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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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American Society Contact |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2010, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
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About Ivan W. Parkins: Dr. Parkins is a retired professor of
Political Science from Central Michigan University. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval officer
during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama.
He is a recent widower with three daughters, 3 grand children and 2
great grand children. Dr. Parkins has
written extensively, having authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column
for many years. |
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Front Page |
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DID YOU
KNOW? Parkins Points to Ponder
By Ivan W.
Parkins ….. According to Wikipedia, a March 2009 atmospheric measure of CO²
showed 387 parts per million
(p.p.m). At 10,000 p.p.m.
people get drowsy. At 70,000 to 100,000 they get ill or die. 10,000 p.p.m. can be reached in a
poorly ventilated auditorium. …. The great post-WWII spy scare ( referred to as McCarthyism)
was not a wild exaggeration. The
actual Soviet penetrations of America’s secrets, and their facilitation by
Americans of communist belief or sympathy, actually exceeded the official
investigations and prosecutions. Many
persons who were “cleared” were actually guilty and many who were guilty,
were never identified. …. “The Youth Movement” of the 1960’s and 1970’s actually
generated here at home an increased rate of death among youths, while the
rates of other age groups were falling.
Many deaths in that increase were violent, and their numbers totaled
more than those from our military combat abroad. ….. At the time that Congress ordered a halt to all financial, air,
and military equipment support to our allies in South Vietnam, it appeared
the South Vietnamese were successfully and willingly holding off the attacks
of the Communists, without support from American ground forces. ….Both of the major presidential impeachment efforts of recent
Congresses, Nixon’s and Clinton’s, were subsequently denounced as improper in
books by the Chief Investigative Counsels chosen by the House Judiciary
Committees to pursue them—and those Chief Investigators were both
Democrats. In Nixon’s case the charges
were drawn by the Judiciary Committee in such a way as to exclude evidence of
any similar behaviors by earlier Presidents; in Clinton’s case they were drawn
so as to exclude Clinton’s most obviously official and illegal acts, grants
of citizenship to persons not eligible and severe campaign finance
violations. ….. Since the Korean War, the trend of
military spending, as a portion of this nation’s gross domestic product , has
been downward to a little less than half of what it was in 1951-52. Meanwhile, spending for education, health,
and other welfare have all taken increasing portions, and together have taken
much more than spending for defense. …..One hasty act of the Environmental Protection Agency, joining
with the World Health Organization in the ban on DDT, resulted in more deaths
(of Blacks from malaria) than all the deaths from all ethic conflicts and
American military engagements in our nation’s history. . .
. . .
. . .
Were any of the above episodes the choices of an American public who
were well served by the educational, journalistic, and representative
institutions of our nation? |
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A PLACE FOR OBAMA AMONG DEMOCRAT PRESIDENTS? By Ivan W. Parkins Franklin Roosevelt had been an anti-Tammany
Senator in New York, a very active Assistant Secretary of the Navy prior to
and during World War I, the Democrat nominee for the Vice Presidency
in 1920 (a Republican year), and was Governor of New York when nominated in
1932. Barack Obama had served as a
Senator in both the Illinois and the United States Senates. Franklin Roosevelt’s initial election victory
was by a margin substantially larger than President Obama’s. Also greater were FDR’s majorities in both
Houses of Congress. [The Roosevelt
advantage increased greatly in elections of both 1934 and 1936.] The economic crisis of the early 1930s was
much more intense than is the present one, especially in agriculture, then a
major source of employment. Of course
even many small farmers, of whom there were many then, usually had enough to
eat. In a time when the family unit
was more common than it is now, and usually had only one wage earner,
unemployed fathers often meant real and critical hunger. For a substantial portion of farmers, those of the Dust Bowl, life
became especially challenging. One
early move of the New Deal was conservation measures, but they would succeed
only slowly. No single act of the New Deal was so extreme
in its immediate implications for nearly every American as the present
changes in health care proposed by the Obama Administration.
I.W.Parkins 10910 |
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COLD WAR AND SMALL WARS THE
MEDIA, THE LEFT AND THE KENNEDY’S By Ivan W. Parkins The post WWII period was not a time of
peace. Cold War between the United
States and the Soviet Union soon emerged, followed by wars of the United
States with Soviet proxies. Perhaps
fewer of us should have been surprised that the Soviets were so unwilling to
accept our Marshall Plan and leadership of the post war world. Communism had not disavowed its goal of
world domination. And the Soviet Union
had paid a higher price for its contributions to allied victory than any
other major combatant, except Poland. Measured as a percentage of population,
Soviet losses were approximately forty (40)
times our own. It was not without some
justice that they felt entitled to a large role in shaping the reconstruction
of the world. But compromises between
the communists and capitalists found little traction. At first, it was largely conservatives who
could not abide our limited war in Korea.
They would have preferred General MacArthur’s pursuit of “victory” to
avoidance of all-out confrontation with the Communists. And, we now have
solid evidence that conservatives were largely right regarding their “soft on
communism” charge in so far as it related to Soviet spying in America.
Meanwhile, a huge expansion in America’s information media, including massive
college enrolments, was creating an opinion body quite different than any
seen here before. And, belittling the
Communist threat was becoming a popular viewpoint in academia. “McCarthyism” became a broad epithet to be
hurled against almost any reference to dangers from the Left, domestic or
foreign. Hero journalists of the new
television media used it freely. And,
that media bias was difficult for younger Americans to comprehend when most
of them had not even heard of the Commission on Freedom of the Press that was
created shortly after World War II, or the Sell America Campaign a few years
later. Sell America was a campaign by
national advertisers against government interference in business. Fortune Magazine estimated the costs of
Sell America as about the same as those of a national election at that
time. Fortune also labeled the
campaign as ineffective, and it passed virtually unnoticed in the popular
texts of history and political science.
In the new age of mass media, businesses needed advertising as much as
media celebrities needed them.
Businesses would have much greater difficulty promoting their
political interests. Then, a new President, John Kennedy, quickly
gained many young admirers, but they were slow to follow, and especially slow
to remember, when, soon, there was need to do that, he came into office
warning of Third World proxies in the Cold War. He created the Green Berets to prepare
America for smaller wars and increased our aide to South Vietnam. Although first speculation tried hard, and
later imagination persisted, to identify JFK’s assassin as someone from the
far Right, all official and firm evidence pointed to one culprit from the far
Left. In
regard to our relations with the Communists, JFK’s younger brothers soon
became leaders, in the more popular “liberal” direction. “Bobby” became an anti-Vietnam candidate for
the Presidency in 1968, and suffered a fate similar to John’s. Again, the assassin was not a person
related to the most salient issues.
Ted, a Senator, got his toga wet in a nasty negligent homicide. The Democrats were dividing, and though Ted
Kennedy never won their nomination, he became their most enduring major
leader of the ensuing decades. It says
something of both the Democrats and our major media that a man who had
committed one negligent and very personal homicide, and who added to that to
that a major part in facilitating the genocide of our Vietnamese and
Cambodian allies, was buried as “a
humanitarian.” I.W. Parkins 010910. |
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THE GREAT DEPRESSION By Ivan W. Parkins Following several years of falling farm
prices, at a time when many Americans still farmed, and the stock market
collapse of 1929, FDR’s New Deal had also to cope with deteriorating world
order, and increasing trade barriers.
The great initial triumph of Roosevelt was to impart hope and some
confidence to America. Early success came from some of the simpler
moves, such as closing banks, examining them, and then permitting most to
reopen. There was also the insurance
of bank deposits. The
Reconstruction Finance Corporation, initiated by President Hoover, was given
increased funds to lend especially to enterprises with large payrolls and
poor credit. Public works, the TVA for
instance, were many of them valuable additions to national
infrastructure. Later, Social
Security, provided much of what its name implies for a, then, not huge class
of aged. The most complex undertaking, the National
Industrial Recovery Act (known as NRA), sought to reorder how businesses of
many kinds were organized and conducted; it was a failure. Many New Deal
programs were invalidated by majorities of the Supreme Court. The NRA failed
to gain the support of even one Justice.
Gains of most kinds came at a heavy cost in public debt and
inflation. From 1933 to 1939 successes
in employment and national out puts were minimal. As World War II developed in Europe foreign
demands for many American products increased and many more of our unemployed,
or underemployed, found steady jobs.
By the time of Pearl Harbor, America was beginning to hum again. The Japanese attack, surprising mainly in its
severity and closeness to our homes, was in some ways a blessing. It produced unusual national unity, quickly
energized nearly all our resources, and facilitated an expansion of federal
government that would make possible some lasting changes after the war had
ended. Part of the initial cost in American lives of
World War II can be charged to unrealistic expectations of peace in the 1920s
and the penury of military appropriations prior to Pearl Harbor. Those related problems seemed obvious
enough to me as a rural teenager, and the President did as much as he
believed politically possible to alert the nation. But it took a major enemy attack to waken
the public to what most preferred not to see. Many expected a relapse into depression after
the war. But, America, unlike most
major combatants, had suffered no great damage to its infrastructure or
industry. Postwar benefits to the
demobilizing military were generous by past standards. And the many people employed during the war
had earned good wages, with little practical choice but to save much of their
incomes. Demand for consumer goods
quickly exceeded available product. A
post-war boom developed. Generous aide
to other combatants, enemies as well as friends, also employed
Americans. And the vigorous economy
was soon producing tax revenue to reduce the burden of public debt. Meanwhile, America’s black population, having
served well, and migrating into northern cities, were demanding more. And the postwar American Government was in
position to do more about what had been the largest blot upon American
democracy. In many respects postwar America was
flourishing, and one was a much increased birth rate. Unfortunately, many of the new citizens
would find it difficult to relate either to what had been achieved, or to the
new, and in many respects fluid, situation. I.W. Parkins
011110 |