Socialism in Oklahoma

Socialism was first tried in Oklahoma,1907-1920.  It came about because of the grinding poverty in the aftermath of the land runs.  Relatively few Oklahomans had been there for more than a few years at the time of statehood. Many had arrived as adults gambling everything on Oklahoma. But those who had been around decades before often locked up ownership of Indian lands as the reservations were dissolved in the Indian Territory (East of a line from approximately Lawton to Ponca City). Grafting (getting your name on title to an Indian’s allotment) was one of the sharkish legal techniques and gives us the modern connotation for the word “graft”. The result was that most farmers in the east were tenant farmers who sharecropped.  In the west, homestead land ownership was more common but enormous debt was normal as people tried to establish themselves in raw land. 70% of the total farmers in OK were tenants.

            And so the Socialist Party grew, garnering 30% of votes in gubernatorial elections from 1912 to 1920. 1914 was the year that scores of Socialists won local and state representative elections. Two dozen socialist newspapers came into being, including the Kay County Populist, from Newkirk, OK.  There were more Socialists in OK than in NY. In 1917, a few rebels in the Canadian River valley refused to register for the draft for WW I.  Called the Green Corn Rebellion, it did not amount to much.  This Socialist rebellion was soon put down by state officials.

            But then after 1920, socialism rapidly died.  Why? An agricultural recession hit farm prices right after the war. Wouldn’t that have spurred socialism?  But the true demise of socialism was from the churches. Socialism is counter to faith in a personal Savior who puts one on a personal mission in life.  It is evil to confiscate property which is another man’s stewardship from God.  Pulpits clashed with newspapers and the Bible Belt won.  Elsewhere, the Red Scare overtook USA as atrocities in the Soviet Union became known and union radicals fell into distrust. Socialism went down fast.  But a few never gave in, such as Woody Guthrie, the atheist singer who went on to write for Communist Party USA’s newspaper.  Again, socialism demands a sort of godlessness that most people choked on. A softer version of help-thy-neighbor overtook hard politics and as a result, when the dust bowl struck in the thirties, Oklahomans became resoundingly FDR Democrats at the expense of the socialist movement. Though hurting at times, Okies were at heart very independent yet charitable. Ayn Rand, an agnostic, nonetheless said it well, “Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal collective good.”  Jesus said, “Where a man’s treasure is, there his heart will be.”  

The Roosevelts

I’m watching Ken Burns’ The Roosevelts.  Burns is a lib.  He does a good job at documentaries, panning old still photos to suggest action, and photo selection to tell his story.  He does a great job with older history and did well with Country Music, but touch anything polically modern and his politics interferes. Both Roosevelts “thought outside of the box.” Progressive TR is viewed with disdain by most libs while progressive FDR is an unvarnished hero. Why?  Because TR championed Rugged Individualism which supports the conservative notion of limited government and Liberty.  FDR’s trial-and-error solutions of the Great Depression advanced Big Government and blaming selected groups. But the liberal big hate reason is that TR strongly favored American involvement in Spanish American War—warmonger! None of this was spoken to in Burns' first episode. Indeed political issues are rather glossed over.  No mention that Americans doing business in Cuba were detained and never heard from again.  No mention that Spain was oppressing the Cubans.  Those things angered Americans greatly and the explosion of the Battleship Maine was politically a last straw for people in USA. But hippie Burns tells a lot of psychoanalysis as always.   TR was judged to be fighting ‘inner demons’, that if he didn’t stop working hard and changing things, he would surely have died of depression as an alcoholic like his brother. Why his wife and mother died on the same day! And cruelly he ships his only daughter off to live with his sister.  No mention that Victorians separated men and women’s responsibilities and living with relatives was common.  But the dude TR he found himself in cattle ranching in the west.  Left unsaid is why his N. Dakota neighbors, who laughed at him at first, found great respect for him and his views.  Oh, wait, Burns advanced the explanation that TR slugged a guy who called him ‘4 eyes’ and somehow that gained everyone’s respect.  (Hmm.  My cowboying days seem to tell me that a guy like that could just as well be ostracized.) The audience might be left to wonder how the westerners admired a man who went spectacularly broke.  Unsaid is that that the disastrous winter of 1886-7 left 90% of the cattle dead in northern USA. Sadly everyone went broke.  So TR went home to NY, remarried, then got a job in Washington DC, eventually becoming Asst. Sec. of the Navy.  Sensing war was about to break out, TR directed Admiral Dewey to close in on Philippines. The result was a brilliant victory.  Then TR resigned to become commissioned as Lt. Colonel and recruited the ‘Rough Riders’ cavalry regiment. Burns indulges himself in proclaiming him a witless commander at Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill, who flung his men carelessly and cynically into enemy fire in order to conquer another inner demon that TR thought himself a coward.  But historians I have read say that US command didn’t anticipate a new murderous weapon the Spanish had, the machine gun with a cooled barrel.  The only thing that saved the Rough Riders was their audacious commander who ordered a fast strike that overwhelmed the Spanish positions.  So TR returned a hero, but Burns selects cartoons of political opponents lampooning him as a crazy man.  TR thereupon ran for governor of NY and won handily.  Left untold is how he appealed to the working men who remembered his demands for good working conditions and reasonable pay when he was a state legislator.  His tireless work for McKinley’s election is seen as another inner demon.  Then his unbelievable effort to get McKinley re-elected with himself a VP is almost portrayed as demented. 

May I suggest theat TR’s inner demons were simple.  All young men struggle to prove themselves. If you have a dad who is close and gives you a thumbs up, it usually ends somewhere in the early twenties.  Without one, like TR, you seek affirmation of other accomplished men like the military, bosses, or coaches. TR struggled as a spindly kid with genius who had to also prove himself to himself.  It took longer.  His dogged personality seems not sick and demented, unless you are a hippie, who also suffered from absentee father, who chose to retreat from all male competition. 

            On the other hand, FDR, who grew up quite a Richie Rich in Hyde Park, a coddled child who had no friends in school, was locked in a valiant effort to save his elderly ailing father.  (James R. in his 50s had married Miss Delano, 20, who realized she could only have one child when old James had a stroke and became a helicopter parent of her son.) It is pointed out that FDR was utterly adored by both parents, never admonished for doing wrong.  But it isn’t noted that this is normally the perfect prescription for narcissism, unchecked ego. Ironically fortunate, polio humbled FDR.  

So the next episode will be all about TRs presidency and FDR’s polio no doubt.  Look for FDR to be aggrandized as a man who overcame all odds while TR went down in infamy in a quixotic attempt to have one more term in his presidency in 1912. FDR had a power-of-positive-thinking personality, perfect to inspire people in a Depression.  But many economists today blame  the Great Depression, which grew out of a financial crisis recession, as coming from government takeover and regulation of practically everything. Policies of TR and FDR then provide a great lesson on progressism doing well and doing badly by which course it takes.

            If Burns shines in his depiction, it is probably in telling the tale of Eleanor Roosevelt.  She was daughter of Elliot, TR’s brother, hence TR’s niece.  Elliot went mentally ill and then alcoholic and died young.  Eleanor, raised by her grandparents, struggled with this all her life.

Exploitation rarely explains riches

If one studies conquests and the clash of civilizations it has been popular to label the conquerors as exploiters.  Morals are condemned and causes explained to show why one society is rich and another poor.  But despite the popularity of these exploitation theories, in the actual historical record they are rare.  Usually the mundane reality is that productivity produces wealth. 

            Exploitation theories have condemned European imperialism and colonialism.  But when the Europeans left Africa, instead of becoming richer, the nations there saw national incomes and living standards fall significantly. The same was true when Romans left Britain and when every Chinese dynasty fell.  The overlords brought labor skills and abilities that the natives lacked.   And slavery, the ultimate exploitation, has never made slave-owning regions more prosperous. This was true comparing the North with the South in USA.  Northern Brazil with lots of slaves, was poorer than southern Brazil, populated with free Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants. So why do people choose to believe such bunk? Anger. The true answer is that there are often great differences in productivity and wealth. It’s easy for the loser or their sympathizer to blame poverty on someone else’s malfeasance. But envy of someone who has more is precisely what the last 2 of the 10 Commandments warn Christians against.

            Changes of productivity of the conquered can often be traced to transfers of cultural capital.  The English had laws, banking and improved agriculture that they transferred to the Scots.  Western Europeans brought the industrial age to Eastern Europe.  China transferred a great deal to Japan and Korea. The Cowboys married the Indians and today we see Oklahoma rising from poor state into the middle. Human capital, as it is transferred is often a boon to the lesser developed guys, whether they be conquerors like the barbarians who invaded Rome or the Hebrews who invaded Canaan or conversely, Germans who brought industry to Brazil and transformed Argentina from a wheat importer to a large wheat exporter. In The Italians have been winemakers from California to Australia.  The dominance of overseas Chinese who pick up ideas and teach production is stunning.  In 1994 the 36 million overseas Chinese had a higher GDP than all of Communist China.

            Perhaps no country has had more success in spreading productivity and culture than USA.  It derives wealth from a free market of goods and ideas of many immigrants. Its notion of Liberty and republican democracy has spread to nearly 70 countries in 200 years. Evidently free men work harder and smarter. John Locke, father of modern psychology, derived six principles from the Bible that he insisted people would thrive under—Liberty, Equality, Tolerance, Natural Law, Separation of powers, and Rights—especially property rights.  Dinesh D’Sousa is an author and film maker. When he was an Indian exchange student at Dartmouth, said that people would come up to him and say, “Oh, you’re from India. I love India!” And he would say, “What part do you love? That the electricity works only 3 days a week—you just don’t know which days?  Or is it the constant riots between Muslims and Hindus that claim thousands of lives?  Wife burnings? Or is it 400 languages where no one can understand his neighbors unless they use English?”  Dinesh said he never asked if they admired the malnutrition. His dream of coming to America started by watching a propaganda film in India in grade school where the narrator said that USA was a terrible country.  There were lots of food lines.  Indeed the film showed some poor Americans standing in line getting food. Another kid next to Dinesh gave him the elbow and whispered, “They are all fat! I want to go to a country where even the poor people are fat.” And so D’Sousa came to America, studied economics and began to understand that a system based on Christian liberty principles is superior.  This then led to the Christian faith and walk that he claims has transformed his life. Watch out!  The Holy Spirit will set up circumstances in your life, uniquely aimed at your heart, to bring God’s faith!

Alice in Coronavirusland

 I’ve been watching the coronavirus Covid19 news like everybody but the news coverage has been unreal.  Gloom and doom and we’re all going to die! 5 weeks ago it was indeed quite uncertain and dumb me, thought it might be time to stock our pantry in case a pandemic caused disruption.  Spent $200 at Sams I probably didn’t need to.  But then I learned ‘coronavirus’ is the name for the common cold.  This new strain will be hard on us since no one has immunity, but the body works fast and we survive. Then someone in the media figured out it was a great new opening for the Democrats to attack Trump and so they have been piping this thing like it was Armageddon. (And of course the Prez hasn’t handled it right.) The Republican State Committeman part of me gets frustrated.  The teeth-grinding side of politics is when your opponent sneaks a win by accusing you of something that looks circumstantial or that is not at all true, but by repetition or some other skullduggery, manages to fool some of the people some of the time.  Well, this time they did it big.  When China closed the city of Wuhan and some of the factories and told all the people to quarantine, (That is what a dictatorship does), it was represented as news that this might happen everywhere-- the only hope to save humanity.  Side Effect: it kills the economy! So the stock market plunged in panic.  The media moved in for the kill, spotting things Trump said that weren’t exactly what his experts were saying and proclaiming that, therefore, we had no idea how to solve this.  Then the talking heads called for a “cure”.  Of course with a virus there is no such thing.  And so the Task Force strove to tell us that it was going to get worse before it was going to get better and we’d eventually have vaccine. Don’t get on a cruise.  More panic and more market crash and more glee by the media and D’s trying to take down Trump. USA had 1 million test kits and 8 million would be produced the next week.  But the Dems glomed onto this with Biden and Bernie demanding that everyone in the USA Had a Right to be tested any time they wanted to and people, thinking that they couldn’t even find out if they had it, bought all  the darned toilet  paper and cleaning fluids.  Then some knothead in the NBA was phoo-phooing the coronavirus and swiped his hands over all the mics of the media in a presser.  Luck would have it, next day he tested positive. Sports world went zonkers, cancelled all the fans and then the games and so now ESPN looks like endless sports commentary about coronavirus and poker competitons.  Have we gone bat guano insane?

            Years before I got involved in politics, I was a saver and investor, even though I kept getting in trouble financially and draining my savings.  But you learn skills.  There are times when the market has gone too high with Tulip Mania or worse, a Credit Crisis.  There are a few times when it just panics for no worthy reason, as in 1987 and now.  Makes a comeback easily. So I was watching all last year as stock prices rose thinking there has to be an end at some point.  When the price to earnings ratio gets above 20 that is warning of price too high.  (and when it goes down to 12 then it is BUY BABY BUY!!) January, the average P/E had gone to 19.5, yet US personal savings rate is highest it has been historically and lowest personal debt.  People are in good shape, a total flip from 2007 when everybody was in la-la-land about their houses. They’ve learned a hard lesson. But  if we had a recession, they would be in pretty fair shape. Yesterday the market plunged hideously again, Democrats all joyously cheering the news.  Those devils have no concern whatsoever for your life savings.  They would cheer complete demise of the US economy if they could get into power by it. But now the average P/E is down to 14.  Trump has a new conference today.  He is declaring a National Emergency.  More bad news.  Yet, strangely, the market kept going up.  There is an old saying, ”A market that neglects bad news is destined to go higher.”  I called my broker.

            My broker is my son, a 20-year veteran certified financial planner. He’s been harried by clients full of worry and he came home last night, wife says, you haven’t watched TV for 2 weeks.  So he sat down and tuned CNN and Rachel Madcow.  “I could’ve slit my wrists!” he said.  “It was that gloom and doom, we’re all going to die.” He told about younger brokers worried what to tell their clients.  They haven’t been through this sort of crash.  He had sage words. Prices after a crash are cheap. The deeper you push a beech ball into the water, the more force it wants to rise.  Well, your father is aching to put some of his bond money in stocks, I laughed.  And if the average P/E goes down with another rough day, I’m going to be cagey as a loon to buy stocks.  One gets about one chance per generation to see this sort of idiocy--empty shelves, no sports, market crashing over nothing, daily press conferences--and all because of a new strain of the common cold?  Buy on the cannons!

            Bottom line, it is fulfilling to see your side win politically.  Nice to make money.  But when you have a chance to make a killing off the lunacy of the Dem Fools…

Significant things we can learn from Early Christians

                                      History is His Story

Today, many American churches seem to be declining. What if there were no beautiful buildings or polished worship services?  What if there were no Bibles, and clinging to the few Words of God which you knew would put you on a government watch list?  Your children’s ability to get an education is threatened.  Your ability to make a living and join the marketplace is forbidden. Would you still go to church?

            The 1^st century Christians not only held onto belief, but stood proudly proclaiming their faith in the face of sure death.  They witnessed the Gospel far and wide without a written gospel, for those were written 30 years after Jesus was crucified.  Nor did the church advertize itself with a cross.  That didn’t commonly occur until after 250 AD, when Rome stopped the practice.  It is as if the cross were too horrible and vivid, too common a fate to be a brand. So what did the early Christians have that made their churches grow?  First, they had the New Testament, not the books but, “This is the new testament [covenant] in my blood.” Luke 22:20. That was the only time Jesus ever said the words.  But it stuck.  For Luke writes in Acts 2:42 that from Pentecost forth, “They continued with…the breaking of bread.”  And still 2100 years later, churches throughout the world continue communion.  It’s uncanny. We agree on virtually all the Bible’s miracles—Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus making water into wine, walking on water--yet we are split into factions when Jesus simply said, “This is my blood…This is my body.” For 1500 years no one questioned it was anything other than miraculous. But now we argue. Moreover, the gospel writers no doubt inserted “is”. Jesus either said those words in Aramaic or Hebrew to his disciples.  Neither language has an “is” in usage, rather, it was assumed. (literally “This, my blood.”) But when all 3 gospel writers wrote it down in Greek, they chose “This is…” Greek can either not use an “is” (like caveman talk (“Og dumb”), or put one in for clarity (Og is dumb). There’s no explanation by either Jesus or the writers of this mystery. Just believe the new covenant.  The early Christians weren’t looking to find God, they had found Him, true, mysterious, and a personal Savior.  They belonged to something that doesn’t end but lasts into eternity. Faith was given by the mystery of God who saves us. Before there was a Bible to hold us together, there was the Lord’s Supper.

            But when the faith started to become widespread geographically the temptation among no doubt well-meaning people to teach a few words of their own crept in. The “apostles’ teaching” [doctrine, “didakay”, Greek] was sometimes corrupted into ‘hetero-didiakay’, heterodoxy/heresy.  The apostles then knew they had to write Jesus’ true words down. Formerly, listeners had memorized verbal repetition.  (Even centuries after, Bibles were scarce and memorization was a preferred tool to instill the Word in ones heart.). Men of faith believed the gospel writers were ‘ortho-didakay’ [“straight doctrine”, ‘orthodox’].  Why?  Because the apostles were living by the Spirit and inspired by the Spirit to write and in II Tim. 3:16 Paul claimed it.  That was the third key to why the early church spread.  They lived by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit was there in faith (I Cor. 12:3), prayer (Rom.8:26), supernatural fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5), many special gifts, and the Spirit’s infusion of The Word.  In the Word, believers saw absolute Truth. So what if you don’t understand part of it? So much the better—that’s God!  Modern man demands an explanation and quibbles over the uncertainty of words. Worse, moderns prefer only what they find likely.  But impossibility defines a miracle and requires the Spirit by which we live.

            Fourthly, they were the Body of Christ. Paul’s earliest epistle was Galatians, to dispel the heresy of the Judaizers. But during Missionary Journey 3 he was compelled to stay in Ephesus and saw an explosion of Christian converts.  Without time to return to Corinth where factions had broken out, he wrote instead.  I Corinthians was actually a second letter and he dedicates it to “the body of Christ”.  Moderns have toyed with the Body as just a metaphor. But the early church believed it flat out. The Ascension took Christ to heaven where, in the Godhead, He can exist everywhere. Yet as an undead man, He can also be localized where He choses to be. As such He chose to be in us as His Body on earth--“you are the body of Christ”.  You are then, Jesus with skin on. You’re the only Jesus some will ever see.  And you’re the only words of life some will ever read.  When the Christian ingests Christ’s body and blood in the New Testament communion, there is the stunning guarantee of this.

Thus the early church grew.  Few scriptures, but they had an absolute trust in what they did know and took pains to memorize and etch it in their hearts.  Not relative truths (“well, that’s your interpretation.”), they believed that God imparted real meaning and truth through the words—through His Spirit.  God was no theory, He was ever-present in relationship with them. And He was in their hearts, connecting them to all the world of other believers. If one lives like this, what does it add up to?  It means complete dependence on God, almost like discovering an added dimension that goes beyond space-time. In that dimension, God is remaking the soul and imparting His hunger to bring others who are lost. 

Should the modern church return to its roots?

Hitler's obsession with USA

Hitler’s “Secret Book”(1928-33 journals), published in obscurity after WW II, is telling new things about the diabolical dictator. He was less obsessed about Jews than USA. In his early years, he couldn’t afford a placement in the Vienna School  of Fine Arts, while other richer Jewish kids bought a seat. Hence he became disgusted with Judaism and agnostic.  But in the Secret Book he talked about being in charge of POWs in WW I.  He came off convinced that Germans who had immigrated to America had depleted Germany and enriched USA.  He viewed everything through racial eugenics and Germans were supposedly the Master Race. Eugenics and social Darwinism had been all the rage since 1890 among intellectuals. British were also long-lost Saxons and together with USA, they threatened to dominate the world. 

Meanwhile Germany lagged economically.  USA’s  Great Depression looked like a decent economy to German farmers of the time. Hitler despised the capitalism of USA and UK, so he adopted Mussolini’s socialism. It seemed to him that a Jewish banking culture had ruined Germany when the finance world conspired to cut down the German empire after WW I.

What to do? First Jews and Slavs had infiltrated German stock and he wanted to banish or genocide them.  Historians have mostly focused on this.  But secondly, he wanted an intense effort to raising up a contaminated German people. Central to every aspect of his Third Reich were things like Pure Aryan Art, Hitler Youth, Strength Through Joy athletic events and demands that good Aryan mothers bear as many children as possible. Thirdly there was Lebensraum, “living space”.  The military was rebuilt with clear intent to take over Eastern Europe and Russia as a “frontier” much as USA had taken over native Americans. Hitler had a unique gift to turn rhetoric into hideous reality.  Others decried the Weimar Republic; Hitler destroyed it.  Others castigated Jews for being money obsessed; Hitler planned a Final Solution.  Other politicians wanted a strong Germany; Hitler took over Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

America it seemed to his racial Darwinistic worldview  was economically mighty but culturally degenerate. Jazz, republican democracy, and Wall Street were things he found disgusting.   His hope was to stave off confrontation with America/Britain until 1943, but a miscalculation in starting war in Poland, then Japan’s Hawaii attack in 1941 stopped this delaying plan. Confronted with America’s military, he had no answers.  He distrusted Japan as they did him. As FDR endorsed a “Europe First” strategy and US industry out-produced Germany 5 to 1, the Germanic Darwinian cause was lost.