Just Say No To The Invasive Climate Change Pledge

Earlier today an environmentalist knocked on my fifth floor Stark room. As I thought it was someone else, I said "come in." My bad. Had it been a robbing invader as that which frequented those poor Pomona students, I would certainly be that much poorer and gagged. Instead I was robbed of something that is nonetheless valuable: my time.

He tried to encourage me to sign an environmental pledge as part of President Gann's efforts to curb climate change. He handed me the sheet and encouraged me to fill it out and put it on my doorway.

I don't generally reject those things out of hand and may have even sympathized with some of the goals, but I don't -- and won't -- post something up on my doorway signifying my compliance with something I had no part in deliberating or studying. Had Heroes not been on, I would have certainly given him a debate, but as it was, I'll have to settle for a blog post.

A Mistake To Recognize Genocide at Claremont McKenna

As many of you know, I frequented the People's (Stalinist) Republic of Berkeley this past weekend for a debate tournament. One of the topics mentioned was whether or not the U.S. should recognize the Armenian genocide. Having predicted the topic myself, I was very pleased. I got to argue against it and though I did not win the debate at Berkeley, I hope to address the debate here at Claremont McKenna on whether or not we should pressure Congress to recognize the Armenian genocide. As this topic does not seem to be going away, even after Pamuk did not want to talk about it, it's time for a response to the Genocide Noticers. These types engage in rallies without addressing the real substance: how might we best prevent genocide today.

At its heart, this "recognize genocide or else!" campaign on college campuses fails to meet strict intellectual scrutiny. What a pity the otherwise outstanding Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights asserts itself into what is clearly a politicized issue designed to aggravate the Turks. As Professor Pitney mentions, it's a pretty lame effort on the part of Democrats to appease their ethnic constituencies at the expense of Turko-American relations. These relations are essential if we want to keep Turkey from engaging in a war in the relatively peaceful region of Kurdish Northern Iraq and if we want to continue using Turkish bases in that area.

How do I make those claims? Well, for starters, President Reagan already recognized the genocide in 1981. Any symbolic act, however well-intentioned is a restatement of Reagan's position (albeit a quarter century more after the document was issued.)

What's more, any efforts to recognize this particular genocide will result in ethnic tensions here in America. The reason the Armenian lobby is pushing for this recognition is because it is politically powerful and other groups, like the Turks, Rwandans, etc. are not. Despite this problem though, it won't be long before the Chinese lobby in the U.S. forces Americans to recognize the Nanking massacre in China. That this will hurt Japanese relations as much as the current symbolic action will hurt Turko-American relations is of little consequence to the Democrats. Democrats, who often seek to reduce ethnic minorities into dependent Democratic voters by giving them reparations or special ethnic-based services, harm the very national fiber and encourage competition between different ethnic groups. In turn, this fight between ethnic groups leads to ethnic conflict and a "Us vs. them" dichotomy -- the very precondition necessary for genocide to occur.

But this isn't a question about history, it's a question about forcing us to feel guilt for a "genocide" that occurred nearly a century ago. (The reason I say "genocide" is because historians still dispute whether or not a genocide occurred in Armenia and even if it did, what exactly constituted the actions undertaken.) The flier, urging us to "take a stand against denial" plays on our emotional strings. It asks: "If 1.5 million people were killed today, people would care. What makes the past so different?"

Like most emotional pulls based on shoddy historicism, the protesters hope not to be answered. I give them no such satisfaction or moral authority. The reason the past is different is that we have no control over it. We cannot get into a time machine and somehow resurrect people from the dead. But we can stop the Iraq war from accelerating out of control. We can stop setting the stage for a future genocide. We can save lives today.

Now what does this have to do with Claremont McKenna and the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights? By recognizing the Armenian genocide and becoming pawns of the Democratic party's ploy to withdrawn troops from Iraq, the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights loses its credibility and fails to sustain its commitment to prevent future genocides.

And that is a tragedy much worse than I can stomach. But if you insist on stopping genocide today, please take advantage of the letter to congress campaign going on at Collins, Frary, Malott, and McConnell. Ask the Democrat Congress to prove their commitment to ending genocide by stopping future genocides by continuing to support the winnable war in Iraq. Be sure to thank them for putting aside the vested interest of the Armenian lobby for the sake of America's national security and pride.

Claremont McKenna Professor and the Civil War

Claremont McKenna professor Marc Weidenmier wrote a paper accessing whether the South could ever have really won the Civil War. Unbeknowst to me, the Confederacy issued gold bonds in 1861 that were traded in the Amsterdam markets until the end of the war.

According to Portfolio.com, Weidenmier, using data from Belgium and the Netherlands, (and his colleague, Prof. Oosterlinck at the University of Brussels) looked at the price fluxations of the gold bonds. This price fluxation tells what kind of confidence the international markets had on the Confederacy's ability to pay its debts. Post-Gettysburg, confidence disappeared and so did the likelihood of a Southern victory.

Prior to the defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July of 1863, Weidenmier and Oosterlinck put the slave states' chances of victory at about 42 percent. When news of the defeats reached Europe, the value of the gold bonds took a dive and by the end of that year the probability of victory had dropped to 15 percent.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the South couldn't have come back post-Gettysburg. What great historical challenge will Claremont McKenna professors tackle next? J.F.K. assassination, anyone?