, the city of Rome also became the first proof that communism could lead to decline by encouraging sloth among the people. Remember, in the city of Rome the residents were provided with "bread and circus" to keep them happy - regardless of the work they did. By providing them with free food and entertainment many of the city's residents never worked. As a result the city never really developed a commercial class and therefore was not able to cope very well with any economic blips.

So how does this affect modern day France and Co.? Well, remember these are the homes of the ultra-militant labor unions and the 35-hour work week (maybe going to be less soon). Labor and command economies (to an extent, but not completely) have lead to a stagnation of ambition of the last 50 years. As a result, the people are turning more to a life of leisure instead of putting in a solid week's worth of work. Couple that with an aging population and it's hard to fathom how these nations are still economically afloat.

It's also interesting to note that in these countries, the commercial class is frowned upon. I wish I could find the study to link to, but I remember seeing a German study in which a very high percentage (maybe 70%+) of German high school kids thought that being a businessperson was a terrible idea. In these nations there is absolutely no respect for the shopkeepers and as a result, you see the nations starting to head down the same road as Imperial Rome.

It's a shame to see former great powers reduced to hollow shells of their once vibrant selves. Mr. Chapin is correct in his assertion that these nations in decline will slowly, but surely move further and further away from us as our economies become more and more divergent. How long will the decline take? I have no idea, but hopefully their fall from grace won't turn violent.

Today in Libertarian History

On this date, the Ides of March, in 44BC, Brutus struck a blow for the libertarian cause. He cut down the dictator Julius Caesar and attempted to campaign for the election of Harry Browne. After an electoral defeat, Brutus fled to the east, but was denied passage through Turkey and was eventually defeated by Caesar's adopted son, Augustus, who then proceeded to establish a world power based on arrogance and conceit, which the French are today trying to emulate (sans the military power).