(And, Thank You, Paul Fussell!)

The great American novelist, William Styron, described his feelings in reaction to the word reaching him as a young Marine on Saipan awaiting orders for the invasion of Japan: ECSTACY.

They were going to live to be old men.

Hundreds of thousands of young Americans would have perished. Millions of Japanes lives were saved. And that’s in addition to the 250,000 Asian lives dying per month under Japanese occupation.

Thank you William Manchester in, “Goodbye Darkness” and E.B.Sledge’s,
“With the Old Breed on Pelelieu and Okinawa.”

My own Dad was an engineer with the 20th Air Force B-29’s on Tinian. His Bomb Group, the 462nd Helbirds in the 58th Bomb Wing on West Field when the news reached them that those two B-29’s, Enola Gay and Bock’s Car, had ended the coming horror of invasion. He told us boys growing up in a post war L.A. suburb that the young Marines preparing for Hell ran up to them and their SuperFortrsses with incredible gratitude and massive relief.

The Hellbirds Group Motto on the nose of their airplanes:
WITH MALICE TOWARD SOME.

I use that motto today to apply to Radical Islam and the current epidemic of the American Left.

On the Liberal to Leftist shift: the simple answer is that Classical Liberalism consists of an ethos that allows it to be exploited, whereas “tougher” ideologies or government systems have no problem with the destruction of contrary, and dangerous, ideologues.

To wit:
One man, one vote, one time.
Alinsky: Make them follow their own rules.
Cloward-Piven strategies.

“Free speech for me, but not for thee” directly subverts Classical Liberal values.
Same for most of the Bill of Rights (“I can demand privileges for MY tribe, but YOU have to bake that cake”).

There’s a reason they are called “Bleeding Heart Liberals.”

I’m somewhat surprised it didn’t take three.

Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence.
Third time is enemy action.

If classical liberalism involves the establishment and maintenance of liberty by recognizing and supporting individual human rights, I suggest that the road to liberty (R2L) requires a mature focus on recognizing reality and acceptance of responsibility to address the issues and problems discovered thereby. In some ways this is simply restating GB’s tough love comment. The Democrats/ leftists have clearly side stepped reality in numerous ways and avoided responsibility for proper governance of areas under their control. Unfortunately in too many cases the Republicans/ conservatives have not really stepped into the breech either.

Past discussions of our republic being only suitable for a virtuous people (John Adams, et al.) suggest maybe we have fallen down in that area, whether misdirected by excessive or easy prosperity, decline of religious fervor for various reasons, or Gramscians purposefully neglecting traditional values as they destroy our heritage and related institutions. My own view is that too few people appreciate morality as really being the mixture of inherent (genetic, evolved) psychological characteristics and the cultural elements developed within a particular society [see for example, Larry Arnhart; Darwinian Natural Right: the Biological Ethics of Human Nature (1998)]. We need to use this insight to better maintain valid virtuous positions. For example, proscriptions against homosexuality from a largely agricultural and pastoral society in 900 BC might no longer apply in 2020 if sexual orientation is eventually shown to be mostly or totally genetic in origin. Conversely, our inclination to seek transcendence in some form must not also be denied (along with freedom of conscience). The Golden Rule covers a lot of this, but tit for tat game theory also suggests a corollary: “Do unto others as they have done unto you … until they stop.” Also an aspect of tough love.

But in some recent blog thread (here or elsewhere?) the topic came up of the limits on creating a successful republic with a large population over a large geographic area. The main argument (by the Roman Cicero?) was that the people’s representatives cannot help but become more distant from their own communities and social circles as these elements of government increase. There just may be limits on what conservatives can ask our 1776/1865 Constitution to achieve, without further corrections. I would favor a number of amendments, but one that maybe the founders and framers should have considered was a mandatory convention of the states every 50 or 60 years (i.e., every two or three generations?) to ensure any amendments desired or of merit might at least have a chance of being aired. There is a lot more to this idea than can be covered here, but perhaps amending the Constitution is now just too difficult under the current two options. Thus many of the current distortions of law and governance obtained by all three branches cannot be properly or quickly changed when “consent of the people” is slipping away but we are not yet fully under a tyrannical boot.

And maybe Zman is suggesting there are just human limitations on maintaining suitable social interactions when our community is greater than 150 people or so. Perhaps more study along the lines performed by Jonathan Haidt are also warranted to explore this further. Certainly the magnitude of trust involved in our modern (global) world is very large, and a wonder to behold. But also more fragile than we often appreciate.

Lynn Hargrove — when we were stationeds in German, we used to get the same crap from the Krauts about how we had bombed this, bombed that, blah, blah, blah. My response was, “You should have thought of that!

I also wonder if anyone here knows about the aspect/ prospect of simply sieging the island chain to starve them out over say the next 6 months and why that was apparently not an option?

My father fought in the Pacific theater in a support role, not as a front line combatant, but I am still glad Truman made his fateful decision as there is still a small chance I might not be here otherwise (along with many others commenting here now and over the past years).

Also recall that Japan is an island nation, and once their navy was basically destroyed or rendered ineffective by the US Navy by 1944, well it was clear that it was all over for Japan.
But they still did not surrender.

Best estimates indicate that a military invasion of Japan by the USA and allies would would have resulted in a casualty total far in excess of the number killed due to the A bombs. Just think about the resistance the Japanese employed at Okinawa; they fought until they were all dead – very very few Japanese surrendered.

Anyway, if Japan had any interest in surrendering, then why did it take a second
A-bomb to have them surrender?
Was one A-bomb not enough?

Why? He’s a hobbyist.

–Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz