ISRAEL AND 'HUMANITARIAN' RELIEF

Imagine, if you will, that along the Cote d'Azure of France some goodly portion of the Arab population of France -- perhaps rightly inflamed by the secular state's banning of the burkha -- has been running an enclave that includes Cannes. These French Palestinians, once citizens of France, have refused participation in the central (Israeli) government. They and metropolitan France have been at intermittent war for some years, especially since elections on the Enclave brought a more radically Islamic government to power. You may, and should, assume that there are rights and wrongs on both sides, and that the blockaded Enclave is suffering as a result of a French blockade.

Now imagine that five ships are organized to create a propaganda coup by friendly Islamic powers, not to speak of various do-goodies, and that these ships should -- despite endless warnings and alternative offers -- head straight for Cannes and are headed off by French troops (the famous paras) and in the resultant melee, ten allied Muslim men (mostly Turks) should be killed. Would France be condemned?

The parallel is fairly consistent with reality. I know of no tenet of international law that proscribes a sovereign state's defense of its own integrity. The blockade may be poor policy; it may even by some thought to be immoral, but it is certainly not illegal if a state of war exists between the Enclave and France. I have no doubt that there is suffering on both sides, but what state can tolerate being under constant attack? Who would support France if it failed to protect its own citizens?

Since its founding in 1947, Israel has fought many wars to preserve its integrity. It is a tiny country surrounded by hostile states. The Enclave's international 'support' has come only from other Islamic states: and from the academic Left and other elements of the old pro-Arab elements in the UK Foreign Office. Four ships were boarded safely, one was not. Those on board that fifth ship -- does it matter who fired first, when we know who first resisted the boarding? -- knew what the consequences of resistance would be. And resisted.

In a politically correct world, the ensuing brouhaha is predictable and no less wrong.

THE TRoL REVIEW OF OLD BOOKS

Here is a new and untimely feature: taking a look at books that I would guess are not much looked at.



Matthew Josephson: The Politicos, 1938



Lately I've asked a cross-section of friends and correspondents to name US presidents between U.S. Grant and the turn of the twentieth century. The record of correct answers belongs to a gent who was raised in Brooklyn's public schools in a period when kids still got educated. He reeled off four names. Most people are lucky to get one or two -- though Polk is a popular nominee, perhaps because no one can remember a damned thing about him. Wrong, however: his merited oblivion is pre Civil War.



Here is the Rogues' Gallery:



Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley.



It is possible they have been erased from memory because all but one of them (Cleveland) were Big Business Republicans in what constitutes a period of our history -- that of the Robber Barons and the political Bosses -- that we would rather forget.



I re-read these books because I thought I discerned a certain relevance between the aftermath of the Civil War and our own post-1989 world, the connecting thread, in a word, being Greed. As a kid coming to America in 1939, that was not a word I associated with the United States. Generous, yes; Greedy, no. Well, , we've come a long way, Baby!



The chances are that Josephson was a bit of a Lefty. During the New Deal, this was no crime. He is not much a man of words, but of hard facts: how the Republicans struck unionists from the rolls; how it contrived to defeat Andrew Johnson, because he thought the question of Negro suffrage was amatter for the several states; how that block of votes led to a party seizing control of the state, while leaving enfranchised Negroes nothing and sustaining, for electoral purposes, a military occupation of the southern states; how offices were bought and sold; how the thirty years of Republican dominance was maintained by funds handed the party by the trusts in an equable quid pro quo; how petty officials, beneficiaries of party patronage were taxed at election time; how the federal budget was regularly robbed by the party and its patrons -- in other words, all the sordid details of corruption and influence-peddling.

I don't think any of us need to be told that hypocrisy is a much-practiced art -- for politicians, the very heart of the matter is how they will be perceived. Nothing new about that. As professors of cant, few can equal the great Massacusetts abolitionists. On behalf of their mills they could see that the industrial supremacy of the North would best be advanced by the destruction of the agricultural South, hence abolishing its slave-owning economy, in the name of 'freedom', was something that would greatly benefit their own growth. It was a clarion-call of patriotism that did the job, and for forty-odd years, Republicans were nicely able to run the country without the southern-based Democrats: in the name of the Union.

And? you may well ask.

Well, I seem to detect in all that more than a whiff of What is good for General Motors is good for America: especially if we bail out the former and set the lawyers loose on the enemy -- those bloody Asians who actually own our country: a form of conduct which can only benefit the Lawyer Empire based on Tort. Back in the happy days of good business government (not Halliburton but the railroads, the iron barons, the whiskey circle) someone thought up a good caper: take over what is now the Dominican Republic; the only constraint was the notion that it wasn't really worth (financially) taking over. Oh, I am perfectly sure that making BP pay to clean up its mess in the Gulf has nothing whatever to do with the oil interests that governed, and still govern, our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to speak of Iran. Very sure.

Reading old books puts you in old places. I commend the practice.

Next: Felix Frankfurter.

THE SIMPLE ARITHMETIC OF VOTING

There are some very simple facts about the recent UK elections that I think bear reflection; on this side of the Atlantic they are clearly not very well understood.

1. This is a 'hung' parliament, which means that no one party has a clear majority. Despite television's attempt to dumb us all down, UK voters were not choosing between three party leaders, Messrs Cameron, Brown and Clegg, but among 650 distinct parliamentary seats, most of them contested by between six and ten-plus candidates.

2. The final results were, in terms of seats: Conservatives: 306, Labor: 258, Liberal Democrats: 57, Others: 28.

3. In terms of popular votes, the results were: Conservatives: 36.1%, Labor: 29%, Liberal Democrats: 23%, Others: 11.9%.

4. Conclusion: A little over 1/3 of the popular vote is not a democratic mandate for a conservative government. Thus, two possibilities exist: (1) A coalition between one or more parties, or (2) a minority government which can be overthrown by any adverse vote.

5. If popular votes are what counts, then these offer tantalizing possibilities. Assuming that the 'Others', a host of nationalist parties, would split evenly (a big assumption), the two major coalitions possible would be: Conservative 36.1% + Liberal Democrats 23.0% + Others 6% would give Mr. Cameron the theoretical backing of 65.1% of votes cast. The alternative alliance would be: Labor 29% + Liberal Democrats 23% + Others 6%, or 58%. If politics were simple, that would suggest the first alternative would form the government, and in all probability, it will.

Buried in all this simple arithmetic is the main Liberal Democrat argument that the current first-past-the-post electoral system (winner takes all) is unfair. In this, they are absolutely correct. In fact, the Conservative 36.1% of the overall vote produced 47% of the seats; for their 29% of the vote, Labor got 39.6% of the seats; while for their 23% of the vote, the Liberal Democrats got only 8.7% of the seats.

Does this mean that it takes four times as many popular votes to elect a Liberal Democrat than a Conservative. NO! It just means that in a number of constituencies, a shift of a few hundred votes would have produced a far different result.

We are a first-past-the-post nation, and our system is every bit as inherently unfair as the UK system. But ours is a presidential system; the UK's is not. And God bless the UK system for that. The Prime Minister may have a cozy home at 10 Downing Street, but it has no swimming pool in the basement, its own tennis court, Air Force One and the kind of worship and importance we offer our president, worthy or not. When he goes to work, the PM is simply the chair of a cabinet meeting and the titular 'head' of his party. Unlike a president, he does not have to appear among the rowdies of the House or the Nodders of the Senate to advance his legislation.

One might think that Mr. Clegg's troops are the ones with the greatest grievance, and that is indeed so. That is why their part in any possible alliance rests on a 'reform' of the UK electoral system, so that the popular vote is better reflected in the distribution of representatives.

Here, another vital factor comes into play. Under the UK system, and most European systems of Proportional Representation, a government may fall when it is unable to obtain a vote of confidence on a critical piece of legislation, such as the Budget. The US government cannot fall. A president may fail to get his budget (or anything else) passed a dozen or more times; he and his legislators perforce have to work things out. That is because president and legislators have set terms of office, which is something Mr. Clegg would like to see, and I would not.

The UK's current system has its faults, but it also has many advantages: (1) it is very local and therefore responsive to the problems of each constituency; (2) it is fallible, and may readily be punished (by the dissolution of parliament) if its legislation is faulty or out of touch with public opinion -- how many times in the past year wished we could have a snap election and rid ourselves of certain noxious legislators? --; and (3) the absence of set terms means that election campaigns do not start the moment a legislator is elected, but are limited to thirty days, which essentially means that money has far less of a chance to influence the result.

The faults of PR are obvious. Italy, for instance, can be so unstable that as many as three governments may (and have) fall within a month. On the other hand, Italy's president is no monarch: as Messrs Sarkozy and Obama seem to think they are. The Italian president is trotted out to cut ribbons, inspect honor guards, and receive political leaders in search of forming a government -- functions performed ably, in the United Kingdom, by H.M. the Queen.

Could it be that democracy itself has its faults, and that it is, as was famously said, the worst possible form of government except for all the others?

LITERARY MAGAZ,INES

http//thefastertimes.com/fiction/2010/04/27/a-new-literary-magazine-ranking


This is a quite nifty and intelligent attempt to do the impossible.

It started out as a ranking and then became a list. In the earlier version, TRoL managed to be in the fifth tier, which I guess you might call the Honorable Mentions. In the subsequent listing, we are still there.

The author's criteria for selection seem to me sound, at least in part, the question being 'If you were a writer, to whom should you try to flog your merchandise?' The objective of most writers being to get themselves published, notice and (possibly) paid, there are an awful number of variables in the mix, but this is an honest attempt to give advice.

Here are some thoughts on the subject:

1. I don't think Pushcart or O.Hara awards are a sound basis for scoring. I know I wince when I have to send copies to Pushcart, though their hearts are undoubtedly in the right place. At best, publication in Pushcarft (and yes, we have won some, I think), is a sign of competence: not of originality or significance. As for O. Hara, I pass. I know nothing about it.

2. The fundamental error is that the list of magazines is parochial. TRoL is an international magazine. We publish the best literature we can find. Oddly enough, it's been some time since America led in the field, so we have to find mss among the French, the Italians, the Poles, the Russians, the Latin Americans and so on. Most of the magazines listed are pretty monoglot.

3. There is a generational gap among magazines, which is related to circulation, location, gossip and trivia. TRoL is my ninth magazine, and when I look back over a sixty-year career in the field, I think I can safely say that the anthology (Saul Bellow & Keith Botsford: Editors, available from the Toby Press) of this magazine and its predecessors, is ample evidence of our quality. But we are probably not as up to date as some. We just do our work. We don't Facebook or Twitter.

4. There are also peculiarities to TRoL which go unacknowledged in such a listing. We are the ONLY magaz,ine I know of that will publish texts up to book-length; we are the ONLY magazine that consistently revisits, in the Archives section, literature that has been forgotten or unjustly neglected.

5. The purpose of the listing is weighted towards magazines to which writers should submit. We are committed to publishing a magazine in which the intelligent Reader, be he writer or not, can find a sense of discovery.

6. It needs also to be said that in the magazines listed, some are commercial, and most are subsidized. TRoL owes nothing to anyone. We don't have 'student' readers, or juries to select what gets published. We don't apply for grants. One old man does all the work and foots the bill. I guess that makes us, however estimable, relicts.