In 1942 Congress changed the flag code because our salute looked just a little too Nazi-like

Schoolchildren using the Bellamy salute prior to 1942.

    There was a time when Americans saluted the flag with their right arms stretched out. The stiff-arm salute was known as the “Bellamy Salute,” as it was created by the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy.

Francis Bellamy

    Bellamy, an extreme socialist, wrote the pledge in the 1890s with the idea that it would encourage patriotism for schoolchildren to recite it every day. The Bellamy salute was intended to be non-militaristic. In the photo above, the schoolchildren have their palms facing upward. When properly executed, the palm should vertical. I’ve seen a number of photos and videos of schoolchildren reciting the Pledge with their palms facing downward, identical to the Nazi salute.
    It was this similarity to the Nazi salute that caused Congress to modify the Flag Code in 1942 to change the salute to the flag to the hand being held over the heart. I’ve seen several photos, probably taken right after the change, that show children with their hands over their hearts in a “salute” position rather than flat over the heart as practiced today.
    It is unfortunate that almost any politician who waves at a large crowd is at some point going to give a wave or salute that looks similar to a Nazi salute. Extreme bodybuilders have trouble fully straightening their arms, and perhaps politicians should make a point to wear an elbow brace to keep their right arm from extending all the way out lest their opponents use the opportunity to portray them as a Nazi.

Edward Bellamy

    My father mentioned to me years ago a book by Francis Bellamy’s brother, Edward, called Looking Backward 2000-1887 (free on Kindle). It’s a Utopian, Rip-Van-Winkle-style novel that he was assigned in college by his favorite professor, Jim Silver, in which a man wakes up to find an America vastly changed from the dog-eat-dog capitalism of 1887. Both Bellamys were quasi-Communists, but the book nevertheless has some amazingly spot-on predictions and interesting observations.

    For example, the book describes a type of credit card, and a shopping system where all goods could be reviewed and delivered overnight by pneumatic tube (in fact, I think such a system was used by the French postal system in Paris); sort of like today’s Internet shopping. Radio had not been invented at the time the book was written, but Bellamy envisioned a wired (cable!) system that would allow people to listen to 25 stations, including some of the finest concerts, in their homes.
    In Year 2000 Boston umbrellas have become obsolete. Our Rip-Van-Winkle protagonist, Julian West, is surprised to discover that the streets have covers that are extended when it rains, thus eliminating the need for an umbrella. His modern-era companion, Edith Leete, expressed a bit of skepticism as to whether streets were ever full of people holding individual umbrellas. I found the passage interesting, certainly reflective of Bellamy’s ideology, and thus share a few paragraphs (emphasis added):

    . . . I was much surprised when at the dinner hour the ladies appeared prepared to go out, but without either rubbers or umbrellas.
    The mystery was explained when we found ourselves on the street, for a continuous waterproof covering had been let down so as to inclose the sidewalk and turn it into a well lighted and perfectly dry corridor, which was filled with a stream of ladies and gentlemen dressed for dinner. At the comers the entire open space was similarly roofed in. Edith Leete, with whom I walked, seemed much interested in learning what appeared to be entirely new to her, that in the stormy weather the streets of the Boston of my day had been impassable, except to persons protected by umbrellas, boots, and heavy clothing. “Were sidewalk coverings not used at all?” she asked. They were used, I explained, but in a scattered and utterly unsystematic way, being private enterprises. She said to me that at the present time all the streets were provided against inclement weather in the manner I saw, the apparatus being rolled out of the way when it was unnecessary. She intimated that it would be considered an extraordinary imbecility to permit the weather to have any effect on the social movements of the people.
    Dr. Leete, who was walking ahead, overhearing something of our talk, turned to say that the difference between the age of individualism and that of concert was well characterized by the fact that, in the nineteenth century, when it rained, the people of Boston put up three hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.
    As we walked on, Edith said, “The private umbrella is father's favorite figure to illustrate the old way when everybody lived for himself and his family. There is a nineteenth century painting at the Art Gallery representing a crowd of people in the rain, each one holding his umbrella over himself and his wife, and giving his neighbors the drippings, which he claims must have been meant by the artist as a satire on his times.” 

    Bellamy’s Utopia relies on a high degree of statist force, although this is subtly indicated in the novel. And the author is convinced that one of society’s major economic problems is too little centralized control over the economy. He believes everything would work better without the pesky free market and the silly duplication of goods and services it produces. Incredibly dumb, but people didn’t know that in 1887.
    Despite its silly economics, Looking Backward is an interesting and insightful book and I suggest it to anyone. As for Bellamy salute? Probably better to skip it.

The lapis-lazuli dagger exumed at Ur is apparently alive and well in the Baghdad Museum

Lapis-lazuli dagger exhumed at Ur

    I've been trying to read Will Durant's Story of Civilization. It's a slow go. It's not exactly bathroom reading, but that's where I keep it. But I also try to make myself read a few pages every day while sitting on the sofa.
    I've only made it to page 134 in the first volume. The 11-volume series has about 10,000 pages, so I'm just over one percent through it.
    I had to stop reading and go to the Internet when I read Durant's description of Sumarian artifacts. This is the oldest civilization that we know of, dating to about 4,000 B.C. He describes the Sumarians as terrible potters but good goldsmiths and mentions some of these elaborate artifacts. "Best of all is the gold sheath and lapis-lazuli dagger exumed at Ur," which he said touches on perfection. His footnote says that this artifact is in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
    Of course, I had to rush to the Internet to see if the dagger was one of the items looted after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The failure of our military to secure this museum quickly is inexcusable. As best I can tell, the dagger remains in the museum. But many priceless Sumarian artifacts were stolen or simply destroyed. These are the oldest man-made artifacts in the world and they aren't making any more.
    So the dagger apparently survives. I can go on with my reading, three or four pages at a time.

________________________________

    It's the nature of Internet searches that one will discover facts tangental to one's original search. The excavations at Ur took place at the start of the 20th century and eventually stalled. The ancient city is only 20 percent excavated, and current excavation activity is limited.
    I found a webpage filled with photos of the artifacts exhumed from the royal tombs of Ur. The website is worth a visit. As you look at these items, remember that they come from the oldest civilization that we know of. Pretty amazing.
   

Book excerpt shows that the anti-gun crowd doesn't understand how hunters and gun owners think

    Betsy and I were in the woods alone for the first time in over two years, slipping along from tree to tree. We were mainly enjoying being outside, though I had my 30.06 along.

Robert Hitt Neill

    Thus begins a short essay by Delta writer Robert Hitt Neill in his book, Don't Fish Under the Dingleberry Tree.     I loved reading Neill's newspaper columns back in the day, but I've really only skimmed his books, some of which I think are a collection of his old columns. Anyway, I sat down to read one of his old books and the quote jumped off the page at me.
    I suspect that the average New York or California gun-control advocate simply can't imagine taking one's significant other out for a walk in the woods and just casually taking the 30.06 along. I just thought it was a fun excerpt that shows a different way of thinking between those who like guns and those who hate them.
    Neill is the author of a number of other books, including "How to Lose Your Farm in 10 Easy Lessons," which is a good way to understand some of the changes that took place in agriculture during the 1970s and '80s.

  

After a long wait Ender's Game movie trailer is released; the book is available now

    I've never seen so much excitement over a movie trailer, but the first official trailer for Ender's Game has been released. The actual movie release date is Nov. 1, 2013.
    Ender has apparently been aged quite a bit. He's supposed to enter battle school just shy of his eighth birthday. Maybe the movie-makers decided the public couldn't stand to see an 8-year-old child being mistreated.
    The movie could be a dud, so by all means read the book. I encouraged Ash to read it in first grade and he cast it aside after finishing two-thirds of it, declaring it "boring." He took it up again in fifth grade and declared it among the best books he's ever read (if not the best).
   Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, has a Lexile rating of 780, which means it is slightly more difficult reading than The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson) by Rick Riorden (Lexile 740) and easier to read than most of the Harry Potter books. Most John Grisham books come in with a Lexile rating of below 700, so books like Ender's Game are truly written for all ages.
    Lucy has steadfastly refused to read Ender's Game, on the grounds that I recommended it. But I don't know of anyone who has read it who did not like it. So read the book so you can join the ranks of those who declare "The book was better," in six months.

Remarkable Like Me

    As a child and young teen I remember flipping through a book of my dad's called Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. It told the story of a white journalist/author who turned himself black by taking heavy doses of a pigment releasing drug. I think he used some skin stain as well.
    Griffin's book was widely read and highly influential in the 1960s. His status as a white man gave him added credibility with the American public as he described his experiences of traveling through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana as a black man. It should be noted that Griffin was apparently fully black in appearance, as he relates one conversation with another black where his companion complains about the black leadership not always listening to the voices of "dark skinned Negroes like us."
    I bought the book a couple of years ago and confess to having read only a third of it before setting it aside. It's really not a page turner, but nevertheless one of those books one would like to have read. I need to take it up again. I looked up the book on Amazon and did some additional research on Griffin today, and he turned out to be one of those people who after reader their Wikipedia entry or other Internet profile you just say "Wow!"
    For starters, Griffin did NOT die of cancer caused by the Oxsoralen he took to induce skin darkening. He died in 1980 at the age of 60 due to complications of diabetes.
    According to Snopes.com, Griffin was born in Dallas, Texas in 1920 and went to Paris at the age of 15 in search of a classical education. Of course, this makes me want to know a little bit more about his parents. Not many people are able or willing to send their 15 year old child off to Europe to study, and in 1935 he likely would have come home only once a year. And what Southerner had money to go to Europe in 1935?
    While barely out of his teens, he had completed studies in such diverse fields as French, literature, medicine, and music, worked as an intern conducting experiments in the use of music as therapy for the criminally insane, specialized in medieval music under the Benedictines at the Abbey of Solesmes, and was contemplating making the religious life his vocation. For some reason he was especially interested in Gregorian Chant. He wrote about his experiences at the Abbey and the personal struggles he underwent during this period of his life in his 1952 book, The Devil Rides Outside.
    Note that the link to above takes you to a collectible copy of his paperback novel released in the 1950s which became the subject of a court case, in part because of the "racy" cover. This novel described Griffin's personal struggles, which included certain sexual themes. As a result a bookstore owner was arrested for the sale of the book in Michigan, which resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Butler v. Michigan, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a state could not, in the guise of protecting minors, restrict the non-obscene speech of adults.
    The opinion, written by Justice Felix Frankfurter, has a wonderful line that I plan insert into conversation at some point. He describes the Michigan law banning such speech as follows: "The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely, this is to burn the house to roast the pig." I love that last line and surely I will use it some day. An interesting law journal article states that the importance of Butler v. Michigan in free speech jurisprudence is often ignored. I tend to agree.
    I have placed the cart a bit before the horse in describing the court fight over Griffin's novel. His novel describes his life in his late teens. At the age of 19 World War II came and he joined the French Resistance and because of his medical training served as a medic. He later served more than three years in the Army Air Corps and spent almost two years as the only non-native on the island of Nuni, assigned to study the local population.
    In 1946 Griffin was blinded in an Air Corps accident. As a result of losing his sight he took up writing. He miraculously regained his eyesight 10 years later. After his death a collection of his essays that he wrote while blind was published, called Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision.
    Griffin wrote other novels but obviously his real claim to fame is Black Like Me. The idea for the book was truly remarkable. Yet look behind the book and there is a remarkable man with a truly remarkable life story. I'm surprised he has been so far beneath the radar of our consciousness.

'Mismatch' an eye opener as to the price blacks pay to serve as window dressing for affirmative action

    No matter what your views on affirmative action and racial preferences, you ought to read Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit Itby Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr.
    Sander is a UCLA law professor who shook the affirmative action world a few years ago with a law journal article on affirmative action and "mismatching" of students. Taylor is also a lawyer, and authored a book on the Duke Lacrosse case. Neither author is really opposed to affirmative action on the grounds that it is unfair to whites.
    The authors string together both hard data and anecdotes that show how racial preferences, as practiced today, are incredibly harmful to blacks (the authors find race preferences don't harm Hispanics, since they don't receive preferences that are nearly as large as those received by blacks). And the bad thing is the colleges know this and continue to string blacks along because all they care about is getting blacks in the door to make their minority recruitment numbers look good. It doesn't matter whether the blacks actually graduate or pass the bar -- and many won't. Just get them in the door.
    Universities have done everything they can to hide the data concerning affirmative action, even from professors on admissions committees. They have even lied and issued knowingly false reports. The authors have been able to glean data from sources here and there, and from various court cases where massive amounts of data were filed.
    The authors cite the example of a Dartmouth administrator who was charged with finding out why black students were signing up for STEM majors (science, technology, and math) and almost without exception changing to other courses of study. His finding was that the black students simply weren't as prepared as the white students and had lower SAT scores in math.
    According to an article in the Dartmouth student newspaper (covering a discrimination suit) Asians need a minimum math-verbal SAT score of 1550-1600 for admission to Dartmouth; whites need a 1410 and blacks need an 1100. Another source shows that the 75th percentile SAT math score at Dartmouth is 780 -- almost a perfect score. And it's these students with the near-perfect scores who will be the white students majoring in the STEM fields.
    So Dartmouth's affirmative action program is going to throw a bunch of above-average black students with 600 math SAT scores into a class with a bunch of genius white kids with 780 and 800 SAT scores and expect the black kids to keep up. They can't. Instead the black kids will make D's and F's and ensure that the white kids all get better grades on the curve. All of the black students will change majors and a few may quit college all together.
    But the thing is, a 600 math score on the SAT isn't terrible -- it's well above average. If these kids were to be placed with other students of like ability where the instruction was a little more basic and a little slower they would do just fine. It's not that they can't learn the material, they just can't learn it as fast or in the same manner as near-geniuses who make 780 or 800 on the SAT. This story is repeated countless times at schools across the country.
    The authors point out that there is a terrible mismatch problem in most American law schools. What they find is that black students who attend law schools far out of their league due to racial preferences tend to have great difficulty passing the bar. Students who attend a law school where their LSAT scores are similar to those of the other students tend to do quite well. There's something about being the worst in one's class that is just dispiriting.
    And that's what affirmative action has done for blacks. We've all had it drilled into us that we should attend the most elite college that we can. Due to racial preferences most blacks are guaranteed admittance into any university until they reach the point that they are in the bottom decile of the student body. But once they are admitted they leave themselves in a position that no matter how hard they try they can never hope to be a really good student in relation to their peers. The authors cite a study called "The Campus as a Frog Pond" which finds that it is much better to have high grades at a mediocre college than poor grades at a selective college. (Affirmative action aside, all parents would be well advised to counsel their children not to attend a university where their test scores will fall in the bottom half of the distribution; they should likely shoot for the top quartile). Yet due to affirmative action blacks will almost always be the ones with the bad grades. The system is rigged against them.
    Most people aren't aware of just how extreme racial preferences are in college admissions. To have a 500 point math-verbal difference on what is expected for Asians wanting to enter Dartmouth versus what is expected of blacks is just stunning. This is the norm and not the exception.
    When California did away with racial preferences for a few years after the passage of Proposition 209 something interesting happened. Minority applications from around the country to UCLA went up. Apparently many minorities wanted to attend a college where they would be viewed as equals. Many of these outstanding minority applications were turned down and minority enrollment did drop pretty dramatically. But even though enrollment dropped, the number of blacks graduating four years later remained virtually the same. In other words, the only students who didn't enroll were the ones who were going to flunk or drop out anyway
    California's race-blind system didn't last. Despite its success, the school succumbed to pressure to illegally discriminate again. But for a brief moment in time it was possible to see that a color-blind system could work, and that even though minority enrollment might drop, just as many blacks would earn degrees.
    The authors admit they don't know what the answer is, but they insist that universities should be required to inform blacks of what their likely outcomes are based on prior students with similar credentials. A law student told that only 40 percent of students with their grade-point and LSAT score had gone on to pass the bar might either rethink law school or check the success ratios of other universities.
    Blacks who are told they are being given an opportunity should be informed of just what that opportunity is instead of being used by universities for window dressing and to provide the illusion of "diversity." If affirmative action is about helping blacks, then start helping them by providing them with full disclosure about what their chances are should they enroll in a particular program or college.
    Read the book. You won't regret it.

Holly Springs native Marie Moore pens murder mystery

    Marie Moore joins the ranks of Mississippi authors with her soon-to-be-released book, "Shore Excursions."
    If the book is successful she plans a series to feature Sidney Marsh, a Mississippian transplant in New York who works as a travel agent. Travel is a tough business these days, but Marsh succeeds by organizing and leading group tours. When the grim reaper visits a couple of her tour participants, Marsh insists on finding out what happened.
    I haven't had a chance to read the book yet as it hasn't been released. A few lucky souls who are higher on Marie's list have gotten review copies, and the book has received generally favorable reviews. The blogcritics.com review can be found here.
    Like many authors, Moore shares some of her personal experiences through her writing. She had her own travel agency in Holly Springs for many years, and got out of the business just as airline tickets started being booked over the Internet. So she has a good sense of timing! Her husband's works as an immigration judge took them to New York for several years. So her personal experiences should allow her to bring some life to her fictional character, Sidney Marsh.
    In any event, I'm looking forward to reading Marie's maiden book offering. My understanding is we won't have to wait very long for a sequel. The next book in the series, Game Drive, is in the final editing stages. If all goes well, it will be released by the end of the year.
    Good luck Marie from your former student, your former Memphis Press-Scimitar delivery boy, your former travel agency customer and your old friend!

Book describes horror of Dust Bowl and Hoover's unwitting role

    In my recent post on Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's
Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath I mentioned that Hoover had a role in causing the Great Depression by advocating a $1 per bushel guarantee on the price of wheat in 1917 when he was head of the U.S. Food Administration.
    Woodrow Wilson had appointed Hoover to that position as the United States was entering World War I. Hoover was known at that time as one of the world's leading humanitarians. Hoover's proposal did exactly what it was designed to do in 1917 and the years afterwards: It dramatically increased crop production so that for the next several years the United States was able to feed both itself and Europe. Mass starvation was averted.
    In 1917 America was still an agricultural nation, and these high prices set in place one of the greatest financial booms of all times. The "roar" in the Roaring 20s came from the unprecedented farm profits shouting their way through America's economy.
    Prices stayed high for several years, but eventually the bottom fell out. The problems with American banks that surfaced in the 1930s had their beginnings in the farm crash of the mid-1920s. As farm prices fell farmers tried to raise more and more, making both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s much worse.
    My source for this information, and much more, was The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan.
     I read this almost five years ago, and it is one of the better books I've read. It describes the economic and ecological disaster that was the Dust Bowl. I've always heard of the Dust Bowl, but this book explains what it was really like and to some extent why it happened.
    I had never heard of "dust pneumonia," for example, but it was apparently not uncommon at the time for a child to be sitting a classroom one day where he would cough up some blood. A few days later he would be dead.
    If this book made enough of an impression on me that I'm still thinking about it almost five years later, obviously it is a good book. If you love learning about our nation's history, or just love a great story, this book is for you.
    I'm not sure I want to share all of this information with my Dad. He grew up blaming Herbert Hoover for all of the nation's ills. If he could lay credit or partial credit for the Dust Bowl on Hoover I don't think I could ever get him to "zip it," as Mort Downey used to say.
    On a self-serving note, if you should buy the book by using my link, I think I will earn a small commission. It won't cost you any more. So help the Colonel!

Democrats propose 100 percent tax on 'unreasonable' profits

    If you wonder why I fear Democrats, a recently filed bill that would tax "unreasonable" oil company profits ought to be reason enough.
You can read the story, Dems propose 'Reasonable Profits Board' to regulate oil company profits for yourself.
    This bill would tax oil profits over 105 percent of a "reasonable" level at 100 percent (in other words, more than five percent higher than the government target). That's right, the government will establish a "reasonable" amount of profit and anyone daring to make more will pay the entire amount to the government thourgh a 100 percent tax. According to The Hill, the proposed law would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms.
    The bill doesn't establish what a "reasonable" profit is, or how a "reasonable" profit is to be calculated. Is the driller of a 2-barrels-a-day stripper well to be taxed the same amount on his oil as the driller of a thousand-barrels-a-day gusher? Is a "reasonable profit" to be the same for someone who already has a well in production at the time of a price spike as it is for someone who rushes out and drills a spec well? If so, won't that be a disincentive for drillers to work to solve oil shortages?
    I hate high oil prices as much as the next guy, but if you look at the past several years you'll see that Obama's unprovoked attack on Libya has had as much to do with the increase in oil prices as any other factor. If a price must now be paid for Obama's folly, it should be done by levying a tax on his supporters, not by taxing the patriots who are supplying our country with oil. If the government wants lower oil prices, approve Arctic Wasteland drilling, approve offshore shallow-well drilling (not dangerous ultra-deep wells), approve the Keystone pipeline, approve oil share extraction.
    Instead the Democrats can only think tax, tax, tax, and they've finally come up with a tax rate they can live with: One Hundred Percent.
    It's heresy to say it these days, but it must be noted. Most oil companies are publicly traded, and every citizen can buy in and benefit from rising oil prices. Of course, they run the risk of falling oil prices, too, not to mention the outside possibility of an ecological disaster that will destroy their investment. If the government is going to confiscate "unreasonable" gains, shouldn't it be required to repay anyone who suffers an "unreasonable" loss?
    It's also grist for another column to note that programs such as this actually tend to produce the opposite of the desired effect. In other words, price caps turn into price floors and price floors turn into price caps. Look what happened to agricultural prices when the government quit supporting prices. If the government really wants to lower oil prices, then guarantee oil producers a minimum price of $70 per barrel for the next 10 years. That will get folks drilling and effectively cap oil prices at $70.
    If you want to know how this will turn out if this bill ever becomes law, the book has already been written. It's called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. If you haven't read it or read it lately, read it. Because we're living it today.