Category Archives: Historical Figures

Social Security’s History and Future

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Social Security WorksRecently I reviewed a book because I hated the premise. I read this book because I like the premise. The title says it all (with an exclamation point): Social Security Works! Why Social Security Isn’t Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All. I wanted to see the proof offered by authors Nancy J. Altman and Eric R. Kingson.

With an average of five stars from over three hundred reviews on Amazon, the book has a following. Altman and Kingson aren’t Social Security’s only champions, as this article on slate.com shows, there was anger over Obama’s willingness to “give away the store…[and] cut spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security In exchange for a modest tax hike of $100 billion over 10 years—targeted at the wealthiest Americans… an outrageous deal.”

Some 54 million Americans receive benefits today, with the “average retiree’s checks roughly equal to the gross pay of someone working fulltime at the federal minimum wage.”

The authors seek to debunk “a three-decade-long, well-financed campaign [that] has sought to dismantle Social Security… [and been] successful in undermining confidence… The mainstream media has aided and abetted the campaign by uncritically accepting and advancing a panoply of misconceptions, while largely ignoring the facts.”

I must admit to being swayed by the anti-Social Security campaign. Since I started my career, I have assumed I would never receive any Social Security and used to joke that my tax went to my own grandmother. Yet, here I am, nearly forty years later, and Social Security looks secure for the next 20 years (assuming Congress doesn’t damage it.)

From the beginning, many opponents called Social Security socialism. “These same opponents rarely, however, express disgust with, or seek to privatize, America’s socialized police, fire, and prosecution services or our socialized system of roads, canals, and national parks, not to mention our socialized military.”

I found it interesting to read that President Eisenhower thought the opposite. In a message to Congress, he called Social Security “a reflection of the American heritage of sturdy self-reliance which has made our country strong and kept it free.” Continue reading →

Nobody’s Perfect

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Abraham Lincoln is the American president I admire the most. He led America through our Civil War, the bloodiest war in out history. Throughout, he showed remarkable sympathy for his opponents and tremendous political agility, while enduring personal tragedies and mental illnesses that would incapacitate most people. He seemed to maintain a sense of humor and, despite the difference in 19th century speaking styles, his words resonant today. He stood at a pivotal point in American history – before Lincoln, we said “the United States are'” but after Lincoln we say “the United States is.”

But the Great Man wasn’t above a little corruption. Continue reading →

Why We Remember the Alamo

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My own tourist picture of the Alamo chapel, with Crockett Hotel in the background

My own tourist picture of the Alamo chapel, with Crockett Hotel in the background

I ran across this week’s phrase while reading an article by Jeff Wagg about the legend of the Alamo. The article discusses several variations in the story from conflicting sources, as does the official Alamo website. I had only a vague notion of the Texan/Spanish/Mexican history behind the famous siege and battle. Texas belonged to Mexico at the time and many of the Anglos defending the fort were, in essence, illegal aliens invading Mexico. That terminology from Wagg is provocative (imagine the outrage if a high school text book used it), but pre-Civil War America was pursuing its Manifest Destiny. Texas joined the Union as part of that era.

What really intrigued me in Wagg’s article was speculation on why the Alamo became the quintessential piece of Texan history when other battles were at least as important. The official website calls the Alamo a shrine; that’s quite a commemoration. Continue reading →

Line in the Sand

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Wikipedia says “a line in the sand” is a metaphor referring to a point beyond which no one can proceed, or an act with consequences that are permanent and irreversible. The article states the origin is unknown.

A suggested Biblical link seems like a stretch to me. (John 8:6 reads: This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. [NKJV] I don’t see the current meaning of “a line in the sand” here.)

Wikipedia lists instances of an “actual line being drawn in several historical, or legendary, military events” even if the phrase wasn’t used.

A National Geographic article says “one of the earliest recorded instances of anyone drawing a line in the sand took place in ancient Rome around 168 B.C.” when a Roman envoy “drew a line in the sand around [the opposing king] and told him he had to decide [if he would accede to Roman demands] before he crossed it.” Continue reading →

War, Progress, and a Challenge for America

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worth of warWikipedia identifies Benjamin Ginsberg as a libertarian political scientist, professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of twenty books. I read his new book, The Worth of War, because I hate the thesis: “Although war is terrible and brutal, history shows that it has been a great driver of human progress.”

No, I thought. War is a terrible destroyer. But there’s more.

“War selects for and promotes certain features of societies that are generally held to represent progress. These include rationality, technological and economic development, and liberal forms of government.”

“Preparation for war often spurs on economic development.”

This is a short book – 175 pages in the body of my Epub version, mostly focused on Europe and America since the 17th century.

Ginsberg uses some terms idiosyncratically. He is fond of “ensorcelled”, which I think is a neat word. But his odd use of “Lamarckian” to mean lessons learned and taught to the next generation may befuddle biologists.

There is much discussion of military techniques and organization – does it really matter if brigades are divided into regiments commanded by colonels, further subdivided into…

But I did learn some interesting tidbits. Between WWI and WWII the US had color coded war plans – ranging from War Plan Black for Germany to War Plan Crimson for Canada; that Rome preferred its legionaries to be at least 5′ 10″ tall; and that modern training techniques have resulted in 90% of soldiers firing their guns in battle versus 15% in WWII.

Via the “curriculum of war” winners learn rationality and develop skills in planning, organizing, and engineering that “spillover” beyond the military. Errors in judgment can be corrected, but countries committed to magical thinking disregard facts and become losers.

Ginsberg presents examples from ancient Greece and Rome [1],China, the European Crusades, Aztecs, and the Soviet Union, but Nazis receive considerable analysis.

The bizarre Nazis ideology of racism led them to believe “mongrel” Americans could pose no military threat, that Slavic peoples were “subhumans,” and that Jews should be exterminated. They diverted war materiel to exterminating the Jews and turned Slavs who initially welcomed them as liberators from Stalin into enemies. The Nazi rejection of “Jewish science” and Jewish professionals created an “enormous transfer of intellectual capital” to their enemies. Thus their adherence to ideology led to their defeat. Continue reading →

Does an Objective Universe Exist?

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Grand DesignThe Grand Design is a physics book that leads from antiquity to today, when a group of overlapping models called M-theory may be the unified theory of everything – though not as easy to write down as E=mc^2. “If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design.”

Stephen Hawking is, of course, a famous professor of mathematics and physics. His co-author Leonard Mlodinow is also a theoretical physicist who has written for Star Trek: The Next Generation. This happy combination produced a book that is casual in tone, with helpful diagrams and nerdy cartoons. I don’t think Mlodinow is the sole source of the book’s approach, since Hawking has appeared in many popular TV shows, including recently on The Big Bang where his sense of self-deprecating humor is evident.

The history of physics is well known and you may wonder if yet another book will add to public understanding. Remember that Richard Feynman once wrote “nobody understands quantum mechanics.” This is because quantum effects are beyond most of our daily experiences. I know intuitively that if I drop a glass it will fall and that if I leave something in a locked room it will be there when I return because of my experience. But cosmic relativity and infinitesimal quantum actions seem unfathomable. Repeated exposure to physics helps and this book, in particular, I enjoyed. Continue reading →