The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
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The world Nicholas Copernicus was born into was wrong. Indeed, 550 years ago, almost everything people thought about the world and their place in it were based on false ideas. Without necessarily meaning to, Copernicus shook his world to the core and ushered in a revolution in science. Everyone in the western world believed that the earth was stationary and was the center of the universe. People might argue about other things, but everyone accepted the earth’s role and believed everything r...
Five Hundred years ago, the Protestant Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli’s theology was designated the official religion of Zurich. The rumblings of the Reformation were just starting. As education expanded, literacy allowed more people to read the Bible, increasing curiosity about theology. Families sent their best and brightest sons to become ordained priests. Seminaries become a concentration of intellectually curious male teenagers; rather than accept the authority of the status quo, these s...
One hundred years ago this month, delegates from various parts of the old Russian Empire met in Moscow to create the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The world would never be the same. Prior to this declaration, an internal conflict pitted a variety of groups with differing political ideologies against each other. At the cost of more than 10 million dead, the communists emerged as the victor. Under Vladimir Lenin, they consolidated power to create the first communist state; an experiment tha...
The Pilgrims’ first Christmas in the new world was remarkable, but not for the reasons you’d think. On December 25, 1621, William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, prohibited the celebration of Christmas. But he wasn’t a Scrooge or a Grinch; he was simply following his religious conviction. He believed that Sunday was the only day for celebration and time off from work. While the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving was like our celebration, their first Christmas bore no resembl...
One hundred years ago this month, Italy succumbed to a new political order that would ignite a worldwide struggle for freedom. Completely abandoning its rightful claim as the birthplace of republican self-government, Italy embraced the fanatical politics of Benito Mussolini and embarked on a sad journey of prioritizing rhetoric over reason and ideology over experience. The permanent scaring and disability of the veterans who suffered the horrors of trench warfare were a constant reminder of the...
With supersonic air travel, it takes less than three days to travel around the world. Five hundred years ago, it took three years. When Ferdinand Magellan left Spain in 1519, he embarked on an adventure that was rife with danger and uncertainty. His flagship, if you can call it that, was a mere 75 feet long and had room for just over 60 people. He had no map and would be guided primarily by a crude form of celestial navigation. In reality, his destination was undetermined. But, his ultimate...
Prior to the American Revolution and more than a decade before the French Revolution, there was the Swedish Revolution, which marks its 250th anniversary this month. While often out of the orbit of discussions of western civilization, Sweden was and continues to be a repository of enlightened democratic values. With a remarkable history of military conquest and constitutional government, the semiquincentennial of the Swedish Revolution is worth noting. Sweden is known for having divided...
Ninety years ago, Portugal was the poster child for instability. New governments came and went roughly every 6 months. Change seemed the only constant, which created a vacuum of leadership tailor made for military intervention. Out of the confusion and the void of effective leadership emerged one Antonio Salazar; he would govern Portugal for 36 years. American Secretary of State Dean Acheson remarked that Salazar was the closest thing in the 20th century to the philosopher-king outlined in...
Dr. Martin Luther King argued that the arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward justice. This geometry lesson was used to illustrate a belief that history is pulled gravitationally towards freedom. One of the early “moral arcs” occurred 807 years ago this month when the Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede. This critical event would set in motion several important concepts now ingrained in our system of government. Perhaps the most important ideas acknowledged by the Magna Carter wer...
May was an interesting month for our neighbors to the South. This year, Mexico commemorates the 200th anniversary of the coronation of Emperor Agustín I, and the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Puebla. These seemingly obscure events are vital to a complete understanding of the Mexican experience. As a colony of Spain, the internal government of Colonial Mexico was dependent upon the competency of Spanish officials sent to govern in the name of the King. The absolute power of the King was...
It was no surprise when 60 years ago President Kennedy nominated Byron White as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With few detractors and almost nationwide acclaim, White was almost everyone’s choice, and his confirmation was dizzying. Nominated on April 3, his judiciary committee hearing began just eight days later. After White testified for 15 minutes, his nomination was unanimously approved and immediately moved to the Senate floor, where he was confirmed by a simple v...
Had she lived, the Queen of Soul would have been 80-years-old in March. For at least 60 of her 76 years, Aretha Franklin shared her vocal gift all over the world. In addition to bringing her both critical and commercial success, her voice became a symbol for a new generation of Americans. Older generations rooted in staid and static smugness frowned upon popular culture for breeding new forms of entertainment and activism, which promoted an expression of unique, differing and contrasting ideas....
Eighty years ago this month, with the stroke of a pen, President Franklin Roosevelt in Executive Order 9066 effectively relegated 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps. Many of these American citizens were afforded no rights to object to their removal, and there was no procedure to prove loyalty to the United States. These citizens were interned solely because of their ancestry, nothing else. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, there was widespread fear that the Empire of Japan might...
One vision of utopia includes the conversion of weapons of war into farming implements. The Bible anticipates a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares, and spears will become pruning hooks. But sometimes in our modern world, it happens that bitter enemies with blood on their respective hands wake up and realize that compromise is better than conflict. Overcoming hate is less about love and more about recognizing the reality of the devastating consequences of protracted conflict. When...
This article recalls the Philippines off-year election in 1951. It is a little known story about how the good guys avoided a communist take-over. Regrettably, these lesson were forgotten in Vietnam some 10 years later. I hope Alabama Gazette readers will find it of interest. Seventy years ago, the Philippines came within a whisper of being the pre-game for Vietnam. But much like the dog that didn’t bark or the accident that didn’t happen, few people appreciate how close the Philippines came to...
As Thanksgiving morphs into Christmas, the December television schedule will be filled with the usual assortment of Christmas classics, not the least of which is Frank Capra’s: It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen his movie and unlike some classics that are tiresome, Wonderful Life always grabs me. The idea of selfless giving is made manifest when the entire community comes to George Bailey’s aid. I think every small business owner secretly views his business...
In the blood sport of electoral politics losers are forgotten and rarely rewarded; in British politics even winners experiencing their peak of success can be defeated. As a result, dealing with the humiliation of loss and muddling through toward future success is perhaps the hallmark of a successful leader. Winston Churchill’s come from behind win 70 years ago this month ranks among history’s greatest political resurrections, but this accomplishment, improbable as it was at the time, is swe...
Experience is the practical scientific method. Some things succeed while other things fail; observing the reasons for success should help draft a blueprint for planning the future. It may be vogue to regard the past as nothing more than a sentimental embrace of the pre-modern world, but the laboratory of human conflict yields tangible results that can be examined, quantified and reviewed to consider best practices. What can we learn when the autocrat’s autocrat allows a form of pluralism that i...
Imagine your football team is in the first quarter of a game, a couple of star players are sidelined and the opponent’s offense seems unstoppable. The score is already 28-0 when your head coach takes a time out. He lets his assistants coach up the team while he meets with an architect to design a new stadium to display championship trophies and meets with another head coach to discuss developing a new conference with more efficient rules to increase attendance and enthusiasm for the game. S...
Few calendars in this part of the Western Hemisphere will note it, but on July 28, Peru celebrates 200 years of independence. Two centuries of anything is a big deal; it demonstrates generational resilience and that’s something to celebrate. But the occasion also offers us cause to examine, and understand the international, liberating forces unleashed by the success of American Independence, how these ideas permeated through other nations to create a culture of liberty and freedom, and the l...
If the 4th of July has a pre-game, it is June 15th. On that date in 1215, the Magna Carta was signed, beginning a gradual process of defined individual rights and limiting the power and authority of the British crown. The Declaration of Independence, which outlined the colonists’ desire for freedom from the edicts of King George, is a direct descendant of the Magna Carta. It would be foolish to argue that the Magna Carta anticipated all the rights and freedoms we enjoy today, but it certainly p...
Always the catch-all political crime, an accusation of treason is used to punish rivals and remove them from civic engagement. Autocrats use the insinuation of treason with brutal efficiency to banish, if not execute, a political problem or inconvenient idea. While treason is bandied about to characterize someone with whose political beliefs we disagree, our founders made treason a particularly difficult crime to prove. As with so much of the Constitution, the terms were specifically written to...
When great powers stump their toe on foreign policy, the initial pain, though slight, often causes loss of focus, a stumble, and sometimes a more serious accident. Sixty years ago, the United States sponsored an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba, and the colossal failure ultimately damaged our nation’s reputation, emboldened our enemies, worried our allies, and clouded our vision of proper objectives for foreign relations. President John Kennedy’s inauguration was a cause for much optimism as a you...
There has been much debate lately about how we name public buildings and whether we should remove some names because of long ago actions that no longer conform to contemporary societal practices. Public buildings are always tricky to name as evidenced by the fact that just a couple of years ago, the University of Alabama Law School was named after Hugh Culverhouse, Jr. in acknowledgment of a very generous donation. However, Culverhouse’s donation was later returned and his name was chiseled f...
We take freedom of conscience for granted, but, 500 years ago, accepting and practicing beliefs outside of the mainstream was deadly. The 1521 Diet of Worms was a legislative gathering held in Worms (one of the oldest cities in Europe) to consider Martin Luther’s theology. The stakes were extraordinarily high as Luther, a mere monk, parried with the leading Roman Catholic scholars of his day. The ramifications of this meeting, while couched in religious terms, had clear political u...
