On this day in 1776, Nathan Hale officially became a spy for the colonists against the British troops. Two days later, he was sent behind enemy lines. Less than two weeks later he would be dead. He sent back no intelligence. So really, he is only a national hero because he was foolish enough to volunteer for this crazy assignment. He definitely never said, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.” And he probably never said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

But what if he had said it? It is just as stupid and harmful as, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. As Patton said in the movie, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” Making war romantic is always a bad idea. And Hale’s life, death, and legacy are nothing but the romance of war. If he had been older, he doubtless would have understood that. There is no glory in war once you’re dead.

On this day in 9 CE, Arminius led the German tribes to totally destroy three Roman legions at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. As you all know, I’m not all that keen on the Germans. And really, it isn’t the Nazis. Well, I don’t know. The truth is that over the last decade in Europe, they have been as big a bully with their economic power as they were with their military power under the Nazis. But I suppose the main problem I have with the Germans is that they are so much like the Americans. Regardless, I like that the Germans put their differences aside and kicked some Roman butt.

The more I’ve learned about the Romans, the more they seem very much like fascists. I know: people have to be judged by their own times. But how far does that really get you? I mean, the Greeks came first, and they were not nearly as brutal. So I think there really was something wrong with the Roman Republican and then Empire.

Anyway, I could write a summary of this most famous battle. Buy why when you could just watch this great episode of Terry Jones’ Barbarians, “The Savage Goths.” You have to remember that Jones has an ax to grind. Basically, he thinks it was the Romans who were the real barbarians. And he is mostly right.

[I wrote this last year for Labor Day. And I think it is great. If you didn’t read it then, you really should read it now. It tells the history of the holiday and about the people who suffered so we could all enjoy it. -FM]

Happy labor day, comrades! Do you know why labor day is today and not on May Day — International Workers’ Day? Well, it’s because of the commies and anarchists. President Grover Cleveland was afraid of associating the international worker movements with the American movements. Of course, Cleveland wasn’t all that keen on the labor movement. But he made Labor Day a national holiday! Why? Because he was trying to make nice after totally screwing up in the government’s response to the Pullman Strike.

This is an interesting but totally typical story. The Pullman Company made railroad cars. Following the Panic of 1893, Pullman lowered worker wages. There is nothing especially wrong with this. It can be much better than laying workers off. Of course, Pullman did lay off workers. It probably only lowered wages because it had an excuse. But all that was probably okay.

The problem was that the workers lived in a company town. They paid the company for rent and food and more. But when the company lowered wages, it did not lower the cost it was charging workers for their necessities. The workers were, not surprisingly, unhappy about this situation. But George Pullman refused to lower his company town prices and refused to even arbitrate the matter.

Notice the situation here: Pullman thought that his workers should suffer because of the bad economic conditions. But he didn’t think he should suffer at all. During the first years following our financial crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble, there was endless repetition that what the country needed was “shared sacrifice.” But if you dug down even a little into these pleas, you saw that it was all sacrifice by the lower classes — none by the upper. For example: we heard constantly that we had to cut Social Security, but we couldn’t even mention raising the payroll tax cap. (That would be class warfare!) The bankers were bailed out without much fuss but homeowners were just left to their foreclosures. And there were large cuts to social programs but only a tiny increase in the very top marginal tax rate and only because it was going up anyway.

More desperate than we are today, many of the workers joined Eugene Debs’ American Railway Union (ARU). And they went on strike. It got ugly. Union members eventually stopped railroad service in a number of places. Then Grover Cleveland used the interruption of mail delivery to justify sending in federal troops. This did eventually end the strike — at a loss of 30 striker lives and almost twice as many wounded. This is generally the way it goes.

The government does not like organized labor. It is too much of a threat to the status quo. When organized, workers have enormous power. That was why, in 1947, we got the Taft–Hartley Act, which outlawed “jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns.” And after that, Reagan savaged unions and basically made the remaining union rights void through lack of enforcement.

In 1894, of course, the government was scared. Grover Cleveland and the rest of the government wanted to make nice with organized labor. They probably had Louis XVI of France in mind and were trying to hedge their bets. So only six days after the strike ended, Cleveland signed the legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

As for old George Pullman, well, a national commission was appointed to look into the causes of the strike. It found Pullman culpable and said his company town was “un-American.” In 1898, the company was forced to sell off the land, which became part of Chicago. It didn’t matter to George Pullman, however; he died the year before.

After the strike, Debs was arrested and charged with conspiracy to obstruct the mail. You know: it wasn’t enough to have your strike crushed; Debs was a little man and so the government needed to crush him too. But Debs was represented by one of the great heroes of that period: Clarence Darrow. Darrow argued that Debs didn’t conspire to do anything and that it was the railroad that conspired against the workers. This is something that doesn’t seem to be understood by my libertarian enemies who almost to a man hate unions: if workers aren’t able to organize, it isn’t fair; the company management is very organized.

The prosecutors saw they were going to lose the case, so they dropped the conspiracy charge. Debs was later convicted on the lesser charge of violating a Supreme Court injunction and was given six months in jail. Although he entered jail what we might call a liberal, he left a socialist. While in prison he read a whole bunch of Marx and that changed his outlook. He was also influenced by visits from Victor L Berger. Along with him and others, Debs founded the Social Democratic Party of America. He went on to run for president as a socialist five times — the last time in 1920, he did from prison. He was serving a ten year sentence for violating Obama’s favorite law, the Espionage Act of 1917. He violated it by giving a speech that “obstructed recruiting” for World War I.

In 1921, The Bridgemen’s Magazine wrote:

So enjoy your Labor Day. But don’t forget the suffering and loss that it represents. And don’t stand for people like Eric Cantor showing such great disrespect to it. We know conservatives hate the labor movement. We know that many so called liberals are at best apathetic towards the labor movement. But the least we can demand is that they all show a modicum of respect one day of the year. Now go enjoy your barbecue or whatever.

On or about this day in 1522, the Victoria returned to Spain — being the first ship to make it around the world. It was the only one of Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships to return. A total of 260 men started the voyage and only 19 returned. That doesn’t mean the other 241 died. A lot of them just had the good sense to desert. But one of the men who did die was Ferdinand Magellan himself. He died in a battle in the Philippines almost a year and a half before the mission was completed — while still over 10,000 miles from home.

So why do people say that Magellan was the first man to sail around the world? Well, they have to give someone the credit and it was his voyage. But that’s a big part of what is wrong with humans: our insistence on seeing everything in heroic terms. There were so many people who made that trip possible — including scores of people who never set foot on one of those ships. But we just don’t seem to be able to grok that.

Interestingly, I think this is why most people are so much more interested in manned spaceflight. I prefer the robotic kind myself. When humans are involved in that way, I just worry about their safety. But in addition to that, when it is an unmanned mission, it is clear that it is the accomplishment not just of the thousands of people who worked directly on the mission, but of the entire society. And the world is a better place the more we think that way.

So the Magellan mission sailing around the world was a great accomplishment. As for the man? Whatever.

On this day in 1666, the Great Fire of London finally ended. It had started early in the morning of 2 September, so it went on for four days. It made 70,000 of the city’s 80,000 people homeless. There is some question as to how many people died as a direct result of the fire, but it appears to have been fairly low. But no one really knows, because no one creating official records really cared when poor people died.

The fire started in a bakery. But at the time, the people of London decided that it had been started by Mexicans immigrants. In that case, it was French and Dutch because England happened to be at war with them. So many people were beaten and lynched. It’s an interesting kind of mentality of us humans, “There’s a terrible fire going on! Let’s do something! Let’s kill innocent people based on rumor!” Clearly, even if the immigrants had been responsible, that was not the time to seek justice.

This is yet another reason why demagoguery is such a bad thing. It’s all fine for Donald Trump to go around saying that Mexican immigrants are rapists. But the moment there’s a crisis of some kind, who gets blamed? Who do the rest of society start attacking? This is the very worst of what we humans are — and it is in us all. This is why we need to create institutions and ways of thought to counteract this in us. And let’s be honest: we are better than we have been in the past. But we have a long way to go. And there are a lot of people who continue to push us in the other direction.

On this day in 1781, a bunch of Spaniards settled “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula” — later to be known as simply Los Angeles. Luckily for the native population, elders from the Tongva and Chumash got together to discuss the situation. They decided that if they allowed the Spaniards to stay there, they would spread disease, try to push their ridiculous god who gets himself nailed to a stick, and ultimately commit a genocide. So they acted.

The women of the tribes came to the settlement offering native fruits and vegetables. While they were talking to the settlers, the men came up behind them and killed all the settlers. It was quick and painless. Unlike the Spaniards and all of the other Europeans who were invading the Americas, these tribes were not savages.

But once all the settlers were dead, they had to make a decision as to what to do next. Finally, they decided that Los Angeles would be a great place to produce films. So they started the film industry. In fact, “Hollywood” is an old Chumash word meaning, “That which is white with a bloody throat.” But this explains why Hollywood spent so many years using Italians to play the parts of Native Americans: the Native Americans were too busy running the studios.

Afterword

In fact, there were Native and African Americans as part of the settlement. This is a broader commentary, in as much as it is a commentary at all. Mostly, it’s just silly.

This will be short. I just think it’s kind of interesting, but not really worth diving into. On this day in 301, San Marino was founded. It claims to be the earliest republic still in existence. It was founded by Saint Marinus, supposedly fleeing the Diocletianic Persecution. But the fact that he could get away from it with only fleeing to modern day San Marino shows just how extensive the persecution was. Anyway, he founded a church there and thus a city and it still exists today.

But who knows? Really, Marinus is said to have died in 366, so he would have had to have been very young when he founded the place, or very old when he died. It’s possible, certainly. It wasn’t until 1631 that the Catholic Church officially recognized it as independent. The Sammarinese Fascist Party did lead the nation from 1923 through 1943. But it didn’t adopt anti-Jewish laws like Italy and Germany. And it managed to stay neutral throughout both World Wars. Generally, I think San Marino has managed to avoid conflict because it is so small, and powerful nations always figured that they could grab it when the need arose.

Anyway, it is now a wealthy European nation that has more cars than people. It could be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t especially want to live there. Still, it has an interesting history. But I don’t like places where you need a car to get around.

On this day in 1789, the United States Department of the Treasury was formed. It’s the agency that prints money. But even more important, the IRS is part of Treasury. I’m constantly amazed at the conservative anger at the IRS. Unless you simply don’t believe we should have a government, we need a tax collector. This goes along with something that I publish later today about conservatives really not thinking things through. It’s kind of like starry-eyed liberals thinking we could have no military and everything would be just fine. (I believe we have a military that 5-10 times the size of what we need, but I still think we need one.)

Even more ridiculous is the common belief that we could get rid of the IRS if we instituted a “flat tax.” To begin with, a flat tax is meaningless. Looking up how much in taxes you owe after doing your taxes is the easiest part of it. The hard part is dealing with all the deductions and such. And that is the stuff that is in there because of the rich. I have a great idea for simplifying the tax code: let’s make all deductions standard — no itemization. How about that rich people?! Would you go along with that? Because I’ll tell you something: that would make filing your taxes easy. It would also make paying them harder, but if the issue is not money but convenience, the rich ought to be all over my proposal. But they aren’t.

The point of the flat tax is the point of all so called tax reform: to shift the burden of taxes from the rich to the poor. But regardless of what you do, there still needs to be a tax collector. And this has been true for thousands of years! People don’t pay taxes voluntarily and they never have. So let’s just cut the nonsense. The IRS isn’t evil — in fact, by the historic standards of tax collectors, it’s quite reasonable. In fact, dealing with the IRS is a breeze compared to dealing with the California Department of Revenue. But if people have a better idea, I’d love to hear it. Because here’s a secret: none of us like paying our taxes. But the smarter people understand that living in a civilized society requires paying taxes.

Happy birthday Treasure Department!

I am not one to wish anyone dead. Well, except for Antonin Scalia — I really wish he would have a heart attack and die — quickly, painlessly, but completely and irrevocably. But on this day back in 1997, Henri Paul died. So did Dodi Fayed. And that other woman: Diana, Princess of Wales. For the record, I never liked her. I don’t like any of the royal family. They are good for tourism in the United Kingdom?! Great! Disneyland is good for tourism here. I’m all for that. But would it be news if Mickey and Minnie Mouse had a baby? I don’t think so. And I similarly think that people who care about what’s going on in the royal family are idiots.

This isn’t to say that I don’t think that the royal family is useful. They are a great example of how screwed up we humans are. There was a time when Queen Elizabeth would have total power over her nation — a time when she could kill anyone she wanted just because she was in a bad mood. And this was thought to be perfectly acceptable because the royalty were thought to be better than other people.

It’s good that those times are gone. Except that they aren’t. It is just that today — in America most especially — being rich means that you are special — better than other people. If you are poor, it is because morally you are a lesser soul. It might even mean that God doesn’t like you. If you are rich, well, you must be doing something right in God’s eyes.

We humans are followers. And it is not rational at all. We do not follow the smart when we need the smart and the wise when we need the wise, but we do follow the strong when we need the strong. But that’s just because we follow the strong always. I’ve noticed it in my life recently. As my working life has become better, I’ve felt better about myself, and people treat me better — even though if anything, I’m more of a jerk. But I’m no more smart or wise than I was before.

When Princess Diana died in the car crash, so did Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul. It’s sad they died. But no one cares about Fayed and Paul, so why care about Diana? No reason at all.