YESTERYEAR: 1938 -- A YEAR OF CRISIS!

By Edwin Cooney

I guess you are pretty old if you recall announcer Fred Foy’s weekly invitation at the beginning of “The Lone Ranger” episodes on the radio to “....return with us now, to those thrilling days of yesteryear.”  If so, welcome to the club!  If not, lucky you!  However, that’s exactly what I’m inviting you to do this week.

“Yesteryear,” this week’s focus, is the year 1938 which began on a Saturday.  President Franklin Roosevelt was in his second term.  America’s population was about 129,000,000. The average income in 1938 was $1,730, average rent was $27 a month, a new car cost $763, hamburger was 13 cents a pound, and a new house cost $3,930.

Nineteen thirty-eight, like every other year, had its share of memorable events.  Future baseball Hall of Famer Willie McCovey was born on Monday, January 10^th and the great “attorney for the damned” Clarence Darrow died on Sunday, March 13^th.

The year 1938 was filled with challenges and crises.  On Wednesday, June 22^nd heavyweight champion Joe Louis (a black man) knocked out the only man who had ever beaten him, Adolf Hitler’s favorite Aryan boxer, Max Schmeling, in the first round at Yankee Stadium.

On Thursday, July 14th, Howard Hughes set a new record flying around the world in 91 hours.  Flier Douglas Corrigan, who was denied the proper license to fly to Europe by the government, nevertheless landed in Dublin, Ireland on Monday, July 18th.  He explained himself by insisting that he had meant to fly from New York to California but mistakenly flew eastward instead.  Hence, for the rest of his life he would be remembered derisively as “Wrong Way Corrigan.”

The same day Louis defeated Schmeling, Congress passed the Chandler Act which established procedures making it possible under Chapter Eleven for citizens and corporations facing bankruptcy to settle their debts rather than face liquidation of their businesses.

It was on Saturday, June 25^th, that FDR signed the Wagner Act also known as the Fair Labor Standards Act. It permanently legitimatized the rights of workers to unionize and seek fair wages and safe working conditions.

Wednesday, September 21^st saw an unusually severe hurricane make landfall in New England causing some 700 deaths and millions of dollars in property damage.  The storm hit without warning from the National Weather Service and some 63,000 people were left homeless.

On Sunday night, October 30^th, NBC scared millions of Americans by broadcasting Orson Welles’ play “War of the Worlds,” as though it were a news story.  After all, the next day was Halloween, wasn’t it?

On Thursday night, November 10^th, (the eve of the twentieth anniversary of Armistice Day), Kate Smith sang Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on her NBC radio show for the first time.  However, the crisis that made all other events seem small by comparison, due to its long lasting effect on the give and take of future international diplomacy, occurred 75 years ago today, September 30^th, 1938, in Munich, Germany.

To avoid the threat of immediate war, in the “wee hours” of that Friday, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French Premier Edouard Daladier, Italian Duce Benito Mussolini and German Chancellor Adolf Hitler agreed to cede the northern section of the twenty-year-old Czech Republic to Germany.  (Czech President Edvard Beneš wasn’t even invited to the Munich conference.) The location for this four-power conference was the Führerbau (or Führer’s headquarters).  In return, Hitler agreed to make no additional territorial demands in Europe.  Prime Minister Chamberlain’s proclamation upon his return to London that he’d achieved “...peace in our time” proved a pathetic failure in less than six months. The immediate reaction outside of Czechoslovakia was very popular although there were misgivings in some very significant quarters.

The most long lasting effect of the Munich agreement, way beyond even the devastation of World War II, was its anti-appeasement lesson.  Most people are convinced that the two reasons Neville Chamberlain conceded Czechoslovakia to Hitler were his fear of war and his naiveté.  Even worse, tradition insists Chamberlain was outfoxed by Hitler.  I, too, had accepted that scenario until I read former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s biography entitled “A Journey: My Political Life.”

Blair insists that Chamberlain wasn’t fooled by Hitler’s charm nor did he fail to recognize Hitler’s “badness.” According to Mr. Blair, Chamberlain fully understood Hitler’s evil madness. 

However, what Chamberlain had no way of knowing, insists Blair who has carefully read Chamberlain’s diary covering that time, was how extensive Hitler’s badness and madness might be. Thus, Chamberlain sought to contain Hitler thereby allowing him to simply remain in place.  As times changed so would Germany, Mr. Chamberlain clearly believed.  It has since been revealed that there was a scheme at that very time in the German military to oust Hitler if he gave the go ahead to move militarily into Czechoslovakia.  The scheme was led by General Ludwig Beck, Hitler’s Chief of Staff, who had written a memo to Hitler back in May warning him that Czech forces along the German Czech frontier were exceedingly powerful and could be injurious to the security of the German Reich.  Although forced to resign his post, Beck, ironically, lost the essential momentum for his scheme when the Munich agreement was made and Hitler could walk into Czechoslovakia unmolested.   (Note that Ludwig Beck’s opposition to Hitler was more practical than moral. Still, the courageous Beck led the famous July 20^th 1944 bomb plot that nearly killed the Führer. Obviously, Beck had to pay for that plot with his life.)

Tony Blair believes Chamberlain’s mistake was to ask himself the wrong question: “Can Hitler be contained?”   The question Chamberlain should have asked according to Blair was whether Fascism was sufficiently strong and dangerous enough that it should be immediately uprooted.  Nor does Blair take Chamberlain off the hook. After all, leaders, Blair writes, must always ask the fundamental question.  Chamberlain’s question wasn’t naive, it was simply too narrow.

Whether you and I buy the traditional interpretation of what took place in Munich 75 years ago is less important, I think, than the truth of a much larger reality.  No tactic, whether it be called containment, appeasement or aggression, is always either wise or foolish.  No American president, not even Ronald Reagan, sought to overthrow Communism.  Although some political conservatives called it appeasement, American foreign policy was about containment.  Not even aggression always has its “price.” After all, Presidents Reagan and George.H.W.Bush invaded Granada and Panama with minimum cost just as the Soviets invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia with minimum consequences.  Between 1947 and 1991, America and its allies contained Communism which is exactly what Chamberlain sought to do with Nazism and Fascism.    As I see it, Munich taught us no lesson nor established no guide for handling international crises.  For me, however, Munich represents a larger truth than any lesson can possibly teach.  The successful overcoming of every crisis requires the application of principles that respond best to the fundamental question that the crisis is asking.

With the political climate of 1938 Europe teetering on the edge of war, the drama of the Munich conference of Yesteryear 1938 was certainly thrilling.  If only the “masked man and his Indian companion Tonto” had been available to prevail, what a different world today would surely be!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE MYSTERY OF THE MATTER OF WHY!

By Edwin Cooney

The question is so compelling, it’s almost instinctive!  Yet, as a psychological or spiritual aid, it is almost useless as an immediate antidote to our concerns.  The question I’m referring to is “why?”

Adult -- “Okay little one, it’s bedtime!”

Little one -- “Why?”

Adult -- “If you sleep well tonight, you’ll be strong tomorrow!”

Little one -– “Why?”

Adult -- “Because little boys and girls need rest to grow big and strong!”

Little one -- “Why?”

Adult -- “Well, because we’re made that way!”

Little one -- “Why?

Adult (under his breath, of course) – “Damn it! Monday Night Football starts in ten minutes and I haven’t even gotten out the beer and potato chips yet, and it’s almost kickoff time. So, your ass is gonna be bedridden for a good twelve hours or be as red as a beet if you don’t slide under those covers right now!”

Out loud the adult says -- “Because daddy loves you and wants you to be big and strong.  Besides, mommy will be very sad when she gets back from her knitting class if her little sweetheart isn’t sleeping!”

That last answer is a “why” inquiry that a little one understands because a sad mommy cries when her sad little one does.  The other answers, true as they may be, are irrelevant.  After all, young children generally respond to feelings, not reasons.  The main reason children ask “why” is because adults ask them “why” even before the word has any meaning to them.  “Why” is invariably puzzling to both adults and children.  However, it doesn’t take long for smart children to discover that adults often pause when “why” is asked of them.  So, when asked to do something a child doesn’t feel like doing, the child seeks to puzzle the adult caretaker with that magical, wonderful “why” defense.

So compelling is the “why” inquiry that we carry it as almost the first question we apply to problems we encounter as romantic, parental and even as professional adults.  The most exasperating aspect of “why” is that it is seldom that the correct or most helpful answer applies to the immediate point of frustration, anxiety, or despair.

I’ll never forget a conversation I experienced with a lady when I was fourteen years old.  She was telling me of the loss of her husband’s sister to cancer and neither she nor her husband could imagine “why” God had taken her sister-in-law from them. “Esther was so good she was practically a saint,” the lady told me. “It couldn’t be because God was testing us because we’re all dedicated Christians and we understand that we must surrender to God’s will. Why do you suppose God took her?” she asked me.

As you can imagine, I had no answer for her agony in my repertoire of teenage wisdom!  Still, “why” is the first question that haunts the jilted lover, the abandoned spouse, the bereaved brother and sister-in-law or the person who doesn’t get a certain job.

I’ve come to realize, in the wake of a lifetime of myself making the “why” inquiry, how often we seek to wonder “why” when we aren’t ready –- or even more to the point –-aren’t even willing to hear the answer to that question.

“Why” is a powerful planning tool to be applied to conditions facing us as we apply strategies to conditions we seek to accomplish, but the “why” inquiry almost never eases either anger or sadness.  Why Britain lost her American colonies, why slavery was written into the constitution, why Lincoln freed the slaves and was ultimately assassinated, why civil rights took so long to be realized, why people become liberal or conservative, why people are gay or lesbian, why economic theories are so elusive in problem solving: these are all academic or instructional rather than conscience-easing or heartbreak-mending.

Ultimately, “why” isn’t really an inquiry. It’s often an emotion-laden demand.  As such, it usually provides little balm to the inevitable outrages that engulf us.

During happy times, “why” is a wonderful inquiry as it allows the mind and heart to imagine way beyond the likely, almost all the way to the realm of the impossible.  Questions such as why does she love me? why do I love her? why is life so wonderful? are not really “why” inquiries.  Inquirers who are happy realize from deep within that they’re not seeking anything.  After all, they’re sipping from the chalice of supreme gratification.

In stressful times, the “why” demand remains as useful as a knave, as inappropriate as a slave and silent as the grave.

As a demand, “why” sounds and seems compelling. As an answer, there’s little significance in its telling!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

BECAUSE THEY’RE AFRAID!

By Edwin Cooney

A little more than a week ago, I received the following email from a reader:

So many of the conservative talk show hosts seem to truly hate Barack Obama, a visceral, gut-wrenching hatred that seems to go so far beyond just disagreeing with his policies.  By extension, I feel that these people also hate me.  Why do you think their hostility goes so deep, so far beyond just political disagreement?  Are they truly so filled with hatred for people like Obama, plus you and me, that is, the have-nots, or, is it all acting, shtick and charade?  Any thoughts?

Before offering my response, I must tell you two things.  This reader is a friend of mine.  I’m glad to have his inquiry as it gives me license to do a bit of expounding — so here it goes.

First, having been interested in both history and politics since the 1960’s, I’ve done my own fair share of political hating and finger pointing.  I can remember the days when just the letter combination LBJ drove me batty.  My attitude for Hubert Humphrey, a man I’ve since come to love and admire, was downright contemptuous.  In recent years however I’ve forced myself to find something admirable about most members of the political opposition, although I find it painful to offer much of my respect for many radio and television talk show hosts — with some ideological exceptions.  (To paraphrase the great conservative communicator Ronald Reagan, “there I go again!”)

Conservative and liberal talk show hosts invariably reflect the hopes, fears and values of their constituents.  So, you may well ask, what is it that they reflect?

For the first century or so of our existence as a republic, between 1789 and 1900, we lived in a largely agrarian society not nearly as dependent on a cash economy as we are today.  Public issues had more to do with occupational matters such as:  the benefits of high verses low tariffs, the settlement of public lands, and our “manifest destiny.”  Even civil rights issues such as slavery or the displacement of Native Americans had little direct effect on the way people lived their personal lives.  Finally, with the dawning of the twentieth century, government began dealing with such issues as the purity of food and drugs, the need to control the hitherto unregulated prerogatives of corporate capitol and the rights of working men and women.  (The nation was shocked in September of 1902 when Teddy Roosevelt involved himself in the settlement of the Anthracite coal strike.)  Government, after all, had never, up until then, dealt with a specific economic crisis — even going so far as to legitimatize a labor union!

Since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, government has become increasingly involved in social affairs to the gratification of liberals and to the chagrin of conservatives.

When I was growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, most Americans identified themselves politically as Republicans or Democrats.  However, since the turbulent 1960’s with LBJ’s Vietnam conflict “credibility gap,” Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover up, Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, Jimmy Carter’s incompetence, Ronald Reagan’s arrogant snubbing of the poor, the international adventurism of two Bushs named George and the personal conduct of Bill Clinton, the character of our national leadership has moved to center stage.  Add to all that the existence of such issues as black civil rights, abortion, and gay and lesbian marriage, and one can readily see how Republicans and Democrats turned into conservatives and liberals.

Conservatives and liberals have two things in common.  They’re proud of themselves, not so much for what they’ve achieved, but mostly for what they believe in.  Second, they’re deathly afraid of each other.  Even the partial success of one diminishes the other.  Subsequently, and neither fully yet realizes this, in their sureness of their moral superiority they’ve become contemptuous and intolerant of anyone who challenges their dogmatism.  Thus, their devotion to liberty takes second place to their sense of self.

As for the current occupant of the White House, to probably the vast majority of conservatives the very name Barack Hussein Obama smacks of devotion to world values and priorities over American values and priorities.  Hence, everything from his birth to his very name labels him and those who support him as less than American.  As for the color of his skin, they’ll insist they don’t notice it, but they squirm and scream when he publicly identifies with the fate of an unarmed black teenage boy who was assaulted by a man with a gun while walking to the home of a friend on a dark February Florida night.

Ultimately, I resist the idea that conservatives hate my friend, the poor or even President Obama.  What I am sure of however is that they fear the three of you, who you are and what you believe in.  They have come to allow your agenda to diminish them.  Let them be who they are, and you go right on believing what you believe but keep in mind the following:.

As logical, sincere and even patriotic as your beliefs and values may be, understand that the legitimacy of liberty is based on the likelihood that the beliefs and values of others are as crucial to our future well being as your own!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

LESSONS – ALWAYS LESSONS TO BE LEARNED!

By Edwin Cooney

For the past few weeks, you and I have been chewing our fingernails up past the elbow wondering what to do about the Syrian government’s apparent practice of chemical warfare against its own people. Should we be doing anything?  Is it any of our business what any sovereign government does to its people?   If so, is it exclusively America’s business what other nations do to their rebels? Do other nations have the right to concern themselves with the way our government treats you and me?

Next, there’s the matter of consequences.  Are the rebels against Bashar al-Assad good guys or bad guys?  Come to think about it, we’ve been wondering the same thing about the opponents of the Egyptian government.  As bad as Bashar al-Assad is, might he be overthrown by a fundamentalist Islam faction that could be as dangerously hostile to us as either Al-Qaeda or as the Iranian government has been since 1979?  If so, might we be better off keeping “hands off?”

Even liberals are wondering what their president is up to.  They’ve twice elected Barack Obama believing that he, unlike his predecessor, shared their reluctance to engage in what they regard as “international outlawry" and now they’re not quite so sure that he does.  Since at least 2011, President Obama has administered international executions using Special Forces: Osama Bin-Laden was killed on May 1^st, 2011 and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi (with the assistance of NATO) died on October 20^th, 2011.  Additionally, as a part of our assistance to Afghanistan, he has authorized the launching of drone attacks not only upon Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, but also on American citizens residing in that part of the world who were suspected of aiding terrorist organizations.  Now, he’s apparently considering some kind of “shock and awe” missile strike against Syria in the tradition of every president since Jimmy Carter.  Even worse, the Obama administration appears to be as secretive about its domestic information gathering activities as were either Bush or Ronald Reagan. Hence, lately even liberals are asking that old question: what is this country coming to?

I would be misleading you if I even suggested that I knew the answer to that question. However, there are some invaluable lessons in our history books which we would ignore at our peril.  So, let’s take a look.

Through the Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln left us, as his legacy, the expectation of the advancement and perpetuation of human freedom.  In order to do that, however, “Father Abraham” suspended some constitutionally guaranteed rights such as habeas corpus and freedom of the press during the Civil War.  In May of 1863, Mr. Lincoln even had Clement Vallandigham, a former member of Congress, arrested for his antiwar activities which were conducted near military bases in southern Ohio.  The lesson here, as I see it, is that human rights are absolutely essential only so long as they guarantee the preservation and expansion of human liberty.

On March 4^th, 1933, the day he was inaugurated as President, FDR asserted to a demoralized and panic-stricken nation: “The only thing we have to fear is – fear itself...”  That pronouncement proved prophetic.  On February 19^th, 1942, although both he and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover initially insisted that Japanese Americans weren’t a threat to national security, FDR caved in to the political pressure (mainly from west coast Republicans who included California Attorney General Earl Warren) and signed Executive Order 9066.  That order authorized the internment of those who were Japanese and living on the west coast whether they were born in Japan or in the United States.  The lessons here are multiple.  First, truth and logic aren’t necessarily the same.  While it may be logical to believe that Japanese Americans, or Arabic Americans, or Islamic Americans may be loyal to native countries, cultures or religions, that doesn’t prove that they truly are.  Second, political pressure in a democracy is generally both essential and healthy, but that doesn’t guarantee the wisdom of its effect.  Third, fairness and equity are as vulnerable during wartime as human life itself.

It’s my guess that President Obama doesn’t really want to launch any kind of an attack on Syria and is gambling on the possibility that a combination of isolationist Republicans and liberal Democrats will not approve his request for authority to do what he really doesn’t want to do.  Perhaps the Israelis have informed him that if he doesn’t take action they’ll fill the “leadership vacuum” which Great Britain and the U.S. are vacating in world affairs.  (Note: on Sunday, June 7^th, 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in defiance of world opinion.)  It may be in our best long term interests not to intervene in Syria’s domestic affairs.  After all, if we intervene in the Syrian government’s domestic options, can we ever really complain if another country intervenes in our affairs in defense of a religious or ethnic American minority?

Yesterday, today and tomorrow are alike in two significant ways.  There are always things to be wondered about and there are always new lessons to be learned.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

I GUESS IT’S UP TO US!

By Edwin Cooney

Last Wednesday was the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for jobs and freedom.  The march was conceived by A. Philip Randolph.  Randolph opened the ceremony which was attended by an estimated 200,000 people and viewed on television by millions more.

A lot of Americans including Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (then a Democrat who became a Republican when the party abandoned civil rights as a worthy issue), Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona (who would receive the Republican presidential nomination in 1964), Malcolm X (who referred to the march as “the farce on Washington"), and a seventeen-year-old know-it-all by the name of Edwin Cooney didn’t think the march was either necessary or that it would ultimately be significant.

Last Wednesday, fifty years later, a whole mess of people (some of the most prominent Republicans and Conservatives) still felt that the original march and especially last Wednesday’s celebration were not only unnecessary and insignificant, but downright nettlesome.  I heard a local Conservative talk show host categorize President Obama’s address as “a brilliantly arranged plate of crap.”

I, who now believe that it all did matter, celebrated in part by listening to a recording of the original ceremony.  The first voice on my recording is that of A. Philip Randolph.  (Asa was his given first name.)  He was a remarkable man.  Born in 1889 in Crescent City, Florida, Randolph was an early labor union organizer.  The son of a Baptist preacher, he spoke the English language as you’d imagine an Old Testament prophet would have done had Old Testament prophets spoken English. Randolph was 74 years old. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day, he said in his deep rich voice to the estimated 200,000 people who were gathered there:

“We are not a pressure group. We are not a mob. We are the advanced guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom. This revolution reverberates throughout the land touching every city, every town, and every village where black men are segregated, oppressed, and exploited. But this revolution is not confined to the negro or civil rights. For our white allies know that they can not be free while we are not. And we know that we have no future in a society in which six million people, black and white, are unemployed and millions more are living in poverty...”

The 1963 March on Washington for jobs and freedom wasn’t the first march on Washington that Randolph had conceived.  Back in 1941, Randolph, who was then president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, had threatened such a march if President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t do something about racial discrimination in war industries.  So, he and Walter White, then the president of The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, paid the thrice-elected president a little visit.  In exchange for not exposing what would have been an embarrassing sign that America, even in a milder form, shared with Hitler’s Germany an abiding human prejudice, FDR agreed to sign Executive Order 8802 which was called the Fair Employment Act.  The act, however, merely banned discriminatory hiring practices against blacks by firms profiting from federal war production contracts.

After Randolph, John Lewis spoke. He was then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  Just 23 at the time, Lewis would be severely beaten on “Bloody Sunday” (March 7^th, 1965), as he and Hosea Williams led 600 demonstrators across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the first leg of a proposed march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.  He currently represents the people of Georgia’s 5^th Congressional District and is the only speaker of that occasion still living.

Lewis was followed by Whitney M. Young Jr., Executive Director of the Urban League.  Young would go on to serve as president of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and to work productively for three presidents: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.  Young died on March 11^th, 1971 while swimming in Lagos, Nigeria. President Nixon not only sent a plane to bring his body back to his home in Kentucky, but he also eulogized Young at his funeral.  During that eulogy, the president said, “[Whitney Young] knew how to accomplish things that other people were merely for.”

Roy Wilkins, Executive Director of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), next urged the Congress to be as brave as civil rights marchers, as daring as the nine black children who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas back in 1957 and as forthright on civil rights issues as North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford -- although he didn't specifically mention Sanford by name.

Then it was Dr. Martin Luther King’s turn -- and men and women all over the world have had a dream ever since. 

Dr. King was followed by Bayard Rustin, the Executive Director of the Congress of Racial Equality.  As a gay man, Rustin wasn’t welcome by some within the civil rights leadership.  A. Philip Randolph had conceived of the March on Washington, but Rustin had organized it.  Still, according to one source I read, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP resisted Rustin getting any publicity at all for the event.

The Reverend Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, who had served as president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia since 1940, closed the ceremony.  His most famous student was Martin Luther King.  Therefore, it was fitting that Dr. Mays not only closed the ceremony, but also delivered the eulogy at Dr. King’s funeral on April 6^th, 1968.

Despite the passage of legislation knocking down the legal barriers blocking the realization of a myriad of human rights and opportunities since that historic occasion, there are those who will insist that such legislation had nothing to do with the March on Washington for jobs and freedom.  Furthermore, they will insist that the march shouldn't have mattered, since the prosperity of a free people is none of the government’s business.  At the same time, there are those who will trivialize the significance of both yesterday’s and today’s gatherings because there are so many gains yet to be made.

Hence, whether either yesterday or today really matters is ultimately up to us.  That means you and me!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY