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He Became the Nation’s Ninth Vice President. She Was His Enslaved Wife.Ronald G. Shafer

By on September 13th, 2023

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/he-became-the-nation-s-ninth-vice-president-she-was-his-enslaved-wife?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

Her name was Julia Chinn, and her role in Richard Mentor Johnson’s life caused a furor when the Kentucky Democrat was chosen as Martin Van Buren’s running mate in 1836.

She was born enslaved and remained that way her entire life, even after she became Richard Mentor Johnson’s “bride.”

Johnson, a Kentucky congressman who eventually became the nation’s ninth vice president in 1837, couldn’t legally marry Julia Chinn. Instead the couple exchanged vows at a local church with a wedding celebration organized by the enslaved people at his family’s plantation in Great Crossing, according to Miriam Biskin, who wrote about Chinn decades ago.

Chinn died nearly four years before Johnson took office. But because of controversy over her, Johnson is the only vice president in American history who failed to receive enough electoral votes to be elected. The Senate voted him into office.

The couple’s story is complicated and fraught, historians say. As an enslaved woman, Chinn could not consent to a relationship, and there’s no record of how she regarded him. Though she wrote to Johnson during his lengthy absences from Kentucky, the letters didn’t survive.

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, who is working on a book about Chinn, wrote about the hurdles in a blog post for the Association of Black Women Historians.

“While doing my research, I was struck by how Julia had been erased from the history books,” wrote Myers, a history professor at Indiana University. “Nobody knew who she was. The truth is that Julia (and Richard) are both victims of legacies of enslavement, interracial sex, and silence around black women’s histories.”

Johnson’s life is far better documented.

He was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature in 1802 and to Congress in 1806. The folksy, handsome Kentuckian gained a reputation as a champion of the common man.

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THE GREAT CRISIS OF OUR TIME: JOHN WATERS

By on August 27th, 2023

https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2023/08/26/great_crisis_of_our_time_975593.html

Nearly 100 years ago, Winston Churchill wrote an essay called the “Mass Effects in Modern Life.” In it he wondered whether the best of human potential had been handed over to assembly lines and machine processes, what he referred to as the “magic” of mass production. “Science in all its forms surpasses itself every year,” Churchill observed. The year was 1925. Churchill had seen a great deal of change in his life. He had lived through the mass sacrifice and suffering of the Great War, the rise of a collectivist ideology in Soviet Russia, and a second wave of industrialization that stretched from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth century. Though science had delivered “material blessings” in “measureless abundance,” the face of society was changing.

Gone were the master craftsmen and creators. Gone were the pioneers and adventurers, whose bold choices spurred the enterprise that followed their discoveries. In the place of “eminent men” was industrial repetitiveness, powerful and productive but lacking in whatever elusive qualities that once imbued the lonely individual with a sense of honor, and an ambition to leave his mark on the world. Modern civilization proved “hostile to the development of outstanding personalities and to their influence upon events.” More artist than politician, Churchill saw through the mysteries of the times and concluded that as man becomes more dominant over science and technology, “the individual [himself] becomes a function.” This tiny speck that is a person no longer thinks of “himself as an immortal spirit, clothed in the flesh, but sovereign, unique, indestructible.” He loses his faith; he loses himself.

Modern life seems depleted of meaning and purpose, writes political philosopher Glenn Ellmers. In his new book The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy (Encounter, 2023), Ellmers explores what went wrong in the American political community over the last 100-plus years, tracing a line from Machiavelli to Nietzsche on to Hegel and then Foucault in search of that rogue strain of thought that produced this modern condition. At less than 100 pages, the book offers no solutions. Instead, like Churchill, Ellmers illuminates the problem: how the individual became part of an aggregate; why “our dignity has no quantitative value.” I spoke with Ellmers about his book and ideas. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

What is the “great crisis” of our time?

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A bit of history never goes amiss. Victor Sharpe (2011)

By on August 23rd, 2023

President Obama’s lugubrious policy of denigrating America whenever he visits developing Third World countries includes craven, mournful apologies for perceived past American sins to some of the world’s worst thugocracies. British Prime Minister, David Cameron, alas, appears to be sinking to the same level in apologizing for alleged British sins.

The Prime Minister was recently in Pakistan — that Muslim nation that has just seen U.N. officials beheaded and scores of people murdered by frenzied Muslim mobs upset at the burning of a Koran by an American Christian pastor.

Of course, burning the Jewish Torah (first five books of the Bible), the Bhagavad-Gita, (Hindu Gospels), the Tripitaka (Buddhist holy book) and the entire Bible itself would never engender beheadings or murders: such horrors are left to the followers of Islam.

But David Cameron has some problems with history, it seems. His words imply that Britain is responsible for all the ills between India and Pakistan — stating that Britain’s, “imperial legacy was to blame for the current conflicts in many parts of the world’s trouble spots.” He continued, “As with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.”

According to Nile Gardiner, Mr. Cameron, while on a trip to Washington last July, 2010, also described Britain as the “junior partner” to America in fighting the Germans in 1940. Are we to understand that Prime Minister Cameron does not know that Britain fought alone once war was declared on September 3, 1939 and that the US did not enter the war until December 7, 1941, and then only because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor?

Again, according to Nile Gardiner, writing in the London Daily Telegraph on April 5, 2011, Cameron’s predecessor, Gordon Brown, had responded to an earlier attack on Britain by Thabo Mbeki, then South Africa’s president, by declaring that, “… the days of Britain having to apologize for its colonial history are over,” and that, “we should celebrate much of our past, rather than apologize for it.”

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Robert Taft: A Senator for All Seasons Paul F. Petrick

By on July 31st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/31/robert-taft-a-senator-for-all-seasons/

Contrary to popular belief, the biggest fraud in American politics is not Rep. George Santos.  Nor is it the not-so-Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren.  Nor is it the “Stolen Valor” Sen. Richard Blumenthal.  It is not even Joe Biden, whose fabulism stretches so far back that Johnny Carson joked about it. 

The biggest frauds in American politics are the 27 “Republican” members of Congress who voted for the obscene $1.66 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill last December, 16 of whom still “serve.”

In stark contrast to their example is the memory of Ohio Republican Sen. Robert A. Taft, who died 70 years ago today — July 31, 1953. 

Among the few outstanding American statesmen and the fewer whose greatness was contemporaneously acknowledged, Taft’s destiny seemed preordained.  First in his class in high school, college (Yale), and law school (Harvard), Taft was the scion of a great American political dynasty and the son of the only man to hold the offices of U.S. president and Supreme Court chief justice. Leaving no branch of government unmastered by his family, Taft scaled the legislative ladder. In the Ohio legislature, he led efforts to reform the state’s antiquated tax code, opposed prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan, and rose to become speaker of the lower house before graduating to the State Senate.  But it was as a U.S. senator that Taft became one for the ages.

Elected in 1938, Taft immediately became renowned for his intelligence, parliamentary skill, and principled opposition to government intervention at home and abroad. Impervious to interest groups, Taft never broke an agreement, especially with his constituents. He was always the man they voted for. Taft eschewed political deception and courageously adhered to his principles, garnering universal respect. 

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The Discovery of Insulin: A Story of Monstrous Egos and Toxic Rivalries Meet the feuding scientists who battled for credit over the discovery of insulin.

By on July 20th, 2023

ttps://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-discovery-of-insulin-a-story-of-monstrous-egos-and-toxic-rivalries?utm_source=pocket-newtab

When Frederick Banting’s phone rang one morning in October 1923, it was the call that every scientist must dream of receiving. On the other end of the line, an excited friend asked Banting if he had seen the morning newspapers. When Banting said no, his friend broke the news himself. Banting had just been awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery of insulin.

 Frederick Banting on the cover of TIME magazine on August 27, 1923. Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo 

Banting told his friend to “go to hell” and slammed the receiver down. Then he went out and bought the morning paper. Sure enough, there in the headlines he saw in black and white that his worst fears had come true: he had indeed been awarded the Nobel – but so too had his boss, John Macleod, professor of physiology at the University of Toronto.

This is a tale of monstrous egos, toxic career rivalries and injustices. But of course, there is another character in this drama: diabetes itself.

According to a 2021 World Health Organization report, about 9 million people with type 1 diabetes are alive today thanks to insulin. I’m one of them, and it was my own shock diagnosis with this condition, just over ten years ago, that first led me to investigate the discovery of insulin – the drug that I would be injecting several times a day for the rest of my life.

‘The Pissing Evil’

Diabetes derives its name from the ancient Greek word for “to flow” – a reference to one of its most common symptoms and for which the 17th-century English doctor Thomas Willis (1625-75) gave it the far more memorable name of “the pissing evil”. But frequent trips to the toilet were the least of a patient’s worries.

Before the discovery of insulin, a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes meant certain death. Unable to metabolise sugar from carbohydrates in their diet, patients became weak and emaciated until, due to the production of toxic compounds known as ketones, they slipped into a coma and died. Even at the start of the 20th century, there was little that could be done for patients with this condition, other than to put them on a starvation diet that might at best delay the inevitable.

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How Jews Fared in 19th Century ‘Palestine’ Before Zionism and Balfour. July 14, 2023 by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on July 14th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-jews-fared-in-19th-century-palestine/

In recent years, Palestinian and other Arab propagandists have claimed that before the Zionists appeared, supposedly intent on taking over by force land “belonging to the Arabs,” the local Arabs in “Palestine” (a toponym not used by the Arabs until the late 20th century, for until 1948 they thought of the area as part of “southern Syria”) had gotten along quite well with the Jews who had been living in the area long before the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers from Europe.

In this version of history, it was only when Jews, having become Zionists, suddenly became land-grabbers, “stealing Arab land,” that the Arabs, quite justifiably, turned on them in self-defense.

This claim is as false as the one that so many peoples in the West accept about Islamic Spain being a splendid example of interfaith tolerance and cultural syncretism. Elder of Ziyon several months ago compiled news reports from the period before the Balfour Declaration, even before the first stirrings of Zionism, to show what had been the real relations of Muslims to Jews in “Palestine.” More on the evidence showing the treatment that Jews had to endure at the hands of Muslims in “Palestine” in the period “before Balfour and before Herzl” can be found here: “A short catalogue of Arab intolerance of Jews in Palestine before both Zionism and the Balfour Declaration,” Elder of Ziyon, April 10, 2023:

There is no doubt that there were some friendships between some Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem and throughout the Arab world, but to use them as evidence of widespread acceptance of Jews as equals or near-equals is not only flawed reasoning but utterly false.

The evidence that Jews were treated horribly is irrefutable.

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America’s Strength for Freedom by Lawrence Kadish

By on July 14th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19801/america-strength-for-freedom

Earlier this month, a Gatestone Institute reader, Goh Heung Yong, submitted a comment in which he noted:

“No one should forget that it was America’s strength for freedom, that freed just about all of Asia from Japanese occupation. Her power for peace liberated half of Europe and kept Stalin’s predatory advance at bay. America still is that shining beacon for freedom and civilized existence.”

His astute observation reveals a number of important insights regarding the historic role of the United States during World War II. While much of our attention is often drawn to the European theater of operations, America fought a two-front war. The Pacific theater was a literal fight-to-the-finish as our Marines, Army, Navy and Army Air Corps created a ring of steel around the Japanese Empire intent on fighting for every square inch of land. America won in the Pacific at enormous cost, and only the use of two atomic weapons finally brought the conflict to an end.

What few Americans appreciate was the path of destruction and litany of war crimes committed by the Japanese Empire throughout their zone of occupation, which included huge swaths of China.

Historians have documented their crimes; these included repeated massacres of civilians and prisoners of war, sexual slavery, human experimentation, forced labor and starvation. While those crimes occurred wherever the Emperor’s soldiers occupied Asia, China bore the brunt of Japan’s assault on humanity. Historians estimate that from 1937 to 1945, nearly 4 million Chinese, mostly civilians, were killed as a direct result of Japanese violence.

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Stranger in Moscow On this date in 1988, Ronald Reagan told Soviet college students about freedom – and the future. by Bruce Bawer

By on May 31st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/__trashed-19/

Thirty-five years ago today, on May 31, 1988, Ronald Reagan, who was in the last year of his presidency and was in Moscow for the last of his summits with Mikhail Gorbachev, delivered a landmark speech to an audience of students at Moscow State University, a hub of scientific and technical research. The occasion was unprecedented, and the speech itself a masterstroke: with palpable enthusiasm, Reagan talked up the ongoing technological revolution that heralded a new information age, and urged the young Soviets to embrace freedom and peace so that they could be part of it:

Standing here before a mural of your revolution, I want to talk about a very different revolution that is taking place right now, quietly sweeping the globe without bloodshed or conflict. Its effects are peaceful, but they will fundamentally alter our world, shatter old assumptions, and reshape our lives. It’s easy to underestimate because it’s not accompanied by banners or fanfare. It’s been called the technological or information revolution, and as its emblem, one might take the tiny silicon chip, no bigger than a fingerprint.

Reagan outlined some of the many ways in which our lives were being – or were about to be – transformed, from weather forecasting to instant computer translations to the mapping of the human genome. All of these developments, he underscored, were products not of government planning but of independent experimentation by individuals, some of them very young people – the near-contemporaries of those Moscow students – tinkering in their own garages. And their achievements, he pointed out, would have been impossible without the gift of freedom – a subject on which he proceeded to expound to that audience of Communist vassals with his customary eloquence:

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream – to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer….

Cognizant that those students had learned the importance, in scientific and technological development, of ingenuity, innovation, and experiment, Reagan cannily played on this learning in his attempt to hook them on the idea of freedom. But he also mentioned other fruits of Western liberty that he knew would appeal to them: for example, he enticed them with the then unimaginable notion that someday, like their counterparts in the West, they might actually be able to spend a summer backpacking around Europe. “Is this just a dream?” he asked. “Perhaps, but it is a dream that is our responsibility to have come true.” In fact, it would come true in three years. Similarly, he floated the idea of sharing U.S. magazines and TV shows with the USSR by satellite. Of course, the Internet would soon make those items, and a great deal more, available to Russians.

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Things Worth Remembering: The Extraordinary Courage of Tatiana Gnedich Condemned to ten years in the gulag, the scholar sat in her cell and translated an epic poem—all 16,000 lines—from memory. Douglas Murray

By on May 29th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-tatiana-gnedich?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Here I am going to break one of my own rules, and dedicate a column to a translator of a poet, rather than an actual poet. I cannot stop myself from doing so. For it is necessary to pause and to say the name of Tatiana Gnedich.

I started this series talking about the significance of one act of memory—that of Boris Pasternak and the thousands of Russian writers in 1937 who knew Pasternak’s translation of Shakespeare by heart. Pasternak was then, as now, a famous writer. His own act of translation and memory cannot be diminished. But if it could ever have been superseded, then it is by a woman who almost nobody in the English-speaking world has heard of.

One of Gnedich’s ancestors had translated The Iliad into Russian, and in the 1930s she looked set to follow in his footsteps. She was studying seventeenth-century English literature at Leningrad State University when the purges began, and the universities were among the institutions trying to oust all enemies of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinism for crimes that shifted by the day.

At a meeting at the university (which she was not at), Gnedich was denounced for having noble ancestry and, what is more, of hiding it. She was indignant at the claim—indignant that she should be shamed into hiding ancestors of whom she was proud. 

So she was thrown out of the university for “boasting about her noble ancestry.” The madness of those days was such that even someone who simply wanted to study the Elizabethan poets could not avoid politics.

At some point, Gnedich was allowed back into the university. With her mother, she moved into a small wooden house in Leningrad. During the siege of the city, from late 1941 to early 1944, her mother died and their house burned down. 

In December 1944, she got it in her head that even entertaining a desire to go to Britain was an act of sedition. She confessed to this, was duly put on trial, and sentenced to ten years in the Gulag.

While in jail awaiting transfer to a faraway Gulag camp, an interrogator asked her why she didn’t use any of the books that she was entitled to in the holding cell. She replied: “I’m busy. I don’t have the time.” 

Busy with what, the interrogator asked. 

“I’m translating Byron’s ‘Don Juan,’ ” she told him. 

The interrogator realized that she was doing it from memory. 

“But how do you remember your final version?” he asked her. 

Gnedich agreed that this was the hardest part, “especially now that I’m approaching the end. My head is too full to remember anything new.” 

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The FBI Was Created by Napoleon’s Grandnephew History takes some odd twists and turns. by Daniel Greenfield

By on May 9th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-fbi-was-created-by-napoleons-grandnephew/

History takes some odd twists and turns.

This particular odd twist began when Napoleon tried to build a dynasty out of less-than-ideal stock. His brother Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte lacked his talent for winning battles, running a country or doing much of anything. After disgracing himself during a naval command, he fled to America and married an heiress.

Jerome had a son, but remained a spineless weasel. After trying and failing to talk Napoleon into accepting his wife, he agreed to divorce her and marry royalty. Jerome failed miserably as a prince, wasted money, lost battles and was a disaster. Meanwhile, his son, also Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, grew up in America. Jerome had two sons, Jerome II and Charles ‘Charlie’ Joseph Bonaparte. Both men made a better show of the family name than their absent deadbeat prince of a dad had. Jerome II became a successful fighting man while Charlie wound up in Teddy Roosevelt’s cabinet as Attorney General Charlie Bonaparte or Charle the Crook Chaser.

Charlie Bonaparte created the Bureau of Investigation which would later become the FBI.

Napoleon’s grandnephew created the FBI originally to fight leftist anarchist terrorists. As organized crime took off, the FBI’s mission shifted more to what we know it as today, combating interstate crime.

And for those who accuse the Bureau of overreach, it was created by a Bonaparte.

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