Category: Commentary

Anybody who knows me for long knows I’m fascinated by history, and I collect interesting (to me) stories to illustrate the many lessons we can learn from it. And few aspects of history are more entertaining (to me) and enlightening (to us all) than those dealing with unintended consequences. You know, the situations where a leader or a group or even a nation does something and ends up–eventually–with an outcome entirely at odds with what they intended.

On one hand, these historical tales describe a rich vein of irony: not the watered down understanding of irony in vogue among post-modern intellectuals, nor the whiny version Alanis sang about (Ray-ay-ain on your wedding day is unfortunate, but hardly ironic). Irony involves the unexpected, which means when you have no reasonable expectation (such as the weather for a wedding day you chose), you can’t have irony. The best example of ironic humor I ever saw was a simple cartoon showing a man hitting a hammer against a glass vase; the hammer shatters, and the vase stands untouched. That’s ironic. And maybe that black fly just likes your Chardonnay!

So here goes with some unintended consequences; enjoy:

1. “The Sins of the Father.”

George H.W. Bush, hereafter Bush ’41, was faced with a post Cold War conundrum. The US was the lone superpower, but what did that mean? When Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait in a completely opportunistic and aggressive move; he had his answer. Bush ’41 developed a global response, led by the US, to evict Saddam from Kuwait. Why? The US had long guaranteed the House of Saud that it would protect the monarchy as long as the oil flowed. And if Saddam could just seize Kuwait, there was little stopping him from doing the same to Saudi Arabia. We had built complete air bases out in the Saudi desert, even though they had little air power. The bases were financed by the Saudis and built/maintained to US standards, for our use should we ever need to project power in the region. Thus the US did not need to station troops in Saudi Arabia, which would have been offensive to devout Muslims.

So the grand Coalition marshaled its forces in Saudi Arabia and then expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Except there was no agreement about actually deposing Saddam, so they left him in power. Which meant he was a continuing threat. Which meant we needed to keep some “tripwire” forces in Saudi Arabia. A little-known cleric named Osama bin Laden had been preaching, to little effect, that the Saudi Monarchy was corrupt and in league with the infidel West. He predicted that the Saudis would allow “crusaders” into the Muslim holy lands, and when it happened, he moved from lunatic to prophet. And the seeds of Al Qaeda and 9/11 were sown.

Bush ’41 was looking to create a better world where aggression was punished by collective action. He forgot the simmering tensions that underlay all foreign relationships, and thought our good intentions would be recognized by all. Rather, he inadvertently laid the groundwork for a terrible challenge his son would someday face.

2. “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” H. L. Mencken.

In the early Twentieth Century, the Progressive movement was quite influential in federal, state, and local politics in the United States. Progressives were impressed with recent, dramatic improvements in science and technology and believed that these advances heralded an age when reason and science would rule between individuals and among peoples. One of their core concepts was the importance of direct democracy and the belief that the people could be relied on to do the right thing, if only given the opportunity to do so (i.e., vote). Partially this was a naive belief in the ‘wisdom of crowds’ but mostly it was a reaction to the various cabals, conglomerates, and oligarchs which proliferated at the same time. These “special interests” had seized control of several layers of government and the Progressives were their sworn enemies.

Progressives in California eventually got control of the state government and enacted several provisions which supported greater democracy: one was the creation of Propositions, whereby the people could vote directly on a policy which the government would then have to accept and enforce. The other was Recall elections, where the people could sponsor a vote to remove an office holder and replace him/her immediately. Both of these provisions were designed to limit the power of tiny groups of influential people by providing a means for larger groups to override them.

Things didn’t quite turn out that way. The Proposition concept did require a simple democratic majority, but it proved to be a blunt instrument that allowed ill-conceived, general concepts to be “approved” by the voters who probably didn’t fully understand the implications. It eventually ended up with the infamous Proposition 13 in 1978, which created a series of prohibitions on raising taxes or appraisals that have hamstrung California leaders to this day. Whatever one thinks about whether taxes are too high or too low, California’s proposition system proved a poor approach.

Oh, and the recall option? Progressives set the signature bar low for initiating a recall, and thus have cost one Democrat his Governorship and forced the current incumbent into an expensive defense, which had it failed, would have inaugurated a conservative Republican who managed only twelve percent of the vote! Power to the People, indeed.

3. Upsetting a delicate balance

Those who had a basic civics and government course can quickly describe the various “check and balances” built into the government of the United States by the Founders. There are the struggles between the three branches of the federal government, the powers reserved under the Constitution to the States and the People, Judicial Review, and the anti-majoritarian aspects of that same Constitution. These balances are constantly under stress. For example, as the US moved from a developing nation to a global superpower, the federal government naturally accrued much more sway. But sometimes the balance is voluntarily upset.

The Founders designed the House of Representatives to be representative of the people: directly- and more frequently-elected, more passionate and more partisan. For the Senate, the Founders intended a more deliberate body, selected by State Legislatures and therefor representing their (i.e., the States’) interests. But in the early years of the Republic, the federal Senate was less powerful (even a backwater), and some States either didn’t bother to send Senators, or didn’t send their best.

During that Progressive era at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, William Randolph Hearst, a fan of direct elections, sponsored a fictional novel, “The Treason of the Senate,” which detailed the failings of various Senators and State legislatures, fueling the fire for change. The result was the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which took the Senate away from the States and made it directly-elected, like the House. And as we all know, since that time, the Senate has never had any members who would be considered dishonorable in any way.

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*EDIT: a sharp-eyed friend pointed out Agnew was only President of the Senate (as Vice President of the United States), so he merits inclusion as disreputable, but not as a Senator!

More to the point, since that time, no entity represents the view of the States in the federal process, which has led to further “federalizing” of State functions, and greater stress on the delicate balance that is the American form of government.

4. A prophet is not without honor except . . .

On June 8th, 1978, Harvard University held its annual commencement exercises, discharging another set of high-achieving alumni into careers as leaders of the nation. As is its custom, Harvard had bagged the most influential commencement speaker: former Soviet political prisoner, Nobel prize-winning author, and famously private dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

No doubt the Harvard administrators expected an important address, not the usual platitudes about ‘changing the world’ or ‘finding yourself.’ Perhaps the soon-to-be graduates expected a paean to the West, which had helped rescue the Russian dissident just as the Cold War was reaching its peak. What they got was “A World Split Apart,” a jeremiad worthy of the original Old Testament prophet.

Solzhenitsyn, characterizing his criticism as coming from a friend, not an adversary, attacked the West from start to finish. He said Western society was morally bankrupt and weak. Youth were selfish and complacent and materialist. The press was corrupt, interested in influencing the public rather than informing them. He asked what moral force the West could provide in the larger battle against the evil that was Communism, and he saw none.

The crowd at Harvard was rapt as the speaker–in Russian–and his translator–in English–continued. A few times they cheered, more often they vocally hissed. Afterward, the major media attacked the messenger, not the message, calling him “bitter,” “unappreciative”, with James Reston at the New York Times saying the speech represented “the wanderings of a mind split apart.”

Solzhenitsyn never apologized and never withdrew his criticism. After the fall of the Communist regime in Russia, he returned there, dying in 2008. His speech, which merits your attention, is amazingly prescient, accurately describing how trends evident in the West in the 1970’s resulted in many of the problems which bedevil us today. The speech is widely considered one of the greatest of the Twentieth Century, alongside Churchill’s “Blood, Tears, Toil & Sweat” and Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream.”

Needless to say, Harvard got more (and different) than they bargained for.

5. Packing, Cracking and Majority-Minority districts

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a landmark piece of legislation that, among other things, attempted to redress decades of voting rights violations committed against many minority groups. One of the things the Act specifically prohibited was the drawing of voting districts in a way to reduce the influence of minority voters. This is a type of gerrymandering (drawing voting districts to create an artificial vote result) called cracking: you divide a concentrated minority group (say for example, blacks in a city) among several voting districts that also include larger numbers of suburban whites, making it difficult for a black candidate to win. The end result is few if any successful black candidates.

But as anyone who is mathematically and geographically literate can tell you, if you draw a district to create a majority of minority voters (hence the term majority-minority district), you greatly reduce the number of minority voters in all the surrounding districts (because you’re dealing with small numbers–a minority–in the first place)! This is another form of gerrymandering called packing, which nearly guarantees a successful black candidate in one district, but also also greatly increases the chances of all the other white candidates’ success.

Currently there are approximately one hundred majority-minority districts in the US House of Representatives, representing about one quarter of the four hundred and thirty-five seats. These seats are overwhelmingly occupied by minority representatives, strongly indicating that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 worked. But, and there is always a but, over time voters have increasingly sorted themselves politically (like-minded voters choosing to live where they think other like-minded voters live).

Gerrymandering to disadvantage voters by party — or political gerrymandering — may be distasteful, but it is constitutional according to the US Supreme Court (Gill v. Whitford). But what if a racial group (i.e., African-Americans) overwhelmingly identifies with a single party (i.e., Democrats)? Then gerrymandering those voters might be a violation of the Voting Rights Act. So these majority-minority districts become protected (in theory) during redistricting. Which means if certain seats can not be changed (or changed much), all the other seats become subject to even worse gerrymandering.

So the law which seeks to protect minority representatives actually also places many more Democratic candidates at risk of being re-districted into noncompetitive campaigns.

6. Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Weapons that Weren’t

From the moment he took power in 1979, Saddam Hussein was on a mission toward self-aggrandizement and Iraqi domination of the Middle East. He constructed a security service that strangled Iraq’s many ethnic minorities, built up military forces, and sought weapons of mass destruction (WMD, especially nuclear and chemical). By 1981, Israel deemed the threat of Iraq’s nuclear program sufficient to justify a risky long-range aerial bombing and destruction of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. During the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, Saddam gassed the (Iraqi) Kurdish village of Halabja, killing thousands of his own citizens. He repeatedly demonstrated the capability and will to use such weapons.

US and Coalition military forces were prepared for Saddam to use such weapons during the first Gulf War in 1991, but he didn’t, fearing the reprisals. After the war, UN sanctions forced him to destroy his WMD munitions and infrastructure. Saddam complied, but continued to conduct suspicious actions which led the UN and various intelligence agencies to believe he retained a covert stockpile and program. Why else would he deny certain inspection areas, or make sudden movements of equipment and people to avoid inspections, if not to hide a residual capability? In the end, Secretary Colin Powell laid out the circumstantial case about Saddam’s programs before the UN, and Bush ’43 proceeded to occupy Iraq, capture Saddam, but never found any WMD!

During debriefings by the FBI after his capture, Saddam explained that he knew Iraq had the technical know-how and scientific capability to rebuild its WMD program. But he didn’t do so, so as to avoid giving the West an excuse to remove him from power. However, the West (and especially the US) was a more distant threat; Saddam firmly believed WMD and his demonstrated willingness to use them were all that was deterring the Iranians–and to some extent the Israelis–from attacking him. So he took a calculated gamble: act suspicious enough to make Israel and Iran stay back, but not so suspicious that the US would get involved.

This approach worked for decades. By the year 2000, human rights organizations were calling for the removal of sanctions on Iraq for humanitarian reasons (fake child mortality data provided by Saddam), Russia was actively working around the sanctions, and even France was signalling the sanctions had to go. But the 9/11 attacks had heightened US sensitivity about vulnerability to terrorist use of WMD. Combined with the Bush administration’s belief Saddam was a problem which would only get worse, his WMD bluff proved in the end to be his undoing.

Hope you enjoyed this small foray into the world of unintended consequences; if not, maybe I just committed another myself!

Is there anything harder than putting down your dog? Don’t answer, I don’t want to know.

Judy & I have put down three Vizslas in our married life. It’s an odd euphemism. Some say “put to sleep,” others “put down” and of course there’s the old “sent to the farm.” But in the end, it means the same thing.

Our first two (consecutive) Vizslas each lasted to ten years old, which is pretty good for a large dog breed that has been inbred for generations. Both developed cancer, and showed signs of physical decay and pain that made our choice somewhat easier. The decline was sudden–weeks not months–and obvious. The veterinarian told us we could wait a little longer, but the likely outcome was painful internal bleeding leading to sudden collapse: hardly an option to choose. Still, it wasn’t easy, and I (actually the whole family) cried like a baby.

Dogs will do that to you. Both Judy and I had grown up with dogs as family pets. Yes, they cost a lot. Yes, they take up time. Yes, they’re inconvenient when travelling or with visitors. But then again, so are families. And dogs are a chance to teach your kids about responsibility, about growing up and growing old and dying. And in between, they give unconditional love. Kids need that; sometimes parents have to be the provider of tough love, but that dog is always there, wagging a tale, just happy to see you.

The best dogs don’t think they’re dogs any more. They think they’re slightly smaller, oddly-shaped humans. They want to be with you, they need to be with you, they’re only happy when they are with you. When our kids were grown and off to college, we rescued two Vizslas at once. Even though we understood the breed, the balance of two Vizslas and two humans turned us into a pack rather than a family, with negative behavioral consequences for all concerned. We quite literally found a farm for one of our Vizslas, and things returned to normal.

Tucker was our fourth, and almost certainly our last, Vizsla. We rescued him around the same time we committed to retiring to Mexico. He was “four or so” according to the breed Rescue Society, but we had just turned down a five year old since the pain of putting down a dog at ten was fresh in our minds. Suddenly a “four year old” became available. Hmmmm, something suspicious about that, what?

Tucker was a three-time loser, a dog who had been turned over to rescue at least three previous times, and this was his last chance. We had to say yes. We knew that his most recent owners had been in the midst of a divorce, and there had been an incident of domestic violence (the wife attacking the husband, who was the pet’s favorite, we were told). This would show up again once we rescued him: if Judy started walking quickly toward me, he would move between us, a trait which foreshadowed a sad end.

The Tucker we knew was a sweet dog, very smart, but also very stubborn. He learned several words (outside, w-a-l-k, treat) and many commands (sit, stay, and even “hurry-up” to poop, believe it or not), yet he practiced being deaf at times, too. He was afraid of smoke, even steam, and fire engine sirens. The chirping of the smoke alarm, signalling the need for new batteries, was an existential terror for him. He was only social with humans. When we took him to the dog park, he ignored the other dogs and introduced himself to all the owners. The few times he played with the other dogs, he would show-off by outrunning or out-cornering the other breeds, but then turn the pack on some smaller dog like a schoolyard bully.

After much work, we eventually trained him to ignore other dogs, which was fine with him. I noticed how he watched me go running on the weekends, so one time I decided to take him with. He fell into a heel position and ran at my pace for three miles! Either someone had trained him well, or he was natural born runner’s companion.

He started to “go white” almost immediately, confirming our suspicion he was older than we were told, but he was healthy and well-adjusted. We joked about him joining us in moving to Mexico, which was still five years out when we rescued him. Obviously he took us seriously, because those years flew by and at ten, he was till healthy and active and cancer-free. So we loaded him up in a tiny space in the back of our SUV and drove him south of the border.

Expat life was as kind to dogs as human retirees, and he remained healthy. Over the course of five years here, he lost some hearing, although he feigned losing even more. His depth perception and visual acuity declined, leading to some hysterical encounters with Mexican squirrels, including even stepping on one. He took longer and more frequent naps. He became more sensitive to those loud noises he could here, especially cohetes, which required mild sedation at times. But he was still active and alert. I think he got a kick when people asked how old was my puppy and I told them “fifteen years!”

In the past year, he stated displaying some confusion. He was prone to barking attacks where something set him off–he was clearly agitated, not startled– but could not be easily calmed. He started charging at Judy more often, sometimes just when we were talking. Finally, he took a small bite at her, (Strike One) and we knew trouble was brewing.

The drama of selling our house, buying a new one, moving, and having renovations only added to his confusion and agitation. When the grandkids were visiting, we left Tucker home one day, and when we returned, he ran out the door, jumped in the rented mini-van, and would not leave it. I went out and reached for him, thinking he was having trouble navigating getting out of the vehicle: no, he went off and tried to bite my hands. I backed away, so he leapt out of the vehicle and bit my leg (Strike Two). Then he stopped and looked at me with a “what was that all about?” look.

Two nights ago, Judy walked toward me and Tucker dashed across the room and nipped at her. I shouted and kicked at him (never reach for an angry dog), but he bit her a second time and clamped down. I smacked and kicked at him, and he let go, but she had a tremendous bruise on her thigh from the attack. Strike Three; you’re out.

He laid down in his dog bed, clearly upset, but whether that was remorse or shock, who knows? For us, the die was cast; you can’t keep a dog which might go full-scale beserk at any moment. In some sense, putting Tucker down was more difficult, since when he was normal, he was completely normal. In another sense, it was easier, as we had a sense of relief at not waiting for the next attack.

I still cried.

Ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition? I thought you’d be surprised! You know, how it demonstrated the horror of imposing one’s religious beliefs on others, not to mention the danger inherent in believing one knows exactly what God intends, which can lead to all manner of extremism. It’s a popular view, almost a trope, partly based on that well-established English bias about history that North Americans imbibe, and partly based on, well:

The Good News (pun intended) is that the Catholic Church, being the world’s longest-running, most successful bureaucracy (among other things) has excellent data on the Spanish Inquisition. Not only that, the data are reliable, because the inquisidores really believed they were doing God’s work (however bizarre that may seem to modern sensibilities), and lying about their work would have undermined the “good” they thought they were doing. And the Vatican released the data in the late 1990s.

If you asked an average person what they knew about the Spanish Inquisition, the key points would boil down to: (1) many innocent people were tortured to confess, (2 ) they were burned at the stake, (3) all to force people to accept the Catholic faith. So let’s get past Monty Python’s “comfy pillow” sketch and look at the facts!

How many people died at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition? None. Well, that’s a quibble. See the Office of the Holy Inquisition had no authority to execute anyone; only a King did. So the Inquisition passed off the condemned to the King’s executioners. Setting aside the quibble, early estimates ranged upward of millions of victims killed. But there are those pesky records, and modern historians have pored over them and determined the total to be at most 5,000 people (during the period 1478-1834, about 350 years), or a little more than one a month. There were periods of more and fewer executions, and long periods with none, as no trials were held. Hardly an enormity in the true sense of the word, or even a blip in the mortality statistics of the day!

Why the quibble about the role of the King in all this? It may be hard to understand in modern-day terms, but back then the government and religion were one-and-the-same: it was called Christendom for a reason. Denying the true faith demanded penitence, but refusing to admit the sin was a challenge to the sovereign, who was after all God’s chosen leader (the Divine Right of Kings), and thus was a capital offense. That’s what cost the accused their life. There was a continuing disagreement between Spanish royalty and Rome, with the former seeking harsh punishment (for the challenge to the throne) and the latter granting mercy as long as those charged repented at any point.

What about torture? Yes, the Inquisition practiced torture. They literally wrote books about it: when to do it, for how long, under what circumstances, etc. These tracts would be very familiar to anyone who read the Department of Justice memos regarding “enhanced interrogation techniques” under the Bush administration. Where do you think “waterboarding” came from originally? Here’s the rub: all countries, and all legal systems, allowed torture at that time. The Roman legal system practiced it, and bequeathed it everywhere Romans went. Islam developed its own version. Charging the Inquisition with torture is “like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.”

For the Inquisition, torture could only be employed after guilt was established, to elicit a full confession and further information about co-conspirators, heretics, etc. (again, sound familiar?). There were limits on how long, what types, how painful, the need for a doctor present; it’s eerie reading. And none of these rules applied in the regular government legal system. There, torture was practiced freely without restraints and often used early in the investigation to get a confession and complete the case. How bad was “justice” at the time? The records show criminal or civil defendants requesting to be transferred to the Inquisition for trial! So guilty as charged on torture, with a huge asterisk as that was nothing unusual at the time.

What about forcing others to become Catholic? See, here’s the problem with that odd charge: anyone could avoid the Inquisition by simply stating they were not Catholic. The Inquisition had no authority over Jews, Muslims, or pagans. The Church had long accepted the notion that one could not be forced to accept a different religion; thus the Inquisition was adopted to weed out heretics and false believers. Spain was in the process of the Reconquista, the expulsion of the remaining Muslim forces on the Iberian peninsula. As Catholic Spanish forces gradually occupied the lands, they had the problem of ruling these lands. Their solution was to allow freedom of religion, but to place limits on land ownership, positions of authority, and to impose heavy taxes, thus encouraging–but not mandating–conversion. Incidentally, these were the same rules Islamic leaders developed when they ruled Al Andalus, rules which some historians called even-handed and far-sighted!

Some Muslims and Jews became conversos, but a very small number only did so for the financial and political advantages it held. These false conversions became a target for the Inquisition, often based on secret tips from faithful Muslims and Jews who were annoyed by the success of their one-time fellow adherents. Add in ethnic rivalries, the ability of the Crown and local leaders to profit from seized property, and petty jealousies and you get a deadly mix of accusations. One redeeming quality: the inquisidores were intrepid detectives, and most charges brought to court were dropped. One set of records shows about one percent of the 125,000 heresy cases brought to trial under the Spanish Inquisition resulted in executions.

What about the procedures involved with the Spanish Inquisition? The Inquisition was all about process: there were hundreds of pages of rules and policies and procedures, all of which were lacking in European justice systems at the time. That is why many ordinary people and local leaders welcomed the Inquisition. All throughout the process there were opportunities for those charged to confess and seek forgiveness through some act of penitence. The arrival of an inquisidor started a thirty day Grace Period (literally) where anyone could simply admit guilt, be given a penance, and be forgiven. Then began a period of accusations and investigation, a trial and verdict, then sentencing or release. The final act was the auto da fé, which has come to mean “burning at the stake” in English, but actually means act of faith. This was a religious ceremony–including a mass and a procession–where the inquisidor and local prelates related the results of the trial to a public. At the end of the process, the accused, having been given another opportunity to repent publicly, was handed over to the civil authorities for punishment.

Why is there such a dark cloud of misinformation hovering over the Spanish Inquisition? Partially it is so foreign to our ideals today, but mostly it is a hangover from the “Black Legend.” In the 16th century, Spain was the wealthiest, most powerful Catholic nation in the emergent struggle over the Protestant Reformation. Thus it was the target of propaganda, the most effective of which was a campaign known as the “Black Legend” which depicted Spain in the harshest terms as a land full of violence, corruption, sexual excess and worse: sort of like California today (I kid, I kid). Many of the stories involved the Spanish Inquisition, and England was the chief source (in its ongoing rivalry with Spain). And those legends got past along with English history.

None of which is to say the Spanish Inquisition was good. Saint Pope John Paul II apologized for the violence it enacted. Moreover, while heresy was a continuous problem in those days, the threat posed by conversos was greatly exaggerated and never merited an inquisition, as demonstrated by the numbers of trials, exonerations, and executions.

George Santayana said “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I would add that those who don’t know the truth about history are condemned to repeating falsehoods.