GOD'S COUNTRY
A THREE VOLUME
CONSERVATIVE, CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW OF HOW
HISTORY FORMED THE UNITED STATES EMPIRE AND
AMERICA'S MANIFEST DESTINY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
By STEVEN TRAVERS
COPYRIGHT © (20011 BY
STEVEN R. TRAVERS
“I don’need ta know history I know now.”
-CHARLES BARKLEY
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to re-live it.”
-SANTAYANA
To not know about things prior to one's birth is to remain forever a child.
To conquer and achieve without contribution is to leave no dent.
RES IPSA LOQUITER
The things speaks for itself; i.e., the things stands on its own.
“Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.”
-THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN
This book is dedicated to my daughter, Elizabeth Travers, because I want her to know the Truth!
GOD'S COUNTRY
By Steven Travers
The United States of America at the beginning of the 21st Century is the greatest, most powerful nation and empire in the history of Mankind! This fact has been reinforced by the events that followed September 11, 2001. The U.S. has achieved effective victory in the War on Terrorism, rendering Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda relatively impotent; achieving total victory over Saddam Hussein; and laid the groundwork for American hegemony in the Middle East. Powerful U.S. Democratic, military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural influence spans every corner of the globe, in a way that no colonizing empire has ever known.
In the second half of the 20th Century, liberals have written the majority of history. Conservatives have been spoon fed the Leftist point of view to us in schoolbooks, from college professors, books, magazines, newspapers, network journalism, and Hollywood. All along, conservatives had a sneaking suspicion that what they were being told did not add up.
Steven Travers, America’s poet-warrior and Renaissance Man – an athlete, soldier, writer, political philosophizer, historian and patriot - has written his magnum opus. He is one of the New Conservatives who have recently decided to fight back and tell the Truth about history and America's extraordinary place in it. He says that we are embarking on the age of the New American Empire, but that it is a "new kind of empire." He writes that this conclusion is based not on vanity but on moral responsibility, and that it is ideas, not military success or occupation, that will shape the new empire of the 21st Century. Travers concludes that America is and will continue on the path of greatness because we are a nation that submits to God's will, instead of succumbing to the vainglorious paganism that has marked too many historical powers. He has taken on the task of outlining how America’s extraordinary place in the world came to be, and details the no-holds-barred, unflinching strategy for the future of America and the world. This is not your average "objective" history book. Instead, it details the facts of the past 3,000 years, interspersed with the slant of a columnist's right-leaning opinion. However, it offers the theory that the so-called "end of history" has demonstrated that the socialist-Communist theories of the Left are the demonstrable losers of history.
Travers boldly poses questions like, "Is it biased to say the New York Yankees are the greatest sports team of all time, or is that simply stating a fact?" His answer is that the statement is not opinion, but fact backed by empirical evidence. He offers that same logic to his dissection of history. America is not hated, it is respected. It is the best country on Earth, but being the best does not generate love. Time after time, conservatism, Christianity and America have triumphed, and this is not an accident or a trend. Rather, to state that this trinity represents the best hopes and aspirations of Mankind is not merely a biased opinion, but rather a simple, accurate description of events that repeat themselves time after time.
If not for the U.S., according to the author, "the world would be one big concentration camp, with German, Soviet, Japanese and Chinese nuclear missiles crowding the skies above us."
“God's Country” is a comprehensive history book, covering Mankind’s triumphs and failures, including the rise of Christianity and a study of all the world’s great religions. Travers gives treatment to the most influential philosophies (giving equal weight to good and evil). Covered are the wars, politics, territorial disputes, cultural influences and dramas that shaped the world, leading to the rise and fall of great empires in Rome, China, England, and France; and the minds of those who are most responsible for great movements, ranging from Athenian Democracy, the anarchism of Rousseau, Thoreau and Emma Goldman, Marxism-Leninism, and finally the ultimate triumph of Jeffersonian Democracy.
The second phase is the history of America, from the Revolution to Iraq. Travers, an unapologetic conservative, boldly offers that America is the greatest country ever conceived by man, and theorizes that the young nation has not achieved this by accident. First, he offers “evidence” that America, from the Founding Fathers to the present day, is a country Divinely Inspired and protected by God, a notion that no doubt drives the liberals crazy! Rather than paper over or justify America’s controversies – the U.S.-Mexico War, Manifest Destiny, slavery, Vietnam – Travers explains each of these events with unflinching honesty, rebuffing the lies of detractors without excusing the human failings that demonstrate that this great country is neither infallible, nor impervious to future threats. The author is able to show the huge advantage that the United States has. Idealistic, intelligent, Christian Europeans who were brave and moral founded the nation, thus inculcating a unique ideal. Geography and natural resources have proven to be of enormous benefit. But most important, by outlining the patterns of history, he demonstrates that the wise men who built America had centuries of lessons to learn from and avoid the many mistakes of history. That is why the Great Experiment is such a resounding success.
Finally, Travers writes that the U.S has "saved” the world and must accept its role as the greatest superpower of all time. He details the wisest plan to make use of this status in a way that will best benefit his country and the world as we enter the new Millennium. “America’s Manifest Destiny” is written from the perspective of his Christian worldview, and an interesting back-story permeates this view. That is the concept that good and evil constantly battle each other. The author outlines his fascinating theories of how the devil has strategized and schemed to gain advantage through a never-ending series of lies, bluffs, false alliances and rear guard actions involving governments, despots, religious, political and military leaders.
"God's Country" also posits fascinating "what if?" theories, including a dissection of John Kennedy's "stolen" Presidential victory over Richard Nixon in 1960. The author offers that had Nixon been in office, the Bay of Pigs would have ousted Fidel Castro and freed Cuba, Nikita Kruschev never would have risked the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Communism would have been halted in Vietnam before that war escalated. He also argues that Communism is worse than Nazism, and details how the Cold War "normalized" it. Travers makes the point that had World War II ended in a stalemate with Adolph Hitler, a Cold War with the German Empire would have resulted in off-shoots of international Nazism that Western appeasers would have dismissed as less threatening than in fact it would have been.
“God's Country” is not your average "history book,” the dry ruminations of a Ph.D. thesis. "God's Country" serves as "one-stop shopping," offering 2,000 to 3,000 years of history under a single cover, while at the same time providing the information with conservative opinion. It used the gathered knowledge of centuries to demonstrate the victory of conservative thought and why America is where it has flourished. It is highly opinionated and filled with personal reflection. Travers contends that the world needs liberals, but left to their own devices with unchecked power, their criticisms of American policies would lead to ruination. The good news, Travers says, is that America is so great even the Left cannot bring it down. Their formulas are untenable in the real world. So even when they come to power, they must govern conservatively because they have viable alternatives. Liberalism has failed and those on the Left have little left except to blame America first. He informs the reader with stories, drama and modern cultural humor, providing a scathing review of unpatriotic Hollywood, the falsehoods of the Blacklist, liberals who find themselves on the wrong side of history, media bias, and how new communications are feeding a public thirsting for Truth.
His fascinating "Reagan Theory" details how Ronald Reagan should be credited with winning the Cold War without firing a shot, and will do more to enhance his legacy than any other retrospective. In the end, Travers outlines the next century, where he sees a battle for the world's soul between liberalism and conservatism. In a chilling "cautionary tale," he details how Communism has found a substitute international ideology which stands at odds with American values. He describes how Plato's "warrior spirit" is a concept that the U.N. and Europe have abandoned for the worse. Travers warns that unless Christianity makes a comeback outside the U.S., Napoleonic mistakes of the past may repeat themselves. The Internet has the potential to disseminate evil on a massive scale.
He is a futurist who makes a surprising observation, which is that the "defeat" of liberalism has the potential of launching destructive forces. Pointing out that Nazism and Communism strove for a "purity" of form, Travers says that the evil specter of White Supremacism and race wars may be in our future unless stopped. After 3,000 years of history, he feels the only way to prevent this catastrophe is through the messy ideals embodied by America, and that it is this great country that was empowered by a loving deity to prevent such a thing. The future of our world, therefore, depends on the success of America.
Also written by Steven Travers
Barry Bonds: Baseball’s Superman
The first comprehensive biography of a man who may one day be regarded as the greatest baseball player of all time, Travers delves into the intensely private, proud mind and ego of the world's most celebrated athlete. This Best Selling book, currently in re-print, available in paperback and nominated for a Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of 2002, examines Bonds' childhood, his high school and college years, his entire professional career, and his relationships with his father, Bobby Bonds, and his Godfather, Willie Mays.
TO ORDER BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN, LINK TO: http://sportspublishingllc.com/book.cfm?id=3
OR CALL TOLL FREE: 1-(877) 424-BOOK
OR SEND CHECK, MONEY ORDER OR CREDIT CARD NUMBER BY MAIL:
Sports Publishing LLC
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FAX: (217) 363-2073
GO TO A MAJOR BOOKSTORE NEAR YOU.
GO TO www.sportspublishingllc.com OR www.amazon.com.
ISBN: 1-58261-488-1
$22.95
Angry White Male
A novel that combines baseball, sex, pornography, Christianity, racial tensions, and all the things that makes life worth living. This is the story of Stan Taylor, a youthful baseball star who never attains the greatness predicted of him, while his boyhood rival, the African-American Billy Boswell, becomes the greatest player in the game. Stan, now a writer, contracts to ghostwrite Billy’s surefire Best Selling autobiography, but a black writer, jealous of Stan, first sets him up to be fired from his sports columnist’s job, then snakes the book deal away from him. When Billy’s ex-porn star wife turns up dead, it first looks like Billy did it, until the cops discover that Stan had an affair with her and planned to “get back” at Billy by co-writing a “tell all” book with her. The twists and turns have just started.
The Writer’s Life (2004)
A complete compilation of all the articles, columns, essays, songs, poems, stage plays, teleplays, screenplays and books by America’s hardest-working and most prolific writer.
STEVEN TRAVERS' YAHOO SEARCH: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Steven+Travers+AND+Barry+Bonds%3A+Baseball%27s+Superman&sub=Search&fr=fp-top
STEVEN TRAVERS' WEB PAGE: http://hometown.aol.com/__121b_CGcgOUHm43yNTzigf53J2ni4PDx4ScfGkWFqoTUQObCsJUA+iZmx7g==
OTHER WORKS BY STEVEN TRAVERS
SCREENPLAYS
Once He Was an Angel
21
The "K" Conspiracy
A Murderous Campaign
Rock `n’ Roll Heaven”
The Lost Battalion
Baja California
Wicked
The Hunter’s Dream
On the Edge
Summer of ‘62
Burning Snow
Blackjack
TELEPLAY
Bandit
STAGE PLAY
The Cool of the Evening
SONGS
You Asked Me to Love You
The One I Love
Puttin’ Up With Me
Never Quit
SHORT NON-FICTION
Broken Wings
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEVEN TRAVERS is the author of the critically acclaimed Best Seller "Barry Bonds: Baseball’s Superman" (www.sportspublishingllc.com), in multiple re-print, now in paperback, and nominated for a Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of 2002. Travers writes for Human Events, America's leading political magazine for the past half century. A former columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and StreetZebra magazine in Los Angeles, he wrote for the L.A. Times as well. Travers is also an award-winning screenwriter and author of the novel "Angry White Male" and “The Writer’s Life”, his complete compilation of all the articles, columns, essays, songs, poems, stage plays, teleplays, screenplays and books written by America’s hardest-working and most prolific writer.
An ex-professional baseball player, Travers struck out 1989 National League Most Valuable Player Kevin Mitchell five times in one night (striking out 15 that game) while pitching in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. He was also a teammate of Jose Canseco in the Oakland Athletics organization. Pitching for the A’s vs. San Francisco in a Major League exhibition game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, Travers struck out the side against the Giants en route to three scoreless innings.
Steve’s suburban California high school team won the National Championship team in his senior year. The 6-6, 225-pound Travers attended college on an athletic scholarship and he was an all-conference pitcher. Steven graduated from the University of Southern California, where he studied in the USC School of Cinema-Television, as well as in the UCLA Writers’ Program.
Steven served in the United States Army during the Persian Gulf War. He coached baseball at USC, the University of California-Berkeley, and for one year in Berlin, Germany. After attending law school, he was a political consultant and a sports agent before embarking on a writing career. His screenplays include “The Lost Battalion” (a true tale of patriotism, valor and Congressional Medal of Honor winners during World War I), “Wicked”, and “Once He Was An Angel”, the story of ex-baseball player Bo Belinsky.
"The defining event of my life is the fall of the Berlin Wall and America's victory in the Cold War," Travers says in explaining his outlook. "Growing up, I did not think I would ever see it fall, but I was a young man when the wall came down, and lived in Berlin for a year shortly thereafter. This experience taught me that the United States can do anything we have the will to achieve, and my studies conclude that astounding achievement is a continuing trend in America's history. This comes with the great responsibility of doing good."
Travers is a sixth-generation Californian who still resides in the Golden State. He has one daughter, Elizabeth Travers, and comes from an old political family. His uncle, Colonel Charles T. Travers, was a longtime Republican advisor to politicians ranging from U.S. Senator William Knowland, Vice-President Richard Nixon, Governor Ronald Reagan, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Tired of the Leftist slant of his alma mater, the University of California-Berkeley, Colonel Travers began the Travers wing of Cal’s political science department, based on the premise of providing fair, balanced study of government, policy and history. It has expanded each year, and today is the most popular source of elective classes at the university.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
GOD'S COUNTRY
Chapter Title
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
BOOK ONE
HISTORY LESSONS FOR A YOUNG AMERICA
A MODERN THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL
THE FORMATION OF DEMOCRACY
The Hindu Vision of Life
Plato's "Republic" applied to modern politics
MACHIAVELLI AND REALPOLITIK
THE ORIGINS OF COMMUNISM
5 INFLUENTIAL CONTRARIANS
Henry David Thoreau: Anarchist?
Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Grand Inquisitor
Anarchism and liberalism
6 HITLER, GANDHI AND THE LIE OF MORAL RELATIVISM
7 CIVILIZATIONS AND CHRISTIANITY
The rise and fall of the Roman Empire
Homer and the Trojan Wars
The life of Christ
Christianity spreads, the Church is formed, and religion takes different shapes
8 THE MIDDLE AGES
The mysterious East
After Rome: Is war the true nature of man?
The Crusades and the political militarization of Catholicism
The Hundred Years' War and Joan of Arc
9 THE RENAISSANCE
10 THE FORMATION OF WESTERN EUROPE
The transformation of Elizabethan England into a modern power
France struggles under the Catholic monarchy
The failure of the French Revolution, the "reign of terror," and the
Napoleonic wars
Dress rehearsal for Communism: 19th Century social revolutions
A DIFFERENT KIND OF REVOLUTION: AMERICA FORMS "A
MORE PERFECT UNION"
The ride of Paul Revere
Lafayette and the American-French alliance
No taxation without representation
The experiment
Our Founding Fathers: George Washington
Our Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson
Our Founding Fathers: John Adams
Our Founding Fathers: Alexander Hamilton
Our Founding Fathers: Benjamin Franklin
12 MANIFEST DESTINY
Indian Wars
13 AMERICA: WHERE SLAVERY CAME TO DIE
14 THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES
Civil War time-line
Battle of Gettysburg
Gettysburg Address
General Robert E. Lee
Ulysses S. Grant
President Abraham Lincoln
15 A MODERN WORLD POWER
"The man in the arena"
The Old West
The Industrial Revolution
William Jennings Bryan
President Theodore Roosevelt
BOOK TWO
THE AMERICAN CENTURY: A NEW KIND OF EMPIRE
Title
PART ONE
SUPERPOWER
World War I
Lawrence of Arabia
The fall of the Ottoman Empire: Lessons of the Middle East
Armenian genocide
The Russian Revolution
V.I. Lenin
The "lost generation"
The Roaring '20s
The Great Depression
PART TWO
MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR CHRISTENDOM
Did FDR allow the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on purpose?
Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazi Germany
The Zionist movement
The "four freedoms"
The gathering storm
Blitzkrieg
The Battle of Britain
The Russian Front
The "rape of China"
Awakening the "sleeping giant"
Dealing with the devil
The Holocaust
Holocaust time-line
The eagle against the Sun
History is written by the winners
Japanese-American internment
General George S. Patton, Jr.
General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell
General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery
The "desert fox"
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Winston Churchill
PART THREE
ASIA AND THE COMMUNIST MENACE
Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan
George C. Marshall
Mao Tse-tung
Korean War time-line
The "forgotten war"
Harry S. Truman
American Caesar
The "soldier of Democracy"
Joseph Stalin
Kennedy and Vietnam
The Kennedy's: American royalty
Lyndon Baines Johnson and Vietnam
LBJ: The conundrum
Vietnam and triangulated global diplomacy
John Lennon sang "Give peace a chance," and Southeast Asia
"imagined" Pol Pot
The age of Nixon
Henry Kissinger: "Dr. Strangelove", Republican Svengali, war criminal or diplomatic hero?
PART FOUR
THE REAGAN THEORY
Time-line of the Cold War and Red Scare
Glossary of Cold War terminology
The gulags: Communism's holocaust
The Venona Papers
Eastern Europe under Stalinism
Democrat Communists sell out Eastern Europe
An interview with Alger Hiss
East German uprising of 1953
Hungarian revolt of 1956
Fall-out of the East German uprising in Poland and beyond
The "church of America": The CIA's covert action in Guatemala, 1954
McCarthyism
Voices of the Left and not-so-Left
Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution
Bay of Pigs
Cuban Missile Crisis
Che Guevara
Nikita Kruschev (1894-1971)
"The Right Stuff"
The nuclear "arms race"
The Cultural Revolution, 1966-76
Prague Spring: 1968
The after effects of Watergate: Détente; the appeasement of Jimmy Carter; the Cold War is "passe" on the Left; the Battle of the Third World; apartheid; the "eve of destruction"
The "church of America": Central Intelligence Agency and the Church Committee
Time-line of CIA covert ops, 1946-1984
South African Apartheid
Russia's "Vietnam": Afghanistan
Lech Walesa and Polish Solidarity
Glasnost, perestroika and Mikhail Gorbachev
Margaret Thatcher: Britain's "iron lady"
Ronald "Dutch" Reagan
Caspar W. Weinberger
President George Herbert Walker Bush
BOOK THREE
AMERICAN HEGEMONY
Chapter Title
1 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
American Gandhi: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Malcolm X
George Wallace
J. Edgar Hoover
2 THE MIDDLE EAST
Israel
Time-line of major events in Israel's modern history
1967 Six-Day War
1973 Yom Kippur War
Menachem Begin, sixth Prime Minister of Israel
Golda Meir
Ariel Sharon
Benjamin Netanyahu
Anwar al-Sadat
Black September: Yasser Arafat's murderers kill Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics
The Iranian hostage crisis
1987 Palestinian Intifada and beyond
Persian Gulf War
WHY THE RIGHT GOES AFTER THE CLINTONS
Vince Foster's murder
The Clinton body count
Time-line of the Clinton Presidency
Clinton raises taxes; "don't ask, don't tell"; Waco, "Black Hawk
down"; Hillarycare
War in the post-Communist breakaway Republics
Rwandan genocide
North Korean nuclear build-up
Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and the Republican
Revolution of 1994
1996 Clinton-Dole campaign
The Monica Lewinsky scandal
The Clinton legacy in the Middle East
The Internet boom, Elian, Clinton's pardons and Democrat
vandalism
"The bitch is back": Is Hillary Clinton worse than Bill?
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
2000 Presidential election
9/11
America's Mayor: Rudy Giuliani
War on Terrorism: Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda
War on Terrorism: The Taliban and Al Qaeda
War on Terrorism: Afghanistan
War on Terrorism: Iraq
President George W. Bush
After terrorism, the next crusade: Africa
THE DOMINANT MEDIA CULTURE, AND THE EFFECT OF SPORTS ON AMERICAN SOCIETY
Hollywood and the McCarthy "backlash"
Talk radio
"Useful idiots" and liberal media bias
Are liberals less patriotic than conservatives?
Our National Pastimes
6 "LET'S ROLL"
Apocalypse now? Drawing U.S. into world conflagration is
terrorist's goal
Arabs and distortions of history
Letter to George W. Bush
AIDS and the devil
The Kissinger doctrine: Self-interest and history are keys to
Middle East diplomacy
One man's take on a new kind of war
The American instinct
The truth about politicians
California
United Nations
George W. Bush, the 2004 Presidential election, and G.O.P
strategy
The next war
G.O.P. policy: Taxes, small government, and other issues
America's Manifest Destiny: A new kind of empire
Christianity
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AUTHOR'S NOTE
As I sit here at my desk in 2004, writing the last words of “God's Country", I envision this to be a "manifesto” for the 21st Century. I find it ironic that that the word manifesto and its derivations can be sourced not just to James Monroe, but to a very unlikely source, Karl Marx. In the 1840s Marx was a German emigre living in such miserable squalor in London that his beloved daughter died from a lack of medical care. It was during this time that Marx wrote “Das Kapital”, and later the “Communist Manifesto”. His political ideas were formulated from the experience of being all but penniless in England during this time. He wanted to find out what was wrong with a system that he might have called Darwinian Capitalism. He set out to find a utopian "workers paradise.”
I make no pretense that my book will create a revolution. My ideas are a continuation of conservative philosophy that has been expounded for many years, especially since 1964. Nevertheless, I would not write this if I did not feel as if I have something new to offer the debate. Marx was a revolutionary. While many of his ideas came from the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marx proposed ideas that were virtually unheard of.
Marx, for all of his misguided ideas, had passion, and while it may be difficult to find two people in the history of the Earth more different than Karl Marx and Steve Travers, I must admit that I admire his passion. Marx wrote because it was "in him.” He had no publisher urging him on, no advance, no promise of a big income. He just had to do it. He was as wrong as wrong has ever been, but is influence on the 100 years that followed his publication cannot be denied.
I see the future as clearly. Only time will confirm whether I am a visionary. It is with visionary zeal that I wrote this book. I find myself in a period of introspection, like Henry David Thoreau at Walden’s Pond, but examination of life is not relegated simply to my personal non-entities, but rather to the political world I live in.
I am not a Ph.D. or a fellow at Heritage, Hoover or Brookings. I do not have an assortment of government grants to study things. This book is not a thesis, nor is it some offshoot of a professorship in which at least I am guaranteed a university press publication which force-feeds distribution of my work to future students.
I am just a guy who reads a lot of books and cares deeply about my country and the world we live in. What I have set out to do is to tell the story of America. How we arrived at its place in the world, from a philosophical, military, economic and political perspective. This requires a study of the great thinkers of the past, applying their ideas to the American Experience. My book looks at the U.S. and the world from a conservative, Christian standpoint, and I make no apology for this.
I also write from the perspective of a man who knows how lucky he is. Not just lucky to be an American, the product of an affluent family and comfortable surroundings, but to live in the times that I do. I am a white male, but this means something substantially different in California at the end of the 20th Century, my formative period, than it does in Alabama in the 1930s. The fact that I have been exposed to a diverse cultural world has been part of what shapes me and makes me a better person. No doubt future generations will look back on my era and find things we do that are distinctly backwards. However, from where I sit, I think history will judge my generation to be a pretty enlightened one. I think the basic morals and things we find virtuous today will stand the test of time.
There are certain elements of virtue that transcend events. One finds great virtue, for instance, among the Confederate soldiers of the Civil War, despite the fact that history proved their cause to be the losing one. As a conservative, I have the advantage of hindsight in examining the origins of my political philosophies. Members of my political class have made mistakes in the past, but since hindsight is 20/20 vision, I am able to improve upon them. Hopefully. This is the duty of every generation, to improve on the past. This does not mean to radically change everything. The quest for understanding the past, and making use of it, lies at the heart of why I am writing this book.
I welcome any and all commentary, good and bad. I can be reached at (415) 455-5971, or by emailing me at STWRITES@aol.com.
STEVEN TRAVERS
Marin County, California
January 1, 2004
PROLOGUE
AMERICAN CENTURIES: THE 2OTH AND 21ST
Who we are.
How we got here.
What history teaches us.
Why America is special.
Where we are headed.
The United States of America is the greatest country in the history of Mankind, but why? To merely boast such a statement is empty unless it is backed by a solid premise, and this is the basis of my proposed historical analysis of my nation and how we came to become the greatest, most dominant empire in world history.
First, I do not believe that the U.S. achieved its status by pure chance. My worldview is based on a Christian perspective, but rather than centering on the concept of the United States as a “Christian nation,” I prefer to look at our advancement as the result of a “guiding hand” that defies denomination. Perhaps it is not meant for us to understand why we are the "chosen nation,” but rather to focus on the evidence that we are without probing into a spirituality that is beyond our ken.
The first evidence of divine guidance comes during the Revolutionary War, a time in which men with much to lose chose, for reasons more often than not against their personal interests, put themselves on the line against King George’s England. This war could have been lost during many periods, yet somehow fate drove us to victory. To consider the intelligence of the resulting Constitution and its lasting importance without believing that it was a Godly document is, to my mind, almost impossible.
The lack of self-preservation that lies at the heart of our Founding Fathers lies at the heart of America’s history. Herein we discern the difference between all other countries and us. While certain diplomats such as Henry Kissinger practiced a European kind of realpolitik, our ultimate purpose has always been one of benevolence. How else to explain that we have achieved unprecedented power so benignly? The U.S. possesses the ability to dominate all others, to turn the globe into a Pax Americana, to enslave and conquer beyond the realm of all previous conquerors. Can one envision the Romans, the Chinese Dynasties, the Soviet Bloc, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, even the British Empire, possessing our weapons and also our restraint? What about modern countries like Iran and China? The question is impertinent in the face of what we know.
So how did we get that way? While the hand of God cannot be discounted, one must consider that timing and the quest for human knowledge has been the weaponry of our good fortune. By that I mean that we had the wonderful hindsight of world history to study and determine what mistakes had been made, and how to improve on the performance of our predecessors.
Using as a model the study of politics endeavored by Dennis Dalton, Ph.D. from Barnard College and Columbia University, we start by examining the Hindu vision of life. At the heart of Hinduism is a four-part "life education” centered on the value of property (capitalism), sensual pleasure, religious duty, and spiritual enlightenment. The study of Hinduism, embodied in the 20th Century by Mohandas Gandhi, contrasts with the study of the Muslim religion. It is impossible not to note this in light of current affairs.
Next, we analyze the cradle of Democracy, Greece after the Peloponnesian War. War is said by the Greeks to be a “violent teacher.” It is a peculiar fact of Mankind that to our worst mistakes has allowed us to gain our greatest knowledge. Socrates proposed ideas that were so radical he was given the hemlock, and his students, Plato and Aristotle, expound upon the lessons of the losing battle with Sparta and the Hindu vision of life. The result, in short, is a view of politics that conservatives can relate to in the modern era.
First, the Greek philosophers disagreed with the Hindu "fourth step,” which was to find personal enlightenment. The Greeks felt that personal enlightenment, while admirable, should be used for the purpose of political contribution. This can be found in the concept of noblesse oblige that is at the heart of the greatest political family today, the Bush’s, and can be contrasted with the Machiavellian concept of power that was Joseph Kennedy’s vision of his Massachusetts dynasty.
Plato argues that politics should be a science that, like Hippocratic medicine, trained professionals to eschew personal ambition and, like doctors, desire to do only good. He felt that Greek Democracy was too widespread, fomenting the mob mentality that Americans, by forming representative government, sought to avoid.
His study of war teaches us that the liberal creativity at the heart of the Athenian military was not a match for the strict discipline of the Spartans, a lesson worth remembering when we contemplate our military as a social experiment instead of a bulwark against our enemies.
The study of Machiavelli is important in trying to understand those who have opposed us over the years. Like the Greek thinkers, Machiavelli arrived at his conclusions in light of military disaster. Italy was in the throes of despair in the years after their Empire had been broken up, and it was the lessons of that fall that Machiavelli applied to his view of political power. We find Machiavelli’s ghost whispering in the ears of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the Clintons – both Bill and especially Hillary. The Republicans have not been immune to the Machiavellian creed. McCarthyism and Richard Nixon’s paranoid "enemies list” carry the Machiavellian touch, and from these periods we find cautionary tales that we must heed or face disaster.
Contrasting the Greeks with Machiavelli allows us to get to the heart of unique American designs, which are to do good. To do good, often at great sacrifice, is a concept perhaps still too novel for those not fully understanding of American values to grasp. In that regard we can offer only patience and continuing example.
Next, I address the politics that co-existed with the United States. This includes the French Revolution and how it was inspired by the American Revolution, but veered so far from that concept. Next, the English transformation from royal to parliamentarian embodied by their Jewish Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. The U.S. influence, embodied by Theodore Roosevelt, is studied as it applies to the eventual break-up of the British Empire and its resulting racial implications.
No study of America is complete without an unflinching look at slavery, and it is here that I propose a revolutionary, bold model that I call “America: Where Slavery Came to Die.” Plato determined that slavery was a natural result of the human condition, and the British colonial view did not veer far from this concept. These values were thrust upon America. Yet somehow, in four score and seven years, the U.S. managed to address a thriving institution that had existed for thousands of years and, effectively, end it. This was accomplished on our shores, using our laws. No foreign power came here, defeated us and told us what to do. Considering slavery’s economic benefits in the South, and the cost of the Civil War, the ending of the "peculiar institution” might be the most compelling example of how we changed the politics of self-interest into the politics of better interests. This is a premise meant to cause some controversy and plenty of discussion, always a healthy result of philosophies and critiques.
How did Communism rise and why was it opposed in America? What did we learn from Gandhi? What lessons did we apply in the post-World War II years? Throughout history, conquering nations had enslaved and colonized. We left Europe and Japan with a legacy of goodwill never seen in the annals of Mankind. Contrast Doug MacArthur with Napoleon, just to start the discussion.
What were the results of McCarthyism? I argue that here we see the true roots of liberal bias. It was a backlash against McCarthy that lies at the heart of a Left wing dominant media culture, embodied by millionaire actors racked with guilt over their good fortune, and a “gotcha” journalistic ethos spawned by Watergate. But why should the Left be the sole disseminators of correct political thought? Where were Ben Bradlee, Katherine Graham and the Washington Post in 1960 when the greatest political crime in American history was being perpetuated? Orchestrated by Joseph Kennedy, the Democrats stole the election from Nixon by creating Texas’ "tombstone” vote and rampant corruption in Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago that rivals…New York’s Democrat Tammany Hall. To study liberal bias carries with it a study of how talk radio and cable television has finally brought about a sea change in the way Americans receive their information. Because of it, the world will never look back. I argue that the current Democrat Party’s days are numbered, in my lifetime. Despite my obvious Republican sympathies, however, this prospect is rife with potential disaster, because a thriving two-party system is healthy.
We will look at the role of the Democrats in the Jim Crow South and how it was the Republican Party that husbanded the region from its racist past into its current thriving, functioning role in our society.
The Cold War is examined herein, and at the heart of my argument is the Reagan Theory, which is based first on an observation of World War II. In that war, over 50 million people perished from the Earth. Some 358,000 Americans died. Yet the country and the world agree that the cost was worth it, to purge society of Hitler and the Japanese warlords. The theory then delves into a scenario worthy of a Tom Clancy novel. The U.S. and the Soviets enter into World War III in 1983. The war lasts until 1989. 50 million people die. 360,000 of them are Americans. Better technology and Divine Intervention bring victory to the U.S. The political result of W.W. III is exactly the same thing that actually did happen! The Berlin Wall falls. The U.S.S.R. is broken up. The Eastern Bloc crumbles. Communism is relegated to the dustbin of history, leaving rogue regimes in North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba to live out their miserable, meaningless existences until attrition takes its inevitable toll. The Reagan Theory asks the question, Would such a result be worth the lives of 360,000 Americans? and posits the notion that a post-World War III world would, like its World War II predecessors, agree that it was.
Except that Reagan and the conservatives who believed, endorsed and fought for him achieved this without the loss of life. Is anything more telling? Still, this notion has never been put forth, so herein I propose a theory that, at its heart, offers a revolutionary new model for looking at history.
Finally, we must ask ourselves who we are today, and what the post-9/11 challenges are. We see history repeating itself. It is America that stands, seemingly alone, ready and willing to do the heavy lifting necessary to rid the world of terror, while Europe, long the benefactor of our protection, reverts to its old notions of self-interest. As Santayana once said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to re-live it.” I might add that America is willing not only to remember the past, but in so doing, we willingly take on the task of shaping a hopeful future.
Lastly, as you read this book and some of my ripe conservative views, I have a message for liberals, conservatives and everything in between and beyond: There is love in my heart for everybody, do not take the politics personally, and in the U.S., we are all Americans.
"United we stand," Abe Lincoln once said. "Divided we fall."
VOLUME ONE
HISTORY LESSONS FOR A YOUNG AMERICA
CHAPTER ONE
A MODERN THEORY OF GOOD VS. EVIL
Americans like to congratulate themselves on what a great country we are. We pat each other on the back because we got it right where others were off the mark. Our Constitution has lasted well over 200 years. We managed to effectively end the institution of slavery as a viable trade between legitimate nations. We have fought wars for the right reasons. Instead of plundering the conquered lands for booty, we re-built nations and endeared ourselves to grateful millions. We managed to create a political and economic model that defied the previous assumptions of men. Our mistakes are placed in the storefront window, not hidden from view. We study our errors and seek to correct them in a way no country has ever done.
Consider Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France in the beginning of the 19th Century. Bonaparte was one of the greatest military strategists of all time, but his strategies failed to take into account important aspects of campaigns. First, aggressive war makes enemies. Second, post-war occupation is a breeding ground for conspiracy.
People are remarkably pliable over time. As generations change, populations get used to their situation. But Napoleon was not much more benevolent than all previous dictatorships. The Roman Empire plundered and enslaved conquered territory, and so did Napoleon. The Romans did bring their culture to distant outposts, and some of the native populations managed to prosper under their command. But mainly populations chafed under Roman dictate. This was not the impetus of the empire’s crumbling. However, benevolent strength throughout their empire could have proven to be the necessary infrastructure of its existence.
This lesson was not learned by Napoleon. He thought he could do better. He attacked his neighbors and looted their riches. He did not institute governments or policies that improved the situations of the defeated nations and armies. Many of the dispossessed multitudes would have welcomed changes that improved their political landscapes.
The British, while the most progressive of the great pre-American empires, made the mistake of treating the populations in their colonies with contempt instead of endeavoring to create respect for law and equality. The one real exception to this was America, where the British viewed the colonists as semi-equals because they came from English stock.
What is important to understand, however, is that the United States has had the great advantage of history, timing and modern sensibilities guiding its destiny. Imagine how much recorded history had passed, like sands through the hourglass, before the U.S. came into being. England had crossed the seas, coming upon strange lands filled with mysterious, dark-skinned peoples. While the precepts of morality and goodness tell us that the English should have treated these populations with respect, it may be too much to expect the English race, faced with their own ignorance, suspicions and religious view of “pagans,” to act out in the manner God would intend. The English, imbued with a superior view of themselves, were not advanced enough to welcome non-whites as equals. Many have tried to blame Christianity for this, but one finds nothing in the Bible, or the teachings of Christ Himself, any justification for this behavior.
Holding historical people responsible for their acts, using modern knowledge, is a standard that few can live up to. There are exceptions, but they are rare. The American Ideal was born from what we knew about the British, but because we were colonists chafing under their authority, it gave us the principles that lie at the heart of our country’s foundation. Thank God for it.
This is not to discount our own dark moments. The slavery experience, and the Indian Wars, in retrospect could have been handled much differently. But slavery did not continue, and the Indian experience was not the holocaust it could have been. What other countries in the 19th Century would have handled the Indian confrontations in a manner substantially different from the U.S.? A reminder of the Spanish Inquisition offers some perspective. The American West was an unavoidable clashof civilizations.
Mainly, the history of America occurs side-by-side with enlightened times. The civil rights struggle, women’s suffrage, and modern religious, political, economic and psychological ideas are part of America’s growth. The question is worth asking, Has the world grown up because of America, or is America the by-product of a grown-up world? No doubt a little of both. This chapters endeavors to place credit where credit is due, by looking at historical figures whose writings and teachings influenced the formation of American political thought.
Dennis G. Dalton is a Ph.D. who teaches a course at Barnard College, Columbia University, called “Power Over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory.” Professor Dalton teaches in a beautiful, non-judgmental manner that seems to be devoid of the kind of political correctness and historical revisionism that colors so much scholarship today.
Professor Dalton endeavors to tell us who we are by examining the giants of political thought throughout history. He uses two major criteria: How important the questions are, and the responses to the questions.
Since America is at its core a Democracy, it seems to make sense that one begins with an examination of Democratic principles. This takes us to the cradle of Democracy, Athenian Greece. But the three great philosophers of Greece, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (and before them, the medical ethicist Hypocrites) did not just come to their conclusions without teachers of their own. Who and what influenced them?
Western political theory generally falls into three broad areas. The first involves the characteristics of human nature and interaction within society. But what drives human nature? Are we a product of internal or external matter? Does reason or passion drive us? Let us cut to the chase. Are people sinful or good? Violent or non-violent? Understanding these questions is as fundamentally difficult today as it was in Socrates’ time. It is the essential question that drives public policy today and in our future.
The attempt here is not just to gain some understanding of these tenets of the human animal. The purpose is to apply what we have learned to a study of the unique American character. The premise of this treatise is an acknowledgement that in the United States, we have made better and more moral decisions for the public good than any previous power. Still, we have not achieved a perfectly harmonious society. The quest for harmony goes back several Millennia. In order to achieve harmony, leaders must find a balancing act between coercive acts of power and the containment of conflict, as outlined by the laws written by institutions. Professor Dalton then asks, or really repeats the question, is social unity achievable? Is it even what we are looking for? Ah, as Shakespeare once said, there’s the rub. This is the nexus of struggle.
What about human rights? The American promise is based on the principle that man has unalienable rights. Legal theory has over the years ascribed the term “natural law” to this concept. It is brought up a great deal today. Natural law was a major part of the questioning of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991. When the inevitable debate occurs over Roe vs. Wade, the abortion decision delivered in 1973, it will be the central theme of this question.
To understand the rights of man, one must address whether a Creator endows his rights. This requires that leap of faith religious people have made. But many do not take that leap. Furthermore, remember that throughout the ages, many people lived under the rule of people who thought they were gods. This premise creates further complicating dilemmas when addressing the question of equality and human rights in the context of social authority.
As somebody once said, the one constant is change. If this is so, should revolutionary thinkers be extolled for endorsing their cataclysmic ideals, or are they just historical conduits of necessity? Inevitable shifting sands of thought? To put it in plain terms, if Socrates, Plato and Aristotle do not come along, does somebody else take their place? Are we dealing with inevitability? If this is the case, one shudders to think that somebody like Adolph Hitler was inevitable.
So the question of dynamics is addressed, in the context of moral leadership and inexorable laws of history. The attempt here is to define some kind of absolute truth that exists as obviously in Athenian Greece as in 21st Century Iowa. Let us call this what it is, the question of good and evil. To determine a kind of universal, enduring code of ethics is to dispute a premise that makes its way around the modern landscape. This is the idea of moral relativism. Is it okay for Palestinian suicide bombers to blow up 50 Israeli men, women and children at a shopping mall, because Palestine has not achieved independence? Is it okay for the State of Texas to put another human being to death because that man killed another human being? Is it okay for a military commander to order his men to shoot into a crowd trying to break up a riot that would cause more casualties than those inflicted in order to stop it?
Are the answers to these questions founded in the realists’ grasp of hard facts, or some higher truth? This question has been framed at times as, What would Jesus do? One finds it difficult to imagine Jesus yelling, “Fire” at a column of soldiers who respond to His command by shooting at civilians, even if they are rioting civilians. If humans can operate on the premise that there is a God, and that the vagaries of life on Earth pale in comparison to an eternity in Heaven, then the quest for truth becomes operational. Perhaps we must simply acknowledge that while we have come a long way, the kind of understanding needed to avoid life’s hard facts is still far beyond our ken. What is realistic is that humans will not do the same things that Jesus did, because we are humans. Asking us to do what He did is not a viable expectation. Jesus had better information at His disposal than we do.
As we look at ourselves in the beginning of the New Millennium, it is important to address the nature of change. We live in a world of newspapers, cable televesion, satellites, the Internet, and information that is readily available to much of the world’s population. Change can occur much faster now than it did 300 years ago. Could the Communist Revolution have survived the kind of available knowledge we have today? National Socialism? Slavery? Or is technology a source of evil? This seems to be a strange question, but the Internet has turned out to be a place where child pornographers and terrorists communicate and readily find what they want. Is there some kind of universal dark message on the World Wide Web? The Web dislocates us from our communities, which have always operated as a kind of bulwark protecting us from ourselves. Believe me, I am a guy who uses the Internet every day. Maybe the Internet is just the way evil operates now. Through back channels. Via subterfuge. No more frontal assaults. I have a theory, based on my faith not only that there is a God, but that there is a devil, and that these forces of good and evil are constantly battling for the Earth. Maybe if the devil wins, that is when Armageddon occurs.
Or, maybe Armageddon has already happened, and we are just living in a post-Armageddon world. World Wars I and II could have been Armageddon. The atomic destruction in Japan could have been Armageddon. Maybe the build-up of opposing forces in the Middle East will lead to Armageddon. There actually is a place in the Holy Land called Armageddon. Maybe we averted Armageddon when we defeated the U.S.S.R. in the Cold War. Maybe the success of America thwarted the devil's Armageddon plans and he was forced into a rearguard action.
Great advances in science do not equate with morality. Look at the world we lived in 100 years ago. We made great strides during the 19th Century in art, culture and political philosophy. The work of Sigmund Freud symbolized a new Modernism, heralding a dawn of understanding among men of goodwill. The United States was an optimistic nation, led by Theodore Roosevelt, making its bid to be a world leader. We had settled the terrible slavery question on our own shores, and the feeling was that we had learned from our mistakes, our wars, and our misunderstandings. Hope sprung eternal.
But one might posit the notion that the devil had a plan. He might have seen the new technologies of the Industrial Revolution, and determined that man would just as likely put them to use for evil as for good. That is what happened during World War I. We ended that conflict and called it the "war to end all wars." We formed the League of Nations and told ourselves that civilized men and nations would keep the peace. The great expectations of the new century had simply been postponed by unfortunate old feuds between ancient European rivals. But evil has a face. It is the face of Hitler and Stalin. It was symbolized for years by the swastika, and the hammer and sickle. In the Roaring '20s, a group of Parisian-based writers called the Lost Generation sensed that the horrors of war had unleashed darkness that was spreading, not receding. The devil discovered, to his great delight, the machine gun, chlorine and mustard gas, the railroad line; these were weapons to further his work. It was heard in the cries of Armenians who died by the hundreds of thousands at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, in a genocide that the world ignored.
How wonderful, thought
the devil. How convenient. A massacre of an entire people, all done
under the color of “military
necessity,” and given the
imprimatur of government respectability. The devil knew then and
there that the selfish people of the world, concerned only with their
own petty national problems, could be duped easily. We would just
stand around while his work was done. The devil set out to find the
most efficient regimes to carry out his plan.
The United States? Naw, said the devil. It would be great if he could get those people to carry out his work. He had had a few successful campaigns in the New World. Slavery. The Civil War. But the U.S. was too Christian, and those Founding Fathers were independent thinkers. Trying to overcome the Constitution was too difficult a task. So the devil looked at the two huge countries hit hardest by the Great War, Germany and Russia. How perfect, he thought. He would pit them against each other, and it would not matter who won. The devil was hedging his bets for both sides.
First, and how perfect was this, the devil planted the seeds of hatred in Germany against the Chosen People of Israel. By almost the middle of the century, over 45 million people were dead. Among them were 6 million Jews, plus another 6 million who died within the camps, and countless soldiers and civilians. Misery, disease, injuries, and displacement. The devil was on a roll, but he was facing his old nemesis, the United States. A chosen nation, given all the extra advantages that God could bestow upon it. The devil might not have expected the U.S. to come out of this latest war so well, but that is what happened.
Damn, thought the devil. Foiled again. Just when it looked like the 20th Century would be his greatest victory, America came along with its principles, its ideals of happiness and equality. The French had espoused these ideals in 1789, but the devil saw to it that greed and retribution would win the day. But these Americans kept doing the right thing.
The devil kept getting his licks in. He managed to divide this beautiful nation, just enough to keep us from achieving our goals in the rice paddies of the Southeast Asia. He smiled when Pol Pot’s minion’s killed millions in Cambodia. But when the Berlin Wall fell, the devil new the old techniques would not work any more. He needed to change the plan.
Now, the U.S. faces new challenges in a new century. Evil is a tricky thing. Like Communism, evil looks for disciples amongst the dispossessed, the losers, and the left-behind. Who better than the Arabs, who contributed little to victory over the Axis Powers, then aligned themselves with the Soviets in one of history’s poorer choices. These are the people who live in Third World squalor. They have occupied these countries for centuries, while the desperate, refugee Israelis moved into their back yard. Within a few years, they created the ultimate in your face: A thriving economic and military power.
The devil knew how to get to these Arabs. He planted seeds of hate, masked in the guise of destiny, within the little heads of Hussein, Arafat, Qhadafi, bin Laden, al-Assad. He found in these small people admiration for Hitler’s Germany. He told them that Der Fuhrer had been doing God’s work by massacring Jews, and that it was their chosen path to keep up the good work. This time, the Jews fought back, armed with better brainpower, moral authority, and partnership with the United States, who were now calling the shots instead of France and the ancient appeasers. The U.S.-Israeli alignment simply said no, and the little men were stopped.
In this new War on Terrorism, we are more and more facing an “enemy” that we call Militant Islam. But is this the real enemy? Is the devil just using the Muslims, a convenient group as it is, to hide his real agenda? He has, it would seem, just substituted the Jewish face, or the Armenian face, with the musky, bearded face of Islam. Something different and hard to understand. The enemy? Just as the Germans learned that the Jew was not their enemy, we will learn the Muslim is not ours. The key is to do it in time, before World War III breaks out in a massive misunderstanding of chaos and anarchy that sounds like the laughter of evil.
Who will say, “Never again?” Who will do the heavy lifting necessary to advance civilization in such a way that the devil retreats and cries “uncle” for 100, 500, maybe even 1,000 years? That is a pretty good guess, pilgrim. The answer: The United States of America.
CHAPTER TWO
THE FORMATION OF DEMOCRACY
My search for the American soul begins with the cradle of Democracy, Athens, Greece during the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. As mentioned in the previous chapter, their search for understanding was based on the teachings of history prior to their times. Professor Dalton has chosen to center his initial study on the Hindu vision of life. It is a very noble vision, pre-dating by many centuries the Muslim religion. A study of Hinduism illustrates contrasts with Islam. It is not my intent to downgrade Islam. The comparison really is worth its relevance when one considers that the two religions coexisted as rivals in India prior to the break-up of the country after achieving independence from Great Britain. Gandhi was a Hindu, not a Muslim. In light of recent developments, as one gains understanding of Hinduism’s core tenets, one might wish that the warped mind of Muslim extremism would have been imbued with some of those tenets. The tide of history has divided the two religions, instead of allowing them to co-exist and benefit one another. Hope remains that some day the twain shall meet.
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