Dave Does History

In 44bce, the world was stunned on the Ides of March as a group of Roman Senators mercilessly attacked and murdered the sitting roman Dictator, Julius Cæsar.

Over the next two thousand years, the story achieved legendary status in literature, theater and film. We watch as Elizabeth Taylor weeps over his death. Shakespeare brings us Marc Anthony’s rhetorical masterpiece, “Friends! Romans, Country men! Lend me your ears!” Even HBO gets into the act, with a sympathetic portrayal of Cæsar that received applause and praise worthy of Marc Anthony.

For the men who founded a new country in 1776, history was different than Hollywood and Shakespeare. They had been raised on the writings of Cato, steeped in the concepts of liberty and freedom. To a man, they saw Cæsar as he actually was, as Brutus and Cassius saw him – a usurper of tradition and, more importantly, the absolute law of the Republic of Rome.

The fact that Cæsar was beloved, even by his opponents, did not undo the fact that he was trying to put the crown of Rome on his own head. And no Roman republican could accept that.

America would choose to follow in the footsteps not of Cæsar, but in the ideas and actions of those who killed him. It was more than just the defeat of a King who ruled them, but an understanding that, like Brutus, they loved liberty more than they loved being Englishmen…

Some Technical Notes from today’s episode: (1) Dave has had zero sleep. He was up all night for a family activity. (2) The WMMB computer failed, necessitating the show be done by telephone rather than the normal method via computer. (3) Bill and Dave decided to leave their off air discussions on the podcast version. This is unusual but the conversations were germane to the subject (which is unusual) and might be of benefit to the listener.

On the night of March7/8, 1968, a loud and very unexpected sound reverberated through Central part of the Pacific Ocean. Officially, the sound originated 1500 nautical miles northwest of Oahu, exactly on the 180th Meridian (the International Date Line).

Depending on who you choose to believe, the United States intelligence community knew almost instantly what the sound was. And within a few days, a major operation was launched centered around the USS Halibut SSN-587, the most technologically advanced spy submarine in the world, which was sent look at the source of the sound.

Today, we know what she found, and we have even seen some of the photographs. But that was literally just the beginning of the story.

Richard Nixon was passionate about achieving détente. And, as events would play out, he knew what the US had found in the wreck that was found at the site of the sound, the Soviet Ballistic Missile Submarine K-129. And he was determined to use that information, and more, to achieve that mission…

I read “Red Star Rogue” for the first time back in 2006. In 2011, I was able to interview the author, Ken Sewell on Afternoons Live. There are a number of books as to the loss of K-129, but a couple of things are clear – we will NEVER know the full story.

But consider… for just a moment… the possibility (some would say probability) that on a quiet March night, a Soviet Ballistic Missile Submarine was hijacked by radical elements of the Soviet government for the express intention of attacking the United States…

Last week President Joe Biden was asked about his read of China’s intention vis-à-vis Russian and Ukraine. He said that he did not see” China helping Russia with weapons and/or ammunition. This was, of course, after his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken said that China was planning to do exactly that. And China, said that they were not considering it.

Then for good measure Blinken threatened to have McDonalds leave China.

It hardly seems like it, but it was just over half a century ago that the Vulcan proverb was born: Only Nixon could go to China. Which he did, after more than a year of secret meetings with Kissinger and his Chinese counterparts.

Fifty-one years ago, Nixon and Zhou Enlai signed a document know as the Shanghai Communiqué. And for the past fifty-one years, it has guided American foreign policy towards the Peoples Republic of China…

On February 21, 1945, the newly upgraded aircraft carrier USS Saratoga was supporting the landings on Iwo Jima. The night before she was detached with a small escort to bomb Japanese forces on Chichi Jima. The next day is overcast with very low cloud cover.

Out of the low clouds screamed six Japanese planes, who manage to hit the Sara’s forward end, causing heavy damage and killing one hundred and twenty-three of her sailors. Another one hundred and ninety-two are injured.

Sara will survive the attack, but she will never serve in combat again. She is converted into a training Carrier, and then into a transport for operation Magic Carpet at the end of the war. She was then determined to be obsolete and surplus.

On 25 July, 1946 she was sunk during Test Baker of Operation crossroads, the first large scale test of the atomic bombs effects against naval vessels.

Of those one-hundred and twenty three men killed on February 21, 1945, sixty-four could not be recovered and were sealed in the ship as she traveled back to Bremerton for repairs. There, they are removed, but cannot be identified. They are interred in one of the saddest and yet most honored places in the Pacific Northwest, Ivy Green Cemetery.

Look, nothing happens in a vacuum.

Whether it’s a Papal Bull that results in the eradication of cats that seems to lead to millions of human deaths, or a grain shortage in the middle of a violent revolution that leads to a Economist and Reverend watching what is going on and coming up with what will become one of the most impactful theories in human history…

The first American Civil War was every bit as vicious and hate-filled as the second. And… like the second, it eventually resulted in amending the US Constitutional to try and make things better.

It all started when the state of Georgia decided that it wasn’t going to pay the guy who sold their militia supplies during the war.

It led to an intense debate during ratification over the concept of State Sovereignty, then went before the US Supreme Court, where the court… got it “wrong.”

On February 7, 1794, We the People of the United States made that absolutely clear.

Or… did we?

In January of  1944, the Allies thought that they had found a way to crack the Gustav Line south of Rome. The bloody battles in Italy had the Allies stalled and desperate to move around the entrenched Nazi forces. From December of 1943 to June of 1944, almost 100,000 allied soldiers were casualties. Most of them, from two assaults intended to break the Gustav Line.

On January 22nd, the Allies launched “Operation Shingle” as a part of the attempt to break out from the beachheads at Anzio. US Ranger Battalions headed to Cisterna as a a part of the overall assault force. What they did not know was that Army Intelligence had misread things, and the lightly held outposts that they expected were already abandoned. Instead, standing in the way was the German 715th Parachute Infantry and the powerful Herman Göring  Division.

Under strength and undertrained with numerous replacement troops, the Rangers soon found themselves surrounded and in full on combat with the best troops the Nazi’s had to send….

I Survived the Battle of Cisterna: The Story of PFC James Palmer

Some months back a caller asked me what I thought was the “worst” Constitutional Amendment. He postulated that it was the 17th, which moved the election of US Senators from the State Legislature to the popular vote of a given State.

Look, from a purely strict constructionist viewpoint – which by the by – NOBODY holds – every amendment from the progressive era has been “devastating.” Some more than others, but all of them destructive to the original ideas of a strictly separated Federal and State system.

That said, I have always believed that the 16th Amendment was the really destructive amendment. NOT because it established an income tax. What most people do not understand is that an income tax was always on the table. What the 16th Amendment did was remove the most effective deterrent to the income tax…. apportionment… and with the tearing down of that barrier, the door was opened for the Federal Government to subsume the States with, you guessed it, money…

Before the middle of the 19th century, the most famous American in the world was Benjamin Franklin. He was – as most people know – a scientist, an inventor, a printer, a writer, a socialite, a diplomat, a fashion icon and a humorist.

Today we celebrate his birthday, with some of the things that you might not know about the man who some call “the First American…”

In many ways, the United States always resembled republican Rome. By the last half of the first century bce, the republic was teetering on the edge. Corrupt politics,  mounting debt to fund foreign wars, societal breakdowns that left long held traditional values in disrespect and disregard left the every day Roman wondering if the world had gone completely mad?

As we look around our nation today, the parallels must be striking. The question is what happens next? Do we recover our republican form of government and manage to solve the innumerable problems that mushroom into full blown crises? If so… given how chaotic things seem today,

Or… is there some leader out there who is determined to cross the Rubicon?