Watergate

Carl Bernstein

“Loyalties, a Son’s Memoir”

Executive Order No. 9835

By Richard E. Noble

I’ve just finished reading a book entitled “Loyalties, a Son’s Memoir” by Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporter of Watergate fame.
Carl Bernstein’s dad was a lawyer. He was interested in politics. He got involved in the Roosevelt administration and served on several prominent committees. He joined the military in World War II and went over to Europe to fight against Fascism and Nazism. When he returned to his home, it seems to me, he found more of the same waiting for him right here.
On March 21, 1947 Harry Truman passed executive order 9835. This order was to trigger the American Inquisition of the late 40’s and early 50’s - the McCarthy Era.
This law basically stated that anyone suspected of disloyalty could be summarily dismissed from their government job. You could be called before a commission on information provided anonymously. You had no right to a lawyer, no jury, no trial. You weren’t allowed to confront your accusers, or to even know who they were. No proof or specific evidence was required, but yet if the board found that you were suspect, you would be fired from your job, and labeled as a subversive. You might never find another job. You might have to move from your neighborhood, change your name, lie, hide and keep the knowledge of your appearance before this inquisition committee a secret for the rest of your life. And this all could happen to you because you were a member of some labor union, or an associate of a member of a labor union. Or you were a member of a club that petitioned for the rights of blacks or minorities in America; or you wrote something positive about the Soviet Union, or you associated with someone who did. You could lose your job, your career and the potential for your whole life’s efforts on the false accusation of an anonymous, jealous fellow worker; someone who may have had a cousin in line for your job.
Carl Bernstein’s dad was one of these people. He was bigger than an unjustly accused victim though. He was an outright champion of the victimized. As a lawyer, he took it upon himself to defend over five hundred of these people brought before Mister McCarthy and his team of government investigators until finally like, Clarence Darrow before him, he was brought to the firing line by his political rivals and enemies. He lost his status and position. He lost his Washington career. He lost his ability to practice law. He ended up opening up a Bendix coin-operated Laundromat in a black neighborhood, and that is how he earned his living from that time on.
This is quite a story, in itself, but there is more.
Carl Bernstein’s dad, a defender of the liberal left was confronted by the McCarthy champions of the right. Two of McCarthy’s prominent Knights were the infamous Roy Cohn, and Richard M. Nixon.
Richard M. Nixon, the man who was forced to resign from the highest government job in the land, who had his whole career ruined; who lived the rest of his life fending off accusations and denying his being labeled a crook, and a criminal - this man’s life, very much in the pattern of his late rival, Alfred Bernstein, was brought to this disgraceful position, at least in part, by the son of his victim, Carl Bernstein. The man whose life and career Richard M. Nixon had once helped to destroy.

Animals

Animals

By Richard E. Noble

Dogs and cats are being butchered in China for their pelts. An undercover reporter went to China, posing as an agent for a fir buying firm and with a hidden camera filmed his experiences.
He showed film of little kittens in cages all cowering in the corner, while a man with a string looped on the end of a stick, strung it about the neck of one of the little kittens, then pulled it tight and lifted the kitten to the top of the cage where it was left to dangle, kicking, mewing and struggling until it died. While we all watched the little kitten struggle, the camera caught the faces of the kittens still in the cage awaiting their turn with the noose.
“Those kittens are cowering in the corner with fear in their eyes. It is almost as if they understand what is about to happen to them,” offered the show’s host.
In another scene a man is shown walking a dog on a leash. The dog is wagging its tail as he walks obediently at the side of his master. The dog’s leash is then hooked to a fence, and the owner then takes hold of a back leg of the animal, slits an artery up in the thigh, and as the dog yelps, wines and whimpers he proceeds to skin the dog alive. As he peels the hide off the living dog, the dog’s tail continues to wag in friendly adherence to its master’s torturous demands.
The reporter comments that some of these pictures will be imbedded into his mind forever. I knew the moment that he uttered that phrase it would be the same for me also.
I wanted to scream out in righteous indignation at the brutal unfeeling Chinese, but before I could squeak out even a peep, I saw the dead, cooked carcasses of turkeys and chickens on my dinning room table. I saw pork chops and steaks sizzling on my Bar-b-que grill. I saw burgers and sausages browning in my sauce pan. And so, I thought, we humans choose some living creatures to pet and others to torture.
And how does a man who would like to consider himself as “good” rectify this sight with justice and morality?
I guess he doesn’t. Like much else in this world and life about us we simply turn our heads and deny that it is happening. We hire others to do the killing and perform the dirty deeds and we avoid as best we can the responsibility for even our own appetites. Or we perform the dirty deeds ourselves, and say that we have done it because it is so. But what should we do?
Well, I suppose that we could stop killing and eating other living things. If we can’t do that, we could at the least be a little more humane. After all, animals are also the possessors of that divine spark that we humans call life. Is it not that spark we attribute to the image in which we have supposedly been created?
“Humane”? That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? Humane does that mean treating other living things kindly, or does it mean treating other living things as we treat other human beings? You know - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
But, I am told that we are already doing that. It doesn’t seem to be working all that well.
Obviously we need to look for higher standards.

JEWS

Jews – History

By Richard E. Noble

In this process of my self-education - and I must educate myself, because no one else has the patience - as far as history, philosophy, theology, science ... man, just about everywhere you turn, there are Jews. So I decided that I had to read some books about the Jews.
I followed the Jews back to Moses. But there is a controversy about Moses. They are not even sure he really existed. But Mark Twain helped me out there. Mark said that if Moses didn’t really exist, there was probably someone around about the same time with the same name.
So okay, we have Moses, “the Law giver”. But Moses wasn’t the first Jew. Moses was found floating down the river by an Egyptian Princess who took him home and raised him as an Egyptian Prince. Moses has it made; but Moses messes up. He gets into a fight with an Egyptian Foreman who is whipping a Jewish bricklayer whom the foreman feels is screwing up one of the pyramids or something. Moses wins, but he wins too good. The other guy is dead. Moses then tries to defend and explain himself, but the only people who agree and understand his point of view are Jews - kind of like the 0. J. Simpson trial. So Moses heads for the hills, and moves in with a bunch of Jews.
But then I ask myself, if Moses wasn’t the first Jew, I mean, he was no Buddha. There were Jews all around even before Moses showed up at the construction site. So who was the first Jew, and where did all this Jew stuff really begin?
So I find the oldest Jewish historian that I can find, a guy by the name of Flavius Joesephus - no relation to Bo-sephus, the red-neck country guy. This is Joe-sephus. This guy is a story in himself we will do something on him another time. But, in any case, I start reading in order to find out who the first Jew in history really was. And this book written by Josephus starts off like this:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
It’s the Bible, man! Can you believe it? According to Josephus, the first Jew is Adam and the first Jewish Princess is Eve. Now I wish that this Josephus had done a little more research, because I’m wondering now, was God really Jewish, Himself?
But whatever, the first man and woman were Jewish. Well, I’ll be damned, who would have thunk it? And if that is the case, then we are all basically Jews. I mean everybody!
But what if I don’t want to be Jewish, I don’t even have one of them little beanies. The Pope even has one. But why shouldn’t he? He’s just as Jewish as all the rest of us.
I just don’t get it. If everybody is Jewish, what has everybody been arguing and killing one another about for all of these centuries?
More books to read, I guess. You know, I’m beginning to think that there is no end to all this reading and educating business. You’d think if God wanted me to know all of this stuff, He would have created me as an Encyclopedia salesman or Funkend Wagnall or somebody like that.

Poverty

Poverty

Commentary

By Richard E. Noble

Poverty seems to be both universal and timeless. But, as with pornography, everyone recognizes it when they see it, yet find the concept impossible to define. My reading in philosophy has led me to believe that nothing can be understood adequately unless it can be defined.
So far the simplest and most straight forward definition that I have is that poverty is a lack of money or material possessions.
This definition, of course, is very vague. Almost all of us can attest to having a lack of money and material possessions - to some degree - but we don’t necessarily consider ourselves to be living in a state of poverty. Today many consider the State of Poverty to be a real place - namely Mississippi. But even given this terrible set of circumstances most of us would agree that we would rather be poor in Mississippi that in India or Bangladesh, Bangkok or Baghdad.
So what is poverty? Let me give it a shot here:
Poverty is that state or condition in which an individual or a group of individuals within a given society or structure are unable to provide for themselves adequately.
Right off, I see that the problem with this definition is the word “adequately”. Who or how do we determine what is adequate?
Let’s try again:
Poverty is that state or condition in which an individual or a group of individuals are unable to provide for themselves in a manner acceptable to the majority of the people composing the group or community of which the said individual or group of individuals is a part or member.
This would make poverty into a relative concept. In other words whether a person is living in poverty or not would be determined by the judgment of the majority living within that particular group or community. And I would say that this is the case or fact of the matter. What would be considered poverty in Denmark might not be what is considered poverty in Bangkok.
But whether in Bangkok or Mississippi whatever we decided is poverty, this state is determined by “money” and or “material possessions”. It is not a state of mind. It is a condition that exists in economic reality.
And what determines a person’s relative poverty is a matter of what he owns or earns. If what he owns or what he earns is below a certain standard then it is deemed that he is living in a state of poverty.
The solution to poverty would then be that an individual or group of individuals living in poverty must somehow have their material possessions or quantity of money enhanced to that degree considered to be acceptable by the surrounding society or group.
So obviously, if we determine who are poverty stricken within a given society and we “give” them money and or material possessions in sufficient quantity we could eradicate poverty from within our society or any given society.
But as far as I know there has never been any society that has found this to be an acceptable method for the eradication of poverty. There are a million problems with this method and I don’t think that I have to elaborate.
But before we even get to the possibility of the above as a solution we must all be brought to accept that poverty does exist in reality within our particular societies.
In the early days of human civilization poverty was somewhat glossed over by the institutions of slavery and peasantry. And in these early days both slavery and peasantry were accepted as destined, inevitable, acceptable and in most cases established by God. Most of the early religious leaders - Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and many of the early Jewish prophets - saw an “injustice” in this attitude. They set out on the charitable mission of reforming the established acceptance of poverty and turning the eradication of poverty into a religious goal. Instead of the elite and successful being the “chosen people” of God - Egyptians, Romans, Greeks etc., these reformers taught that the “poor huddled masses” were the “chosen” and if not the chosen at least they were to be included and not excluded from God’s select circle.
This went on rather haphazardly until Calvin and others of his time began to spin the story of God’s love back onto the lives of the rich and famous - and I would say that this is pretty much where we stand today on this matter.
The debate after Calvin was picked up though once again during the enlightenment. Certain social thinkers - Godwin, Voltaire, J. S. Mill, Karl Marx and many, many more - began to suggest that poverty was not a condition established by God or that this condition was not inevitable but was brought on by society in general. This did not sit well with the Generals of society. One of the first defenders of the status quo and society in general was Malthus.
Malthus suggested that the reason that poverty, starvation and destitution were growing at such an alarming rate was very simple. Food supply increased arithmetically while people increased geometrically. Therefore starvation, destitution, and poverty were inevitable. It was not so much that the rich were not willing to share or that society in general was inadequate, but more because of mankind’s sexual practices - and especially the sexual overindulgence of the poor and poverty stricken.
Today conservative thinkers like George Will still advocate this same notion. George Will says that the eradication of poverty in the U.S. is simple; all we have to do is stop teenage pregnancy. George says this because 55% of all women living in poverty in America today were once pregnant teenagers. I would also bet that over eighty percent of us alive today were born of a teenage mother or a very recent graduate from teenagerhood but ... whatever.
Both of these answers I find problematical. First Malthus:
If the question is: How can poverty be eradicated or how can we eliminate poverty. Neither of these answers addresses the issue.
If as Maithus suggested we have people who are living in poverty or who are of the poverty stricken class, produce fewer children - we would still have “poverty”. We could have fewer people living in poverty provided we do not have more people immigrating into this class (peasant) from other societies or that the economic circumstances within the society do not deteriorate thus reducing more and more people to a state of fewer and fewer material possessions or less and less monetary income. Poverty as you will remember is an economic condition. It is defined by how much money and or material possessions a person has.
Mr. Will’s solution would also fail to eliminate “poverty”. People would still be living in a state of poverty if teenage girls did not become pregnant. If all the daughters of the wealthy in America were allowed to become pregnant as teenagers and all the poor and poverty stricken in America were prevented from giving birth as teenagers the ranks of those living in Poverty would probably not be changed one iota. We may have fewer teenage girls living in poverty but poverty would remain.
By keeping your daughter free from teenage pregnancy you may decrease her chances of living a life of poverty but you certainly won’t eliminate poverty. Poverty depends on how much money a person earns or has access to – not on whether she is a teenager or if she is pregnant.
This also applies to those who advocate education as a means of eliminating poverty. You can educate a child and thus give him a greater chance of earning more money - but this will not eliminate poverty. You can educate everybody in the world but if the world does not have enough jobs of above poverty level income available you will simply have smarter people living in a state of poverty. You will probably have the additional challenge of trying to outsmart brighter thieves and burglars. Then you will have to create brighter police officers - that may prove to be even more difficult that eliminating poverty.
If in the time of Malthus all poverty was in the peasant class, then it would follow that poverty could have been eradicated by eliminating all peasants. But if I have my history in tact, peasants were the people who did the farming - they did the hoeing and the cultivating. So if the peasants were all eliminated the food supply would also have been eliminated. In which case Malthus’s bright idea would not only have eliminated “poverty” it would also have eliminated “prosperity”. One may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth but if there is no pudding or porridge or Campbell’s chicken noodle soup what good is your silver spoon?
The bottom line is - if the peasants constituted “poverty”, in order to eradicate poverty the peasant material condition must be enhanced - somehow.
If a pregnant teenage girl must live in “poverty” because she is only capable of working at a job that provides a poverty sustaining wage - if she delays her pregnancy ten years but at the end of that time she is still only capable of working at a job which pays poverty sustaining wages, then what have you accomplished?
There is an elephant in the living room here that neither Malthus or George Will want to face. As long as you have jobs that supply only poverty sustaining wages you will have poverty.
Now we are getting to the real problem.
If your “system” demands that your employers must, of necessity, pay wages that sustain poverty - you either have to learn to accept poverty - shake your head and blame it on God as they have in the past - or you have to tweak the “system”.
The system can only be tweaked in so many ways as I see it.
You can leave the employer alone and “subsidize” those who must perform the poverty producing jobs by some sort of redistribution of wealth via taxation; or you can standardize the pay rate so that no job is poverty sustaining; or you can do a combination of both of these alternatives until there are no people living under the conditions that the majority of the people of this society find inadequate.
Unfortunately the poor can not eliminate poverty. One poor person can work and possibly change his condition but this does not eliminate the economic conditions that dictate the necessity of poverty. Poverty is not individual but systemic - only the wealthy or those who control the supply of money and the opportunity of attaining money can eliminate poverty - in other words those who control the “system”.
If we apply the Willie Sutton Principle here; If a situation can only be satisfied by money, then those with the money or those who control the supply of money are the only ones who can apply the solution. This means business, banking, government - society.
The poor have to be willing, able and have the capacity to earn the money if it is made available. This is understood. There will always be those that are incapable - but that is a much different problem.
In the U.S. it is estimated that there are between 36 and 40 million people living in what is defined by the government as poverty. Unemployment is estimated to be between 4% and 5%. That means that one third of these people are currently registered to be looking for employment. There are no statistics on undocumented workers or on the criminal underclass of chronically unemployed. So this means that over two thirds of these people (36-40 million) are currently employed. These people are working to maintain their poverty. You can either raise their wages, or give them what they need. As long as society allows employment that pays wages that sustain poverty - there will always be someone who is living and working in a state of poverty. You can not educate away poverty; you can not de-populate poverty; you can not racially cleanse away poverty. To remove poverty requires “money” - somebody is going to have to pay for it.

My Wife's Religion

My Wife’s Religion

by Richard E. Noble

It is funny, religion is one thing that my wife and I never really talked about. I didn’t ask her and she didn’t ask me. Until one day after we had been married for a number of years, she suggested that we go see the new movie Jesus Christ Superstar. She had heard some songs on the radio and she liked them. So I said okay. As we watched the movie it became obvious to me that my wife was not too familiar with the plot of this story.
“Who is that guy supposed to be?” she would ask.
“That’s Jesus,” I would say.
“No, no; not that one. I know Jesus - for God’s sake! The guy standing next to him?”
“Well, that’s Peter. You know ... Upon this rock, I will build my church.”
“Huh?”
“Peter, the apostle? Jesus’s right-hand man?”
“Why is Jesus’s mother following him around everywhere?”
“Jesus’s Mother?”
“Her! ... Mary?”
“That’s not Jesus’s mother, that’s Mary Magdalene.”
“Who’s Mary Magdalene?”
“Well ... ah ... she’s kind of like an apostle.”
“An Apostle? She looks like a tramp.”
“Yes, well she is … or was. She was a lady of the night, or whatever. Then she met Jesus and straightened up.” My wife looked at me kind of funny. “Well, I don’t know. That’s the story. I’ve heard from other sources that she might have been Jesus’s girl friend, or maybe even his wife.”
“Ahh ha!”
On the way home from the theater, I asked my wife what religion she was raised in. She said she was a Protestant.
“What kind of Protestant?” I asked.
She didn’t know. She said that she would call her mother when we got home and find out for sure.
“Well,” I said to her, “it doesn’t really matter. Did you go to Sunday School or anything like that?”
“Of course I did.”
“Well what kind of things did you learn there?”
“Ahh, I learned how to make nifflies, and roast pork with sauerkraut.”
“That’s good. I like roast pork with sauerkraut. What’s a niffly?”
“Oh those are really good. There like a kind of noodle. You eat them with lots of butter and salt. Umm ummm.”
My wife didn’t know Mary Magdalene from a whole in the wall. She didn’t know why Jesus was on trial. She didn’t know that He was a Jew. She didn’t know about the gates of Heaven being closed. She didn’t know about redemption, original sin, purgatory or what the pope had to do with anything. She knew how to make nifflies, and baked sauerkraut with roasted pork. But yet, knowing right from wrong never gave her a second’s pause. When it comes to right and wrong, I ask her. And she always seems to be right; certainly righter than I am. How does she do that, I wonder?

The Bus

Put ‘em on the Bus

Commentary

By Richard E. Noble

Compassion for the poor in the U.S. is a waste of time. Americans do not believe that there are poor, hungry people in America.
My wife doesn’t believe in poverty: my wife who needs, at the most recent estimate, seven thousand dollars worth of dental work; my wife who hasn’t been to a beauty parlor in at least thirty years; my wife who buys her clothes and furniture at the Goodwill; my wife who has traveled, along with her husband, all over the United States picking fruits and vegetables, living under bridges and equipment shelters, washing dishes in crummy restaurants, sweeping floors and working as a transient laborer the majority of her life; my wife who at best can qualify for a minimum wage job anywhere in America; my wife who was once keeping index cards for a cook book which she had tentatively entitled, “One Hundred Different Ways to Cook Chicken Necks”; my wife who, if she happens to get sick tomorrow can look forward to a cot in the corridor at the local hospital because we have no health insurance and throughout our entire working careers never, ever have had any health insurance; my wife who can’t even join in the country song … “A big old brew, my double-wide and you” because the best that we have ever been able to afford is a single-wide; my wife who called the property appraiser’s office last week because our property evaluation went ‘up’ to eleven dollars and thirty-six cents; my wife who recently received a call from a mortgage company who said that if we owned our own property, they would refinance our property, site unseen, for 100,000 - Carol was laughing so hard the man finally hung up; my wife who considers the minimum Social Security benefit a windfall.
My wife doesn’t think that she is poor; she thinks that she is “middle class”.
This is the problem here in America. We have “middle class” folks, like my wife, who watch a show about prison conditions in this country, and who say to themselves; “Man, what can I do to get into that place? free medical and dental, room and board, my own private room, church services, conjugal visits, vocational training, and educational and career training programs. It will take me the rest of my life to earn those benefits out here in the “free” world. And if I can finagle a life sentence, I don’t even have to worry about old age benefits. Wow! That’s as good as the United States Marine Corps, better working conditions, more rights, and no bullets, mud or barbed wire either.”
We have been living in a country where the welfare benefits have been better than the going to work benefits. But that has all been changed - we no longer live in a “welfare” state we live in a “well-fare” state. But here is the Catch-22; when all of the hard working people complained about how even life in prison was better than their lot as honest hard working people, the “middle class” decided that the prison system needed a downgrade. When working people complained that people on welfare had better health care benefits than they did, the “middle class” folks solved the problem by removing health care benefits from welfare recipients. Hardly pays to complain, does it? Next time any of you poor, underprivileged complain; please don’t mention my name - or any names for that matter.
In the past, I would have suggested that the homeless be packed up, put on a bus and brought to a farm out in North Dakota, but I am sure that by adhering to even Geneva Convention rules, or the SPCA the farm will very shortly be better than conditions in parts of New York, Chicago, and L.A., and people all over America will be marching to North Dakota demanding equal rights.

Christianity

Christianity

By Richard E. Noble

I was born a Christian, raised a Christian, and have lived all of my life in highly Christian areas, and in, for the most part, what the world would consider a Christian Nation. But still I have trouble in defining what a Christian actually is.
Most reference books will inform you that a Christian is a person who follows the teachings of Jesus. But I can not consider this a true definition. People claiming to be Christians range all the way from pacifist (Quakers), to barbarian (Nazis), and every stage of development and opinion in-between. What Jesus may or may not have preached is almost indiscernible when viewed from the perspective of the various teaching of all of the various sects claiming to be Christians. So disregarding the various interpretations of the teachings of Jesus, what unifying quality would all of the various Christians agree to?
I think all Christians would agree that Jesus was God - or is of a Divine Nature. I don’t know for sure, and there may be Christian sects who follow the teachings of Jesus but who do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but if there are, I am unaware of them. If I am not mistaken Albert Schweitzer was such an individual. He wrote a very interesting book, entitled: “In Search of the Historical Jesus”. Albert’s conclusion was that the historical record was much too obfuscated to find any accurate evaluations. He further concluded that Jesus was not God and had made no claims to being God that could be corroborated, historically. Yet Albert went on to live his life in accordance with what he believed to be the philosophy of “love” as proposed by the “prophet” Jesus. But I think most would agree in today’s language a Christian would be a person who devotes himself to the notion that Jesus Christ was Divine, the Son of God, and a God, himself
So then I wonder, is this the belief or opinion of the majority of the World?
It is not. The majority of the world does not believe that Jesus was God or that he was of a Divine Nature.
That is shocking, isn’t it? In fact, did you know that the early Christian Church argued and debated over this very notion for quite some time? It was still being debated in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. There was Nestorius and Saint Cyril. There was the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon where they were arguing over the human and divine coordination of Christ. The entire authenticity of the Bible, New Testament and Old, is challenged by Tom Paine in his “The Age of Reason”. To think that most of the population of the world does not believe in this, the most fundamental of Christian beliefs, is difficult to come to grips with.
Most of China, over one billion people do not believe that Jesus was, or is God.
India is mostly Hindu or Buddhist and they do not believe that Jesus was or is God.
The Arab world is mostly Islamic, and they do not believe that Jesus was or is God.
Japan and Russia are not Christian nations. Shintoism prevails in Japan and supposedly atheism in Russia.
Jews, of course, have never believed that Jesus was Divine, or a Savior for that matter. And Jesus was one of them. Jesus was or is a Jew depending on who you ask.
From the perspective of the peoples of the world, then, if you are a person who believes in the divinity of Jesus, you are the member of a minority religious, cult group. Your group may be the largest of any such group, but nevertheless, a minority when placed beside all of the other beliefs of the present world. When you take a particular sect of Christianity (Baptist, Methodist etc.) the figures placing you in a minority opinion become even greater. In a good many parts of the world today you would be considered strange and your beliefs odd; you would be labeled as different, an outsider.
Christians like to take heart that, as a whole they represent the largest single belief in the world, but yet in truth they are still a minority of the peoples of the world, and if all of the different Christian sects are assembled in a room to discuss for example, the Christian Bible - traditionally or Historically, they have ended up killing one another.


1 History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell pp 366-375.