On this day in 1801, John Marshall was sworn in as the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. His greatest legacy is Marbury v Madison. It’s important because it is more or less where the Supreme Court being the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution came from. When I first read about this in school, I thought it was great, because we were in that period when had a decent Supreme Court. But as is well documented in Ian Millhiser’s excellent book, Injustices, the Supreme Court has generally used its power in the most pernicious of ways.

The Supreme Court found itself in a difficult situation. Jefferson was president (Madison was Secretary of State). The administration was wrong to deny William Marbury his appointment as Justice of the Peace. You see, Adams had appointed him, but there was a mix-up, and Marbury never got his papers. Well, since it was an Adams appointment, and he and Jefferson were basically at war with each other, there was no way he was going to make good on it. The problem was, if the Court found for Marbury, Jefferson would just ignore it, turning the Court into a powerless bureaucracy.

So John Marshall came up with a trick: the Court didn’t have the authority to do anything to help Marbury (even though it claimed that the actions of the administration were wrong), but it did have the authority to interpret what the Constitution meant. So the Supreme Court managed to increase its power at the same time that it claimed it couldn’t help a relatively little guy caught in the middle of a fight between titans. Is that not America in a nutshell? We can always find ways to help the powerful become more powerful. But the weak must make it on their own.

On this day in 2007, the Baghdad market bombing killed at least 135 people and injured over 300 others. It was a suicide bombing and and is generally considered part of the Iraq War. Obviously, it was a result of the Iraq War.

But wait! Wasn’t it a suicide bomber?! Wasn’t it a Muslim who did it? Doesn’t that mean that it was all — or almost all — due to the fact that the Quran says you gotta kill the infidel or Sam Harris or something?

Of course, these weren’t actually infidels. This was a Muslim attacking and killing a bunch of other Muslims. It was certainly part of the war that we started between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites. So definitely it was part of the war. The one we started. Did I say that?

But wait! Doesn’t the fact that this guy was willing to kill himself mean that he believes in an afterlife with 72 virgins and all the ice cream he can eat?! Isn’t that itself an indictment of Islam? Doesn’t that mean it is a religion of war and hatred for our freedoms?

Well, there have been cases where Americans took part in suicide missions during wars. Certainly the guys at the Alamo could have surrendered. They might have been thinking that their belief in Jesus would provide them with even more orgasms than one would get from the 72 virgins and, of course, the requisite ice cream for eternity.

Or maybe not. Maybe these guys just really believed in what they were fighting for and were willing to die for it. I don’t agree with it, but there are a lot of reasons people are willing to die — often in the service of killing others.

But wait! Isn’t it true that all of the people commonly called Islamophobes are really just saying that religion plays a part in all of this?

No. The Islamophobes only start throwing around caveats when they are talking to people like me. When they are around each other, they show their true colors and admit that they would vote for Ben Carson over Noam Chomsky. Because a fundamentalist Christian Islamophobe is better than non-religious intellectual who doesn’t have a knee-jerk hatred of Muslims.

But the 2007 Baghdad Market Bombing proves we’re right! Go team!

On this day in 1946, the first Yugoslav Constitution came into effect. It was patterned after the Soviet Constitution. It reminds me of something a couple of years back when some idiot like Michele Bachmann stated that Obama only cared about upholding the communist constitution. Something like that. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that a lot of people think that authoritarian regimes had terrible constitutions. They rarely did.

The Soviet constitution was great. As Justice Antonin Scalia said, “The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours.” Those that fetishize the Constitution are idiots. It’s just a document. And it means what we collectively say it means.

This also reminds me of the Second Amendment idiots who think that it’s their guns that will stop the government from turning into a tyranny. If it gets to the point of us having to protect ourselves from the government, then we’ve already lost. Think about the people at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. A truly tyrannical government would just fly a drone over and blow it up. Problem solved!

Societies don’t stay free because of old documents and stockpiles of firearms. They stay free because the people stay engaged in the process. Every time someone opens a voter’s pamphlet, they are helping to save this republic. Every time someone listens to a political debate, they are helping to save this republic. The greatest threat to this republic and to every other free country in the world is apathy. By the time a Hitler or a Stalin or a Pol Pot comes to power, the fight has already been lost.

We all need to remember that. If Dick Cheney were dictator of the world, he would have all kinds of pieces of paper telling you how free you are, just like the Yugoslav Constitution. And he’d allow you to have your guns. Because he wouldn’t have to worry about them. His position would be solidified by something far more powerful.

On this day in 1701, two feudal lords met. Asano was the weaker of the two and he was visiting Kira. Kira treated Asano very poorly for uncertain reasons. This led to Asano attacking Kira, wounding him slightly. However, to attack a feudal lord in his own home was consider the gravest of offenses, and Asano was forced to kill himself. This made all of his hundreds of retainers lose the title of samurai and become ronin. Forty-seven of these ronin plotted revenge against Kira, killing him exactly two years later. Then the 47 were allowed honorable deaths. That is the story of the 47 ronin. It is perhaps the most famous story in all of Japanese art, having been rendered in painting, literature, and theater. It’s been made in movie form countless times.

Given this, I had always assumed that it was just a myth, but it really happened. It is generally now seen as an act of honor, but certainly at the time, opinion was mixed. Ultimately, it is just a tale of revenge. “They raped our queen, so we raped their city, and we were right!” Even the story we have leaves it open to interpretation. It matters quite a lot if Kira had a good reason to be rude to Asano.

But it does show an amazing amount of loyalty. And for those who believe in hierarchy, the act is laudable at least on those grounds. And the attack was successful in the sense that it allowed Asano’s heir (his younger brother) to re-establish his feudal reign. And the other ronin were allowed their titles back (basically, allowed to make a decent living). Still, a lot of people died.

In the film Ronin, there is a wonderful scene in which the great French actor Michael Lonsdale tells the story of the 47 ronin. It is in the context of honor among thieves. Lonsdale’s character seems to know that Sam (Robert De Niro) works for the CIA. He is making the case that the ultimate master is not the employer but that sense of honor. Sam at least pretends not to understand, but then Sam is not a very interesting character. Ultimately, Lonsdale has nothing to worry about because Sam is an American Good Guy™. The story of the 47 ronin is much more complex, even if American screenwriters have begun playing with it.

On this day in 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed thus ending the Vietnam War. What I think is important about it is that it wasn’t actually the end. This is the sort of thing that everyone should be more aware of. Obviously, it was more than two years later before American troops were actually removed from South Vietnam. But the more important issue is that these things don’t just stop.

In particular, it is inconceivable that the Khmer Rouge would have come to power in Cambodia without the war. And that government was responsible for the systematic murder of roughly two million Cambodians. That’s a quarter of the population. When you look at Hitler or Stalin in proportional terms, they were nothing compared to Pol Pot. It was the most horrific genocide in the history of humanity. It’s hard to even imagine.

Of course, it wasn’t primarily the American carpet bombing of Cambodia that did it. It was also about various other things having to do with the central conflict in Vietnam. In particular, the Khmer Rouge got support from the North Vietnamese government. It seems ironic that it would be the very same Vietnamese government that overthrew the Khmer Rouge just four years later. It’s also amazing that the regime was able to kill that many people in that little time.

I am generally of the opinion that war is a science. There is little about it that is mysterious. Given a particular situation, the vast majority of military leaders agree on how to proceed. What is not a science — what is a total mess — is the wider ramifications of war. Carl von Clausewitz’s statement bears repeating, “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means.” If we could see that war is, in fact, a form of diplomacy, we would do much better. But too often, we see a dichotomy that doesn’t exist: diplomacy is for wimps and war is for real men.

I imagine Iraq in 2016: Saddam Hussein still in power. The situation isn’t wonderful, but it isn’t terrible. ISIS, in as much as it exists, is far smaller and more contained. And roughly a million more people are alive. “Winning” the Iraq War was just the beginning of its very negative consequences.

The Paris Peace Accords were important. Sunk costs are suck costs. But it is better to make the decision to not start the war.

On this day in 2003, as part of Human Shield Action to Iraq, 50 volunteers left London for Baghdad to act as human shields in order to stop the impending invasion of Iraq. The group was led by Kenneth O’Keefe — an ex-marine who has since been involved in many similar political actions. By the time of the invasion, the group is thought to have been several hundred strong. Because of their small numbers, they decided to spread themselves out at strategic locations around the country. The whole thing got very complicated, in part because the volunteers wanted to stop the war but were in no way supportive of the Hussein government.

I have two thoughts about this. The first is that those involved in Human Shield Action to Iraq are the most heroic people in the world. I’m constantly amazed that people think serving in the US military is a sign of bravery. Why don’t these people serve in tiny militaries that have little hope of winning? The US military is roughly the size of every other military on earth combined. Signing up to be on the most powerful team isn’t an act of bravery, although I don’t put down people who join the military. There are reasons to do so. But we shouldn’t talk of heroics.

My second thought on this matter is just how naive Human Shield Action to Iraq seems. I don’t know what the people involved in the effort actually thought. But they did get attention. I do remember hearing about the group at the time. But did they really think that the likes of Bush and Cheney cared in the least about killing these people? This was a war of their choice to make them feel brave after being so clearly cowardly during the Vietnam War. None of the men who have sat in the White House cared about all the people they killed. They justify it as being part of the greater good. But for those two, it’s a whole other level.

Regardless, they were brave people. And of the 80 who spent the entire war there, none were killed. The same, of course, can’t be said of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who were killed in that cowardly war.