Wake Forest and the Hatch Initiative: Finding Waldo

In article below on Wake Forest President Nathan Hatch’s initiative to bring in students without SATs. As to advance and matriculate into the general culture those with economic need. Conversation with former students and a thoughtful letter from a Wake undergraduate asks where is the money going to come from.

A regional counsel might be considered for those states which make up the general sensibility for the Wake Forest area – North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky (parts of) Georgia and Virginia however they decide it – to consider leadership needs regionally. We have begun to do this in Massachusetts and northern New England. Mitt Romney, as governor of Mass., began using our phrase “one size fits all federalism” to denote a wasteful concept and suggest that different regions have different needs and resources should be tailored to those needs. Such a regional counsel in the middle South might realistically face the fact that there are certain educational institutions in those states which consistently provide leadership in the South and that this leadership is elementary to the progress of the region. Wake Forest, W & L, Davidson, University of the South; these are time-honored cultural institutions and provide benchmarks to historical progress. Say any such institution which can find its way into the top say 40 list nationally – which would insure the quality of teacher and learner was globally competitive – would have some focused aid to insure the able poor or needy participate in the general culture of the region. It would face the fact that these particular schools provide leadership and cultural and historical continuity to the region and strengthen regional culture without excluding anyone. When I worked at Wake Forest Ed Wilson was Provost. He, Ed Christman, David Smiley and a few others would keep the focus on the region and the special needs of the region. Those particular needs evolve form the racial history of the country but particularly of the South. These are economic and cultural issues which will only be resolved in the region and by the region and not by dictation from an increasingly inept (Katrina) federal government. I’d hire on Bain & Co. to propose a management model. For myself, I would even offer a particular “leadership" undergraduate degree to these students or for any who wanted to go into public service there including law and medicine to educate on the special history and culture of the region, again, to tailor leaderships needs to specific regional purpose. Globalism is great but it is an outward moving direction of education which moves to the generic, the esoteric and the specialized. Training for regional leadership would feature the sword of discrimination, which is the key to all deeper learning and development – finding the path of opening and awakening and cutting away the waste and the irrelevant. It is like finding the “real Waldo” in a crowd of hundreds of false Waldos.

Obama at Invesco Field; Clinton Somewhere Else

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 7/8/08

Senator Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination in Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver, where the Denver Broncos play football, instead of the Pepsi Center, site of the party’s national convention.

“On Thursday, August 28^th, he’s scheduled to formally accept the Democratic nomination in a speech at the convention hall in front of assembled delegates,” David Plouffe, Campaign Manager for Obama, has written to supporters. “Instead, Barack will leave the convention hall and join more than 75,000 people for a huge, free, open-air event where he will deliver his acceptance speech to the American people.”

Another reason to move the speech is the need to upstage Senator Clinton, who is sure to use the convention as the setting for extended Clinton Theater, where she is certain to present herself as “co-winner” of the Democratic primary. Her husband, the Democrats own Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love, is also likely to use the convention floor as a platform for an extended swansong.

This would be Elvis in Winter; an embarrassment in the god suit live on stage in Las Vegas. The first need for Obama and the ascending Democrats is to get past the Clintons. If Elvis won’t leave the building, Obama will move it to another building. And what better way to “upstage” the Clintons than for Obama to bring his act to Mile High.

Associated Press notes that Obama will emulate John F. Kennedy, the last candidate in either party to deliver an acceptance speech in a large outdoor stadium before a crowd of tens of thousands. Kennedy spoke at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960.

Worth noting that Kennedy’s historic acceptance speech, written by Ted Sorensen, was the origin point of a new political age.

We stand on the frontier at a turning point in history, Kennedy said, with people who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries; but young people who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions.

“The American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack . . . For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do,” Kennedy told a crowd of 80,000.

Words that resonated in a generation as an anthem in Bob Dylan’s The Times They are a-Changin’ written shortly before Kennedy’s death.

Wake Forest’s Nathan O. Hatch Does the Right Thing

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill 7/6/08

Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, doesn’t like to conspicuously make waves. It is not in the desired nature of this region in the heart of the South. But several weeks ago this venerable old Southern institution got big headlines when it announced that it intended to drop SATs as mandatory for incoming freshmen in an effort to ease stress on student test takers.

First commentary was that it was a big mistake. But Wake Forest President Nathan O. Hatch was right to drop mandatory SATs. Others will soon follow.

Wake Forest usually comes to mind up here in New England when either Maya Angelou, who teaches there, is mentioned, or Arnold Palmer, who, like a bunch of other great golfers, went to school there.

A few schools in recent years have dropped mandatory SATs – Bowdoin, Bates, Hamilton, Sarah Lawrence, Middlebury – and on first impression Wake Forest appeared to be changing company. It appeared to be comparing itself with a tradition of elite New England schools. Way good schools, but of a persuasion that the traditional Baptist preacher in the North Carolina Piedmont or Yadkin County tobacco farmer might consider kind of uppity.

Wake Forest’s “traditional constituency” – as those folks are so-called by admissions officers – would be more likely to consider going to UNC at Chapel Hill, Duke or University of Richmond. These are the schools which Wake Forest has traditionally competed with for students. But in recent years it has risen to top national rankings and today students from all over the world seek attendance. Some from India with very high SATs. Some from Hong Kong with high SATs and a whole lot of cash.

Another passing thought was that Wake Forest, ranked 30 among national universities by U.S. News and World Report, isn’t supposed to initiate big deal changes like this. Harvard is supposed to do that, or possibly Yale or Stanford, then everybody else is supposed to follow after that and do what they do. Wake Forest has only been in with this heady crowd the last 15 years or so.

Hatch recently published an op-ed in The Washington Post to explain his reasoning.

“For several years, a growing body of research has made clear that America’s top colleges and universities are doing a poor job of helping some young people realize a critical part of the American dream: That anyone, no matter where he or she begins in life, has the chance to rise to the top,” he wrote.

Students from the top quarter of the socioeconomic hierarchy are 25 times more likely to attend a “top tier” college than students for the bottom quarter, he says. And a study of 78,000 students in California found that SAT scores correlated with family income but not with college grades. In fact, SAT was the poorest predictor of college performance when compared with high school grades and performance on subject tests. Other studies have found that such factors as high school class ranking and strength of the high school course load are better predictors.

I happen to have worked as a press person for a university alumni office in a previous millennium and it happens to have been Wake Forest’s. College administrators read books to help them understand changing cultural trends and patterns, particularly generational patterns, as generations are their business. Hatch is the first university President to fully understand that we have come to the end of one era and the beginning of another and to initiate an important public policy initiative based on that understanding.

Every major college and university faced a dilemma between the 1960s and the 1990s. Economy was booming and so was social awareness. The Civil Rights Movement brought a responsible attempt by most schools including Wake Forest to bring in those who had been ignored; that is, to bring in those who had been systematically excluded from the economy and the culture at large by institutionalized segregation. In North Carolina and the South in particular that meant black folk who were poor folk; some very poor. Many rural and barely educated.

It was not an easy task as the poor do not share the same values, attitudes and cultural leanings and yearnings as the better off. And they would not have the same SAT scores. So bringing them into the best universities would drop the general SAT scores for the school. And SAT scores were vitally important then to colleges and universities because it was a time of rising economy and there was a high demand and public need for highest quality education for a growing middle class. A drop in SAT scores would critically lower the school’s profile.

Black students from middle-class and wealthy backgrounds became highly sought after. They integrated nicely with the white kids of the same economic backgrounds. Increasingly, the original mandate began to drift and the poor became increasingly ignored.

Enter the age of diversity and globalization. When the word diversity became universally ingrained in the lexicon in the early 1990s, the original paradigm permanently shifted. The poverty part of the equation which; the economic element and the core issue of integration was almost universally abandoned. Suddenly, you could not talk to a college President whether from Harvard or a minor junior college in Florida without hearing the word diversity within the first phrases. But as I was told by one black sociologist at the time: They’d begun substituting Mexicans for black people. They were substituting Chinese people for black people. They weren’t. But what they were doing was substituting wealthy people from around the world and some of the wealthiest people on the face of the earth, for poor people in the South and from the blighted cities up North.

The age of diversity and globalization can be seen from a marketing perspective as bringing a full shift in paradigm. It came fast on the heels of the age of leadership and excellence. Now we are entering a new age. It doesn’t have a name yet but it began January 4, 2008, the day after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus with 39% of the vote and Hillary Clinton came in third with 29%.

President Hatch is now a gatekeeper to this age. He has proposed a new formula in which great colleges like Wake Forest and Middlebury and Harvard and Stanford can keep their SAT numbers and other data vital to marketing high, as they must do to bring in the best students they can get worldwide and properly educate them, and also bring in and fully include those deserving from economic backgrounds which had been previously excluded.

Hatch has brought us back to our first principles and to our full range of responsibilities. He has provided colleges with a new model and possibly a standard maxim for the new century and he has done the right thing.

The Way of the Warrior

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill 7/4/08

The 1970s was a time of squalor. What had started in joy and awakening 10, 15 years before had peaked in 1968-69 and descended the stairs. We found then the vile and the menial; Charles Manson, Son of Sam and assassination attempts on the good and the harmless like the pope and John Lennon. Class status was determined then by drugs and the period was awash in drugs – stock brokers, politicians and bankers were openly snorting cocaine in the restaurants in NYC and bike messengers were injecting heroin in stair wells. Then it all changed swiftly.

As Gary Hart mentioned in a NYTs essay last week, a new political era began with the rise of Ronald Reagan. If anything, Reagan brought a change in overriding themes which affected everyone and everything. That era became identified with the word excellence. With the publication of In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. in 1982, excellence became the mantra for new energy and a new and creative attitude in all aspects of the culture.

As the Sixties was said to have started when Bob Dylan, creator/monkey god of a generation, shifted from a wooden guitar to an electric guitar in Newport in 1965, the “age of excellence” might have found its monkey god in author Tom Wolfe, who wrote a book called The Right Stuff in 1979. And as the mage of the Sixties was a troubadour with a guitar, the avatar of excellence was the Korean and Vietnam-era fighter pilot.

From then until now it is worth reviewing the way of the warrior because once again we have fully descended the stairs.

As Wolfe described these pilots in The Right Stuff: “ . . . it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life. The idea seemed to be that any fool could do that, if that was all that was required, just as any fool could throw away his life in the process.”

No, he writes, “The idea here seemed to be that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment – and then to go up again the next day, and the next day, and every next day, even if the series should prove infinite . . . .”

They were men of few words, elite warriors far from the all-inclusive idiom of the times. They were in essence, ”Manliness, manhood, manly courage . . . there was something ancient, primordial, irresistible about the challenge of this stuff, no matter what a sophisticated and rational age one might think he lived in.”

And they bore no patience with the horde: “A fighter pilot soon found he wanted to associate only with other fighter pilots. Who else could understand the nature of the little proposition (right stuff/death) they were all dealing with?” And no patience with those even directly below: “There are no accidents and no fatal flaws in the machines; there are only pilots with the wrong stuff.”

When a colleague crashed and burned in a Florida swamp on a training mission, the mourning was only among the widows. Wolfe reported that the other pilots in his squadron asked only: “How could he have been so stupid?”

By 1989, the age of excellence had reached denouement. Bill and Ted greeted celestials on their excellent journey with the phrase, “Be excellent to one another!” Reagan Chief James A. Baker had rigged White House computers so that they would freeze up when anyone typed the word excellence as it had become so clichéd, show worn and meaningless.

As Wolfe writes, Vietnam era fighter pilots were a samurai cult. Getting shot down was not an option. Simply getting shot down (or shot up) didn't bring political cache and capital until George H.W. Bush’s Presidential run. Bush was shot down in a Grumman TBM Avenger in 1944. He ran for President in 1988.

The idea of "hero" and it’s public and political persona changed at that very moment. Traditionally, a military hero would be considered exactly like a sports hero. Randy Moss or Derek Jeter; the elite – better than any other. Nathan Bedford Forest, the wizard of the saddle, or Joshua Chamberlain, who held off the Confederates with stones and knives in the turning of events at Gettysburg. It changed then to just anyone who just played, even if they failed.

This is a dangerous slide because eventually this worship of the most pedestrian aspect of military service enters a "nostalgico" phase and it has now. Franco's Spain brought royal militarist nostalgia to the first part of the 20^th century and was prelude to the rise of fascism which in Spain, Italy and Germany sought to restore a gone era through military glory.

Rings a bell. In every case it is an attempt to stop time and is always fated to fail. The Ku Klux Klan was also awakened by nostalgico war veterans when Nathan Bedford Forest took its lead. Nostalgia for war lead us to 'war for the sake of war' - the mother of all war crimes and that from which all other war crimes descend.

Today, foot draggers and even cowards are considered heroes provided that they wore the uniform. We regularly see politicians who spent their early years dodging the draft sporting baseball caps and jackets with military insignia while visiting troops. And the leading proponents of warfare today like Vice President Dick Cheney are serial offenders; draft dodgers of legendary proportion. We have entered a middle world; not good, not bad, but mid’lin – what author Curtis White calls the world of Middle Mind. It is a place where soldiers are not warriors, men of the clothe are not men of God but political hacks, it is the place of pedophile priests, apparatchik journalists and accommodating, appeasing politicians.

The general public has really never heard of the great ones; the samurai with abilities at the decimal level of Moss and Jeter. The mediocre and incompetent have ushered them off the stage. Colonel John Boyd, possibly the greatest pilot who ever lived; the pilot who changed the way of modern warfare, is known only to insiders. Colonel Jack Broughton, the legendary warrior who flew F-105’s out of Korat and was relieved of duty for his genius doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry.

I happen to have been there when they still flew 105s out of Korat. By the early 1970s the 105’s were all gone. Shot down, their screech and roar never to be heard from again.

Gary Hart and the Cycles of History

For The Hill’s Pundit’s Blog – 7/2/2008

Gary Hart made the point in a New York Times op-ed last week that we enter a true new cycle in American history with the rise of Barack Obama. He cites Emerson. He cites Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. on the cycles of history. Henry Adams, he says, believed that “a period of about 12 years measured the beat of the pendulum.” Given the visceral level of political ping-pong going on these days it is surprising that in the week since, there has been no countervailing refutation of this thought.

“If we somewhat arbitrarily fix the age of Franklin D. Roosevelt as 1932 to 1968 and the era of Ronald Reagan as 1968 to 2008, a new cycle of American political history — a cycle of reform — is due,” writes Hart.

Historical cycles have gates and gatekeepers. If Hart is right, George W. Bush will be remembered as a Gatekeeper, but Gatekeepers close as well as open gates and Bush’s fate is to close the gate which Ronald Reagan opened. But big historical and cultural cycles contain smaller cycles and countervailing cycles which interweave together like the ceilings of the mosque at Cordoba. In a greater time cycle we have been rising from Wilson to Eisenhower and Kennedy to a true globalism in American consciousness that is no longer shackled to the European tradition and its lore and burdens, but feels a comfortable visitor today in Africa or Laos as well.

The cycles of history theme is most accurately explained and followed today by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their recent books The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy and Millennials Rising : The Next Great Generation. The authors re-animated a theory of Roman historians which describes autonomous four-generation post-war periods called saecula. The culture breaks and turns at the beginning of the fourth post-war generation, which is now.

An example of cycles of history can be seen when W.J. Cash, from Shelby, NC, wrote a book called The Mind of the South in 1941, a criticism of the Confederate mentality which lingered in the segregated South. He fully expected to be denounced from every quarter. But he wasn't. His book was favorably reviewed by 50 newspaper editors in the South and became a turning point in Southern history writing, opening the gate for C. Vann Woodward and other great Southern historians. The South had largely gotten past the Confederacy by 1941 and was ready to move on.

We are at that point right now with WW II history and its afterglow, Cold War. The country is ready to move away from seeing Russia as our enemy and Rome as our Father and viewing our trials and responsibilities as all across the Atlantic. The third generation, of which John McCain is political avatar, looks back to the valor of the first generation, described by Tom Brokaw, who is knowledgeable about the Strauss-Howe theory, as the greatest generation. But the four-generational sectors are archetypal variants; that is, they have different meanings and motivations. The third gen takes its character by honoring the past – it is a feeling thing; an imitation of the original. The first generation did not do that: Theirs was original feeling of striving to survive and that is how they won they war. The fourth-generation simply doesn't understand; as with the greater South in 1941, it is ready to move on from the Confederacy.

Today, China is rising. India is rising. They present a world ahead and cannot be viewed as enemies. In this world McCain brings the dangerous nostalgico condition of gratuitous militarism and royalist ancestor worship that Spain suffered with Franco. It is an attempt to stop the cycles of time and the generations and it is the classic end-cry of a historical period. (See Kafka’s In the Penal Colony – and the plight of the forlorn and forgotten Executioner, left behind when the season changes and the People have lost their taste for Fascism, so he executes himself). Every generation attempts to prevent the new generation from awakening.

It is good that Hart cites Emerson, New England’s celestial bard, who saw us Americans born free in nature and urged us to leave the Euro-past behind and find ourselves again here, free and independent; going alone, refusing even the good models, and “ . . . even those which are sacred in the imagination of men,” - perched and united in a central meeting place between East and West. The “center of the world” to the world’s Four Corners; West, East, South and the Great White North.

“Once elected, Barack Obama would have a rare opportunity to define a new Democratic Party,” writes Hart. “He could preside over the beginning of a new political cycle that, if relevant to the times, would dominate American politics for three or four decades to come.”

The new gate, the new century and the new generation opens now with Obama. Interesting that Obama is the political avatar who comes here from the East (Hawaii) to the center rather than from the West (New York, New England, Virginia). As we enter the new century we not only leave behind the sense of ourselves today as a pseudo-European/Roman set of sub-states. We also leave behind the internal North/South paradigm which has determined our fate these past two hundred years, and open to the burgeoning East/West political dynamic, which finds its center in Obama's Chicago rather than Washington, D.C.

Note to Obama: The cycles of history quite often end in what some in TQM management culture call the Merlin/Arthur Syndrome; the combination of a visionary politician and a master manager who executes and completes the visionary’s purpose. Merlin, the visionary, sees the world inside to its center but needs an agent to bring this vision to the outside world and that is Arthur. Arthur, has the ability to execute a historic master plan but requires the inner vision of the sage to find the plan; he cannot go there by himself. In real life, the executor, Arthur, is usually a military General and that is how the last three historical saecula in America have ended and begun again: Jefferson/Washington, Lincoln/Grant, Roosevelt/Eisenhower.

The Importance of Wesley Clark

For The Hill’s “Pundit’s Blog” - 6/28/2008

We’ve been hearing a lot about John Adams these days. All my Yankee friends who read books have enjoyed the show; the David McCullough biography and the recent PBS series. But as one born and reared in New England, I’ve always preferred Jefferson.

Especially these days. As his father early on compared them to the father and son Adams Presidents, I’ve long thought that George W. Bush modeled – or more likely imagined – his Presidency after Adams, the second President of the United States.

What was troubling was the ease and confidence in which Bush would move forward on issues which were sometimes illegal and unconstitutional and duplicitous. The one historical perspective which resonates is the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts by Adams which stripped the public of civil rights and removed the Constituional basis for public life. Jefferson, the visionary who alone perceived the dangerous potentialities ahead when he signed on with the likes of Adams and Hamilton, felt Adams had destroyed his vision of an burgeoning American republic at its infancy and began to set a separate path for Virginia and the South.

Bush has always had the glowing and innocent self confidence of one who has never really been successful at anything. Perhaps he felt that like Adams, he could not break the law because as President, he was above the law, and like Nixon, if he did, someone would come along later and pardon him. Someone would mop it up later. They always had.

In any event he knew, and he was right in this if the current state of the republic is characteristic, that over time people would prefer hagiography to history when crimes, malice and misdemeanors were suggested. The people would remember that the President wrote daily to his charming wife or spent the idle hours cutting brush in the Texas bush.

Since Bush came to office we have lived in a shadow world of deception and duplicity. We still don’t know the origins. We need to know. Our fate and future as American citizens depends on it.

In one of his recent books Wesley Clark said that he had heard rumors of the Iraq invasion long before the attack. Many of us did. In fact, at one point it was quite obvious that the Bush administration was going to invade and that the tragic terror attacks of 9/11 had little to do with it. Before we go any further, let’s get back to the beginnings of this. Let’s have televised exploratory hearings. Let them be vast and if necessary let them last years and let them begin now.

Not to get all judgmental, but for myself, I’d like to see something a little less touchy-feely than the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and something more akin to the McCarthy Hearings. Or better still, something like France’s war crime trials of the legendary and folkloric Vichy Swine which took TIME’s Man of the Year in 1931, Pierre Laval, and left him vomiting before a firing squad in 1945.

The Iraq war and foreign policy are now secondary. What is at stake here is the soul of America. How did Americans allow this to happen? We can blame the weakling courts, the Congress of Peeps and the appeasing and collaborating press for Gitmo, torture, the repeal of habeas corpus and this phony invasion but up to 75% of Americans originally endorsed the invasion in a national fit of war fever. People may be tired of the war today, but Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush will be back soon either as VP candidates for John McCain or as Presidential candidates in 2012 to restore the Bush vision. Because what Bush has done is call for the establishment of an entirely new point of view in the American condition – one at stark variance with our Constitutional beginnings - and the next step is to institutionalize it.

This is where I see General Clark as important. You cannot abdicate your principles during the time of need then go back to them after the moral crisis has passed. If you do they are not principles, they are talismans. The Iraq war was evidence that we as Americans are no longer guided by republican government and its principles. Like Sarko and the new Euro Bush Souls, we are collaborators.

We need to be redeemed. And we need to redeem ourselves.

It is in human nature to justify our failings. But little wars lead to bigger wars shortly after as they empower the citizenry to fight. The Mexican War led to the Civil War. WW I empowered Hitler and Germany to move again in the 1930s. We are now in the gulf between wars perhaps, waiting for Mitt Romney to fulfill Bush’s great vision in the Middle East.

I saw only Wesley Clark as standing out in opposition at the very beginning. Others, like Howard Dean opposed, but it is one thing when a northern New England Governor opposes – we oppose everything – and a General with the status of Wesley Clark. Clark was often alone in his opposition but he brought forth a force of patriotic character in opposition that elected officials could rally around. Then by the ’06 elections there was Clark and there was Jim Webb, the Senator from Virginia, and the will of Congress and the people began to turn on the initiative of these two warrior-scholars and a sea change occurred.

We will need them again and perhaps now we will need them always in public life until we get our bearings back.

Up here in the Vermont region people have bumper stickers with the date of Bush's last day in office, 01.20.09. But you can't do that; you can't let them take it from you and just wait till it passes. If you do, it won't pass. You have empowered the bully and he will be back.

President Obama needs a bull dog. He needs someone who in his person represents us and our best instincts in our tradition. He needs someone who represents us as fair-minded and compassionate and patriotic and resolute in our opposition. Someone like Webb who brought a shrill voice to opposition when no one would listen; some one like Wes Clark who came back from Vietnam in a basket without complaint, hubris or public display.

Obama needs someone who can face the difficult tasks ahead with clarity and without bitterness or recriminations. Because this isn’t over. It is just beginning.

Journal - 6/25/08 - Gary Hart, Wes Clark, Sam Nunn, Obama's VP

War for the sake of war

Gary Hart makes the point in a NYTs op-ed that we enter a true new chapter in American history with the rise of Obama. Cites Emerson. My comment:

What we have been rising to since Eisenhower and Kennedy is a true globalism in American consciousness that is not shackled to the European tradition and its lore and burdens, but feels a comfortable visitor in Africa or Laos as well. Obama is the avatar who comes from the East to the center rather than from the West. We will also leave behind the internal North/South paradigm which has determined our fate these past two hundred years, to the burgeoning East/West political dynamic, which finds its center in Obama's Chicago rather than D.C. He needs to poach Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger who share his energy and excitement for new awakenings and rise to their challenges.

Wes Clark supporter, Ellen, asks about Clark's chance for VP. General Clark's conspicuous absence from a list of National Security Study Group people for an Obama administration suggested he was being considered for VP. My comment:

Tea leaves: Clark’s presence at head of flag officers (in this Reuters photo of Tony McPeak, Obama and Clark) bolsters Obama’s comments last week preparing/prelude to this moment. Obama said he was considering a military officer for VP and suggestion was James Jones. But Clark is prominent here; Jones comment was stealth.

Clark on left because Obama will use him on interior America role (Introvert – rebuilding a patriotic America; VP only does foreign policy in Bushworld) and use an older man for exterior World (Extravert). Clark VP, Sam Nunn, Sec. of State., Sebelius, Chief of Staff.

Clark v. Romney: I guess from my point of view the war on Iraq and foreign affairs are secondary. What is primary is how did Americans allow this to happen? We can blame the weakling Courts, Congress and the Press for Gitmo, torture, the repeal of habeas corpus and this phony invasion but 75% endorsed this. They may be tired of the war, but Romney will be back either as VP or as Presidential candidate in 2012 to restore the Bush vision. This is where I see General Clark as important and always have. You cannot abdicate your principles then go back to them after the moral crisis. The Iraq war was evidence that we as Americans are no longer guided by republican government and principles; like Sarko and the new Euro Bush Souls, we are collaborators. It is in human nature to justify our failings. Little wars lead to bigger wars shortly after as they empower the citizenry to fight; the Mexican War led to the Civil War. WW I empowered Hitler and Germany in the 1940s. We are now in the gulf between wars perhaps, waiting for Mitt Romney to fulfill Bush’s great vision. I saw only Wesley Clark as standing out in opposition at the very beginning. Others, like Howard Dean opposed, but it is one thing when a northern New England Governor opposes – we oppose everything – and a General with the status of Wesley Clark. This is just beginning and it will be a fight for the restoration of the soul of America. Bush is widely expected to convert to Catholicism after his shift. This is a weird twist in the Protestant Ethic (speaking as a Catholic/buddhist). I half expect he sees himself now as eventually being canonized; just as he and his father saw them selves as Adams and son. And although it is pathological, I see it not an impossible vision. Romney and Clark could fight this out in single warrior combat for the American soul.

. . . up here in Vermont (region) people have bumper stickers with the date of Bush's last day in office. But you can't do that; you can't let them take it and just wait till it passes. If yo do, it won't pass. You have to take it back from them or you lose your character as true citizens. You have to demand it. America's fate could well hang between Wes Clark and Mitt Romney.

. . . if not VP, he (Clark) will be what I wrote in one of my first articles about him - "the bull dog heart of a new Democratic Party."

Suggestion: Obama has some unique and enlightened perspectives but it is beginning now to be able to see at what every day level of decision making he will channel - that is, Sebelius, Webb, Gore, Clark would all be interesting VPs but each of those four would make fully different Cabinet packages and unique administrations. Obama is spending a lot of time these last two weeks with Tom Daschle and Tom is said to be pitching heavily several including Wesley Clark. I don't see Webb getting it - a great and interesting man but with the artist's heart and too unpredictable for the management quality - which I see as very, very high given Obama's campaign to date - that Obama will demand. A Webb decision would not fit Obama's decision - making pattern and it would be too many coyotes on one ticket. A Gore VP would be an emergency "save the environment" team - we may need that but we're not going to do it. Obama will demand management skills of the highest level. That is Clark, Sebelius, Mark Warner (Ed Rendell also a possibility - he was a great hero in Philly; I covered his first race for mayor - but two candidates from northern big cities? Clark as Southern karma.) Warner says no, he won't take it. Sebelius is possibly the best manager of a middle-size state. And she has a way nice Kansas, heartland karma and personality. But we need management plus; Clark has First Tier management but can bring an interior cohesion to the party and the country that the others can't. His work in '06 was important in giving the Democrats a new attitude. Clark fits Obama's recent decision-making patterns. His Cabinet will be mainstream - Tom Daschle - but with a positive new attitude and Clark adds real cache to it so he is currently my first guess since the naming of the National Security Study Group thing.

. . . but if it is a purely symbolic decision he'll pick the guy from Montana or Clare McCaskill, Senator from Missouri.

Ellen cites the Gary Hart comments in the NYTs: This campaign presents the potential for a new cycle of American history.

My thought: Absolutely. He cites Emerson and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. , but the cycles of history theme is most accurately described by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their books "The Fourth Turning" and "Millennials." Specifically, the authors re-animated a theory of Roman historians which describes a four-generation post-war period - an 80 year-period which Roman historians called a saeculum. The culture breaks and turns at the beginning of the fourth generation, which is now. Before General Clark entered the '04 race a friend and I each sent Gary Hart a very small amount of cash and asked him to run for President and asked him to come up here to NH to speak. He came up and spoke at Amherst and U NH and perfectly and in hindsight, with complete accuracy, outlined what would happen if the Bush administration invaded Iraq. A few months later he announced that he would not run for President and listen to this: He sent our money back! An example of cycles of history can be seen when W.J. Cash, from Shelby, NC, wrote a book called "The Mind of the South" in 1941, a criticism of the Confederate mentality which lingered in the segregated South. He fully expected to be denounced from every quarter. But he wasn't. His book was favorably reviewed by 50 newspaper editors in the south and became a turning point in Southern history writing, opening the gate for people like C. Vann Woodward and other great historians. The South had largely gotten past the Confederacy by 1941 and was ready to move on. We are at that point right now with WW II history and its afterglow, Cold War. The country is ready to move away from seeing Russia as our enemy and viewing our trials as all across the Atlantic. The fourth-generation simply doesn't understand. China is rising; India is rising. They present the world ahead and cannot be viewed as enemies. McCain is not ready; this creates the dangerous nostalgico condition that Spain suffered with Franco - Bush is a nostalgico President and guilty of the greatest of all war crimes and the mother of all war crimes; war for the sake of imitating valor; it is war for the sake of war. Bush's roll in the cycles of history is as a gatekeeper but his roll is to close the gate that Ronald Reagan opened. Bush closes the door on the post-Victorian century. The new gate and the new century opens now with Obama. Now we begin to look East as well as West.

Can the Irish Leave the EU?

By Bernie Quigley

6/21/08 – for the Irish Echo

The Irish have sent the EU into a tail spin because they voted to oppose last week’s referendum on EU reform, which would have demanded that Ireland follow Europe’s dictates on abortion, military intervention and taxation. Pundits say it has crippled the EU, perhaps for good, unless Ireland can be coerced into changing its vote. One analyst says Ireland should find a way to leave the EU.

But can the Irish "find a way to leave" the EU? I doubt that the Irish or anyone else in Europe has fully considered that the American Civil War came about because of different philosophical outlooks between the pastoralists in Virginia and the industrialists in New York City and that these opposing outlooks are inherent in federalism.

In the United States in 1776, no one but Thomas Jefferson had fully thought through the possible consequences of federation. But within 20 years of signing, the perceptive Jefferson began to understand that the North would invade the South when it developed the economic and industrial power to do so.

In Europe today I see no Jefferson. And as far as I understand it, there is no exit clause for Ireland or anyone else in the EU.

The American federation first began to crack when President John Adams – who could well be seen as George W. Bush’s role model in his cavalier attitude toward Constitutional responsibility - removed civil liberties with the Alien and Sedition Acts just 22 years after the signing, and Jefferson and Madison began writing secession papers for Virginia and Kentucky in response. Jefferson knew then that the New Yorkers would not allow them to leave the federation even though he had written an exit clause in the Virginia Constitution at the beginning. He expected a northern invasion of Virginia as early as 1797.

The dye was already cast in 1794 at Jay’s Treaty when George Washington broke with his fellow Virginians and joined with Adams and Alexander Hamilton, the New Yorker, who had created the model of a universal industrial state with one center, in opposition to Jefferson and Madison. Those were the first two steps from which all of American federal history has since descended.

Ireland suddenly finds itself today in the early phases of Jefferson’s dilemma. Now that the Irish pastoralists begin to face philosophical differences with their big industrial masters, Germany and France in particular, they will find the same issues.

Commentator Carlos Alberto Montaner who lives in Spain, says there is no such thing as Europe.

“There are French, English, Italians, Spaniards et al, but the inhabitants of the Old World still have not shown anything resembling a common soul and probably never will,” he says in a recent Washington Post article.

He also cites Argentine writer Mariano Grondona who says the same about MERCOSUR, a Latin American body conceived in the manner of the European Union

“I know many Argentines who would be willing to die or kill for Argentina, but I don't know a single one who is ready to do so for MERCOSUR,” says Grondona.

Their commentary suggests the United States prior to federation and shortly after as Ulysses S. Grant described it in his memoirs; a land made up of small communities with localized idioms. The Civil War changed all that.

Lincoln and Grant had to bring in the Irish landing in a horde in New York (including my great grandfather) to suppress the Virginians and the southern pastoralists when the inevitable crisis erupted. Perhaps in time the EU federalists will have to pull in its people in all those Eastern Bloc and Orthodox Christian countries and the Turks and Muslims on the far edge of Europe who so want to participate to suppress a new Irish insurgency.

There is a process or arc in the life cycle of federations which have grown so rapidly in the world since the mid-1800s. These are not traditional empires like China, Russia or the rise of England under Elizabeth I. They are Instant Empires. Their longevity is still up for debate. They are ad hoc groupings of related areas forming together for an immediate purpose; usually defense or economic betterment.

In the United States it was a case of the strong industrial regions dominating the pastoral regions by brute force in the Civil War. We are taught constantly here in the North that this war was fought to fight slavery but letters home by Vermont soldiers show little interest in liberating slaves. Almost all say they entered the fight to prevent the South from seceding from the federation signed on to in 1776.

Europe today is on precisely the same path. The Irish may have seen an opportunity to transcend British cultural dominance by joining the EU. But now it must wonder how it will fare as a German substate, as the new Euro core is largely France/Germany; Sarko's France the submissive yin in full cooperation with the dominant and stronger yang force next door. (Did somebody say Vichy?)

How should Ireland find its way in this world?

It shouldn’t.

When the Irish left home, where did they go? Germany? France? No. They went to Manchester, England, until they had enough cash on hand to make passage to New York and Boston. If Ireland wanted to be a substate to anyone, it should be the free world on this side of the Atlantic which it helped create.

But Ireland now has the opportunity to lead the world out of the soulless and generic mentality of one-size-fits-all federalism to find its own nature again and find its way as a free state and a free people in a free world, beholding to no one on moral issues or any other.

Ireland is a Free State

The Irish have sent the EU into a tail spin because they voted to oppose last week’s referendum on EU reform, which would have demanded that Ireland follow Europe’s dictates on abortion, military intervention and taxation. Pundits say it has crippled the EU, perhaps for good, unless Ireland can be coerced into changing its vote. One analyst says Ireland should find a way to leave the EU.

But can the Irish "find a way to leave" the EU? I doubt that the Irish or anyone else in Europe has fully considered that the American Civil War came about because of different philosophical outlooks between the pastoralists in Virginia and the industrialists in New York City and these opposing outlooks are inherent in federation.

In the United States in 1776, no one but Jefferson had fully thought through the possible consequences of federation. Within 20 years of signing, Jefferson understood that the North would invade the South when it developed the economic and industrial power to do so.

In Europe today I see no Jefferson. And as far as I understand it, there is no exit clause for Ireland or anyone else in the EU.

The American federation first began to crack when President John Adams – W’s role model - removed civil liberties with the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, just 22 years after the signing, and Jefferson and Madison began writing secession papers for Virginia and Kentucky in response. Jefferson knew then that the New Yorkers would not allow them to leave the federation even though he had written an exit clause in the Virginia Constitution at the beginning. He expected a northern invasion of Virginia as early as 1797.

The dye was already cast in 1794 at Jay’s Treaty when George Washington broke with his fellow Virginians and joined with Adams and the New Yorker, Alexander Hamilton, who had created the model of a universal industrial state with one center, in opposition to Jefferson and Madison. Those were the first two steps from which all of American federal history has since descended.

Ireland suddenly finds itself today in the early phases of Jefferson’s dilemma. Now that the Irish pastoralists begin to face philosophical differences with their big industrial masters, Germany and France in particular, they will find the same issues.

Commentator Carlos Alberto Montaner who lives in Spain, says there is no such thing as Europe.

“There are French, English, Italians, Spaniards et al, but the inhabitants of the Old World still have not shown anything resembling a common soul and probably never will,” he says in a Washington Post article.

He also cites Mariano Grondona, an Argentinian, who says the same about MERCOSUR, a Latin American body conceived in the manner of the European Union

“I know many Argentines who would be willing to die or kill for Argentina, but I don't know a single one who is ready to do so for MERCOSUR,” says Grondona.

Their commentary suggests the United States prior to federation and shortly after as Ulysses S. Grant described it in his memoirs; a land made up of small communities with localized idioms. The Civil War changed all that.

Lincoln and Grant had to bring in the Irish landing in a horde in New York (including my great, grandfather) to suppress the Virginians and the southern pastoralists when the inevitable crisis erupted. Perhaps in time the EU federalists will have to pull in its people in all those Eastern Bloc and Orthodox Christian countries and Turks and Muslims on the edge of Europe who so want to participate to suppress a new Irish insurgency.

There is a process or arc in the life cycle of federations which have grown so rapidly in the world since the mid-1800s. These are not traditional empires like China, Russia or the rise of England under Elizabeth I. They are Instant Empires. Their longevity is still up for debate. They are ad hoc groupings of related areas forming together for an immediate purpose; usually defense or economic betterment.

In the United States it was a case of the strong industrial regions dominating the pastoral regions by brute force in the Civil War. We are taught constantly here in the North that this war was fought to fight slavery but letters home by Vermont soldiers show little interest in liberating slaves. Almost all said they entered the fight to prevent the South from seceding from the federation.

Europe today is on precisely the same path. The Irish may have seen an opportunity to transcend British cultural dominance in joining the EU. But now it must wonder how it will fare as a German sub-state, as the new Euro core is largely France/Germany; Sarko's France the submissive yin in full cooperation to the dominant and stronger yang force next door. (Did somebody say Vichy?)

How should Ireland find its way in this world?

It shouldn’t.

When the Irish left home, where did they go? Germany? France? No. They went to Manchester, England, until they had enough cash on hand to make passage to New York and Boston. If Ireland wanted to be a sub state to anyone, it should be the free world on this side of the Atlantic which it helped create.

But Ireland now has the opportunity to lead the world out of the soulless and generic mentality of one-size-fits-all federalism to find its own nature again and find its way as a free state and a free people in a free world, beholding to no one on moral issues or any other.

Obama/Gore '08

Politics is Power. A look at the trajectory of politics in America since Yalta shows a rise of the Power Principle manifest primarily in the Republican Party; Eisenhower and Reagan on a trajectory which is likely to continue. True Democrats like Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, interspersed regularly with levity and playfulness; the yin dancing through the yang, but always in yang’s house. Some, including myself see Obama as the new JFK; some say the new Lincoln. I have a friend who says Obama is the Chosen One – the Aquarian - and will lead a movement to last 2,000 years. But in the perspective of recent history, the most likely scenario is a happy one-term affair, like the breathing space between Watergate and Reagan, a time when the Republican Party was seen as dead in the water, as it is seen today. But Watergate was the best thing to happen to the Republicans. It allowed them to dump the trash and rebuilt within a decade, to dominate the political scene for the next 25 years.

Obama can awaken the new century, but he needs to build a fully original party; one which leaves history behind entirely. And for that he needs Al Gore.

Obama is showing organizational and conceptual abilities already that are superior to any candidate in our time. Our American history is North/South, but from his perch in Chicago, he sees the world East/West as it opens up to the new millennium. But if he doesn’t fully institionalize his vision with the right team, he will fall into history’s footnotes as one of the charming ethnics; like the Irishman from Boston and the Sunday School teacher from Plains, Georgia.

For this he needs to bring Al Gore out of the shadows and on to the main stage for once and for all. Obama needs to institutionalize himself and he needs to institutionalize Al Gore, or both will be remembered as in the Woody Guthrie tune: . . . they come with the dust and are gone with the wind.

All the talk of Republicans falling apart is wishful thinking. Some of the most prominent Republicans today really seem to be looking for a breathing space. And others like Mark Sanford, Republican Governor of South Carolina, may actually be charmed by Obama.

Surveys are deceptive. Obama is slightly ahead of McCain in national polls, but we live in volatile times. Lincoln was widely expected to lose his second election. Surveys showed him well behind, but he won in a landslide. What the surveys showed was that the country was tired of war. But they were not ready to refute the Union effort when it came time to vote. We are today in a similar pattern. The country is tired of war. But is the country ready to refute the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein? Up to 75% of those surveyed at the very beginning supported this invasion; fiercely supported this invasion in a haze of war fever. Including most of the Senate and virtually all of the top editors and reporters. The Iraq invasion could well be recalled like the Mexican War. As Grant said, it was a war of the strong against the weak, but anyone who did not participate in it would not take part in the dramatic events to follow.

Obama can’t win running as an anti-war candidate and he is not running as an anti-war candidate. Negativity feeds a beast and it is its own reward: It likes to fail. (As with the Irish independence movement 100 years since: We don’t seek independence because we hate England. We seek independence because we love Ireland. Hating England is the unfortunate by-product.)

Obama has avoided this negativity. He is one of the few and the brave who opposed the war from its very beginnings but has shown sensitivity and understanding to those Senators like Clinton and John Edwards who voted for it then changed their positions as the surveys changed. Indeed, he has shown maturity and sensitivity throughout in the face of the most childish and dishonest strategies by some of his opponents.

Senator McCain’s entire candidacy is an endorsement of the Iraq war and the Bush so-called legacy. The better way to advance this position would be to put Jeb Bush on as VP candidate and fill the slots with Mitt Romney, Bloomberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jeb is no Boy George and is widely respected as a manager and a politician. That Quaternity would repair the Republican party pronto and with Jeb Bush running for POTUS in 2012, would give the newly Catholicized Republicans (W is widely expected to convert after his shift is up and Jeb, like many leading Republicans, is a recent convert) a permanent dynasty; possibly it would bring an end of republican government as we have experienced it on our continent, and give us instead an American regime akin to that of the Hapsburgs.

Obama is the only chance. And Al Gore is the singular politician in the tradition who does not look to the past ("my legacy") but to the future. He is still the uncarved block and the man of ideas who sees only the future. Some Republicans with an eye to the environment, Governor Schwarzenegger for example, who hopes to build a hydrogen highway from San Diego to Vancouver, and Governor Jody Rell of Connecticut and NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who had hopes of ridding New York City of pollution, have been frustrated by legacy and tradition in both parties. They all look ahead with energy and imagination. In an extended Bush legacy they will have to ignore the feds and look to sympathetic regionalism to advance their vision of rebuilt cities and rebuilt people and fast trains and hydrogen highways from New York to Chicago and on to San Francisco. But Obama/Gore ’08 shares their energy and enthusiasm as it is part of the continuum which spirals forward from the moment, not countervails behind from it in an opposite direction. Obama could easily poach Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger as Gore’s Eisenhower and Marshall on the war of the environment and my feeling is that they would rather work for him in a post-partisan political environment of new ideas.

I’m not sure if it has been discussed satisfactorily, but on the blogs there was wide discussion of why Al Gore did not earlier endorse Obama and questions arose as to why he was the last to speak up.

The reason is simple. In late March, it was reported by Joe Klein in Time Magazine, that it looked like we were going to the Democratic Convention in a stalemate between Clinton and Obama. Some of the most prominent Democrats told Klein that if that happened, it would break the party in half and hand the ’08 election over to the Republicans. But that wasn’t going to happen, because if two went in, only one would come out and that one would be Al Gore. The delegates would vote Gore in on a second ballot.

Al Gore spoke up only this week in Michigan in support of Obama. It means the coast is clear to November for Obama. Obama has the delegates and Gore was certainly not among the crowd of Hillary’s "secret police" (Dick Morris’s phrase) hoping to undo the Obama nomination even after he had the delegates; a strategy which could have led this country to race riots or worse and a complete and permanent division between black and white in our country.

The party relied on Gore to keep those things from happening. That is because Al Gore is the most solid, responsible and reliable politician in the Democratic Party today and he always has been.

Extending Schwarzenegger's vision: A Continental Hydrogen Highway - letter to The Valley News, 6/14/08

A letter writer states that the New Hampshire Legislature refuses to expend its share of funding to advance feasibility studies for a Boston-Montreal Speed Rail which had hopes of getting to Boston from White River Junction via Nashua , Concord and Claremont . But there are other ways to get to Boston . The train could drop down from White River Junction to Brattleboro , Northampton , Massachusetts and Springfield , possibly even with less difficulty as highway paths are already cut there and those regions are largely rural. Western Massachusetts, especially around Amherst and Northampton where a link would be critical, would likely be sympathetic to this idea as well.

This route could also be used to begin to define a continental “hydrogen highway” which requires hydrogen fill stations periodically from Boston to Montreal like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed from San Diego to Vancouver. As many Canadian Premiers are sympathetic to Schwarzenegger’s innovation, an environmental corridor could be visualized through sympathetic regions from Boston to Montreal and west to Vancouver , where trains already run, then dropping down to Seattle and California . Hydrogen stations could be plugged in across the Trans-Canada and one could drive from Boston to CA in a hydrogen vehicle or take a fast train on the same route through sympathetic regions, leaving the obstructionist and hide-bound New Hampshire legislators out entirely.

Obama's Chicago

Ben Stein of Politico reports that Barack Obama is moving the headquarters of the DNC to Chicago.

Excellent. About time.

Politics here since 1607 has been North/South. They wisely placed the capital in D.C. as a benign center of countervailing elements, forming a mandala - a unifying center - to unite the two. Those days are past. We enter now East/West in the country and in the world. Chicago is the center of the East/West world; the world which finds our destiny for millennia ahead; Chicago is the center of West, South, East and the Great White North. Chicago is the center of the world.

Some continuing thoughts on that from Quigley in Exile and The Aquarian Paradigm below.

Particles and Waves: Cities and Countries are Binary and so are People and So Is Everything:

This is essentially, an edited out section of the last episode on the Six Grandfathers and American history.

Current research shows that on the day of birth a baby boy will look at a mobile hanging above his bead. A baby girl will look at a face. The one is a techomatrix orientation and inate fascination with technicality (head), the other empathy (heart). Head and heart are biological divisions and they are binary yang and yin orientations in the world. All societies divide between head and heart. Paris (above, Ile de la Cite and Left and Right Banks with Notre Dame's Rose Glass superimposed on the Ile de la Cite) gives a perfect example: the bankers and burgers live on the Right Bank of the river Seine (in red) and the artists, writers, hippies and mystics live on the Left Bank (in blue). The two halves are divided by a river connected by the Pont Neuf and held together by a perfect jewel: The Notre Dame Cathedral with its rose glass on the Ile de la Cite. Europe likewise divided between Roman (head) and Greek (heart) in Imperial, Christian and Cold War spheres, but unfortunately has no Ile de la Cite to unify and absorb its opposites today in a mandala.

A distinct binary relationship can be seen extending across Asia as well from India to Japan. Vedic (yin) Asia has its source in India but extends to areas that were once Vedic and are now Buddhist, like Thailand and its neighbors. The Vedic influence is palatable in Thailand and Laos. With Taoist (yang) Asia, China, Korea and Japan (Japanese zen owes itself to Taoism and is an extension to Taoism: See Suzuki’s Introduction to Zen), a binary relationship can be seen. The Vedic/yin regions feature yoga and graceful dancing, while the Taoist/yang regions express themselves in cerebral discussions (or non-discussion discussions as in Japanese Zen) marshal arts, stick fighting and in the farthest corner, Samurai swordsmanship, none of which are prominent in the Vedic areas. Tibet has influences of both; archetypal deities that resemble the Hindu pantheon, and the Taoism’s tai chi (yin/yang symbol) sits in the center of the Tibetan flag. Tibet, which calls the center of consciousness the Jewel Heart is in itself the Jewel Heart of the extended mandala of the East. The destruction of Tibet as a sacred center and its occupation by communist China will likely upset and destroy the ancient, balanced symmetries between China and India and those within the entire Asian continent.

The Asian regions developed these relationships over thousands of years, but the entire region will lose its internal yin/yang features as East and West adjoin in our times and a new global relationship develops a new Jewel Heart between East and West, founding a new benign mandala vortex around the Chicago/Toronto area thereabouts. This is a new world picture which has been moving to this one point since the beginning of civilization. It is the Aquarian mandala.

There is a well-known analysis in psychiatric lore about "Henry’s dreams" (picture here from Man and His Symbols, edited by C.G. Jung), which refers to a long series of archetypal dreams that brought a psychiatric patient of C.G. Jung associate Jolande Jacobi to face deep and irrational powers within himself. During analysis, Henry drew a picture with a blue field on the right with a Madonna-like woman standing in it and a red field on the left with a wolf-like black monster in it. The picture suggests that the forces within Henry are dangerously incompatible, but in the center of the picture is a mandala-like flower which links the opposite sides.

This personal dream of Henry's classically illustrates the situation described in the illustration above on the banks of the Seine in Paris, the left bank (artists and writers), the yin side, and the right side (bankers and business people), the yang side, united by the cathedral on the Ile de Cite. Further investigation reveals that this is the same pattern on the flag of France; a left field blue and a right field red, connected by a white field, meant to suggest the lilies of the field.

Many flags, particularly in mature countries, have this same balance; the blue sometimes green and the red sometimes orange, and with a flower or an icon of some type in the center holding them together. (The icon stashed up in the corner and with only one color suggests a transitional phase or a country out of balance.)

Many towns, cities and countries are thus divided, very often like New York into artsy (hippies, poets) “downtowns” and business-like “uptowns” (Madison Avenue). And the beautiful city of Washington, D.C. serves as a center-most mandala for North and South prior to the Civil War. And the Mississippi River divides the world today with Chicago at top and New Orleans at bottom uniting the U.S. east and west and all of the Eastern world and the Western world into one world. So far, like Europe, it has no mandala. But maybe it will one day. At center is the Lakes Region, which forms a water star - maybe a world mandala in the new center of the world will feature the Sea Serpent in the Great Lakes known to First People as the Manitou - the Primary Spirit of the Earth.)

Today's Thought: Big Brown

Wes Clark Endorses Barack Obama

Wes Clark send a letter to his supporters today endorsing Barack Obama. Here is the text:

There has never been a more important election in my lifetime -- with a war waging, gas prices at record highs, our health care in crisis, and our nation's standing around the world severely diminished. I spent the last year traveling across the country talking to great Americans in Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, South Dakota, Indiana and many other places. They all agree on one thing: This country needs new leadership, and it's time for change.

Many of you in the Clark community answered the call. Some of you worked tirelessly for Senator Clinton while others poured hours into Senator Obama's campaign. You did this because you were willing to sacrifice your time and energy to bring the change we so desperately need. I can't thank you enough for all you have done.

Now I am asking you to come together and make sure Barack Obama is our next president. This is a critical mission.

Hillary Clinton ran an amazing race. She inspired millions. Our party is a better party because of her campaign, and our nation is a better nation because of her service. She is and will always be a friend whom I admire.

I congratulate Senator Barack Obama on securing the nomination. His historic campaign has touched lives and his message has moved people in every corner of America. I believe he is not only ready for the challenge but will be a great President.

It's time our party comes together to stand behind Senator Obama as we move forward in this election season. I look forward to doing everything I can to help Senator Obama's campaign. While I respect John McCain's service, I know exactly what he stands for -- Bush's third term. America is a great nation, and our people deserve more. We need Barack Obama to be our next president.

Sincerely,

Wes Clark

Today's Thought: Bodhisattva Samantabhadra

The Obama Quaternity: Obama, Sebelius, Wes Clark (Jim Webb), Sam Nunn

In a DKos diary, Eve says that Wes Clark is the " . . . magical partner" for Barack Obama. A commentator adds that General Clark recently introduced Kathleen Sebelius to a crowd calling her the "next Vice President of the United States."

My comment - The Obama Quaternity: Obama, Sebelius, Clark, Nunn . . .

or Obama, Sebelius, Jim Webb and Sam Nunn. If y’all did a Myers-Briggs study of "types in a group" or one of those comparables that they use in "quality circles" in corporate TQM exercises (and I’m sure Sebelius and Clark have taken part in these in their professions), I think you would find Obama (POTUS)/Clark compatible and Sebelius(VP)/Clark compatible as Arthur/Merlin combinations. It is a thing we used to use in which King Arthur (Obama, POTUS or Sebelius, VP), the Extrovert, requires Merlin (Clark), the Introvert, to see inward and give analysis and suggest direction. Whereas, Merlin, the Introvert, requires King Arthur, the Extravert, to have his inner analysis applied to the outside world to that Arthur may give accurate final direction. The one is incapable without the other. And further, one’s introverted or extroverted abilities can be observed in the analyses over events and situations over their (Clark’s) long career. It is correct as Eve says here: Clark’s analysis of the war on Iraq was instinctive, exact and correct from the beginning while most everyone else was either wrong or lacked the character to act independently or just following the crowd and the market surveys (leave them out). So were Jim Webb’s and Obama’s positions correct. (As a sitting Governor, Sebelius had no right to publicly comment.) And if you look at his full career, you might determine that this was the best analysis in Clark’s career; that it was virtually flawless; that he was acting at the maximal ability of his personality type. In other previous areas (globalist issues rather than national [internal] issues) his analysis in comparison might be seen as not maximizing his type. I would say that is the case. And Clark would patch up the deal with the Clintons if they find that necessary. And no question, Obama likes Clark and had wanted him on his team at the time of the second Yearly Kos.

Hopefully President Obama could lead the way in bringing the same excellence in management to the Oval Office and Administration that we bring to everyday corporate life (or professional sports, which is probably the best we do). (If not, we are at the end of federalism. Ron Paul understands this.) It might be nice for a change to do some testing and not just hire a bunch of friends or hanger-ons; some of which could well be whack jobs and sociopaths and Revenge Demons like we have seen invasive in the Oval Office in times not so distant past.

Note: A Quaternity is a full psychological realm of compatible personality types. If you Google it, it will come up as the "fundamantal unit of reality" in science as well as psychology and mythology. (Seinfeld is a Quaternity, Frasier is a Quaternity, The Wizard of Oz is a fundamental Quaternity and an original American Creation Myth.)