This is a mostly encore post, emphasizing George Washington’s astounding ability to draw from history just exactly the right lesson, and then set the example that makes history.
Washington, though having never attended college, was an inveterate reader, and a sharp student of history. Early he read the story of the great Roman, Cincinnatus, who made the Roman Republic great with his refusal to lust for power. Cincinnatus twice was named Dictator, and both times resigned the commission rather than personally profit as others did — after saving Rome both times, of course.
In his own life, Washington also twice cast off the mantle of top leader, once when he resigned his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army when so many assumed he would just keep on, and add the title of “King of America;” and the second time when, as president, he stepped aside and retired, leaving the leadership of the nation up to the Constitutional processes that had never before been tried successfully in any nation.
Washington’s resignation from the army command came on December 23, 1783 — such an important anniversary usually gets lost in preparations for Christmas, so I’ll post it a bit early. In your holiday toasts, lift a glass to George Washington, who gave us civilian rule, an end to monarchy, and an example of responsible leadership making way for peaceful succession.
Washington had been thought to be in a position to take over the government and declare himself king, if he chose. Instead, at some cost to himself he personally put down a rebellion of the officers of the army who proposed a coup d’etat against the Continental Congress, angered that they had not been paid. Washington quietly asked that the men act honorably and not sully the great victory they had won against Britain. Then Washington reviewed the army, wrapped up affairs, journeyed to Annapolis to resign, and returned to his farm and holdings at Mount Vernon, Virginia.
Because Washington could have turned into a tyrant, it is reported that King George III of England, upon hearing the news of Washington’s resignation, refused to believe it. If the report were true, George is reported to have said, Washington was the greatest man who ever lived.
Washington’s resignation set precedent: Civilian government controlled the military; Americans served, then went back to their private lives and private business; Americans would act nobly, sometimes when least expected.
Worrying about education on Labor Day, with good reason — I get e-mail from the woman who would make a great lieutenant governor in Texas:
Queridos Amigos,
As you light up the grill and enjoy some well-deserved relaxation with family and friends, I hope you will take a moment to reflect on a question I like to ask myself every Labor Day.
We forget how indebted we are to a brave group of forgotten heroes, all of who were labeled troublemakers in their day. They bucked the status quo, stepping out of line to stand up for the dignity of every human being. Their bravery was often met with a baton, or the butt of a pistol, but they showed that the human spirit can not be silenced.
Their names seldom make the history books, but we owe these troublemakers for many of the blessings we take for granted today —including the 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, vacations, and child labor laws.
This past Saturday a group of over 30 volunteers joined my campaign team to go door-to-door in Brownsville, Texas. I want to send a special thanks to County Commissioners John Wood and Sophia Benavides, as well as Jared Hockema, the Vice Chair of the Cameron County Democratic Party for helping inspire the crowd.
Stirring up their own brand of trouble, they got South Texas parents to sign the “Linda Chavez Thompson Today, Tomorrow and November 2nd Pledge” — pledging to do more to help kids succeed in school, to stand up for candidates who support education, and pledging to show up a the polls on November 2nd.
Today millions of jobs are being created in science, technology, engineering and math. But instead of investing in education so our kids can compete for these jobs, Rick Perry and David Dewhurst and have led the Texas economy to the greatest share of minimum wage jobs.
We can do better. And in real conversations in Brownsville, Texas, parents and grandparents told us time and again they want more for their kids.
Teachers make great trouble, as everyone knows — which is why Socrates was condemned to death, why Booker T. Washington is so feared, and why the world’s greatest democrats always support education — like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson, to mention a few education-supporting presidents.
Strike a blow against ignorance: Give a few bucks to Chavez-Thompson’s campaign, or sign up to help out if you live in Texas.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Not really, but it feels similar. Starting Monday I’ll be leaving seventh grade US History for the high school and Civics, Free Enterprise and World Geography.
I like the parish in which I teach. My principal, not so much. While she’s a micromanager and extremely disorganized, I’m very independent and CDO (that’s OCD in alphabetical order, like it should be). As a teacher, my only request from administrators is to be left the heck alone. I have the best test scores in the school, I have no discipline problems, I’m never absent, the students like me and their parents like me. With those credentials, I figured any sensible principal would be more than happy to leave me be and go worry about stuff that actually needs attention. Not so at my school. I actually had a written reprimand placed in my personnel file because I abbreviated the days of the week on my lesson plans. That’s just one example.
It’s a good read, about why a good teacher would abandon students and leave his principal in a fix, mid-year.
First I’ve heard of this film: “759: Boy Scouts of Harlem,” a film by Jake Boritt and Justin Szlasa.
Have you seen it?
2010 is the 100th anniversary of Scouting in the U.S. This film is not officially a part of that celebration — but expect to see more like it. This film was produced independently, with approval from one Scout council, but entirely independent from Scouting otherwise.
Would this make a good recruiting device for your troop? Why or why not?
Perhaps one of the Scouts in your troop, working on the cinematography merit badge, might be inspired to make a film like this about your troop.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, oil on canvas painting by Aaron Shikler, 1978 - Wikimedia image
Beginning in March 1974 I had the great pleasure and high honor of interning with the Secretary of the Senate, Francis R. Valeo. Valeo served because of his close relationship with the Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, and working in Valeo’s office put one on the Mansfield team. In an era before serious security with magnetometers in Washington’s public buildings — we didn’t even have photo identification cards then — Mike Mansfield’s signature on my staff card got me anywhere I wanted to go in Washington, including the White House.
People who knew Mansfield held him in very high regard. I often tell people he was the best politician to work for, but in reality, he’s probably the best leader I ever worked with in any enterprise. He respected every senator as a representative of the people of one of the 50 states, and that respect was returned.
In his office one afternoon he met with the a couple of members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the big bigwigs from the Pentagon. Mansfield was a former sailor, marine and soldier — he had served in the Navy, Army and Marines. He lied about his age the first time. He had served in China and the Philippines, producing a life-long interest and deep expertise in U.S. affairs in the Pacific and Far East.
But this was 1974. Mansfield had turned against supporting corrupt Vietnamese politicians early in the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Originally a supporter of Nixon’s policies, by 1974 his opposition to the war was the chief part of their relationship. Still the military guys loved him. An Army Colonel accompanying the group was anxious to explain to the young intern part of the mystique.
“You should see Mansfield in the formal meetings. Everybody is always introduced, and their full rank is laid on the table. ‘General Muckamuck. West Point ’33, Columbia Law. Admiral Bigship. General Soandso, who recently got his third star.'”
“And then they get to Mansfield. He’s the Senate Majority Leader. And he introduces himself as ‘Mike Mansfield, Private First Class.'”
I asked Mansfield about it later. He smiled, and said he might have done that a time or two. He said that the big brass in the military need to remember as every senator does that they work for the American people. Rank doesn’t make you right, he said.
Looking up a minor fact on Mansfield this morning I ran into this statement, which I’d never heard [quoting now from Wikipedia]:
This gentleman went from snuffy to national and international prominence. And when he died in 2001, he was rightly buried in Arlington. If you want to visit his grave, don’t look for him near the “Kennedy Eternal Flame”, where so many politicians are laid to rest. Look for a small, common marker shared by the majority of our heroes. Look for the marker that says “Michael J. Mansfield, Pfc. U.S. Marine Corps.”
Remarks by Col. James Michael Lowe, USMC, October 20, 2004.
The burial plot of Senator and Mrs. Mansfield can be found in section 2, marker 49-69F of Arlington National Cemetery.
For the sake of accuracy, I would like to know the occasion of Col. Lowe’s remarks, and who Col. Lowe is. The link at Wikipedia is dead. Does anyone know?
In the first of the 2008 debates between presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain pointed to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s two letters, written on the eve of the D-Day invasion in June 1944. One letter would be released. The first letter, the “Orders of the Day,” commended the troops for their work in the impending invasion, giving full credit for the hoped-for success of the operation to the men and women who would make it work.
The second letter was to be used if the invasion failed. In it, Eisenhower commended the troops for their valiant efforts, but said that the failure had been in the planning — it was all Eisenhower’s fault. (It was not a letter of resignation.)
In a few short sentences, Eisenhower commended the courage and commitment of the troops who, he wrote, had done all they could. The invasion was a chance, a good chance based on the best intelligence the Allies had, Eisenhower wrote. But it had failed.
The failure, Eisenhower wrote, was not the fault of the troops, but was entirely Eisenhower’s.
He didn’t blame the weather, though he could have. He didn’t blame fatigue of the troops, though they were tired, some simply from drilling, many from war. He didn’t blame the superior field position of the Germans, though the Germans clearly had the upper hand. He didn’t blame the almost-bizarre attempts to use technology that look almost clownish in retrospect — the gliders that carried troops behind the lines, the flotation devices that were supposed to float tanks to the beaches to provide cover for the troops (but which failed, drowning the tank crews and leaving the foot soldiers on their own).
There may have been a plan B, but in the event of failure, Eisenhower was prepared to establish who was accountable, whose head should roll if anyone’s should.
Eisenhower took full responsibility.
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troop, the air [force] and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.
Who in the U.S. command would write such a thing today?
It was a case of the Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, taking upon himself all responsibility for failure.
McCain has called for the resignation of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which he points to as part of his plan for accountability. The analogy fails, I think. The proper analogy would be George Bush taking blame for the current financial crisis. In his speech earlier this week, Bush blamed homebuyers, mortgage writers, bankers and financiers. If Bush took any part of the blame himself, I missed it.
I wonder if McCain really understands the Eisenhower story. I still wonder: Who in the U.S. command would write such a thing today?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I will never forget when [Franklin D.] Roosevelt announced that we would build thirty thousand fighter planes. I was on the task force that worked on our economic strength, and we had just reached the conclusion that we could build, at most, four thousand. We thought, “For goodness sake — he’s senile!” Two years later we built fifty thousand. I don’t know whether he knew, or if he just realized that unless you set objectives very high, you don’t achieve anything at all.
BusinessWeek cover, Why Peter Drucker’s Ideas Still Matter; November 27, 2005
–Peter R. Drucker (November 19, 1909–November 11, 2005), in interview with Bill Moyers, 1988
Students and faculty at Devry University in Irving, Texas, and a few hundred others who knew him, lost a great friend when Michael Field died the day after Thanksgiving.
His memorial service last Saturday at Arlington’s Unity Church was filled with warmth and laughter as a dozen people remembered Michael’s verve and the joy with which he pursued knowledge, beneficial change, and good social interaction.
In my experience, psychologists come in three varieties: Crazy, eccentric, and real solid people. Michael was a pillar for a lot of people, able to be so solid because he enjoyed the crazy and eccentric, but was not controlled by it. I think the man never met a book or problem he didn’t relish in some way. No fewer than five people testified that Michael was, as a member of some group they nominally led, the guy who sparked great action. That was my experience, too.
It’s been nearly a decade since he left the board of a charitable institution we both served. I was lamenting that we had no one else like him when I learned of his death. Literally dozens of students at Devry told me how Dr. Field pushed them to be better and happier, when I taught there as an adjunct.
Listening at his service Saturday I was inspired again to climb back into the fray. The band of brothers is reduced — several bands, actually — but there is so much to do.
What have you done today to make the entire world better? Michael’s gone. We all have to work harder.
We’ve got the thunderclouds of a recession heading our way. We’re in the midst of a housing foreclosure crisis that is tragic in its dimensions. We’ve got forty-some-million people without health coverage. And the city of New Orleans is still on its knees.
So you tune in to the G.O.P. debate on CNN to see what’s what, and they’re talking about — guns.
To solve the problem, we have to admit we have a problem. Talk about guns doesn’t even get close to what the problems are.
This quote actually isn’t a quote. It was never said by the man who wrote it down to say it. It carries a powerful lesson because of what it is.
A few days ago I posted Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s “order of the day” to the troops about to conduct the Allied invasion of Normandy to establish the toehold in Europe the Allies needed to march to Berlin, and to end World War II in Europe. As a charge to the troops, it was okay — Eisenhower-style words, not Churchill-style, but effective enough. One measure of its effectiveness was the success of the invasion, which established the toe-hold from which the assaults on the Third Reich were made.
Eisenhower wrote a second statement, a shorter one. This one was directed to the world. It assumed the assault had failed. In a few short sentences, Eisenhower commended the courage and commitment of the troops who, he wrote, had done all they could. The invasion was a chance, a good chance based on the best intelligence the Allies had, Eisenhower wrote. But it had failed.
The failure, Eisenhower wrote, was not the fault of the troops, but was entirely Eisenhower’s.
He didn’t blame the weather, though he could have. He didn’t blame fatigue of the troops, though they were tired, some simply from drilling, many from war. He didn’t blame the superior field position of the Germans, though the Germans clearly had the upper hand. He didn’t blame the almost-bizarre attempts to use technology that look almost clownish in retrospect — the gliders that carried troops behind the lines, the flotation devices that were supposed to float tanks to the beaches to provide cover for the troops (but which failed, drowning the tank crews and leaving the foot soldiers on their own).
There may have been a plan B, but in the event of failure, Eisenhower was prepared to establish who was accountable, whose head should roll if anyone’s should.
Eisenhower took full responsibility.
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troop, the air [force] and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.
Who in the U.S. command would write such a thing today?
The message may also be viewed here. Yes, it’s incorrectly dated July 5 — should have been June 5.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Churchill speaking at the Albert Hall in London, 1944, at an American Thanksgiving Celebration. Churchill Centre image
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense!
The first step to maintained equality of opportunity amongst our people is, as I have said before, that there should be no child in America who has not been born, and who does not live, under sound conditions of health; who does not have full opportunity for education from the kindergarten to the university; who is not free from injurious labor; who does not have stimulation to ambition to the fullest of his or her capacities. It is a matter of concern to our government that we should strengthen the safeguards to health. These activities of helpfulness and of cooperation stretch before us in every direction. A single generation of Americans of such a production would prevent more of crime and of illness, and give more of spirit and progress than all of the most repressive laws and police we can ever invent — and it would cost less.
Who said it? Who prescribed such a “socialist” plan for our children? John Dewey? Hillary Clinton? Answer below the fold.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
