How America Saw Mussolini

To understand the way in which Americans viewed Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator who took control of Italy in 1922 and made himself permanent rule in 1926, we must remember that the word 'fascist' was new at the time. World War II hadn't happened yet; neither had the Holocaust. The word 'fascist' seemed interesting, and Mussolini seemed like a leader who was simply trying new ideas.

From a later point of view, looking backward, words like 'fascist' and names like Mussolini bring shudders of horror. But from 1922 until the full outbreak of WWII, few Americans had any ideas about what would be unleashed in Italy. In 1938, Italy enacted - at the urging of Adolf Hitler - a series of anti-Jewish 'race laws' (the phrase 'anti-Jewish' is more accurate, if more clumsy, than 'anti-Semitic'). Historian Jonah Goldberg writes that

by the time Italy reluctantly passed its shameful race laws - which it never enforced with even a fraction of the barbarity shown by the Nazis - over 75 percent of Italian Fascism's reign had already transpired. A full sixteen years elapsed between the March on Rome and the passage of Italy's race laws.

Author Jonah Goldberg reminds the reader that, prior to WWII and prior to the Holocaust, the word 'fascism' did not carry the horrific connotations it now has. In the 1920's, Europe was plagued by political instability; in the 1930's, the world was plagued by the Great Depression. Fascism seemed like a reasonable, if not totally correct, response to those desperate circumstances.

Throughout the 1920s and well into the 1930s, fascism meant something very different from Auschwitz and Nuremberg. Before Hitler, in fact, it never occurred to anyone that fascism had anything to do with anti-Semitism. Indeed, Mussolini was supported not only by the chief rabbi of Rome but by a substantial portion of the Italian Jewish community (and the world Jewish community). Moreover, Jews were overrepresented in the Italian Fascist movement from its founding in 1919 until they were kicked out in 1938.

Prior to the Holocaust - generally thought to have begun in 1938 with the Kristallnacht - the word 'fascism' had no connection with anti-Jewish sentiments. But fascism's treatment of Africans evoked a different notion of racism in the minds of the public.

Race did help turn the tables of American public opinion on Fascism. But it had nothing to do with the Jews. When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, Americans finally started to turn on him. In 1934 the hit Cole Porter song "You're the Top"

did not create any negative reaction among the public. Imagine a song in which a boy woos his girlfriend by comparing her to Mussolini! That was acceptable in 1934. But the public would soon form a more negative opinion of Mussolini and his fascists.

When Mussolini invaded that poor but noble African kingdom the following year, it irrevocably marred his image, and Americans decided they had had enough of his act. It was the first war of conquest by a Western European nation in over a decade, and Americans were still distinctly unamused, particularly

African-Americans, who were still working to secure their own civil rights. It became clear fascism would be linked with racism and imperialism. Americans began to view Mussolini and the fascists in a worse light.

Still, it was a slow process. The Chicago Tribune initially supported the invasion, as did reporters

in influential newspapers across the country and around the globe. From New York to London, journalists had written glowing reports about Mussolini for over a decade. It would take a while for the new information, the unpleasant truth about Mussolini, to sink in.

And why shouldn't the average American think Mussolini was anything but a great man? Winston Churchill had dubbed him the world's greatest living lawgiver. Sigmund Freud sent Mussolini a copy of a book he co-write with Einstein, inscribed, "To Benito Mussolini, from an old man who greets in the Ruler, the Hero of Culture."

When the leading psychologist of era, Sigmund Freud, who was himself a Jew, praises Mussolini, it becomes clear how far the world had gone in one direction, and how far it would have to reverse itself, in its assessment of "Il Duce" as Mussolini was known. But until the full unpleasant truth was known about him, he remained popular in America. Of all the newspaper, museums, and universities, no

institution in America was more accommodating to Fascism than Columbia University. In 1926 it established Casa Italiana, a center for the study of Italian culture and a lecture venue for prominent Italian scholars. It was Fascism's "veritable home in America" and "a schoolhouse for budding Fascist ideologues," according to John Patrick Diggins. Mussolini himself had contributed some ornate Baroque furniture to Casa Italiana and had sent Columbia's president, Nicholas Murray Butler, a signed photo thanking him for his "most valuable contribution" to the promotion of understanding between Fascist Italy and the United States. Butler himself was not an advocate of fascism for America, but he did believe it was in the best interests of the Italian people and that it had been a very real success, well worth studying. This subtle distinction - fascism is good for Italians, but maybe not for America - was held by a vast array of prominent

thinkers, writers, and celebrities. Mussolini had the status of a movie star or popular musician. His name and photo were common in the newspapers.

While academics debated the finer points of Mussolini's corporatist state, mainstream America's interest in Mussolini far outstripped that of any other international figure in the 1920s. From 1925 to 1928 there were more than a hundred articles written on Mussolini in American publications and only fifteen on Stalin. For more than a decade the New York Times's foreign correspondent Anne O'Hare McCormick painted a glowing picture of Mussolini.

Many American newspapers and magazines featured Mussolini. While it was clear that Italian fascism was not in sync with America's belief in a freely-elected republic, Mussolini retained some fascination with the reading public. The New York Times carried an article, written by McCormick, on November 28, 1926, which demonstrates this odd paradox:

Fascism, as has been sufficiently pointed out, does not pretend to be political democracy. At present it does not pretend to be any kind of democracy. But it can no longer be considered merely reaction. As the motor power of the only European country actually going forward since the war, it has a right to be heard when it claims that votes for everybody are less urgent than work for everybody and order for everybody, and that it is engaged in creating "organic democracy," a representation of interests more real and responsive than political representation.

So it was that the readership of newspapers in the United States retained this odd fascination with the paradox of an Italian leader, who was clearly opposed to the American notion of a republic with free elections, yet who seemed so charismatic and so effective at galvanizing Italy into an effective nation. Only the ugly aggression of Italy's attack on Ethiopia, and only the unseemly alliance with Hitler, would finally awaken the American reading public to Mussolini's darker side.

How Nazis Oppressed German Society

Historians have developed many different hypotheses about how the Nazi Party, statistically a minority, could infiltrate and appropriate German society. It is clear that the Nazis had a bad reputation among the majority of Germans, even as late as early 1933, but nonetheless this gang of hooligans was able to grab not only political power, but also to install itself as a bullying presence inside society and inside society’s institutions. Clearly, the Nazis exploited the details of political mechanisms, but they also used social machinations to obtain their hegemony.

Historian William Sheridan Allen examines the process by which the Nazis isolated each individual in the community. The normal social bonds were either dissolved, or made into Nazi bonds.

Jews were simply excluded from the community at large. At the same time The Nazis undertook their most Herculean task: the atomization of the community at large. Though the methods differed, the result was the same.

Subsequently, “by the summer of 1933 individual” Germans were atomized - turned into isolated individuals, as personal relationships were weakened: families, neighbors, coworkers, sports teams, churches, and hobby groups such as card-playing clubs, gardening clubs, etc. - all such social structures were either turned into quasi-official extensions of the Nazi Party, or simply dissolved. The ordinary Germans

were as cut off from effective intercourse with one another as the Jews had been from the rest of the townspeople. The total reorganization of society was the most important result of the Nazi revolution. Eventually no independent social groups were to exist. Wherever two or three were gathered, the Fuehrer would also be present. Ultimately all society, in terms of human relationships, would cease to exist, or rather would exist in a new framework whereby each individual related not to his fellow men but only to the state and to the Nazi leader who became the personal embodiment of the state.

Some social institutions were relatively easy to co-opt: labor unions and sports clubs, for example, could be reshaped by Nazi leadership. The rules of soccer, after all, didn’t change. Other societal structures were more threatening to the Nazis: the family and the church. Some families, and some churches, could be infiltrated, co-opted, and subverted. Others, however, had a strong internal sense of identity and would not easily succumb to the atomization process. To weaken the churches, which were correctly perceived by the Nazis as a potential source of serious resistance, a propaganda campaign was directed against those churches which would not submit to becoming Nazi churches.

Remembering the official name of the Nazi Party - “The National Socialist German Worker’s Party” - is one key to understanding the party’s goals. ‘Nationalism’ was the goal of making the state, the government, the highest personal value for each citizen; in a nationalist society, individuals willingly surrender personal freedom to help the state achieve its goals, and the state is more important than family or God. ‘Socialist’ meant that the Nazis wanted all economic activity, and all property ownership, to be an extension of the state.

When the Nazis turned their attention to religious matters, they relied in part on their ability to confuse the public. Some churches had been successfully subverted and were churches in name only: instead of a cross in the front of the church, there was a swastika; instead of reading from the Bible, they read from Hitler’s speeches. Other churches had resisted Nazi influence, and paid the price: they met in secret, and were hunted by the Gestapo; if they were caught, they were either sent to prison camps or executed. To the general public, the Nazis decried the Christian faith as a collection of falsehoods and lies. Yet the Nazis understood the Christian faith as a threat, because it would expose the Nazis for what they were: it would be the Christians who formed the underground resistance, who smuggled Jews to safety out of Germany, who would hinder the Nazi military organization, and who would attempt to stop Hitler by assassination.

Martin Bormann, a close associate of Hitler’s, who bore the title Reichsleiter, unleashed the following tirade in 1942:

National Socialist and Christian concepts are incompatible. The Christian Churches build upon the ignorance of men and strive to keep large portions of the people in ignorance because only in this way can the Christian Churches maintain their power. On the other hand, National Socialism is based on scientific foundations. Christianity’s immutable principles, which were laid down almost two thousand years ago, have increasingly stiffened into life-alien dogmas. National Socialism, however, if it wants to fulfill its task further, must always guide itself according to the newest data of scientific researches.

The ongoing irony was, of course, that while accusing the Christian Churches of lying (because they were attempting to reveal the truth about the Nazis), the Bormann was part of the apparatus which was producing propaganda deliberately designed to misinform.

In a revolting and shocking attempt to co-opt the apearance of traditional religion, Nazis used religious vocabulary for their own purposes. Historian George Mosse writes:

Nazi opposition to Christianity took the form of elevating its own world view into a matter of direct religious expression.

Nazism was a religion, and could tolerate no other religions in its presence. If the government and the state were the ultimate values - which is an exact formulation of National Socialism - then there would be no room for a meaningful idea of God.

But however much the Nazis wanted to substitute their world view for Christianity, they were careful to keep the traditional forms intact. Even the language they used in their speeches often employed familiar Christian imagery. Hitler and Goebbels talked about the “miracle of belief" (now meaning the Nazi faith), appealed to “Providence,” and were not loath to call Mein Kampf the “sacred book of National Socialism.” Indeed, the Führer’s closest companions were called his “apostles,” while he himself was often referred to as the “savior.”

Christians in Germany created a number of different ways in which they resisted the Nazis. Different varieties of Christians - Lutherans and Roman Catholics - worked together; this type of cooperation is called ‘ecumenical’ work. In addition to the secret activities of smuggling Jews out of Germany to freedom, sabotaging military activities, and attempting to assassinate Hitler, there were public acts of resistance. The famous ‘White Rose’ student group distributed leaflets to the public, unmasking the corrupt nature of the Nazis. In 1933, a group of scholars met to draft a statement in defense of the Christian Churches and against the Nazi Churches. The document they formulated is called the ‘Bethel Confession’ because it was written in the German town of Bethel; a ‘confession’ in this sense is a public statement of belief. Historian Lowell Green writes:

The Bethel Confession was the first extensive manifesto written to evaluate the goals of the German-Christians in light of Christian doctrine, particularly as taught in the Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. Especially noteworthy was its courageous support of Jews in its discussion of the racial question. No other “confession” surpassed the Bethel Confession in this regard. Its most celebrated authors were Hermann Sasse, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Georg Merz, but they were assisted by several other noted theologians: Hans Fischer, Wilhelm Vischer, and Gerhard Stratenwerth.

While the Bethel Confession was primarily a Lutheran document, Roman Catholic resisters like August Froehlich made equally brave protests, and groups like the White Rose involved both Lutherans and Roman Catholics.

While the effort to erase Christianity’s influence among the people was the Nazi Party’s first big task, its second challenge was to weaken family ties. A party of absolute nationalists cannot tolerate loyalty among family members; the only loyalty should be to the state. Therefore, any action which would blur the identity of the family would solidify the government’s grip on the mind of the individual. To this end, the Nazis took a variety of steps. Young women were allowed, even encouraged, to have children out of wedlock, fathered by young men whom they barely knew and might never see again. These children, along with others, were increasingly placed into programs designed to foster, from the very youngest ages, affection for, and loyalty to, the government in general, the Nazi Party in particular, and Adolf Hitler specifically. Historians are familiar with the children, indoctrinated by the Hitler Youth program, who turned their parents over to authorities because the parents had expressed doubts about the Nazi government. Such cases were not isolated.

The desire to weaken the fabric of society was present from the earliest days of Hitler’s career within the Nazi Party. Hitler’s fellow party members reflected this inclination. Historian William Shirer writes:

An organization, however streamlined and efficient, is made up of erring human beings, and in those years when Hitler was shaping his party to take over Germany’s destiny he had his fill of troubles with his chief lieutenants, who constantly quarreled not only among themselves but with him. He, who was so monumentally intolerant by his very nature, was strangely tolerant of one human condition - a man’s morals. No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters. As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven. Hitler did not care, as long as they were useful to him. When he emerged from prison he found not only that they were at each other’s throats but that there was a demand from the more prim and respectable leaders such as Rosenberg and Ludendorff that the criminals and especially the perverts be expelled from the movement. This Hitler frankly refused to do. “I do not consider it to be the task of a political leader,” he wrote in his editorial, “A New Beginning,” in the Voelkischer Beobachter of February 26, 1925, “to attempt to improve upon, or even to fuse together, the human material lying ready to hand.”

The Nazi Party was, then, a group of individuals who understood that the dismantling of society’s core institutions - families and religions - along with the co-option of other social institutions - social clubs, sports teams, labor unions - and the introduction of Nazism as a family and a religion, would be the necessary routes to ensure their lock and grip as a totalitarian dictatorship. Only by weakening society, and offering itself as a replacement for such structuring principles in life, could the Nazi Party eliminate those who would eventually oppose its even darker schemes for the future. It is noteworthy that, although the anti-Semitic nature of Nazism was clear from the beginning, the Nazi government waited until 1938 - the year of the Kristallnacht - to unleash its most loathsome and lethal anti-Jewish activities. From 1933, the year in which the Nazi seized power, until 1938, they first systematically weakened churches and families, so that when their most evil plans emerged into daylight, there were few left with the psychological strength to offer opposition.

Women Were Oppressed

Among the early recorded observations of Native American culture, made at a time before the presence of Europeans had significant impact on it, are the writings of Jesuit named Juan Nentuig. Born in what was then a part of Germany, and is now a part of Poland, his name is recorded variously as Nentvig, Nentwig, Nentoig, Johann Nentwich, and Jean. These variations are both a result of the flexible concept of orthography which existed at that time, and a result of a career which brought him into contact with many different languages and the need to transliterate his name into those languages. He spent time in Bohemia, and arrived in the New World around 1750.

His accounts of Native American culture reveal that women were treated like animals. Note how women are pursued in the wedding ceremony; such pursuit would have been symbolically even more powerful in a culture which engaged in, and relied on, constant hunting. Clearly, the men were "hunting" the women. Beyond the hunting motif, the behavior toward women in this culture was aggressive and perhaps even violent. The manner in which a boy would capture a young woman after overtaking her in the chase must have been painful. Women in this Native American culture were objectified into passive recipients of aggression and violence; to be grasped by the nipple - instead of any other body part - was to turn the women into a sexual object, was to force her obedience by means of pain, and to identify the women as that body part.

Women in this Native American community are public property - they are forced to dance naked, and the marriages are forcibly consummated in public. These cultural practices are designed - consciously or not - to chip away at the women's sense of personal identity, sense of personal freedom, and ability to make meaningful and consequential decisions in their lives. The Jesuit's account reveals the systematic humiliation of the women:

The ceremonies of their heathenish weddings are not fit to be described in detail. I shall only mention the more decent. They gather together, old and young, and the young men and marriageable women are placed in two files. At a given signal the latter begin to run, and at another signal the former to follow them. When the young men overtake the young women each one must take his mate by the left nipple and the marriage is made and confirmed. After this preliminary ceremony they devote themselves to dancing, and as I remember to have heard, brides as well as bridegrooms dance in the costume of primitive innocence. Then all at once they take mats of palm tree leaves, which are prepared beforehand, and without further ceremony each couple is placed on a mat, and the rest of the people go on rejoicing.

It might be easy to dismiss the Jesuit's narrative as being colored by mere prudery, if it were not clear that there was an absolute imbalance of power. To be sure, the Jesuit was influenced by his European heritage, which caused him to recoil at the scenes described.

By the mid-1700's, European culture had embraced the ideal of a marriage on the basis of mutual consent, a relationship of bilateral respect and affection. Admittedly, Western Civilization sometimes failed to live up to this ideal - although women were no longer bought and sold like cattle, marriages were still sometimes arranged for financial and political reasons; ironically, women in the upper classes were more vulnerable to losing their freedom in choosing a spouse. The landless peasants at the bottom of European society had nothing about them which would cause anyone to want to arrange their marriages: no political or economic influence was at stake. But possibly among the aristocrats, and certainly among the dynasties, some marriages were constructed with an eye to power rather than to affection.

Again, while imperfectly implemented, the European tradition had also at least recognized that violence against women was wrong. Wife-beaters were socially ostracized, and wife-beating was considered a sin. By contrast, the Native American society had institutionalized and ritualized physical abuse.

By the time the Jesuit recorded his observations in the mid-1700's, Europe had already seen Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hildegard of Bingen, and Queen Christina of Sweden: women whose social, political, economic, and culture influence was significant and beyond dispute. Maria-Theresa was the Habsburg Holy Roman Empress and Queen of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, and held her own against Frederick the Great of Prussia. (A note on orthography: Queen Christina was 'Kristina Augusta' on the throne of Sweden, and 'Christina Alexandra' afterward, also sometimes spelled 'Christine'; Maria-Theresa's dynasty is sometimes spelled 'Hapsburg'.) It was impossible for Native American women to attain any role of such significance, or even any role of even a fraction of such significance.

Western Civilization still had some way to go: it would not be until 1869 that the Territory of Wyoming would give the vote to women, and female suffrage would not become nearly universal until the early twentieth century. Despite these shortcomings, however, the European tradition had already embarked on the path of recognizing women in way which was inherently impossible for the Native American cultures. Within the framework of European culture, it was at least possible to conceptualize women as fully enfranchised participants in politics, economics, arts, and culture; it was possible to formulate personal relationships in which women expressed their full humanity. It didn't always consistently happen, but it was possible. It was not possible in the Native American societies which were premised upon the axiom that women essentially were objects, treated as property, and subject to an institutionalized humiliation at the hands of men. The humiliation of women was a foundation of Native American society.

Chinese Social and Political Philosophy

The “Spring and Autumn” period of Chinese history is defined as beginning around 770 B.C., when the Zhou dynasty was attacked and not toppled, but suffered a major loss in the influence; instead of being the only power, the Zhou had to content themselves with being the major power alongside other independent, if lesser, kingdoms. During the Spring and Autumn era, the number of kingdoms declined as the more powerful ones annexed the weaker ones; the number of kingdoms sank from a number between 170 and 200 at the beginning of this era to approximately ten at the end of the era, around 479 B.C.

The end of the Spring and Autumn period is the beginning of the “Warring States” period. If the Zhou fell from the being the only power to being the dominant power during the former period, they fell to being merely one of the powers during the latter period. As the name implies, the Warring States period was characterized by warfare, and by advances in warfare. Iron replaced bronze in weaponry. Infantry and cavalry replaced chariot battles. Beyond the advance in technology, this change in warfare affect society. Some Chinese kingdoms adopted conscription – the “draft” – and warfare required the cooperation of the entire population. It was no longer merely an aristocratic contest. By the end of this era, 256 B.C., the Zhou dynasty and its internal sub-groups were pretty much powerless and taken over by the Qin dynasty. The kingdoms which had competed with the Zhou were weakened, having exhausted themselves in warfare, and they would fall around 221 B.C., soon after the end of the Warring States period.

Having defined the Spring and Autumn period, and the Warring States period, one might ask why so many great philosophers, including Confucius and Mencius, emerged in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods. The answer might be found in the types of philosophy propounded by these philosophers. They were concerned with social questions. The tumult during these eras forced such questions into the consciousness of those living through them. By contrast, other styles of philosophy, concerned with questions about time and space, or with questions about cause and effect, were not flourishing during this time.

In an era of upheaval, of significant changes in government or society, ethical questions naturally make themselves felt in those inclined toward philosophical reflection. In an era of stability, e.g. during the Han or Tang dynasties, moral philosophies might be studied and preserved, but more as a matter of academic tradition, and less as a matter of intellectual insight and creativity in response to social conditions. Greece might offer us a parallel: during its era of social crisis (after the Peloponnesian War), its noted political philosophers arose (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle); during its era of stability, other philosophers were more prone to explore those areas of philosophy (e.g., the nature of time and space) which did not directly address the issues of human society.

Confucius did most of his work during the late sixth and early fifth centuries. In an interesting parallel, Aristotle, who did most of his work during the fourth century, drew a number of the same conclusions. Both of them analyzed human society into ‘atomic’ or basic units. Aristotle saw society as a complex structure built from three simple relationships: husband to wife, employer to employee, and parent to child. Confucius had already concluded that society was a complex composed of simples, but posited five fundamental relationships. To Aristotle’s three, Confucius added older brother to younger brother, and friend to friend. Historians Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Anne Walthall, and James Palais write that Confucius (born 551 B.C., died 479 B.C.)

was the first and most important of the men of ideas seeking to influence the rulers of the day. As a young man, Confucius served in the court of his home state of Lu without gaining much influence. After leaving Lu, he wandered through neighboring states with a small group of students.

Confucius searched “for a ruler who would follow his advice,” and idealized the early Zhou dynasty “as a perfect society.” By implication, Confucius must have thought that the society of his era was deficient. His description of the Zhou was his prescription for his own time: people should devote “themselves to fulfilling their roles.” Apparently he believed that many people were not so devoting themselves. Confucius gathered a following, meaning that others saw things as he did, or came to do so after hearing him. The competing regional monarchies provided a larger audience, inasmuch as Confucius was addressing himself often to rulers and bureaucrats.

Mencius, like Confucius, “traveled around offering advice to rulers of various states.” Had China been unified under a solid dynasty, his potential customer base would have been much smaller. Because these states were in competition, there would have been some motive to at least review Mencius’s presentations, so that no opportunity to surpass a rival state would be overlooked. Under a monolithic dynasty, not only would the audience be smaller, but the audience would be less motivated to consider input regarding its governing style.

To the extent that Mencius is considered a Confucian, one may treat Mencius and Confucius together. To the extent that Mencius innovated beyond Confucius, one may contrast the two.

Both of them were interested in advising rulers about how to govern well; both were interested in discovering the truths about society which could inform men about how to best structure their communities. Both of them saw that the imperative for ideal behavior rested upon all social classes, and individuals from all classes needed to live properly in order for the kingdom as a whole to enjoy the benefits of wisdom. Mencius identifies empire, state, feudal lord, high official, and common person in one aphorism; empire, state, family, and person in another. He is not describing an exact taxonomy, so that the reader need not see a conflict between the two listings; rather, his point is that all levels of society are necessary if the whole is to flourish. Confucius structured his view of society around five pivotal relationships: father/son, husband/wife, ruler/subject, older brother/younger brother, and friend/friend; he saw each of these roles as important, and all of them need to be fulfilled well in order for a civilization to prosper.

Mencius and Confucius identify loyalty as a key virtue: the former writes that “never has a person given to true goodness abandoned those close to him” and the latter said that a son might even be justified in committing perjury out of filial loyalty. (Mencius is known to us largely from a collection of aphorisms and quotes called The Mencius. This book, of unclear authorship, is available in an edition by Daniel Gardner.)

Both Confucius and Mencius see the gaining of knowledge as a form of self-cultivation which leads to wisdom. The former sees learning as the first step, leading in a chain reaction to true intentions, a right mindset, a cultivated personality, harmonious households, a well-governed state, and finally a tranquil empire; the latter casts himself as an example, writing that one of his strengths is to “understand words” and to be “nurturing” his “vast, flowing qi … partner of righteousness.” Clearly, qi is a central term for Mencius, but it suffices to make the point at hand to note that, whatever it is, Mencius is advocating a form of self-cultivation.

In passing, for the purposes of the present discussion, Mencius and Confucius are very similar. For other purposes, certain divergences are detectable: while Confucius contemplated a variety of social spheres – family, friendship, government – Mencius clearly places more emphasis on government and less on the other two. When Mencius does mention the other two, he is viewing them in terms of their impact on government, and not for their own sakes. On the other hand, when compared with Zhu Xi and the neo-Confucians, Mencius is still very close to the original Confucius.

Another key Confucian concept is ritual. This points to the concreteness of Confucius, as opposed to the abstractness of some later neo-Confucians. ‘Ritual’ is physical for Confucius – he is concerned about the mats on the floor, and the precise circumstances in which one should prostrate one’s self. He is concerned that the funereal and burial rituals for his newly-dead friends be carried out correctly. He is not an other-worldly person.

Humility is important, and more so in a ruler. A ruler who self-corrects not only models humility for his subjects, but inspires them by his earnestness.

The correct use of terminology is central to Confucius, because it helps one both to avoid hypocrisy and to be precise and careful in one’s speaking and thinking. Attention to usages and definitions are the mark both of the scholar and of the honorable ruler. On this question, the most impractical and the most practical converge. The academic philosopher may spend great effort examining the definition of a word like ‘time’ or some other concept. A ruler may be careful in using terms like ‘tax’ and ‘penalty’ and ‘fine’ precisely (as a recent U.S. Supreme Court case has shown!). Both fall under Confucius’s injunction to ‘rectify names.’

In sum, Confucius has a number of points – largely echoed by Mencius – about how a human society should be organized and how it should function. Those points may be gathered under the broad headings of ‘scholarship’ and ‘physicality’ as follows: Confucius was concerned with reading, studying, investigating, and learning (those four verbs occur often in the Analects), and much of his scholarship had as its subject matter texts, people, dynasties, empires, and events from the past. His emphasis upon studying concrete things is expressed in his preference for ‘studying’ over ‘thinking’ and he did not spend time meditating upon abstractions. His preference for ritual carries his concreteness from his study of the past into his actions in the present.

Spain Suffers: Oppression Unleashed

Prior to the year 711 A.D., Spain enjoyed a reasonably prosperous and peaceful era. Under Roman rule, Spain enjoyed, in some ways, perhaps more lenient treatment than the territory in and around the city of Rome itself; as a relatively remote colony, the governors from Rome were happy as long as taxes were paid, as long exports continued to make their way to Rome, and as long as there was no massive civil unrest. The Roman governors were content to allow the inhabitants of Spain to do more or less as they pleased.

Around 409 A.D., the Roman presence in the area began to gradually contract back toward Rome, and after a transitional stage in which various provinces of Spain were substantially independent of each other, the Goths consolidated a sort of monarchy. Important to note is the diversity of the Iberian Peninsula at this point: Christians and Jews lived peaceably in the same towns.

This would end with the invasion of ruthless Muslim armies. In 711 A.D., they landed in Spain and would control, over the next several centuries, varying sections of Spain. They probably never controlled all of the Iberian Peninsula at one time; pockets of resistance often remained in the northwest.

The occupying Islamic armies made life difficult: they destroyed the synagogues of the Jews, and the churches of the Christians, and forbade the construction of any new synagogues or churches. Jews and Christians had to rise in the presence of Muslims, were not allowed to be on horseback in the presence of Muslims, and were required to wear special identifying markings on their clothing. Officially, these oppressions were recorded by the Muslims as the 'Pact of Umar' or the 'Code of Umar' ('Omar' is also a variant transliteration). Unofficially, Islamic troops assigned to occupational duty in Spain plundered and raped.

A bit of sarcastic propaganda circulated by the Muslims, and trustingly adopted by some later historians, was that the Islamic occupational armies ushered in a 'golden era of tolerance' in Spain. Historian William Chester Jordan writes:

Spain, except for a few relatively small Christian principalities in the Pyrenean north, was completely under Muslim domination from 711. The conquerors imposed their rule on a vast population of Christians and a substantial number of Jews. It is sometimes said that under Muslim rule, at least until the wars of Christian reconquest began in earnest, Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in a state of convivencia. Though always a minority throughout the period of their domination of the peninsula, the number of Muslims was steadily increasing from conversion and immigration. Confident of their continued hegemony, the argument goes, they lived amicably with Christians and Jews, even while denying them full rights. Yet all enjoyed freedom of religion, even if the religions of the conquered peoples were considered inferior to Islam. Architecture, poetry and other forms of cultural and intellectual expression in the subject communities borrowed freely from and adapted Arabic and Islamic motifs and tropes.

Thus, according to this cynically produced disinformation, the era was one of peaceful coexistence, religious freedom, and reciprocal artistic inspiration. In reality, the Jews and Christians of Spain were robbed and exploited:

Recently this picture has been criticized as idealized or even as a more or less deliberate distortion imposed on the narrative of pre-Reconquest Spanish history by liberal and anti-clerical scholars writing in the modern period. Hating what Spain was perceived to have become - a priest-ridden, racialist, and economically and politically backward society when elsewhere in Europe 'Enlightenment' came to prevail - many nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars imagined a time when the Church had little power, pureness of Christian blood or lineage was irrelevant and work and play among people of all faiths made for a prosperous and forward-looking society. But if convivencia of this sort is a myth, it remains true that the

Islamic occupational armies stationed in Spain possessed an ideology which justified violence against Jew and Christians, which sought the eventual extinguishing of "infidel" religion, and which sought the establishment of a permanent caliphate over not only the Iberian Peninsula, but over all of Europe. The Muslim vision was a Europe free of Christians and Jews and under Islamic military government. Having conquered Spain, the Muslims hoped to use it as one base from which to launch the final attacks which would destroy the rest of Europe; Italy and various Mediterranean islands would be other bases for these planned invasions. As historian Will Durant writes:

Having established their position in the Peninsula, the Moslems scaled the Pyrenees and entered Gaul, intent upon making Europe a province of Damascus. Between Tours and Poitiers, a thousand miles north of Gibraltar, they were met by the united forces of Eudes, Duke of Aquintaine, and Charles Duke of Austrasia. After seven days of fighting, the Moslems were defeated in one of the most crucial battles of history (732); again the faith of countless millions was determined by the chances of war. Thenceforth Charles was Carolus Martellus, or Martel, Charles the Hammer. In 735 the Moslems tried again, and captured Aries; in 737 they took Avignon, and ravaged the valley of the Rhone to Lyons. In 759 Pepin the Short finally expelled them from the south of France.

Having failed in their attempt to subjugate all of Europe, the Muslims contented themselves with oppressing Spain.

The emirs and caliphs of Spain were as cruel as Machiavelli thought necessary to the stability of a government; sometimes they were barbarously and callously cruel, as when Mutadid grew flowers in the skulls of his dead foes, or as when the poetic Mutamid hacked to pieces the lifelong friend who had at last betrayed and insulted him.

The physical violence of the Islamic occupiers was paralleled by intellectual violence;

philosophy was silenced, or professed the most respectable conclusions. Apostasy from Islam was punishable with death.

Despite the official propaganda concerning religious tolerance,

many churches had been destroyed, and new ones were prohibited.

To ensure that any remaining Christians did not raise skepticism toward Islam, and to nudge any remaining Christianity toward extinction, the Muslim invaders reserved for themselves

the right to appoint and depose bishops, even to summon ecclesiastical councils. The emirs sold bishoprics to the highest bidder, thought he might be a skeptic or libertine. Christian priests were liable to abuse by Moslems in the streets. Moslem theologians commented freely on what seemed to them absurdities in Christian theology, but it was dangerous for Christians to reply in kind.

Given the ruthless abuse dished out by the Islamic garrisons, the inhabitants of Spain found that even

a minor incident could lead to a major tragedy. A pretty girl of Cordova, known to us only as Flora, was the child of a mixed marriage. When her Mohammedan father died she resolved to become a Christian. She fled from her brother´s guardianship to a Christian home, was caught and beaten by him, persisted in apostasy, and was turned over to a Moslem court. The qadi, who might have condemned her to death, ordered her flogged. She escaped again to a Christian home, and there met a young priest, Eulogius, who conceived for her a passionate spiritual attachment. While she hid in a convent another priest, Perfectus, achieved martyrdom by telling some Moslems what he thought of Muhammed; they promised not to betray him, but the vigor of his exposition so shocked them that they denounced him to the authorities.

For Flora and for Perfectus, merely stating one's beliefs was enough to cause one to fear for one's life - if those beliefs were Christian. In the case of Perfectus,

the judge remanded him to jail for some months, hoping for a change of mood; none came and Perfectus was condemned to death. He marched to the scaffold cursing the Prophet as "an impostor, an adulterer, a child of hell." The Moslems gloated over his decapitation, the Christians of Cordova buried him with pomp as a saint (850).

During the year 850 A.D., and for several years following, Muslims in Spain executed many Christians, whose only crime was having stated that they were Christians. Amid such intolerance, it follows logically that intellectual life declined further, especially because some types of philosophy and astronomy were associated with Christian Europe.

Science and philosophy, in Moslem Spain, were largely frustrated by the fear that they would damage the people's faith.

The languishing of the intellect in Muslim Spain was part of a broader trend, in which Islam academically crippled itself, and left Europe's Jews and Christians to make major advancements in astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy. As Spain continued to endure abuse, Muslims achieved similar invasions onto various Mediterranean islands, and occupied the southern end of the Italian peninsula for several decades in the 800's and 900's. Islamic armies also advanced westward across Asia Minor, obliterating the Byzantine culture and people along the way.

This ongoing pressure - continued military incursions into Europe's southwestern, southern, and southeastern frontiers, lasting through the 700's, 800's, 900's, past the year 1000 A.D. - would finally provoke a backlash from Europe. As historian Harold Lamb writes, "a warlike Berber dynasty," the Muslims of northern Africa, continued to dominate "in Spain, and the Christians there were enduring persecutions." Travelers who left the continent were not safe:

the few pilgrims who had penetrated to Jerusalem in the last years brought back tales of hardship and insult. There also a barbarous race, the Seljuk Turks out of central Asia, had driven

into the areas around Syria and Asia Minor. Europe was attacked, if not on all side, certainly on most of them: "So in the west and the east, Moslems were crossing the once-quiescent frontier." Europe's response to several centuries of threat - centuries in which each decade contained military raids and invasions by Muslims - would be an attempt to stop this nearly ceaseless series of attacks by launching a counteroffensive or counterattack, called the Crusades.

Naming a New Continent

After Christopher Columbus discovered America - yes, we know that Leif Ericson discovered it 500 years earlier, but Columbus's discovery is the one that stuck - the continents of North America and South America, in addition to the islands that surrounded them and isthmus of Central America, quickly attracted attention, explorers, businessmen and settlers. This land, the object of such fascination, was simply called "The New World."

Eventually it would need a name, although some parts of it would continue under such non-names as 'Newfoundland'.

Many history students are familiar with the fact that America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer, cartographer, navigator, and financier who did much to lead the way toward a more accurate knowledge of American geography. His voyages to the Caribbean Sea, and to the Atlantic coast of South America paved the way for the further exploration of the Americas, and eventually, long afterward, the settling and civilizing of the Americas. The data he collected was important for mapmaking.

But who named America?

America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, but it was named by two German cartographers, Matthias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller.

Matthias Ringmann was a poet and grammarian. In addition to writing about the rules of grammar, about ancient authors, and his own original texts, he was a friend of Martin Waldseemüller. Ringmann was something of a cartographer, and credited Amerigo Vespucci with making an important advance, inasmuch as he journeyed further south than the Caribbean region initially explored by Columbus. Waldseemüller and Ringmann together published, in 1507, a new edition of an old book, Ptolemy's geography book, along with newer material written by Ringmann and Waldseemüller. In writing the introduction to that book, Ringmann was the first author to print and publish the word 'America'. He spent much of his life in or near Lorraine (more properly called 'Lothringen').

Martin Waldseemüller did more of the cartography and less composing of text; his maps were the first to use 'America'. He spent much of his life in or near Freiburg.

While the Spaniards and Portuguese were the first wave of explorers in the New World, the German cartographers were known for producing the most detailed and precise maps. And so it was a team of two German mapmakers who named America after an Italian!

What Columbus Brought Home from America

Although one sometimes reads about the devastation caused among the Native Americans ("Indians") by diseases brought to the New World from Europe, it is also true that there were many deadly diseases in America before European explorers arrived here. Syphilis, in particular, was killing mass numbers of Native Americans in waves of infection which rolled from North America to South America and back again.

Given that this disease is spread by behavior forms which are, with rare exceptions, voluntary, certain demographic segments among the Native Americans were safe from the illness. Nonetheless, the death toll was large, preventing some tribes from stabilizing at more advanced levels of civilization, forcing other tribes back to lower levels, and nearly exterminating still other tribes.

Christopher Columbus, of course, knew nothing of this. He did not realize that he was entering into a dangerous area when, in 1492, he first made contact with the Native Americans. Other people in Europe, however, soon realized what the "Indians" had given to Columbus: a deadly disease. At first, scientists disputed whether syphilis, which soon killed large numbers of people in Europe, had actually come from North America. Some thought it came from another part of the world; others thought that it had been in Europe, unrecognized, all along. But in January 2008, Scientific American magazine wrote that

the Italian adventurer and some of his crew contracted the disease during their voyage to the New World — and unwittingly introduced it to the old one circa 1493.

If, in fact, this is true, then we have evidence that Columbus's men, or perhaps even Columbus himself, engaged in the wrong type of activity. Certainly, neither the captain nor his crew were properly married to any of the Native Americans! Not only did they pay the price for their unwise judgment, but others in Europe may have paid the price as well, when the crew returned to the Iberian Peninsula.

Researchers from Emory University in Atlanta report in the online journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases that they used phylogenetics — the study of the evolutionary link between organisms — to study 26 geographically scattered strains of a family of bacteria known as Treponemes, which are behind the sexually transmitted disease syphilis as well as related nonvenereal infections such as yaws. They found that the venereal syphilis-causing strains arose relatively recently in humans and are closely related to an ancient infection isolated in South America that gives rise to yaws.

In other words, the strains of syphilis which spread across Europe descended from Native American bacteria.

"That supports the hypothesis that syphilis — or some progenitor — came from the New World," said lead study author Kristin Harper, an Emory molecular genetics researcher.

Although the new evidence is persuasive, suggestive, and convincing, the case is still not entirely closed. It is conceivably possible, although unlikely and unimaginable, that syphilis did not come to Europe from America.

According to the researchers, the origin of syphilis has been hotly debated since the first recorded epidemic of the disease in Europe in 1495. Most of the scientific evidence in recent years had been gleaned from the bones of members of past civilizations in both the Old and New worlds; bones were considered credible markers since chronic syphilis causes skeletal lesions. But skeletal analysis was hobbled by an inability to accurately determine bone age and a lack of supporting epidemiological evidence.

Another piece of evidence is the pattern of narratives among the Native Americans about epidemics which swept through the Americas before any European explorers arrived.

Scientists say the study is significant because of the large number of strains analyzed, including two species of yaws found in isolated inhabitants of Guyana in South America.

We have, then, another example of the - unintended - results of Europe's discovery of America. Along with tobacco, syphilis was part of the wave of death unleashed not only upon Europe, but the rest of the world, as the misery in which the American "Indians" had long lived escaped into the other continents. Disease and tobacco, along with various plants having hallucinogenic and narcotic effects, may explain the otherwise unexplained fall of significant Native American civilizations before the arrival of Europeans. Unknown to the Europe, to Asia, or to Africa, Native Americans had been living for centuries in a nightmare of epidemics, tobacco-related deaths, and the effects of mood-altering addictive plants.