360 Review Magazine Summer/Fall 2019

MAGAZINE

S U M M E R / F A L L 2 0 1 9 • V O L U M E 2 .1 • U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A R Y ISSUES & IDEAS ON & BEYOND THE NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS

360 REVIEW MAGAZINE covers issues and ideas on and beyond the Northern Great Plains. 360 Review Magazine presents in-depth inquiry, analysis and reflection on important topics, trends and events happening in our region, nation and worldwide. Our point of view is rooted in North Dakota, where we are located, but is not provincial. Rather, the magazine honors the local while striving for the universal. This is the essence of the Christian, Catholic and Benedictine tradition at the University of Mary, which exists to serve the religious, academic and cultural needs of people in this region and beyond.

“Magazine” derives from makhazin, the Arabic word for “storehouse,” which also soon gained military application as a “store for arms.” The world’s first print magazines began publication in England in the 18th century and sought to provide a storehouse of information and intellectual armament. 360 Review Magazine joins that tradition with the benefit of Christianity’s 2,000-year heritage.

As a poet once wrote: “The universe is composed of stories, not atoms.”

360 Review strives to tell some of these stories well—on paper (made of atoms, we presume), which is retro-innovative in a world spinning into cyberspace. There is also a digital version available at: www.umary.edu/360.

Publisher: University of Mary Editor-in-Chief: Patrick J. McCloskey Art Director & Photographer: Jerry Anderson Contributing Editor: Karen Herzog Media Relations: Tom Ackerman Consultant: Travis Wolf, PhD Research Assistant: Emily Lysne Editorial Offices: 360 Review Magazine, University of Mary, 7500 University Drive, Bismarck, ND 58504 Signed articles express the views of their authors and are intended solely to inform and broaden public debate. They are not intended to aid or hinder legislation before legislative bodies at the municipal, state or federal levels.

© 2019 – 360 Review at the University of Mary Printed in Canada

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

Henri Bergson

Table of Contents [Commentary] The Shattering: Christianity’s Decline & the Rise of Forever War . . . . . 2 [Religion] Culture of Life vs. Culture of Death: 4th Century to Today . . . . . . . . . . . 12 [History] The War to Start All Wars: The Great War & Its 100-Year Legacy . . . . . . . 22 [Documentary] Field of Ashes: My Grandfather’s Survival Tale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 [Art] Nigerian Artists in the Dakotas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 [Energy] The Real Energy Revolution: Natural Gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 [Media] News Desert: Losing Our Local Newspapers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 [Politics] The Nobel Prizewinner Who Wasn’t: George H.W. Bush . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 [Technology] Robophobia: Work in the Age of Robots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 [Politics] Monstrous Modernity: Western Roots of Islamic Radicalism . . . . . . . . . . 78 [Photography] Hope in Africa: Overcoming Poverty & Trauma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 [Medicine] Hyperbaric or Hyperbolic?: Treating Brain Injuries with Oxygen Under Pressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 [Culture] Journey to THE CENTER™: Geography, Identity and Serendipity on the Prairie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 [Film Commentary] Lament for “Darkest Hour:” Losing Churchill’s Character & Resolve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 [Film Commentary] Apocalypse Now & Then: A Quiet Place, Annihilation & Blade Runner 2049 in King Lear’s Shadow . . . . . . . 125 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 1

Commentary

The Shattering Christianity’s Decline & the Rise of Forever War Patrick J. McCloskey, Author & Editor-in-Chief, 360 Review Magazine

O

T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888 January 4, 1965)

Opposite: Detail from “Death on the Pale Horse,”

by Benjamin West, 1817, oil on canvas. The painting’s title was taken from the Book of Revelation (6:8-9), prophesizing worldwide destruction, including the persecution of Christians: “And behold a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death. And hell followed him. … And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them who were slain for the word of God.”

2

360

REVIEW

n June 13, 1965, Groucho Marx headlined a memorial event for T.S. Eliot five and a half months after the Nobel Prize-winning poet’s death. Groucho had formed an unlikely friendship with Eliot when the poet wrote him a fan letter in 1961 asking for a photograph. The high-brow writer and low-brow comic actor corresponded and then met for dinner at Eliot’s house in England, six and a half months before Eliot’s passing.

The memorial, billed as a “Homage to T.S. Eliot,” was a full-scale theatrical event held at London’s famous Globe Theatre. The program included Eliot’s poems, selected by W.H. Auden and read by such renowned actors as Sir Laurence Olivier and Peter O’Toole. Stravinsky’s musical tribute to Eliot was performed, and a Henry Moore sculpture punctuated the staging.

Before Groucho read from Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” he began with: “There’s an old vaudeville story about a man who was about to be hanged, and they brought him out on the scaffold and put the rope about his neck, and the minister in the prison said, ‘Have you any last words before we spring the trap?’ The thing was kind of shaky, and he looked up and said, ‘Yes, I don’t think this damned thing is safe.’ That’s precisely how I feel coming out here tonight surrounded by all these great actors.”

It’s easy to understand Groucho’s insecurity. There he was, a 7th-grade dropout, performing with the world’s best actors for the most sophisticated audience on the planet, perhaps ever. Given Groucho’s penchant for imaginative leaps and Eliot’s legacy of profound insight, it would be natural to see that shaky executioner’s scaffold as a symbol for the modern state of Western Civilization: Not only have such cataclysmic events—such as World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII)—literally shaken the foundations of societies worldwide during Eliot’s lifetime, the underlying ideologies that spawned such catastrophes continue to fester on an apocalyptic scale.

Today, a century after the Russian Revolution and end of WWI, is time to ask how this tragically ruthless century could have occurred. How did the cradles of Bach and Beethoven, of da Vinci and Michelangelo, of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy become mass executioner’s platforms?

3

Shattering of the Cross What happened? Eliot provided an answer in “The Wasteland” (published in 1922), writing, “There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.” He saw clearly how empty and unstable our culture was becoming as religion waned from hallowed to hollowed.

That might not seem the key to understanding at first glance. But consider what Heinrich Heine, one of Germany’s preeminent poets and authors, wrote in On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, published in 1834:

Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder.

Christianity—and that is its greatest merit—has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ... Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and, when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world’s history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar, the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.

Eighty years later, those brutal gods awoke with a terrible start to smash cathedrals while waging WWI, as discussed in “The War to Start All Wars: The Great War & Its 100-year Legacy,” beginning on page 22.

“When [World War I] was over,” wrote Winston Churchill in The World Crisis: 1911-1914, “torture and cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilised, scientific, Christian states had been able to deny themselves; and these were of doubtful utility.”

Exactly 100 years after the publication of Heine’s book, Hitler became Führer of the German Reich and, over the next 11 years, outdid the French Revolution in brutality and destruction on a scale far surpassing Heine’s imagination. During WWII, the Nazis and their fascist allies (principally Italy, Hungary and Japan) instituted torture on a methodically massive scale

4

360

REVIEW

and certainly cannibalized their own populations—perhaps even literally in the reported use of the skin of Jews murdered in concentration camps to make lampshades—with the Final Solution in Europe and pervasive mass killings

by Japanese forces throughout Asia. As many as 10 million Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, Filipinos and Indochinese were slaughtered by the Japanese military, including more than one million people in forced-labor projects.

For decades, the Soviet Union instituted torture throughout its police apparatus and cannibalized its citizens in like manner via large-scale purges and political prison and forced-labor camps.

Detail from “Thor’s Fight with the Giants,” by Mårten Eskil Winge, 1872, oil on canvas.

Not Brad Pitt In 2011, Paramount Pictures released “Thor,” a superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character. The lead was played by Chris Hemsworth, whom many fans mistook for Brad Pitt. Not coincidentally, the two actors look quite similar. But just as Hemsworth is not in fact superstar Brad Pitt, the movie’s depiction of Thor was not that of the real ancient brutal god, no matter how much viewers might believe the veracity of comic-book and cinematic depictions.

There are just wars, for example to defend one’s country. But elevating warfare to the level of a savage cult, such as Thor’s, gives sanction to wars of aggression and to rape, pillage and plunder as just deserts.

5

Thor was a popular god among Nordic tribes prior to Christianity. These tribes were far from unique, however, as tribes, nations and empires worldwide paid homage to war gods. The Romans had Mars, and Celtic tribes honored dozens of war gods.

Then, as Heine noted, Christianity “mitigated that brutal … love of war.”

How so?

Christian Revolution

Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously.

Karl Barth

6

360

REVIEW

Consider the world Christ was born into. Oppression was ubiquitous, as it had been throughout recorded history. Athenian democracy indeed flashed brightly in the 5th century B.C. But that experiment wasn’t for everyone in Greek society and lost its vitality before being crushed. To be impartial: “In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind,” wrote Edward Gibbon at the beginning of his masterpiece, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

But there was no such thing as human rights, freedom or democracy, as we understand them today. Roman law brought civil order and measures of justice, at least for Roman citizens. But there was no regard for the individual beyond social standing, which determined value. Slaves, as the expression goes, did not have faces. Fate—cold and usually cruel—determined where a person fit into society and the cosmos. Religion consisted of ritualistic adherence to the cult appropriate to one’s station—without moral obligations beyond ritualistic demands, which involved forms of swearing loyalty to the emperor.

In startling contrast, the Christian revolution offered a most radical proposition on a scale even larger than the Roman Empire: intrinsic equality for all. On the surface, this is an absurd idea, which most Romans initially thought laughable. People are not equal in ability or by any other measure.

But they are equal, in the Christian view, in the unmeasurable: in that each is equally a child of God. As such, each person deserves to be treated with kindness, love and dignity. This precipitated a culture in which charity became the supreme virtue and institutions, such as orphanages, hospitals and school, were founded for all and especially for the poor. The Christian revolution was so successful that today we take for granted this view of the human person and the human rights this view entails.

Even so, Christianity was always inconvenient—as Christians discovered.

There were many injustices in the ancient world that weren’t immediately rectified. Slavery was considered an unfortunate component of society, but the moral demand in the Church’s early centuries was on treating slaves well, not on abolishing the institution.

Eventually, the unbearable contradiction became obvious. Beginning in the 4th century, Christian leaders, such as St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-395 AD), began speaking out forcibly against slavery. Such contradictions reverberated throughout society in the Church’s early centuries, but there was no guarantee the Christian approach would prevail. Happily, hope triumphed, as shown in “Culture of Life vs Culture of Death: 4th Century to Today,” beginning on page 12.

Not until 1807 did the British Empire finally outlaw slavery, and the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t declared in the U.S. until 1863. Full civil rights took another century to realize here. Humans are, as the Bible put it, “stiff-necked” in the extreme.

The most important point is less the years it took to achieve legal equality than that getting there was a moral imperative implicit in the essence of Christianity. There was no such imperative in the ancient world, nor in other civilizations.

At this point, it’s crucial for the reader to understand that the thrust of this article is not to suggest any form of theocracy or measures that would discriminate against non-Christians.

The State as God At the same time as Christianity’s implicit promises were being fulfilled, Heine observed, elites throughout the West began rejecting the basis of democracy and human rights: Christianity and the belief in God. Without God, the state became absolute—as formulated by German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel in the early 19th century: “The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth.”

As Hegel correctly perceived, democracy is messy. That’s largely by design. The American republic, for example, was set up deliberately with checks and balance that create gridlock—in order to necessitate deliberation and prevent oppression.

The American Revolution was carried out both for independence and against absolute British monarchy.

Hegel’s “Divine Idea” (statism) was to circumvent democracy’s inefficiency and Christianity’s even greater obstacles to achieving the state’s political goals. As societies began to industrialize, which involved organizing workers,

Nazi propaganda poster, titled “The Leader of Youth.” As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea.”

7

Educate people without religion and you make them but clever devils.

Arthur Wellesly

tasks and machinery on ever larger scales as factories, leaders ached to organize entire nations accordingly to singular goals. Standing in the way were democratic institutions, individual rights, the traditional family and Christianity.

The two most important applications of statism (or socialism) were communism and fascism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels transformed Hegel’s idealism into atheistic, materialist communism—with a real state as absolute. To formulate fascism, Adolph Hitler did much the same, focusing on race instead of class and scapegoating Jews instead of the bourgeoisie. “[W]hen Hitler says that ‘the State dominates the nation because it alone represents it,’” wrote Albert Jay Nock in Our Enemy, the State in 1935, “he is only putting into loose popular language the formula of Hegel, that ‘the State is the general substance, whereof individuals are but accidents.’”

By positing the state as absolute authority, both communism and fascism were thoroughly totalitarian from the outset. Individuals completely lost their intrinsic value, becoming mere instruments for the Soviet Union’s mass attempt at creating a worker’s paradise and the Nazis attempt at European conquest and founding a new Aryan empire.

This resulted in more death and destruction in the 20th century than all the religious wars in history combined. Published in 1997, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression documented that communist governments had killed more than 94 million people worldwide. Estimates of the number of soldiers and civilians killed in WWII, which fascist regimes initiated, range from 70 to 85 million. It is telling to note that casualty rates were especially high in battles between Nazi and Soviet forces, partly because Soviet battle tactics were indifferent to protecting their soldiers’ lives.

Both Nazis and Communists embraced ideological war as utterly unsparing and total: to the death—that is, of the masses. Totalitarian leaders understood they were creating new political religions, and new religions require martyrs to complete the overthrow of the status quo. But there was a stark and telling contrast between Christianity’s beginnings and those of statist religions. Christians freely sacrificed themselves as martyrs—from peasant to bishop—for their beliefs, whereas communist and fascist leaders freely sacrificed their followers and then entire populations, but seldom themselves.

Our Failures In the 1950s, C.S. Lewis, author of The Narnia Chronicles, The Screwtape Letters and many other acclaimed literary and theological works, exchanged letters with Fr. Don Giovanni Calabria, an Italian priest who dedicated his life to the plight of the poor. The letters were written in Latin, 8

360

REVIEW

which, as a common language throughout Christendom, had once facilitated the Church’s universality. Looking back at the carnage of two world wars, the rise of fascism and communism, and the loss of faith in the West, Lewis wrote: But (this) did not happen without sins on our part: for that justice and that care for the poor which (most mendaciously) the Communists advertise, we in reality ought to have brought about ages ago. But far from it: we Westerners preached Christ with our lips, with our actions we brought the slavery of Mammon. We are more guilty than the infidels: for to those who know the will of God and do not do it, the greater the punishment. Now the only refuge lies in contrition and prayer. Long have we erred. In reading the history of Europe, its destructive succession of wars, of avarice, or fratricidal persecutions of Christians by Christians, of luxury, of gluttony, of pride, who could detect any but the rarest traces of the Holy Spirit?

Indeed, more than 350 wars have been fought in Europe during the Christian era, and much blood has been spilled in the Americas. Some wars were just and others were initiated by invading armies, such as the Mongols in 1223. But most conflicts involved Christians brutalizing other Christians.

Our failings have been so great that communism and fascism, obviously repulsive systems, became attractive. In fact, today’s radical Islam was inspired far more by these heinous political religions than traditional Islam, as shown in “Monstrous Modernity: Western Roots of Islamic Radicalism,” beginning on page 78.

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without.

T.S. Eliot

More than Half the Story One might be tempted, as many have, to conclude that Christianity is the problem. But evil deeds are less than half the story. For example, at the same time as the Nine Years’ War raged in Europe and throughout European empires worldwide at the end of the 17th century, the Lasallian Christian Brothers were beginning to do the unthinkable: educate the poor. Until then, the lower classes were considered impervious to learning. Soon, teaching religious orders were formed throughout Europe and then in the Americas.

This precipitated the most astounding social revolution in history, which again we take for granted today.

In contrast, people are mere fodder in totalitarian regimes. There is no hypocrisy because the state decides right and wrong, with no recourse to a higher, transcendent authority. The Final Solution was an administrative challenge rather than a moral dilemma within fascist logic.

9

Spiritual Declension Totalitarianism’s grand bargain—total care for total control—first surrenders freedom and then falls apart. Total control leads inevitably to zero care for all but the elite. In 1935, as Hitler was vying for power, Fulton J. Sheen (then Msgr. and now Venerable) described the West’s “spiritual declension” as: “Christ, who is God, has been reduced to a mere man. Man, who is made to the image of God, has been reduced to a mere animal. And an animal, which is a living thing has been reduced to a mere atom. And this is called progress!”

Today, 84 years later, we are still trapped in this declension. As David Bentley Hart explained in “Christ and Nothing”: [W]hat is the consequence, then, when Christianity, as a living historical force, recedes? We have no need to speculate, as it happens; modernity speaks for itself: with the withdrawal of Christian culture, all the glories of the ancient world that it baptized and redeemed have perished with it in the general cataclysm. Christianity is the midwife of nihilism, not because it is itself nihilistic, but because it is too powerful in its embrace of the world and all of the world’s mystery and beauty; and so to reject Christianity now is, of necessity, to reject everything except the barren anonymity of spontaneous subjectivity.

At least five times … the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.

G.K. Chesterton

What Hart meant by “too powerful” is that Christianity’s grasp on culture, language, the arts and all other aspects of Western society was so profound and comprehensive that its withdrawal takes everything of value with it, like a receding tsunami.

Is not this “spontaneous subjectivity,” either monstrous or vapid, the supreme value and operating principle for most of today’s progressive culture, politics, media and much of what passes for education? It has become axiomatic that society is no more than a loose confederation of egos who define their own morality, identity and belief or non-belief systems.

Reclaiming Truth “The only cult that can truly thrive in the aftermath of Christianity,” Hart wrote, “is a sordid service of the self, of the impulses of the will, of the nothingness that is all that the withdrawal of Christianity leaves behind.”

There are two ways this slide into “sordid” subjectivity can end. One way is that ego-driven progressivism and consumerism continue their naïve support for socialism—as if we could pass workable laws making everything and everyone completely free—to the point of political domination.

Ultimately, only a totalitarian state (already manifesting as politically 10

360

REVIEW

correct speech, thought and super-surveillance) can order a society that has shattered into hundreds of millions of autonomous, self-centered shards.

The other way initiates an effective return to a Christ-centered culture.

Un-shattering Western Civilization does not entail establishing a Christian theocracy or measures antithetical to non-Christians. Fundamentally, a Christ-centered society means recovering our shared history, moral standards, and understanding of the human person and role of institutions as guarantors and facilitators of human freedom and dignity. The overwhelming majority of principled believers, regardless of denomination, share in the Christian heritage and perspective.

This applies equally to non-believers. “The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core,” wrote Theodore Dalrymple, author, retired physician and atheist.

“To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements and its legacy.”

In 2013, Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, gave the annual Erasmus Lecture in New York City. Sacks recalled a lecture by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI) in 2004, in which he compared Europe to the Roman Empire just before its collapse. In response, Ratzinger called for Christians to act as a “creative minority” to reclaim the best of our heritage. Amplifying this appeal, Sacks said:

The task of a creative minority in the JudeoChristian tradition is always to challenge the idols of the age, whatever the idols, whatever the age.

The task of a creative minority in the Judeo-Christian tradition is always to challenge the idols of the age, whatever the idols, whatever the age. The idols of our age are many—materialism, individualism, consumerism, relativism, a loss of the sense of the sanctity of marriage and the non-negotiable dignity of the human person. So being a minority does not mean that you believe that truth is relative. What it means is that every age has its idols, and it needs prophetic voices to show the way to a deeper truth.

We must seek out and heed such prophetic voices. For they light the way to renewing ourselves, our families, culture, institutions and society.

The free, just society we all want to live in cannot be sustained without a Christian foundation.

We have not, as is often claimed, entered a post-Christian era. There is nothing after Christ—literally in the form of nihilism, the most irrational delusion in human history. Or as Groucho (not Karl) Marx put it, “I’m not crazy about reality, but it is still the only place to get a decent meal.” For breaking bread is first a spiritual enterprise, or we revert to breaking heads. ± 11

Religion

Culture of Life vs Culture of Death 4th Century to Today Mike Aquilina, Author & Executive Vice President, St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology

“T

wo Ways there are, one of Life and one of Death, and there is a great difference between the Two Ways.” This statement begins the first section of the Didache, perhaps the oldest surviving Christian text. The Greek word didache means “teaching,” and the book comprises the body of teachings the Apostles left regarding how to run the Church.

Each of the two ways involves certain actions and omissions that contribute to the making of a certain kind of society. The lives and careers of two 4th-century undergraduate classmates who were raised in Christian families—Julian and Basil—illustrate the two ways, and how one led to life and the other inexorably to death.

Both men were gifted leaders. They were bright, brave and disciplined men who placed their lives at the service of a certain ideal of social order.

These ideals, however, were not morally equivalent but polar opposites. The culture of death has been at war with the culture of life throughout history and, as the New and Old Testaments make clear, this is fundamentally a cosmic battle.

Basil the Great

Opposite: “The Stream of Life; On the River of Life,”

by Hugo Simberg, 1896, oil on canvas.

12

360

REVIEW

Basil was born in 330 A.D., one of nine children in an affluent family in Caesarea, Cappadocia (modern-day Kayseri, Turkey). The family had been Christian for several generations. His parents, Basil and Emmelia, are venerated as saints, as are two of Basil’s siblings, Gregory (of Nyssa) and Macrina.

His ancestors included martyrs and others who suffered for the faith.

Basil’s father was a professor of rhetoric (the classical discipline of argumentation and persuasion) who homeschooled his children. He died when Basil was a teenager, and Basil continued his academic studies at prestigious schools, first in his native Cappadocia, then for a year in Constantinople, the imperial capital, and finally for six years in Athens, which was the Ivy League at the time—and where the lives of Basil and Julian converged.

13

Basil the Great, Father of the Church (330-379), Basilica of the Holy Blood, Bruges, Belgium.

14

360

REVIEW

Both young men studied under Libanius, the most famous rhetorician of their time. Libanius was an ardent proponent of the old, pagan religion, but this didn’t prevent him from training Christians. His students also included St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory Nazianzen. The latter became Basil’s closest friend in Athens. They were housemates and shared a common life of philosophical study, prayer and fasting. Eventually, all three of Libanius’s Christian students were recognized among the Eight Doctors of the Church, and together they are venerated as the Three Holy Hierarchs. In short, they are among the most important teachers and theologians of the early Church.

Basil returned to Cappadocia to teach in 355 and had a spiritual awakening that led him to commit his life to God. He embarked on a tour of regions renowned for their asceticism—Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia—where he met with many solitaries and observed their life. Finally, he returned to Cappadocia to establish a religious community on a remote family property in Pontus, located on the Black Sea’s southern coast in present-day Turkey. His mother and sister joined him and attracted other devout women. Here, Basil composed his monastic rule—now known as the Rule of St. Basil—which he adapted and edited throughout his life. Through Basil’s influence, contemplatives increasingly favored disciplined community life over the solitary life of the desert hermits (who could be wild and anarchic). Basil referred to the life he chose, life in community, as “the way that is in tune with Christ’s politics.”

Basil poured the fruit of his contemplation into his theological works and letters, which drew attention for their erudition and style. His old classmate Julian, now emperor, tried to entice Basil to life at court, but Basil refused.

Basil was ordained a priest around 362 and made an auxiliary bishop shortly afterward. It was a time of doctrinal crisis in the Church. Arian heretics, who denied the full divinity of Jesus, had been condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325, but their heresy continued to mutate like a virus and spread throughout the world. Most emperors in the eastern Roman Empire were Arian, and Arianism was effectively the state religion. Basil’s bishop, Eusebius, was an ardent advocate of the true faith, but he was intellectually ill-equipped for the subtleties of theological disputation and became utterly dependent on Basil.

There was also a major social crisis in 368, when a series of natural calamities—including hailstorms, floods and earthquakes—brought famine to Cappadocia. Basil was appalled when some merchants seized the opportu-

nity to grow rich from the scarcity of food, leaving the poor to starve. Basil’s preaching shamed the wealthy and led them to share what they had. He led by example by selling his inheritance and giving the proceeds to relief efforts.

Basil’s management of these crises established his reputation with Christians. When Bishop Eusebius died in 370, Basil was made bishop of Caesarea, where he championed the Nicene faith until his death in 379.

Historians say that Basil was the first to produce a sustained theological reflection on the Church’s social concerns, which recur in his homilies and letters, mostly addressed to monks and nuns. The ideal monk, Basil said, is one whose prayer is augmented by work, but whose work is done so “that they may have something to distribute to those in need.”

He did not invent this ideal but had observed it in practice in his tour of the great monastic communities in Egypt and elsewhere.

Monks and solitaries served their neighbors as physicians, pharmacists, spiritual directors and friends.

What set Basil apart from his contemporaries—and predecessors—was his efficiency and productivity in realizing his ideal. Basil’s doctrine was (literally) concretized in the construction of the campus known as Basileidas. It was a vast complex of facilities built to serve a variety of needs—so massive that locals referred to it as “The New City.” Basil’s friend Gregory compared it to the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Basil’s charity was as mighty and imposing as the Great Pyramids.

The Basileidas included a soup kitchen, poorhouses, a trade school, a hostel for needy travelers, personal care for the elderly and a hospice for the dying. His staff of monks and nuns dispensed food and medical care to all who approached, regardless of religious affiliation.

This was not something added on to devotions but integral to religious life.

This mixed life of prayer and action was Basil’s ideal for monks and nuns— and for all Christians. In his eulogy for Basil, Gregory described Basil’s church-wide program of charitable work as “the short road to salvation, the easiest ascent to heaven.”

Historians sometimes call Basil’s program a “monasticizing” of the city in that he wanted the laity’s charitable work to flow from a sustained and disciplined life of prayer in community.

Basil set his efforts on a solid intellectual foundation. His theological reflections produced key insights in the development of a distinctive Christian social doctrine. He affirmed, for example, the universal equality of all people before God: “[T]o every man belongs by nature equality of like honor with all men, and … superiorities in us are not according to family, nor

Solid gold coin commemorating the reign of Flavius Claudius Julianus (361-63 AD).

The solid gold coin (solidus) was introduced

by Constantine I in 309 AD and was in circulation throughout the Byzantine Empire until the 10th century.

15

A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.

St. Basil the Great

according to excess of wealth, nor according to the body’s constitution, but according to the superiority of our fear of God.” Nor can one tribe or nation, he wrote, claim superiority to another: “The saints do not all belong to one country … . The homeland of each is common to all, and they give to each other everywhere whatever they have to hand.”

Among Basil’s gifts was his ability to inspire others, which was no easy task in his time. Christianity was legal, but both Valens, the Eastern Roman Emperor, and Modestus, the local governor, held to Arianism and were not congenial to Basil’s efforts. They tried to win Basil over—or force him through threats and bribes—but failed repeatedly.

In resistance, Basil demonstrated the value of detachment gained through a life vowed to poverty and celibacy. He had no fear of confiscation since he owned nothing. When Modestus threatened exile, Basil replied, “I belong to no place. This earth in which I live is not mine. I should be in my own place in whatever country to which I was sent. I know that the whole earth is God’s; and wherever I may be I consider myself a stranger and a pilgrim.”

Infuriated, Modestus replied, “Never have I been spoken to with so much liberty.”

“Maybe you never met a Catholic bishop,” Basil responded.

Even so, when Valens attended Basil’s celebration of the Divine Liturgy (the Eucharistic service of the Byzantine Rite), he was so impressed he donated land for the building of the Basileidas. This interaction helped to define the limits of governmental power over the church.

Soon after his death in 379, Basil was commonly called Basil the Great and became a saint, claimed by everyone devoted to a culture of life.

Julian the Apostate Basil and his classmate Julian were brilliant intellectuals with mighty ambitions. Both were disciplined men who could defer pleasures and gratifications for the sake of a chosen cause. They modeled fortitude for their followers—Julian in the army and Basil in the Church.

Historically, both men loom colossal even though Basil didn’t see his 50th birthday, and Julian reigned less than three years.

Julian was born in 331 into a brutal family and a bloody business. His father was the Emperor Constantine’s half-brother. One historian noted that “Julian’s family spent a great deal of [their days] developing ingenious ways to kill each other.” The motive was usually intrigue, grabs for the throne or just the suspicion bred by such an atmosphere.

In 326, Constantine ordered the execution of his own wife and eldest son.

The three remaining sons succeeded their father in 337 and rather quickly dispatched almost all their male relatives. Only two young boys were spared, 16

360

REVIEW

five-year-old Julian and his teenage brother Gallus. Julian was too young to be a threat and Gallus too sickly.

Although Julian continued to live the privileged life of the imperial family, he kept the memory of that purge, whose victims included his father. And he nursed the grudge. Years later, he wrote with incredulity about his cousin, the Emperor Constantius: “Our fathers were brothers, sons of the same father.

And close relations as we were, how this most humane emperor treated us … .

He put to death six of our cousins, my father who was his uncle, another of our uncles on my father’s side and my eldest brother, [all] without trial.”

The imperial family was officially Christian by this time— the irony of which was not lost on Julian, who was also raised Christian. It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to locate the origins of Julian’s anti-Christian drive.

Julian learned to keep his thoughts to himself, since Constantius was his patron and alienation from the emperor meant certain death. So Julian studied diligently. With Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, he took up philosophy and rhetoric at Athens. But, unlike the others, Julian secretly began investigating the “old religion,” the pagan mysteries. He found a group that practiced the ancient rituals and joined them.

Although he kept up his outward practice of Christianity, his mind and heart now belonged to the old gods.

Appointed to leadership in the military, Julian rose rapidly with stunning campaigns in the western provinces and barbarian lands. He gained a reputation for toughness.

Unlike other generals, he shared the hardships of his troops.

He ate what they ate; slept where they slept. And he rewarded them handsomely. All this made for tenacious loyalty. Not surprisingly, they eventually declared him emperor.

In 360, Julian began marching toward Byzantium to confront Constantius.

But the meeting never happened since Constantius died of natural causes before Julian arrived.

Then began the reign that gave Julian his place in history. He did some things extremely well, including tax reform and military leadership. But he is remembered as “The Apostate,” as the man who renounced Christianity in a public and forcefully institutional way. The Christian Church had enjoyed the favor of emperors for a half-century. Julian made clear that his reign would be different.

Julian immediately made vast sums available to restore pagan temples that had fallen into disrepair. He promoted pagans to prominent positions in the capital and boosted the wages of the pagan priesthoods. In the beginning,

Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus (331-363), known as Julian the Apostate in the Christian tradition.

17

I feel awe of the gods, I love, I revere, I venerate them, and in short have precisely the same feelings towards them as one would have towards kind masters or teachers or fathers or guardians or any beings of that sort.

Julian the Apostate

18

360

REVIEW

he tried to include Christians and invited Basil to take a seat at the imperial court. The Church leadership was wary, however, and Basil refused the honor. Julian became more hardened in his anti-Christian position, and pagan restoration became the keynote of his rule.

Ironically, Julian’s paganism was not really the old religion. Rather it was a mirror image of Christianity, which Julian recognized. In The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World, Adrian Murdoch wrote, “Julian’s attempts at creating a pagan doctrine betray his Christian upbringing … . By the very fact of his early education, he was already, as he would have put it, polluted.”

Whereas the old religion had been a riot of gods, cults, and feasts, Julian strove, in a very Roman way, to impose unity and uniformity on paganism’s worldwide polytheism. And it was the religious equivalent of herding cats.

In Julian’s scheme, the emperor served as a sort of pope over a hierarchy that mirrored the Catholic structure of archbishops, bishops and priests. He set up pagan philanthropies in imitation of Catholic charities. He urged his clergy to lead lives of virtue and preach philosophy to the people. Julian even chose to lead a celibate life after the death of his wife. As Adrian Murdoch put it, “He wanted the pagans to out-Christian the Christians.”

Still, Julian despised Christianity and led the charge to re-paganize the empire. His pagan “coming out” climaxed during an extended stay in Syrian Antioch, a city of a half-million people situated en route to the battlegrounds where he would face the Persians. While in Antioch, Julian renewed the pagan practices, although he was hardly satisfied with the priests’ performance. He was prissy and uptight as any of history’s most fanatical puritans. In Antioch—a city known for its comedians and satirists—the majority-Christian population openly laughed at Julian’s efforts.

This infuriated him and led to harsher restrictions on the Christians. He began by banning believers from teaching grammar, rhetoric and philosophy. He made the requirements for schoolteachers so stringently pagan that no Christian could fulfill them. Banished from the public square, Christianity could be minimized as a cultural force. Yet Julian retained the veneer of religious freedom. Christians remained free to do and think whatever they wanted on Sundays, as long as they didn’t let it seep into the wider society Monday through Saturday.

According to Murdoch, this was Julian’s “master stroke.” Julian “marginalised Christianity to the point where it could potentially have vanished within a generation or two, and without the need for physical coercion.” As Julian said of the Christians: “If they want to learn literature, they have Luke and Mark: Let them go back to their churches and expound on them.” Julian

wanted to remove Christians from public discourse—neutralize their public influence—and drive them into a cultural ghetto.

And briefly—briefly—he succeeded. It was not to last, however.

As Julian shook the dust of Antioch from his feet, he marched his troops toward Persia—and to their devastating defeat at the hands of Emperor Shapur II. On the battlefield at the Persian frontier, Julian fell hard, and with him the Eastern Empire began to crumble. According to one account, he was struck by a spear and suddenly saw matters clearly. His last words were: “You win, O Galilean!”

End of the Pagan World Julian’s death was a critical moment in the fall of the old empire. As Murdoch concluded: “To all intents and purposes we can say that paganism died as a credible political and social force in the last days of June 363.”

The historian Robert Royal, in his study of Western religion, The God That Did Not Fail, gives us an excellent summary answer to the question of why Julian’s project came to nothing: Julian … crafted one of the strongest early critiques of Christian beliefs and made great efforts to stop Christianity’s growth as a social force in the empire. Yet Julian conceded, in a realistic appraisal of what he had to overcome, that the Christian churches were carrying out relief efforts among the poor, pagan as well as Christian, that the pagans themselves were not.

Julian—and the whole classical world—suffered two disadvantages in competing with the new faith. First, there was no substantial set of principles within classical religion and philosophy to inspire such charitable works. The Stoics had come closest with their conception of the entire world as one city, the cosmopolis. But by Julian’s day, Platonism was the only real pagan philosophy still standing and even the old Stoic principle was a far cry from the active and lively sense of the universal brotherhood and sisterhood within the Kingdom of God that the Christians called caritas. Had such ideas been influential in pagan societies, they would not have faced a second problem: the absence of the social structures needed to implement large-scale works of charity.

The empire and its municipalities sometimes provided a public dole. But love and empowerment of the common people is something quite different from a state subsidy. No ancient city, let alone the whole empire, had ever even attempted that. In the world of Late Antiquity, Christianity introduced not only new beliefs and ideas, but new social practices that transformed ancient Mediterranean life.

19

Without Christ, however, there is no holiness on earth, no unity, and certainly no human dignity equality or freedom. There is no reliable foundation for universal brotherhood or hope for world peace.

Julian could not manufacture the sort of love that drove the Christians, during centuries of persecution, to establish a network, a system, a society, a culture of voluntary mutual care and support. What Christians were willing to do for God, no one in his right mind would do for a program as boring as Julian’s. It may be sweet and beautiful, as the pagans said, to die for one’s country. But few people seemed willing to turn over their tithe for Rome or volunteer for pagan soup kitchens. They asked a sensible question—Isn’t that what our taxes are for?—and they went back to their games of horseshoes and checkers.

Julian had great ambitions for reshaping society, and when he failed he failed spectacularly. Yet Julian has fascinated Christians ever since. Perhaps he served as the model for Hazel Motes, the main character in Flannery O’Connor’s brilliant novel Wise Blood. Motes was a veteran who was scarred by his war experiences and rejected the Christianity of his upbringing. He then lived in rebellion against the Christian God, wandering the South and preaching what he calls the “Church without Christ.”

One of Motes’s followers is a scam artist who sees an opportunity to make a lot of money from this new religion, which he coins the “holy Church of Christ without Christ.” This is exactly what Julian wanted: a worldwide gathering of do-gooders, imagining there’s no heaven—it’s easy if you try—and no hell below us, above us only sky.

The Christian Revolution Without Christ, however, there is no holiness on earth, no unity, and certainly no human dignity, equality or freedom. There is no reliable foundation for universal brotherhood or hope for world peace. These ideas were all results of the Christian revolution. In the pagan world, there was no talk of just war. There was no such thing as a hospital. No one was floating the idea that a slave was equal to his master. In pagan Rome, it had been legal to rape or kill a slave.

Christianity changed the way the world thinks. We may no longer recognize or remember this, and we might learn, the hard way, that this is true.

We might acknowledge the failure of secularism and idolatry of the state only when it fails, as it eventually must, to feed us, heal us and save us from our enemies.

“Two Ways there are, one of Life and one of Death, and there is a great difference between the Two Ways.” As noted above, this statement begins the first section of the Didache, perhaps the oldest surviving Christian text—and indeed it is one of the most profound and predictive ever written. Two roads diverge in our wood. Let us choose the way of Basil, even as our world tries to drag us the way of Julian. ± 20

360

REVIEW

Christian Origins of Hospitals

A

n unguentarium like this one—small and made of glass—was probably used to hold medicine or cosmetics in powder or ointment form. In fact, the Latin word unguentarium could also mean a drugstore.

When this vessel was made, in the fourth century, Christian doctors were bringing about a revolution in health care. Immediately after the legalization of Christianity, the hospital emerged for the first time and became ubiquitous. It was, according to the modern historian Gary Ferngren, a distinctively Christian institution, unlike anything that had gone before.

What passed for the medical profession until then was a riot of different types of practitioner: herbalists, magicians, folk healers, as well as doctors in the empirical tradition of Hippocrates and Galen. Most were traveling salesmen, offering their services in one village before moving on to the next. In the course of their careers, they could range across continents.

The profession was unregulated and anarchic, and training happened through apprenticeship.

From the documents and inscriptions of the first three centuries, it seems that physicians were drawn to Christianity—and Christians were drawn to the practice of medicine. No other profession is as well represented as doctors are. They make up the single largest cohort by far. Saint Justin Martyr confirms their prevalence is in the second century, as does Origen in the third.

In the middle of the third century, Christian physicians distinguished themselves for their brave and generous service during the so-called Plague of Cyprian, the smallpox epidemic that lasted for decades and claimed the lives of thousands of city-dwellers in a single day.

Christian doctors did not abandon their stations; the Church was the only institution willing and able to organize relief efforts. Christians, moreover, extended their care not only to their co-religionists, but to everyone—even their persecutors. …

Hospitals extended Christian “hospitality” to anyone in need.

Their complexes often included not only wards for the sick, but also homeless shelters, hospices for the dying, hostels for travelers, and even trade schools to provide beggars with a better future.

An unguentarium from the ancient world. Photo by Susan Brown.

This text is an excerpt from A History of the Church in 100 Objects by Mike Aquilina with Grace Aquilina, Ave Maria Press (2017).

21

History

The War to Start All Wars The Great War & Its 100-Year Legacy Joseph T. Stuart, PhD Associate Professor of History, University of Mary

W

“Remember Belgium,”

by Ellsworth Young, ca. 1917-18, lithograph on paper. This work illustrates the atrocities that German soldiers carried out on civilians during the invasion and occupation of neutral Belgium. The German army raped, burned entire cities and carried out mass executions. This work of art was used as a poster by the American Committee on Public Information to garner support for the U.S. involvement in the war.

22

360

REVIEW

orld War I (1914-18) was seen at the time as the “war to end all wars.” Instead, it did the opposite and led directly to the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the Greco-Turkish War and the Finnish Civil War. It then led to the next two world wars: World War II and the Cold War, which in turned precipitated hot conflicts, such as the Korean and Vietnam Wars. World War I even helped create the “mind of jihad” that continues to fuel global terrorism today.

France, Britain and Russia (with the United States and Italy joining later) fought against Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. World War I was called the “Great War” because both sides fought for a great cause: to defend their national views of civilization. But 20 million deaths and nightmarish trench conditions destroyed not only civilization but also bodies and souls.

The legacy of the conflict involved replacing much of civilization with brutalization. Trauma, on individual and group levels, created spiritual vulnerabilities and additional opportunities for evil to gain entrance into souls. The Great War created this entry point on such a massive scale that one historian called it the “original sin” of the 20th century. The war inaugurated a proclivity toward more evil in subsequent generations, and so its legacy has haunted the world ever since through the loss of innocence that occurred at that time. The war and subsequent collapse of humane values precipitated the rise of political religions—that is, various ideologies seeking to create the kingdom of God on earth without God. The Great War and its single-minded pursuit of power set forth the totalitarian temptation. The war spread the logic of mobilization that pushed efficiency as the highest value, creating a new ideal of “man the worker” with a mind of metal and wheels.

Only rediscovering our full humanity can heal this tragic loss.

Soldiers of the 10th Field Artillery Brigade of the 4th Australian Division walking on a duckboard track through Château Wood near Hooge, Belgium, on October 29, 1917. This area was the site of constant fighting between Allied and German forces throughout World War I.

23

Loss of Innocence

This WWI poster was designed by James Montgomery Flagg (1870-1960), who created 45 other posters for the U.S. government during the war. An updated version of the poster was used during WWII.

24

360

REVIEW

Before the war, many people believed in “Progress,” never doubting the idea that science and technology will always increase human happiness and improve society. “The word ‘machine’ was not yet invariably coupled with the word ‘gun,’” Paul Fussell noted in his book The Great War and Modern Memory.

After years of bloody conflict, however, people wondered if it had been worth it. They mourned loved ones but, as historian Modris Eksteins noted, avoided thinking about the object for which they had died. What did the war really mean? The empty answer to that question propelled people into hedonism and narcissism during the 1920s. Evading the tough questions about the meaning of the war’s suffering and what is ultimately worth living for, many people threw themselves into frenetic activity, pleasure and addiction to try to fill the void. In Germany, the Great War was lost and everything seemed permitted. Drug use was especially widespread there. Elsewhere, the war was won, and still everything seemed permitted.

The Flappers and the Bright Young Things of London flouted conventional behavior and sexual norms.

Many others who fell into disillusion stopped believing in the goodness of life. In the mid-1920s, Dorothy Day, an American Catholic social activist, wrote that her veteran husband was “obsessed by the war.” He didn’t believe in bringing a child into such a world. They separated because he refused to empathize with her turn toward God. Some veterans who did father children brought brutalization into their families, visiting psychological trauma upon the next generation.

Many people found it difficult after the war to respect authority and tradition. Hendrik de Man, a Belgian trench mortar officer, wrote in 1919 about his loss of “human modesty,” which is the fundamental attitude of mind required by every religion. “I find it very hard to bow my head to any living human being or to any of their works. This kind of modesty has been shelled out of me.”

Millions of men, who were artificially massed together, lost their innocence in other ways. Because soldiers were separated from their women, they frequented prostitutes—the number of whom increased, for example, by a factor of four in Brussels. Venereal disease spread to tens of thousands of soldiers, even though the war popularized condoms. As traditional authority and relationships broke down, an historic shift in human sexual belief and practice occurred away from the language of morality to the language of public health. The conflict contributed to changing sexual mores in the first wave of the Sexual Revolution during the 1920s.

Political Religion The Great War made politics the highest expression of values, creating new political religions. The state increasingly became a secular church that proposed itself as the key to human salvation in this world. The mobilization of entire societies during the Great War dramatically increased expectations for state involvement in peoples’ lives. As four empires collapsed during, or soon after, the war (the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman), political religions arose in the resulting power vacuum.

Dire conditions in Russia during the Great War sparked the Russian Revolution of 1917, through which Lenin rose to power and imposed a repressive regime as the ultimate arbiter of value and meaning. Dissenters were killed or exiled to Soviet forced-labor camps. The Great War “has left throughout Europe a mood of disillusionment and despair, which calls aloud for a new religion,” philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote after touring Russia in 1920. “Bolshevism has supplied the new religion.”

The result was the greatest national catastrophe experienced in Europe until that time, with about 10 million dead in the brutal Russian Civil War, which raged from 1917 to 1922.

In Italy, too, the Great War directly led to the rise of fascism as political militants refused to demobilize in 1918. Mussolini and his armed followers sought to preserve the meaning and purpose they had discovered during their wartime experience by creating an all-embracing state. In 1932, Mussolini wrote that fascism is a “spiritual attitude,” and the fascist state a “spiritual society” outside of which no values exist. “Thus understood, fascism is totalitarian, and the fascist state—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops and potentiates the whole life of a people,” he noted.

In post-war Germany, hyperinflation forced many people into poverty.

Vagrants proliferated, some of whom became wandering prophets predicting the end of the world and the need for a new type of man to create a new society. In this environment, Adolf Hitler resolved to go into politics, believing the people needed a common faith. In 1926 amidst postwar despair, Josef Goebbels, future Nazi Minister of Propaganda, wrote to Hitler: “You gave a name to the suffering of an entire generation who were yearning for real men, for meaningful tasks. ...What you uttered is the catechism of a new political credo amid the desperation of a collapsing, godless world. … A god gave you the strength to voice our suffering.” Nazism joined a new church and state into a singular powerful force.

This historical period midwifed the birth of startling new deities: Class (Communism), State (Fascism) and Race (Nazism), for which people killed on an unprecedented vast scale. Like the ancient Aztec god Huitzilopochtli, 25

these modern gods demanded human blood. They inspired warrior faiths that clashed in the 20th century, causing tens of millions of deaths.

Communism alone would eventually claim 100 million lives.

As well, trained and inspired by European ideologues, modern radical jihad is another indirect result of the Great War. In fact, Hitler’s Mein Kampf was translated into Arabic as My Jihad.

Totalitarian Temptation

What a helplessness this [war] will make afterwards, when all the accepted orthodox concepts are taken off the pedestals upon which they have been exhibited, and the bewildered survivors will want to attach themselves again to the abandoned laws of innermost being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

26

360

REVIEW

The U.S. did not remain immune to political religion. Internally, President Woodrow Wilson’s administration implemented a wartime mobilization program that gave a major boost to state control of society through economic oversight, propaganda, political prisoners, persecution of foreigners, regulation of publications critical of the government and intimidation of dissenters. Subsequently, the impressive results of wartime mobilization created the model for the welfare state and the New Deal.

Progressives dreamed of state-led social engineering projects, such as Prohibition and eugenics, providing inspiration for Nazi progressives across the ocean. The politicization of life spread as people placed their faith in experts who “know better.” They came to believe in the perfectibility of human society through government action.

Furthermore, the Great War deeply affected American thinking about foreign policy. University of North Dakota student William H. Greenleaf wrote at war’s end about America as “the composite of the world’s best ideals, the promise of the world’s future.” Progressive clergy gave the Great War a transcendent meaning by interpreting it as a total war for righteousness.

America, as the world’s political messiah, would make the world “safe for democracy,” as Wilson put it.

Many American presidents have shared Wilson’s redemptive goals in foreign policy ever since, leading to a century of global conflict from Vietnam to Korea and Iraq. These wars were driven by conflicting ideologies promising to transform humanity and create a better world order, as historian Arthur Herman pointed out in “The New Era of Global Stability,” published in The Wall Street Journal in December 2017.

Perhaps only now—a century later—is the age of ideologically-driven foreign policy finally nearing an end. The National Security Strategy, published by the Trump administration in December 2017, states in clearly un-Wilsonian terms: “We … understand that the American way of life cannot be imposed on others, nor is it the inevitable culmination of progress.” This might finally represent the decline of the deadly utopian idealism, spawned by the Great War, with a return to what Herman termed “balance-of-power geopolitics.”

The Logic of Mobilization Henrik de Man, the Belgian trench mortar officer mentioned above, visited Paris on military leave after a particularly horrendous spell at the front.

Wandering around the city, he came across the program for a classical concert by a renowned symphony orchestra and decided to attend. For the previous two years, he had only heard soldiers’ songs and ragtime improvisations. De Man listened to several hours of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart (ironically, all Germanic composers). “I could have wept for delight in feeling like a human being again,” he wrote. “It was as though I had suddenly been relieved of the armour which had become identified with myself for two long years.”

After the concert, however, he felt confused, weakened somehow. He realized that it did no good for a soldier to cultivate musical beauty. His job was to kill Germans in order to win the war. The less he was a human being, he wrote, the better he would be suited for that job—“and there was no other job worth doing until the war was won.” So, he resolved to avoid concerts on his next leave and spend his money on a good dinner with a big bottle of wine to make up for months of poor meals. In that way, he believed he would gather strength for the struggle ahead.

This total war effort embodied a “logic of mobilization” that emptied souls of beauty and goodness, filling them instead with frenetic activity and mechanistic efficiency. The mobilization of entire societies towards a single goal squelched the full humanity of its citizens. Governments sought to control even time itself in order to conserve coal during the war by enforcing daylight savings time, starting in 1916. The war popularized the wearing

University of Mary students (left to right: Thomas Fleischacker ’22, Jillian Jacobson ’22, Rebecca Richardson ’20) in the production of “North Dakota Voices from the Great War,” which premiered at the Belle Mehus Auditorium in Bismarck, ND, on the weekend of November 11, 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. History students, under the direction of Joseph Stuart, PhD, researched letters sent home from soldiers and nurses, preserved in the ND State Archives, which were printed in newspapers across the state in 1918-19. The play was also staged in Belfield, ND, and was sponsored by the University of Mary and Humanities North Dakota.

27

University of Mary students (left to right: Casey Beck ’21, Chase Angermeier ’22, Sam Zezeus ’20) in the production “North Dakota Voices from the Great War.” The play was produced by Daniel Bielinski and Joseph Stuart, and directed by Bielinski. Based on letters sent home from soldiers and nurses from the Western Front, the professors and their students created an original theatrical production, adding music and poetry from the World War I era. “This was the most important thing I have ever done,” said one student actor. Others commented on how deeply moving it was to portray forgotten voices from the past.

28

360

REVIEW

of wristwatches, synchronized to make coordinated bombardments more effective. Modern life would subsequently run to the sound of clockwork.

It is difficult to reverse the logic of total war and mobilization once one accepts it. The “moral situation is damnable,” British Captain John Crombie wrote to his mother in 1917: “We can only beat Germany by assuming her mentality, by recognizing the State as the Supreme God whose behests as to military efficiency must be obeyed, whether or not they run counter to Christianity and morality. We call their use of gas inhuman, but we have to adopt it ourselves; we think their policy of organizing the individual life contrary to the precepts of freedom, but we have to adopt it ourselves … .”

The logic of the Great War affected losers and victors alike.

The mobilization of whole societies—their military, industry, media, churches and, ultimately, souls—for total war meant total work. Not only did total work often involve Sundays and cause church attendance to decline, it also changed the conception of being human and the meaning of existence, as found in the writings of Ernest Junger. Man the worker emerged as the image of the future man. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (the Nazis) took up this new utilitarian conception of the human person. Human beings can create their own meaning, their own values—if they work hard enough.

If people do not work hard enough, they lose their meaning. In Germany in 1920, there appeared a book, titled Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life, by Alfred Hoche (a professor of medicine) and Rudolf Binding (a professor of law). So many patients had died of starvation

and disease in psychiatric hospitals during the Great War, due to lack of resources, that people pondered new questions such as: If healthy soldiers can give their lives for their country, should not sick people give their lives too, to ease the burden on the state? Should not the state help them end their lives, thereby saving resources? Should we build houses and tanks or feed imbeciles? One must earn the right to life. The “empty human husks” in psychiatric institutions can have no sense of the value of life, wrote Hoche and Binding.

Hence, their destruction is not only tolerable but even humane. In this way, the logic of the Great War led to the logic of euthanasia and, later, to the Final Solution in Nazi Germany during World War II. The Great War made the unthinkable, thinkable, attacking the intrinsic goodness of human dignity.

The pace of modern life was mobilized during the war according to the unending rhythm of the conveyor belt, invented about the same time. Once millions of people tasted the adrenaline rush, the intensity of total effort, it was difficult to let go of the constant desire for exertion and control. The Great War sped up life and focused it on narrow, specialized goals pursued relentlessly, with the aid of drugs if needed. Under the Nazis, methamphetamines were used by the German military and civilian population as an energy pill, marketed to women with the slogan, “Making housework more fun.”

Stimulant-induced frenetic activity has marked the modern age ever since.

Now we do not have time to listen to the essence of things, to “waste time” in contemplative leisure or to just be with other people. How many children, locked within themselves, have been “disillusioned and damaged, because their parents never learned to spend time with them, with nothing else to do except be with their child,” wondered spiritual writer Jacques Philippe.

The war aggravated our natural tendency to attach ourselves so resolutely to our activities as “to allow ourselves to be carried away by them till they fill our minds entirely,” he noted. Once the Great War mobilized our minds, it became difficult to demobilize them.

In 1917, Harry S. Truman—the future 33rd American president, who rose to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Officers’ Reserve Corps during the Great War—was assigned to an elite artillery school in eastern France.

He had no time for anything but work. However, he discovered volumes of sheet music, including Beethoven, and decided to take time out to play piano at the local YMCA, located in the empty home of a once wealthy French family. He played and played, as the other officers listened. “It sure was a rest after the week’s work,” he wrote, savoring the moments of leisure.

While the war had undermined humane culture, Truman held on to it.

By rediscovering just such a humane culture today, one can strike a blow against the seemingly inexorable and dehumanizing legacy of the Great War. ±

We cannot but feel that no event [World War I] has ever destroyed so much that is precious in the common possessions of humanity, confused so many of the clearest intelligences, or so thoroughly debased what is highest.

Sigmund Freud

29

Documentary

Field of Ashes My Grandfather’s Survival Tale Marek R. Dojs, Associate Professor of Communication University of Mary

A Adam looked like a ghost and, in many ways, had become one.

t dawn on Adam Dojs’ second day in Strafkompanie (SK), he was sent with 20 other prisoners to shovel cartloads of ashes onto nearby fields. The guards told the inmates they were shoveling fertilizer.

It was the end of June, 1944, and SK was a prison inside a vast concentration camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Soon the sun beat down on the inmates who were coated in gray ash that got under their eyelids, inside their ears and noses, and they kept spitting out bits of ash that infiltrated their mouths. They coughed and kept coughing.

Every time Adam shoveled, it seemed that the ash did not want to stay on the ground; it clung to his hands and caked the blue-and-white striped uniform he had been wearing for the last six months.

Adam looked like a ghost and, in many ways, had become one. The ashes were not fertilizer, and Adam, only 18 years old, was no longer young.

Adam Dojs was my grandfather.

Nazi Invasion & Railway Station Almost four years earlier, on September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west and started World War II. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded from the east, as part of a pact the two totalitarian nations had signed in August. The Polish Army lacked the capacity to hold off one of these larger forces, let alone both. In October, the Nazis took full control of the western half of the country, and the Soviets occupied the eastern half.

Adam was nearly 14 years old and had just started attending a boarding school in Poznań in western Poland when the invasions began. Poznań was in the German-occupied territories, but Adam was too young to be conscripted into the German Army. Instead, he was sent back to his family in Kłomnice, a village located 125 miles southwest of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Adam was the second youngest child with four older brothers and a younger sister.

30

360

REVIEW

Adam Dojs’s identity card, issued six months after the end of WWII by the Polish Political Ex-Prisoners Association. Adam is dressed in his prison camp uniform.

Adam’s father, Leon Dojs, had fought for Germany in WWI and was considered loyal enough to take charge of the railway station in Kłomnice during the Nazi occupation. After WWI, Leon had moved his family from station to station, as he worked up the ranks of the Polish State Railways.

Officially, all schools in Poland were closed, but this didn’t stop Adam from joining an underground school. After daily studies, he helped his father at the station. Over the next few years, his responsibilities increased at the same time as he built positive relationships with the Railway Protection Police, who were mostly Volksdeutsche, meaning ethnic Germans who lived in Poland.

31

Polish Resistance

By April 1943, Adam was given permission to work as an understudy to engine drivers and firemen on numerous trains that passed through the region, sometimes taking him as far as Warsaw. The railway police knew him as the son of the stationmaster, so he could travel without suspicion. This drew the attention of the Polish resistance movement. Adam was secretly approached by a captain of the local branch of the AK, the Armia Krajowa (Home Army). Adam was asked to pass messages between underground units during his travels and he agreed to help.

During the next six weeks, Adam proved himself as a trusted courier. In May, Adam took the AK’s official oath: Before God Almighty and Mary the Blessed Virgin, Queen of the Polish Crown, I pledge allegiance to my Homeland, the Republic of Poland. I pledge to steadfastly guard Her honor, and to fight for Her liberation with all my strength, even to the extent of sacrificing my own life. I pledge unconditional obedience to the President of Poland, the Commander-in-Chief of the Republic of Poland, and the Home Army Commander whom he appointed. I pledge to resolutely keep secret whatever may happen to me. So help me God! Throughout the summer of 1943, Adam secretly received military training with other AK recruits in nearby forests. The training focused on guerrilla warfare tactics, which included firearms, explosives and, most importantly, how to be inconspicuous. The new resistance fighters were trained by the famed Cichociemni (the Silent Unseen), who were Polish special-operations paratroopers in exile in Scotland. In total, 316 Cichociemni were secretly parachuted into occupied Poland, beginning in February 1941.

Adam’s role as courier was crucial to communications and to coordinating operations. The Gestapo was constantly trying to infiltrate the AK to break up the growing resistance in Poland. By this time, the AK was “the largest resistance organization in Europe,” as chronicled by historian Gregor Dallas in 1945: The War that Never Ended, with 400,000 members.

After a Gestapo raid on a secret AK supply run, AK’s leaders concluded that people working on the railways were informing the Nazis. Adam soon discovered the identity of the traitors and several days later, with his AK captain’s permission, led an attack on the collaborators, who were thrown from the train as it passed over a high bridge.

Afterwards, Adam’s involvement in the AK progressed from courier to participating in blowing up train lines, transporting supplies to German units on the Russian front, and carrying out assassinations on Nazis and collaborators, who had received the death penalty from AK’s underground courts.

32

360

REVIEW

Sometimes Adam made life-and-death decisions in the moment. For example, he identified a railway policeman whom he believed was informing on the identities of several AK members. Adam followed the officer as he walked home and, at an isolated spot, shot and killed him. Perhaps he got the wrong man or perhaps there was more than one informer. Two weeks later, the Gestapo staged a series of raids and captured several AK members, who were his friends.

Fearing arrest, Adam fled to Radomsko, a town in central Poland that the Germans nicknamed Banditenstadt, the city of bandits, where he hid for a month.

Operation Heads

In 1942, the AK initiated a series of assassinations of Nazi leaders under the code name “Operation Heads”—which referred to the skull-and-bones, or death’s head, symbol worn on Schutzstaffel (SS) and other Nazi uniforms.

By June 1943, the AK had successfully carried out more than 500 attacks.

Then came an opportunity to execute the prime target, Hans Frank, who had served as Hitler’s personal lawyer and was the Governor General of the regions of Poland not directly incorporated into Germany after the invasion.

Under Frank’s direction, large numbers of Polish Jews were segregated into ghettos and sent to the death camps. In his diary in December 1941, Frank wrote, “We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible.” Also, non-Jewish Polish civilians were conscripted into forced labor, and many died as a result.

When Adam learned about the assassination plan in November 1943, he came out of hiding to participate. AK intelligence agents learned of a trip that Frank was scheduled to take by rail from Kraków to Warsaw. Adam, along with his AK unit, set explosives on the track. However, Frank had unexpectedly gotten off the train in Częstochowa, just south of the attack location.

Several days later, on November 20, the Gestapo picked up Adam for questioning. He never found out whether this was related to the failed assassination attempt, but he was soon sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous Nazi extermination camp, located in southwest Poland.

“Whoever went through [the gates of Auschwitz] convinced themselves that the camp was only a vestibule to hell.

Hell itself was the Strafkompanie,” Josef Kret, survivor, quoted in Punishments and Torture by Irena Strzelecka.

Auschwitz-Birkenau For 1.1 million men, women and children, Auschwitz was the end of the story. For Adam, it was the beginning of an improbable survival tale. When trains arrived at the infamous entrance to the death camp, prisoners were immediately sorted: men from women, young from old, healthy from sick.

As a young healthy male, Adam was selected for work instead of immediate liquidation. While being processed, he was asked his occupation and replied, “locksmith,” hoping he would be given the tools he needed to escape. Seeing 33

This page in the SK Book (StrafKompanie’s penal colony records) chronicled Adam Dojs’s incarceration on June 28, 1944, as the 2,362nd prisoner. The third column recorded his prisoner number, and his date of birth was entered in the last column shown on the right.

Courtesy of the Archives of the AuschwitzBirkenau Museum.

34

360

REVIEW

how massive Auschwitz was, Adam knew he would need help. But who could he trust? He remembered his AK training about secrecy and decided to remain quiet and wait for the appropriate time to act.

Adam’s head was shaved, and he received the striped pajama-like uniform with a red inverted triangle and a large black “P” sown on top, identifying him as a Polish political prisoner. By that evening, he was assigned a prisoner block where he struggled to find a place to lie down among the emaciated prisoners. He tried to sleep, but the pain of the tattoo of his prison number (169531) on his left arm kept him awake. When he awoke the next morning, it was December 20, 1943: Adam’s 18th birthday.

He was put to work in a forced-labor group on building projects, moving supplies or whatever he was ordered to do. Adam learned quickly that the biggest danger in the camps wasn’t the guards. In fact, he rarely encountered German soldiers. Rather, the most brutal incidents he witnessed were initiated by fellow prisoners who had been placed in authority roles, the Kapos. He saw Jews killing Jews, Poles killing Poles. The Kapos were essentially criminals and murderers who reigned terror over their incarcerated countrymen.

Remaining quiet was not enough to avoid their wrath, but having a good relationship with a Kapo could earn extra food, a new pair of shoes or a delicacy such as a piece of chocolate.

For the first six weeks, Adam did his best to remain quiet and unnoticed, but he caught the attention of an SS lieutenant who singled him out for special work, which included cleaning his boots and running errands. He received extra food for his efforts, but he also had to suffer several severe beatings when the lieutenant was drunk.

In June, Adam was locked up in SK, the prison inside the prison camp for “prisoners who act against camp order and rigor,” which included work evasion, stealing food, and helping in or attempting an escape. What Adam did to be sent there, he never revealed.

A handwritten entry for June 28, 1944, found in the SK Book, a surviving record from Auschwitz, shows that Adam was the 2,362th prisoner sent to the penal company. His sentence was listed as “b.a.w.,” an abbreviation for bis auk weiteres (meaning, “until further notice”).

He was placed on starvation rations and worked from dawn until after sunset. SK inmates were given the most undesirable jobs, including shaving the heads of incoming prisoners before they were sent directly to the gas chambers and shoveling human ash from the crematoriums onto the surrounding fields.

Adam was saved from a lengthy term in SK, which would likely have been a death sentence, by the advancing Soviet Army and his good health. On July 7, after just 10 days in SK, he was selected for transport to Buchenwald, a concentration camp in central Germany devoted to the war effort.

Buchenwald On August 15, 1944, eight months after entering Auschwitz, Adam arrived at Buchenwald, which kept meticulous records. Much of this paperwork still survives and is conserved at the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Initially established to help reconnect families who had been displaced during the war, the ITS now curates over 30 million documents compiled by the Nazis during the war.

Documents on file include Adam’s personal effects card, listing that he had a cap, a shirt, a smock, two pullovers, trousers, underpants, and a pair of socks and shoes. His prisoner ID card listed his new number as 79769.

Adam’s height and weight were recorded as 5 foot 5 inches and 134 pounds. Regarding his occupation, since claiming to be a locksmith at Auschwitz never gained him access to the tools of the trade, he tried another approach.

This time, he claimed to be a chauffeur, hoping to get behind the wheel of a car and escape.

He was fluent in German and might have been able to disappear.

The prisoner population at Buchenwald was

V-2 rocket launching from Test Stand VII, the principal Nazi testing facility at Peenemünde Airfield on Germany’s northeast coast.

This photo was taken four seconds after take-off on June 21, 1943.

35

The Germans called the V-rockets Wunderwaffen, meaning “super weapons.” They hoped to demoralize the civilian populations of their enemies.

primarily used as a work force supporting the German military. There were former factory directors, company owners, and other professional and highly skilled workers selected from concentration camps. There were about 1,200 major camps and sub-camps in Germany and other Nazi-occupied countries, with as many as 715,000 prisoners at one time. A study by the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., published in 2013, revealed that there were about 42,400 camps in total—some disguised as “care” centers where forced abortions and infanticide took place—and ghettos that constituted a Nazi killing machine that murdered 15 to 20 million people.

On the day Adam was processed into Buchenwald, Wernher von Braun, an SS scientist who became known as the father of rocket technology (both in Germany and, after WWII, in the U.S.), visited the camp—as he wrote in a letter: “to find a few other suitable prisoners” to help build V-1 and V-2 rockets. In essence, these rockets were long-range artillery weapons with on-board gyroscopes as guidance systems. Their accuracy was limited to large targets, mostly cities, and they functioned less as strategic weapons than as instruments of civilian terror.

The Germans called the V-rockets Wunderwaffen, meaning “super weapons.” They hoped to demoralize the civilian populations of their enemies. Deployment began in October 1943 and, in total, 9,251 V-1s targeted England, mostly London, which was hit 2,515 times, resulting in 6,184 civilian deaths. The more expensive V-2 was developed as a supersonic ballistic weapon, which Allied fighters couldn’t shoot down. Again, most of the 1,115 V-2s fired at England landed in London, killing 2,754 people.

Soon after the V-rockets were deployed, Allied air raids started targeting construction facilities. In response, the Nazis built a new factory inside bomb-proof tunnels in the southern Harz mountains near Nordhausen, about 47 miles from Buchenwald. This facility manufactured both V-1 and V-2 missiles. The factory, which was part of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp (known as Dora), went into production in the summer of 1943.

Because of Adam’s technical skills—both real and those he claimed to have—he was assigned to work at the Dora factory on August 17, 1944.

Dora There were two main groups of workers at Dora: laborers in transport columns and specialists. The laborers moved weapon parts from work hall to work hall as the specialists finished manufacturing them. No skills were needed for laborers but physical strength. These workers were highly expendable and died at higher rates than slaves at other concentration camps, due to the extreme exertion involved in heavy lifting and brutal treatment by guards.

36

360

REVIEW

Adam, fortunately, was assigned to a specialist group working on making V-2 parts, as in the photograph on page 38. Camp records show that he was listed as an autoschlosser, a metal worker. Working on the assembly line involved skills Adam lacked, but his time as an understudy on the railroad made him an observant, fast learner. To survive, he had to master spot welding, which was not a mistake-free process. Guards beat his hands for making errors, which made operating tools more difficult, but he persevered.

Failure meant joining the ranks of the transport column laborers, who were constantly being replenished usually by Soviet POWs, whom the guards took great pleasure in abusing.

He soon established himself as a spot welder assembling the V-2’s outer shells. Adam’s last hope of escaping captivity vanished since the area of the factory he worked in was nearly half a mile underground.

Many of the other specialists were political prisoners from across Europe, including Norway, Belgium and France. There were many intellectuals and artists, with sharp minds and deft fingers. Most of these prisoners had been arrested for resistance activity and brought their resistance skills to Dora.

POWs passed on news that the German-occupied territories were shrinking rapidly. This gave the prisoners hope that resistance efforts would have a direct impact on the war. Many specialists focused on delaying production and sabotaging the rockets. Sometimes this meant simply urinating on electric circuitry and in fuel lines. Other times, they did sloppy work, albeit hidden within precise workmanship.

Sabotage was extremely dangerous since guards and factory inspectors were constantly looking for damaged rocket parts. Worse, trusting fellow prisoners was perilous since guards provided incentives to informers, such as extra food or a visit to the camp brothel.

If caught, saboteurs were hanged to death at the entrance to factory tunnels, so workers had to walk underneath and see the results of resistance.

By January 1945, it was obvious that Nazi Germany was losing the war.

The Soviet Army marched into Warsaw on January 17, and the last major German offensive, the Battle of the Bulge, failed eight days later. Auschwitz was liberated on January 27.

Manufacturing V-2 rockets at Dora became desperately important for the Nazis. Many guards evacuated from Auschwitz were reassigned to Dora in order to speed up production. Although allied fighters had an 80-percent intercept rate with V-1s, there was no way to shoot down V-2s since they traveled at three times the speed of sound.

However, the V-2 had technical issues: exploding at launch, overshooting targets or crashing short. Sabotage, the Nazis reasonably assumed, was responsible for some of these failures.

“They hanged them in pairs, the two.

And everybody working in that factory had to go into the tunnel, line up, and walk through underneath the gallows,” Alan Zimm, Jewish survivor of Dora.

37

A work group deep in the tunnels at Dora manufactures and assembles parts for V2 rockets. This photo was taken in the summer of 1944 by Walter Frentz, known as “Hitler’s photographer.” It remained undeveloped until Frentz’s son discovered the film in the attic in 1998.

38

360

REVIEW

In March, the wreckage of a V-2, which crashed in Norway, was recovered and examined to determine the source of the malfunction. The rocket had been sabotaged. Soon the production group responsible for the tampered part was identified. The Nazis decided to execute the entire work group, which included Adam, to make an unforgettable example for other groups.

On March 10, Adam stood in line with the condemned members of his group. Several guards stood with guns ready, as pairs of workers were hanged overhead in the tunnels. Adam was near the end of the line with a Norwegian, a Belgian, two Frenchmen and another Pole—six specialists in total. When it was their turn to be hanged, the guards stopped and said there was no time to train other prisoners to replace them. They were returned to their work table.

Retelling this story years later, Adam was certain that 127 fellow workers were executed that day, but official records (as on page 40) chronicle only 93 prisoner names. In total, more than 200 workers, who were suspected of sabotage, were hanged publicly during the two years the Dora factory was in operation.

Ravensbrück All work in the Dora factory ceased on April 1, 1945. Allied forces were closing in, so the camp was evacuated. Most prisoners were sent to northern concentration camps, such as Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrück. On April 6, Adam was on one of the last trains leaving Dora towards Bergen-Belsen. The train was forced to stop before reaching its destination, as Allied bombers targeted railway trains and tracks to disrupt German supply lines and hinder troop movements. The SS guards ordered the prisoners off Adam’s train and started marching them to Ravensbrück instead, which was about 230 miles northwest of Dora.

Since there were almost 4,000 prisoners, the guards recruited locals to help control them. On April 13, near the small town of Gardelegen, 115 miles from Ravensbrück, the prisoners were separated into smaller groups. One group with 1,016 prisoners was forced into a large barn nearby. The guards

Photo and inscription by Sgt. Herman Hoffman, a JewishAmerican G.I. He arrived at Gardelegen four days after the massacre with the 113th Evac Hospital unit. The barn and bodies of the Dora inmates were still smoldering.

“Darling, I’m sorry if I made you feel bad, but I just had to tell someone,” he wrote to his wife in Cleveland.

“I cannot believe that such a thing is possible ... among civilized people.”

Image courtesy of the Permanent Collection of the Holocaust Museum Houston.

39

40

360

REVIEW

locked the barn and set it on fire. What became known as the Gardelegen massacre was discovered the next day by American troops.

Once again, death passed within a whisper of Adam. He had been assigned to another group that arrived in Ravensbrück in late April. The notoriously meticulous Nazi record-keeping was abandoned as the war ended. Only one document survives that chronicled Adam as prisoner number 440 among transfers to Ravensbrück, and his occupation was listed as electrician.

The evacuation of Ravensbrück was soon ordered. The Nazis wanted to ensure that no eyewitnesses of their atrocities were left behind. As Allied forces advanced simultaneously on German positions from the east and west, evacuations turned more frequently into mass executions, as at Gardelegen.

Fortunately, the presence of the Swedish Red Cross at Ravensbrück made killings more difficult to arrange. To create a positive image of himself at the end of the war, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS and the chief architect of the Holocaust, allowed members of the Swedish Red Cross to assist with the evacuation of women prisoners from Ravensbrück.

News reached the camp that the Soviet Army had completely surrounded Berlin, only 56 miles south of Ravensbrück. There was no time to evacuate the male prisoners. To avoid surveillance by the Red Cross, the guards took these prisoners to the camp’s railway station at the end of April. In order to draw less attention, the guards started hanging rather than shooting prisoners.

Adam’s group was next to be strung up when a Red Cross train pulled into the station. One of the prisoners was still hanging and alive when Red Cross officials stepped off the train. As they argued with the guards, Adam caught sight of an Allied bomber. Moments later, a blockbuster bomb, one of the largest Allied bombs used during the war, exploded nearby and chaos erupted.

Adam and the prisoner next to him escaped. They ran as fast as they could, making sure to avoid roads as they moved west toward advancing Allied troops. After several days on the run, Adam’s companion said he did not have the strength to continue. Adam left him in a small barn where they hid the night before. Hoping to find a British or American unit, Adam continued walking through farm fields at night and hiding during the day.

On May 2, a firefight broke out close to where Adam had taken shelter.

He tried to run away but soon came face to face with a German soldier who raised his gun. Adam heard the sound of an explosion and then blackness.

An Allied artillery shell had landed between them, killing the soldier and throwing Adam back. This was his last brush with wartime death. When he regained consciousness, Adam was helped up by an American soldier most likely from the 8th Infantry Division.

After 529 days as a prisoner, Adam was liberated.

Once again death passed within a whisper of Adam.

Opposite: Page 219 of the Dora Death Book (Register of Deaths in the MittelbauDora Concentration Camp). The first column indicates the total number dead. The second column shows nationality and the third column lists prisoner numbers. The column with the asterisk records birth date, and the next column to the right, headed with a cross, chronicles the date of death. The next column shows the date the prisoner’s name was removed from the rolls.

The final column records the manner of death.

All of these prisoners were executed at Dora on March 10, 1945, as punishment for sabotaging V-2 rockets. Adam Dojs was one of only six out of 133 inmates in his work detail who were spared.

Courtesy of the MittelbauDora Concentration Camp Memorial.

41

But Never Free I wish this story had a happy ending, but Adam lived the rest of his life with a tremendous amount of post-traumatic stress due to his experiences in the concentration camps. He was relocated to England where he met and married my grandmother. She was also a Polish refugee, who had been taken as a child with her family by the Soviets to the Siberian gulags. My grandparents had two children, but the marriage failed because of their mutual traumas, and Adam left the family.

My father, as a young boy, has no memory of Adam. In the late 1980s, after he immigrated to the United States with my mother and me, he became curious about his father. With the help of the British Red Cross, father and son finally reconnected. My father was 40 years old. There was considerable tension due to Adam’s absence, but they worked hard on their relationship.

Meeting Adam Growing up in Houston, I was keenly aware there were few people named Dojs around me. Other than my parents, brother and sister, there was only an aunt with our family name. Naturally, I was curious about our family’s story, but when I asked about my grandfather, my father said little.

When I traveled to England to visit my grandmother, I would ask about my grandfather, but her responses made it clear that Adam was not a subject to discuss.

After my father reconnected with him, I became increasingly curious.

Finally in 1998, at 22 years of age, I flew to England and met my grandfather for the first time. Over the next 15 years, I made five return visits, sometimes with my wife and children.

Adam lived in a small studio flat in Dartmouth in southwest England. He never remarried nor had other children. He lived alone, surrounded by the plants he loved to grow. On my first trip, I found the absence of photographs to be interesting, since my father had sent him family photos. Perhaps he felt he didn’t deserve to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Adam was an interesting character, definitely not the grandfatherly type.

His manner was gruff, but I had both the interest and patience to listen to his stories and sort them out. He would become animated and talk in the voices of characters, even speaking in German at times.

During a visit in 2009, I suggested spending a week with him to record his stories for a film project, since I am a documentary filmmaker. Several months later, I returned and after days of listening to stories I’d heard before, he told me a new one, which had haunted him since he was 18 years old.

He recounted being sent to the SK prison inside Auschwitz and what 42

360

REVIEW

he was forced to do there: The days shaving prisoners heading to the gas chambers, and the days he was sent to shovel their ashes. “I must have shoveled the ashes of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people into those fields,” Adam began quietly. It was getting late and the room was darkening, but I dared not turn on a light. He spoke slowly, with long pauses between sentences, reliving what he had tried to forget for 67 years. At the end of his narrative, he said, “When I die, I want my ashes scattered there.”

It was as if I wasn’t in the room anymore. In that moment, I understood that after all the terrifying things Adam had lived through and somehow survived, he believed he never should have left that field of ashes. In some ways, he never did. Adam left the incinerated remains of his soul among those ashes at 18 years of age.

Ashes to Ashes to Ashes The next morning, I promised my grandfather that I would take his ashes to Auschwitz after he passed. He thanked me.

On November 20, 2012, the 69th anniversary of Adam’s arrest by the Gestapo and my 37th birthday, he died. I flew to England to help my father prepare for the funeral. Photographs of Adam’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren now adorned the shelves in his flat.

Before he passed, my grandfather started a campaign to honor the memory of the 127 I must have shoveled the ashes prisoners who were hanged at Dora for sabotage of hundreds, maybe thousands, on March 10, 1945. His wish was to have a small ceremony in a London park where a handful of of people into those fields,” dirt from Dora would be spread. Adam spoke with Dr. Sarah Wollaston, his local Member of Adam began quietly. … At the Parliament, who made the arrangements. end of his narrative, he said, Dr. Wollaston’s office learned I was making a film about Adam and, soon after, I was invited to “When I die, I want my ashes be my grandfather’s representative and collect the scattered there.” dirt at Dora. My father and I traveled to Germany that summer. We walked through the ruins of the concentration camp grounds and visited the empty factory tunnels.

I picked up a handful of dirt at the tunnel entrance and, a few days later, spread it at the Holocaust Memorial in London’s Hyde Park.

What of my promise to take Adam’s ashes to Auschwitz? For legal reasons, this has proven difficult, due to the transport of human remains across the Polish border. I am still working on fulfilling my promise and hope to soon return my grandfather’s ashes to the field of ashes. ±

43

Art

Nigerian Artists in the Dakotas Karen Syvertson Artist & Art Teacher Above: “Longhorn,” by Dotun Popoola, acrylic on canvas.

The broken, tile-like forms in the background give way to a certain delicacy in the fine lines of grass in the foreground and in the golden hair on the face of the longhorn steer. At the same time, there is a metallic quality to the symmetrically graceful sweep of the horns.

Opposite: “Native Treasure,” by Dotun Popoola, acrylic on canvas. As a backdrop to the silhouette of a raven on a twisted branch, Popoola created a glowing iconography of animal and insect forms. Here we find bison and moose, ants and fish, dog and turtle, birds and spiders, each contained within a square tile-like domain. This fascinating work draws in the viewer for closer inspection of a realm that is simultaneously American and African.

44

360

REVIEW

S

everal beautifully intriguing paintings by two Nigerian artists were exhibited recently at The Capital Gallery in downtown Bismarck.

The works integrate African, European and American influences into arresting works that are both enticingly exotic and warmly familiar.

The Capital Gallery was founded by the Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation and opened in November 2016. According to David Borlaug, who runs the gallery and serves as the foundation’s president, The Capital Gallery West—presented by Starion Bank—will open this summer in Medora, North Dakota.

Dotun Popoola and Jonathan Imafidor first came to this area in 2016 to complete a residency training program in hybrid sculpture with John Lopez at his studios in Lemmon, South Dakota. Lopez was featured in the Spring/Summer 2017 issue of 360 Review Magazine.

During the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a strong influence among avant-garde European artists, including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

Avant-garde painters blended the highly stylized treatment of the human figure in African sculpture with the painting styles of the postImpressionists, such as Cézanne and Gauguin.

The resulting pictorial flatness, vivid colors and fragmented shapes helped to define early modernism.

Now we come full circle-ish as the two Nigerian artists voyaged somewhat leftward of Europe to the American West to reinterpret such icons as

Teddy Roosevelt and longhorn cattle. Popoola and Imafidor paint in the Araist style, which grew out of the traditions of the Yoruba people and was developed by Mufu Onifade in the early 1990’s.

The technique involves using a painted mosaic of textured strokes to form whole images. As a style, Araisim is similar to post-Impressionist pointillism, in which paint is applied in small dots and brush strokes.

Currently, Popoola serves as a curator at the National Gallery of Arts in Osogbo, Nigeria.

Imafidor is working on an MFA in painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia. ± 45

Right: “Pow Wow I,” by Jonathan Imafidor, acrylic on canvas. In the three paintings on these two pages, Imafidor uses the broken mosaic-like texture in both the background and the subject. This leads the viewer to see elements within the paintings as almost sculptural, assembled from many discrete elements. In turn, the mosaic-like texture unifies the composition. The size of the paintings, some as large as six feet tall, encourages the viewer to take an extra step back to appreciate the entire effect.

Opposite: “Teddy Roosevelt,”

by Jonathan Imafidor, acrylic on canvas.

Left: “Custer,” by Jonathan Imafidor, acrylic on canvas.

46

360

REVIEW

47

Energy

The Real Energy Revolution: Natural Gas Mark P. Mills, Senior Fellow Manhattan Institute & Faculty Fellow, Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering, 2016 Energy Writer of the Year

E

ver since the 1973 Arab oil embargo that shocked America, the oil side of the “oil & gas” industry has dominated media coverage and energy policy anxieties—not natural gas. That’s understandable, considering the context of those times.

In the two decades leading up to 1973, America had seen oil imports increase eight-fold. And, at that time, transportation was the biggest energy-consuming sector of the economy, using 10 percent more energy than electricity generation, which was the second biggest energy-consuming sector.

But times change. Today, it is the electric sector that is the biggest energy-consumer, using 50 percent more energy than transportation, which is now in second place. The same electrification transformation is underway globally. Meanwhile, not only are U.S. oil imports collapsing, but America today produces 50 percent more natural gas than petroleum (in energy-equivalent terms) and is a major exporter of natural gas—the latter a complete surprise to nearly every forecaster.

48

360

REVIEW

The ascendancy of natural gas, and of the U.S. as a global supplier, has far-reaching implications. Many pundits and “new energy economy” enthusiasts believe that the future is now centered on a hoped-for revolution in supply, coming from wind and solar technologies. But the real revolution—not based on hope— centers on natural gas. Following decades of massive global subsidies and enthusiastic policies, wind and solar power combined now provide less than 2 percent of world energy. In contrast, natural gas now supplies 23 percent of world energy and is on track to displace oil as the number-one source of global energy supply.

As with oil, it has been the dramatic impact of the shale revolution in the U. S. that has powered a real energy revolution. American shale technology was responsible for nearly one-third of all the world’s increased production of natural gas over the past decade.

The Middle East was slightly ahead, accounting for 40 percent of the new supply. And, over that period, American growth in shale gas added 400 percent more to the U.S. energy supply than did the combined growth of wind and solar, even though these had the advantage of policy preferences, as well as at least $150 billion in cumulative subsidies.

A Bakken shale well near Watford City, North Dakota, producing oil and natural gas.

The state produces more than 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.

49

Growth in U.S. Energy Supply: Natural Gas vs. Solar and Wind

Source: Data drawn from EIA, Monthly Energy Review, July 2018

Billions of Barrels of Oil Equivalent 2.5 2.0 1.5

Natural Gas

1.0 0.5 2006

Solar & Wind 2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

The New “Wildcard”

Natural gas isn’t just used for heating and cooking. Numerous every day products wouldn’t be possible without it, from vinyl flooring, carpeting, and piping to aspirin, artificial limbs and heart valves to sun glasses, deodorant and cell phones.

50

360

REVIEW

The biggest energy wild card on the near-term horizon is not in the alternative energy domains. Rather, the question is how much and how quickly U.S. gas export capability might grow.

The U.S. position in world energy markets today is similar to its position circa 1918. At that time, the world demand for oil, thanks to automobiles and airplanes, began a steep ascent. The U.S. became the single largest source of new petroleum and then, for a half-century, the dominant supplier of crude oil to the world.

The central energy story today is the growing electrification of the world’s economies, in no small part because of the digitalization of everything.

With abundant low-cost natural gas becoming the single largest source of new fuel to power grids, the U.S. has the opportunity to once again become a dominant supplier of fuel for global growth. But can the American gas bounty continue?

Depending on assumptions, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) and other organizations forecast that U.S. shale production will increase another 25 to 100 percent over the next two decades. Even in the case of the lower growth, America would become the world’s second-largest source of new natural gas, only slightly behind all Middle East producers combined.

While most analysts expect that China will rise to occupy the third position, in terms of net new growth in natural gas production, it will still need imports to meet internal demand (as we will discuss shortly).

Projected Increase in Natural Gas Production

Source: EIA, “International Energy Outlook 2017,” Sept. 14, 2017

Billions of cubic feet per day

*The leading Middle East producers are Iran, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

Middle East* United States China Russia Australia & New Zealand Other Non-OECD Asia Canada Non-OECD Americas

5

10

15

20

25

30

How It Happened America’s remarkable transformation in natural gas production did not arise from the discovery of new resources, nor was it the result of government policies or high prices making it more profitable to drill for expensive reserves. Policymakers have been, at best, neutral to natural gas development and, at worst, hostile. And the price of natural gas has remained consistently low over the past decade, at about one-fifth the cost of oil (in energy-equivalent terms).

The expectations for future natural gas production are typically based on gauging the pace of improvement in existing techniques and tools that brought about the remarkable increase in output over the past decade. This forecasting task has become easier, given the sheer quantity of data and experience now available from the shale industry. Thus, the conventional wisdom now is that incremental gains in shale technology will lead to continued expansion, even if today’s historically low prices continue.

But forecasts of U.S. natural gas production do not take into account technological surprises. That’s why nearly every forecaster missed the shale revolution in the first place.

The shale gas (and oil) industry is entering a new era of productivity, driven by machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics and sensors linked by low-cost networks to algorithms in the Cloud. These techniques and tools, more common in other industrial sectors, are now penetrating the oil and gas industry, enabling lower costs, faster and more efficient production, and often radically improving productivity.

51

Digital technologies can, in effect, squeeze more money from rocks.

While shale tech, like all technologies, will reach physics limits, the data make it clear that those limits are still a long way off. The underlying geophysics points to a roughly 500 percent gap between what today’s tech can extract from shale and what nature ultimately permits. In a recognition of that potential, EIA’s “high tech” forecast envisions natural gas production increasing more than four times as much in the coming two decades as it did over the previous two decades.

The speed with which more natural gas production can come online will not depend so much on price as on the velocity of technology progress, and the willingness of governments to permit, if not facilitate, the construction of the necessary infrastructures.

Nowhere To Go But Out With so much more natural gas output, the key question is: where is the demand? Over the past decade, 80 percent of the increased supply of U.S. natural gas has been used, in roughly equal proportions, to produce electricity in the U.S., and for exports, even though the latter began just two years ago.

EIA forecasts that over the coming two decades, 90 percent of the additional supply of America’s electricity will come from wind/solar and natural gas in almost equal shares. The extent to which even more natural gas is needed for domestic electricity generation will be determined mainly by policies relating to preserving and extending old coal and nuclear plants, and the public appetite to preserve and expand subsidies for wind and solar.

But for gas producers, the central reality is that, in nearly any scenario, domestic electricity growth cannot absorb even 20 percent of the likely increase in domestic gas production. The biggest new demand for U.S. natural gas is overseas.

Within two decades, the world demand for electricity will increase by an amount equal to adding an entire U.S. power grid. More than 80 percent of the demand will come from emerging economies, none of which have sufficient domestic resources to meet their needs. Meanwhile, Europe will also increase gas imports to power its domestic grids, because natural gas production from the North Sea fields is rapidly declining and expected to drop by about 50 percent over the coming decade. Even the planned expansion of purchases from Russia won’t fill the gap.

The second-biggest driver in increased demand for U.S. natural gas has been in domestic chemical manufacturing. Natural gas is a feedstock used to fabricate chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, biochemical products and various related products. The rising and long-term availability of low-cost natural gas has caused this sector of U.S. manufacturing to boom.

52

360

REVIEW

Since 2010, businesses have poured more than $180 billion into 260 new U.S. chemical manufacturing projects. All are expected to come online by 2020, to generate more than 400,000 jobs, and to consume more gas.

No other U.S. manufacturing sector is on track for such rapid expansion.

Overall, these planned chemical projects exceed all the existing similar projects in the Middle East. Yet even this torrid growth will not absorb more than 20 percent of the expected rise in U.S. gas production.

Globally, transportation accounts for only 2 percent of worldwide natural gas consumption and far less in America. But even a (sensible) 10-fold increase in natural gas use in U.S. vehicles would have a de minimus impact on the surplus of gas production to come.

The bottom line is that in any scenario, the U.S. economy cannot absorb half of the expected increase of 40 to 60 billion cubic feet per day (in energy equivalent of 7 to 10 million barrels of oil per day) in U.S. natural gas production over the coming two decades. But there is more than ample demand coming from global markets.

Upsetting The “Apple Cart” The liquefied natural gas (LNG) export business requires, of course, equipment to liquefy the gas, costing about $7/BOE (barrels of oil equivalent)—a cost obviously not associated with crude oil. LNG tankers entail a transport cost of about $8/BOE, compared with approximately $1 for crude.

However, the low cost of natural gas production (less than $15 per barrel of oil equivalent) enables LNG to reach world markets for a final cost of about $35/BOE (depending on the distance traveled).

In the energy economy of the 21st century, the new disruptive market dynamic is the increase in demand for natural gas combined with the emergence of America as the single most important supplier. Global natural

As the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market expands, the fleet of LNG carriers continues to experience tremendous growth. In November 2018, South Korean ship builders locked in 3 years worth of large-scale LNG carrier contracts ­— more than 50 orders. South Korean builders captured 78% of LNG-related ship building contracts in 2018, with 14% going to Japanese builders and 8% going to Chinese builders.

53

Massive subsidies for wind and solar have not eliminated Europe’s need for more natural gas. Europe already imports half its natural gas, and that share is rising.

gas consumption is nearly 200 percent greater today than it was in 1990 and is forecast to double again within the coming two decades. While Asian nations account for the largest share of rising LNG demand, Europe’s need for imports will increase faster than India’s and rival the growth expected for all of Southeast Asia.

In every scenario, roughly 80 percent of the world’s new energy supplies will come from the combination of natural gas and alternative energy, the latter mainly as wind and solar. And, as we’ve noted previously, the prospects (or aspirations) for wind and solar are heavily dependent on public tolerance for sustained subsidies.

As it stands now, the world will soon need far more LNG than existing export capacity can meet. It is entirely feasible for the U.S. to meet half the world’s net new demand for LNG over the coming decades. If that were to happen, it would result in a nearly 10-fold increase over current American LNG exports. Not only would such an expansion yield enormous domestic economic benefits (roughly $200 billion a year added to the U.S. economy), but it would also reshape the geopolitical landscape.

Until recently, two of the biggest suppliers of natural gas into world trade have been Russia (mainly via pipelines) and the Middle East (LNG mainly from Qatar, Iran and Saudi Arabia). Current forecasts for 2040 see Europe increasing its dependence on Russian gas from today’s one-third to 50 percent. And until very recently, options for China and much of Asia have been similar. But now, two new suppliers have upset the old status quo: the completion of enormous offshore LNG projects in Australia and (unexpectedly) the U.S.

America’s New “Soft Power” The implications of the new geopolitical era are visible in the trajectories of the energy import dependencies for most nations. Of the five major economic regions of the world that make up 85 percent of global GDP—the U.S., China, Europe, Japan and India—every region but one is becoming rapidly more dependent on imports of both oil and natural gas. And import dependencies are rising faster for natural gas than for petroleum.

One can debate the extent to which Europe, for example, is politically swayed by reliance on Russian gas, but the underlying facts are not debatable. Massive subsidies for wind and solar have not eliminated Europe’s need for more natural gas. Europe already imports half its natural gas, and that share is rising.

It’s not hard to discern why Russia cares about what the U.S. might do to increase both production and export of natural gas. Almost 40 percent of Russia’s federal budget comes from exporting natural gas and petroleum.

54

360

REVIEW

Imports as a Share of Energy Use (2010-2020) Changes in import reliance

Source: EIA, “Oil and Natural Gas Import Reliance of Major Economies Projected to Change Rapidly,” Jan. 22, 2014; EIA, International Energy Outlook 2017

Natural gas imports (share of consumption)

100%

2010 2020

Japan & South Korea

80% OECD Europe 60%

40% China 20% United States

0%

-20%

India

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Petroleum imports (share of consumption)

Even before America began exporting, the U.S. oversupply of both natural gas and crude oil (the latter relevant because of its linkage to gas prices), combined with the prospects of imminent exports, triggered a global collapse in gas prices. In order to hold onto market share, Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned natural gas company, sharply reduced its European prices by nearly 30 percent in 2009 and another 10 percent in 2014.

Germany’s government has taken the position that if “the LNG coming out of the U.S. came to Germany at competitive prices, that would be fine by us.” U.S. shale gas arrives in European markets for less than half the price of five years ago, but even so, pipelines from Russia still deliver it about 20 percent cheaper. Thus for Europe, the question distills to how much it would cost to gain supply diversity (not to mention security) by “buying American.”

As a calibration point: if all of Europe’s purchases from Russia on the completed and planned Nord Stream pipelines were replaced with U.S. LNG, that would result in a less than 5 percent increase in Europe’s total annual energy import bill.

The U.S. is on track to become the world’s energy colossus. And provided that policymakers don’t gratuitously hobble one of America’s newest and biggest industries, there are enormous near-term prospects for accelerating both prosperity at home and geopolitical ‘soft’ power around the world. ± 55

Media

News Desert Losing Our Local Newspapers Samuel G. Freedman, author, journalist & Professor of Journalism, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

O Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.

Thomas Jefferson

56

360

REVIEW

ne day last year, my sister approached me to ask a journalistic favor.

Carol owns a chocolate shop in Somerville, New Jersey, a county seat about 40 miles west of New York City, and the place where I began my reporting career in 1975. The borough’s government, Carol told me, was going to quadruple the charge for on-street parking from 25 cents to one dollar an hour and cut back on the free evenings and holidays. Worse yet, the price hike was supposed to take effect at the start of the Christmas shopping season. Along with a group of other downtown merchants, Carol was furious, because their big competitors in a mall several miles away had acres of free parking to entice customers. So the local shopkeepers were hoping to take their complaints public, partly by getting it into the newspaper. My sister wanted to know if I had any advice.

That simple question set off a disturbing realization for me, as a journalist, an educator and a citizen. Decades ago, when I was a summer intern and then a full-time reporter on the local paper, the Courier-News, a mainstay of our mission was to cover precisely the sort of parochial controversy my sister described. We had a staff of about 60 reporters, editors and photographers based in a handsome and highly visible building just outside Somerville, and the baseline of all our coverage was sending staff members to attend the myriad meetings of local government.

I can’t say that such duty was scintillating—few things can be soul-deadening as sitting in on a four-hour-long meeting of the town council or the board of education—but most of us on the Courier-News recognized the importance of holding the public sector accountable in our humble, even humdrum way. The process ran in the reverse, too. We journalists were not some distant, superior caste to the people we covered. We lived and worked and ate and drank among them. Our salaries put us in the low end of the middle class.

While many of my peers on the younger side of the newsroom had attended college and become imbued with the idea that journalism was both a profession and an academic discipline, the older generation was especially rooted to the communities around us, where they had resided for decades.

Something interesting, something important, will happen somewhere, as sure as God made sour apples, and a good aggressive newspaper will become part of that something. – Ben Bradlee

A newsboy sells copies of the Bismarck Tribune on Main Street.

Photograph by John Vachon for the Office of War Information, 1942.

57

There was the wife of a longtime police officer, a veteran of World War II bombing missions, a refugee from the Hungarian revolution whose American life had started at a displaced-persons camp in Central New Jersey. At the next newspaper where I worked, in the suburbs of Chicago, a number of our reporters were working mothers in their 30s or 40s who had mortgages to pay and kids to help with homework.

By the time my sister came to me with her request, the Courier-News was a shell of its former self. The building had been sold and razed. The staff had been cut by something like two-thirds. Instead of vigorously competing against the daily papers in nearby suburbs like New Brunswick and Woodbridge, the Courier-News had been put under joint ownership with them, sharing a common web portal.

I found myself telling Carol, “I don’t know who can hear you.”

I made that depressing and impromptu admission just a few weeks before Donald Trump was elected president, in part thanks to his attacks on the news media. And over time, I have come to believe the admission and the

The Courier News of Somerville, New Jersey, is a daily newspaper serving central New Jersey.

The paper circulates about 32,000 copies each day, and has been owned by the Gannett Company since 1940.

58

360

REVIEW

election have more than a coincidental relationship. The ability of this president to brand critical, accurate reporting as “fake news� and to campaign against journalists, sometimes inciting his rallies against specific ones like Katy Tur of MSNBC, derives from more than class resentments. Those resentments thrive when people in large sections of the country have less and less of the chance to know a working journalist as a neighbor, a fellow churchgoer, a companion in the PTA. Admittedly, journalists have sometimes given fodder to the Trumpian attacks. CNN, for example, erroneously reported that Anthony Scaramucci, briefly a White House aide, had been in stealthy contact with Russian operatives. While on the staff at Politico, Julia Ioffe tweeted out an offensive insinuation of incest between the president and his daughter Ivanka. But the news organizations did punish Ioffe and the CNN correspondents, costing the latter their jobs. The extravagant calumnies that Trump lobs against even responsible journalism go uncorrected in his part of the political world.

Government is too big and important to be left to politicians.

Chester Bowles

59

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Thomas Jefferson

60

360

REVIEW

What I have seen in suburban New Jersey is even more extreme the deeper inland you get from the coasts. The common narrative of the news industry being in financial trouble and shedding jobs is only partially true. As a study by the website Politico showed, jobs in newspapers indeed fell by more than half from 365,000 in 2006 to 174,000 in 2017. Yet during the same period, jobs in online publishing and broadcasting soared from 69,000 to 207,000.

So the overall drop in journalism jobs was not nearly as catastrophic as it first appears. The problem, though, is that the job picture is wildly asymmetrical. Those jobs in online journalism arose overwhelmingly in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and the Washington-to-Boston corridor. Put another way, the share of reporting jobs based in just three major cities—Los Angeles, New York and Washington—went from 1 in 12 in 2004 to 1 in 5 in 2014, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

One result of this hollowing-out process is the concept of “news deserts,” meaning places that have few or no local newspapers. A study of the phenomenon by the University of North Carolina has kept a running tab of newspapers that have been shut down or merged since 2004—a total of 56 thus far, in heartland places like Slidell, Louisiana, Derby, Kansas, and Tarboro, North Carolina. More importantly, the study contends that even where newspapers still operate in small and mid-sized markets, the changing nature of ownership had led to a decrease in the kind of corporate citizenship that felt it important to keep such papers thoroughly staffed and realistically budgeted as a public service. The new wave of newspaper owners are hedge funds, pension funds and similarly passive investors, rather than the families (Sulzberger, Chandler, Bingham) or corporations (Knight-Ridder, Gannett, Scripps-Howard) that dominated in the past. The new “media barons,” as the report dubs them, are demanding profit margins that can only be sustained by rounds of budget cuts, mostly meaning layoffs of staff and reductions in coverage.

In human terms, the combination of shutdowns, mergers and staff cuts, many of them ordered by geographically distant owners, means that the reporter, editor, photographer or layout designer isn’t a fixture of community life any more outside the coastal boom cities of online journalism. The aspiring young journalists in a Nebraska or an Arkansas, or for that matter a Central New Jersey, have far less likelihood than I did of being able to make a career in their own regions. Economic gravity now will move them toward the Atlantic and Pacific, or lure them out of journalism entirely into the fastgrowing, better-paying field of public relations.

Stereotypes, as we know, flourish when there is not much human evidence to contradict the caricature. If you don’t live around journalists, if you don’t bump into them at the hardware store or the diner or the Little League game, then you’re so much more susceptible to buying into the cartoon image of a

Circulation of U.S. Daily Newspapers Millions of copies per day

Source: Editor and Publisher

75

Weekday 50

Sunday

25

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

haughty, superior, obsequious, condescending city slicker. If you’ve never seen how the reporter on the local paper decently covered your town’s government, if you’ve never been responsibly interviewed by such a reporter about your art exhibit or prize livestock or drum-and-bugle corps, then you’re so much more susceptible to the corrosive idea that critical news, especially of the investigative variety, must be fake news.

When I ran my thesis by an acquaintance who edits a newspaper in southern Ohio that endorsed Donald Trump for president, he pushed back slightly. He told me that his readers still appreciate the local reporters and editors and save their venom for the big-city, coastal, “elite” media. I was not entirely persuaded. Rather, I was reminded of polling that shows that even people who despise Congress as an institution give decent marks to their own representatives there. The exception becomes just one more way of proving the rule.

As for my sister and her chocolate store, the Somerville merchants were able to raise enough of a clamor on their own that the borough rolled back dollar-an-hour parking to 50 cents. The only problem, Carol tells me, is that hardly any customers know, because the compromise was never reported in the local paper. ± Postscript: Several months after I wrote this essay, the Courier-News happened to write a feature story about my sister's shop. I was delighted for her to get the publicity. But nothing in this serendipitous event has changed my overall sense of the perilous state of my former newspaper and so many others like it.

61

Politics

The Nobel Prizewinner Who Wasn’t: George H.W. Bush The Hon. Nicholas Rostow, Special Assistant to President George H.W. Bush for National Security Affairs & Legal Adviser to the National Security Council, 1989-93

In crucial things, unity. In important things, diversity.

In all things, generosity.”

George H.W. Bush (June 12, 1924 November 30, 2018)

62

360

REVIEW

T

he measure of successful crisis management is the number of crises that do not occur. President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) deserved, but did not win, the Nobel Peace Prize for the most significant, successful episode of crisis management in the 20th century: bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end. Bush took advantage of the achievements of his predecessor, President Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of the Soviet Union, in establishing and managing productive, stable U.S.-Soviet relations. Thus, Reagan could tell Bush in January 1989 that the Cold War was over. It was—except for the continuing risk of hot East-West war or regional violence and the sticky details of bringing the Cold War to an end.

In historical terms, the 20th century, the bloodiest century to date, began with the July 1914 crisis that exploded into World War I and ended when Russia and the other Soviet Socialist Republics became independent and did away with the Soviet Union in December 1991. No one thought the Cold War would end with the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe. No one thought the Cold War would end with the peaceful reunification of Germany as part of NATO. No one thought the Cold War would end with the mostly peaceful, largest expansion in the number of democratic countries in history. Bush, his team and his colleagues—Gorbachev, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, French President François Mitterrand, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and their teams—deserve the credit for accomplishing each of these purposes.

Gorbachev alone of the five won the Nobel. He earned it. So did the others.

So, too, perhaps did Pope John Paul II who answered Stalin’s World War II question, how many divisions has the Pope, by demonstrating great, anti-Communist influence among the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. For more than 40 years, the Cold War was fought in the open and

in the shadows; and then it passed into the night with a whimper. Bush led. As Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, said, Bush failed to make any mistakes in bringing the Cold War to an end. No one wins the Nobel Peace Prize for failing to make any mistakes, even when the failure is to everyone’s advantage.

Hah, you might say: You worked for Bush and, therefore, why take your view seriously? I did work for George Bush. I was the Special Assistant to President George Bush for National Security Affairs and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council (NSC). Previously, I worked for Ronald Reagan in the same position. I can point to their success because I watched the entire unraveling of the Soviet Union from the White House, starting in March 1987. By then Gorbachev was in. He had begun to push for the restructuring and opening up of the Soviet Union—perestroika and glasnost—to invigorate Soviet economy and society. Once started, the process escaped control. I recall discussing Gorbachev’s actions, particularly the end of the Communist Party’s political monopoly, with my NSC colleagues. We asked each other, doesn’t he understand what he is doing? Throwing over the Communist

This farewell photo with President George Bush and Nicholas Rostow was taken on December 4, 1992, in the final days of the Bush presidency.

For decades afterward, Rostow corresponded with the former president regarding national and international issues and areas of mutual interest.

President Bush was always warm and personable, and was also a friend of Rostow’s father, Eugene V. Rostow, who served as the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Reagan administration when Bush served as vice president.

63

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle.

We as a people have such a purpose today.

It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

George H.W. Bush

64

360

REVIEW

Party and the Soviet Union itself? Gorbachev, aiming to renew the Soviet Union, apparently did not.

Bush brought to the table all the tools one would have wanted available to the American president at that moment. His long experience in diplomacy as unofficial ambassador to China, Ambassador to the United Nations and diplomat-at-large as vice president gave him diplomatic sure-footedness.

In his eight-year vice presidency, Bush had been an active diplomat. He knew all the principal interlocutors personally and well. Already he had established strong, confident relations with Gorbachev, Kohl, Mitterrand and Thatcher. They trusted and respected him. He reciprocated.

Bush and his National Security/Foreign Policy Team were the A Team: National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, backed by a bench that included Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former National Security Adviser, Robert Gates, Deputy National Security Adviser, and Lawrence Eagleburger, Deputy Secretary of State.

These senior advisers formed a tight-knit core. It was possible to insinuate oneself into the meetings if your administration rank was high enough, but that did not bring equality of participation. John Sununu, the president’s Chief of Staff, tried to become a member of that club. He never achieved more than observer status. Bush was comfortable with his team. Members were trusted advisers and action officers. He held frequent freewheeling conversations with them about what to do and how to do it, what options existed and the pros and cons of each. Staff prepared options papers as the basis for discussion, but they did not contain the discussion. Bush weighed the choices. He was open to persuasion. He chose the option to pursue. He did not dictate the outcome although it was unmistakably his—both because of the central role he played as chief diplomat and spokesman and because of the president’s constitutional dominance in foreign affairs.

Bush was the adult to whom Gorbachev, Kohl, Mitterrand and Thatcher looked to make everything all right in confronting the complex and delicate details of ending the Cold War. A misstep could have provoked a coup attempt in Russia (there was at least one on Bush’s watch) and violence in Central and Eastern Europe. Recall that Romania’s strongman, Nicolae Ceausescu, and his wife were executed after a short civil war and shorter trial. When confronted with the real possibility that Germany would reunite, the British, French and Soviets were deeply troubled. Britain, France and the United States always had advocated a peaceful, democratic reunification of Germany. The Soviet Union had favored reunification on Communist terms: neutrality and disarmament. No one expected to face the reality that Germany might reunite and have a real say in how it would be accomplished.

It was easy to support German reunification when nobody expected it to happen. Now, the union of East and West Germany was becoming a reality. Bush and his core team engaged in the kind of constant, quiet conversation with all the principal players that was essential to sustaining confidence in the most difficult circumstances. Gorbachev, who faced dissent within his own government, needed reassurance and even comfort.

In December 1989, Gorbachev’s foreign minister visited NATO headquarters in Belgium and proclaimed the Cold War to be over. At the same time, he said that German unification could only take place if Germany was neutral and disarmed. Germany was headed in a different direction and was not subject to American or NATO or Soviet dictation. Thatcher and Mitterrand needed assurance that Germany would remain as it had been since Konrad Adenauer (West German Chancellor [1949-63]), a staunch ally and member of the democratic, Western camp. Helmut Kohl equally needed reassurance that his NATO allies would not desert him even while he was trying to pull off the coup of coups: the incorporation of East into West Germany.

It was a period of high drama. Crowds—not mobs—tore down the Berlin Wall. Germany was not the sole issue. There was, as Henry Kissinger later put it, the need to right historical wrongs. The Baltic States were to be independent once again and ultimately join the European Union and NATO.

High-level bipartisan discussion of a sensitive national security matter in the White House cabinet room on May 9, 1990.

Left to right: Nicholas Rostow, NSC Legal Adviser; Robert H. Michel (R-Ill), House Minority Leader; Thomas S. Foley (D-WA), Speaker of the House; President George H.W. Bush; Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-ME), Senate Majority Leader; Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-KS), Senate Minority Leader.

65

National Security Adviser Colin Powell joking with President Ronald Reagan on December 18, 1988, just before their regular morning meeting. Powell wore a paper sign over his ear reading, “Bull Shit Protector.” Also present were (left to right) Nicholas Rostow, John D. Negroponte, the Deputy National Security Adviser, and presidential biographer Edmund Morris, who was conducting research for Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. During the meeting, Rostow briefed Reagan regarding the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, which was established to resolve claims arising out of the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis.

66

360

REVIEW

Russia would not join NATO but work with it. Western support for the new Russian effort to become a democracy and stave off coup attempts became part of the post-Cold War U.S. and NATO foreign policies. These positions took imagination and effort to conceive and implement.

I was like the child with his nose pressed against the window of the candy store. I was not present when Bush formulated and conducted diplomacy.

But I was close. I suppose I helped—I certainly provided advice on how legally to ensure that Russia seamlessly succeeded the Soviet Union at the United Nations. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, I advised on how to leave nothing to chance with respect to binding former Soviet Republics to nuclear weapons agreements signed by the Soviet Union.

With regard to whether or not Congress had to approve the war with Iraq in 1991, I joined my other legal colleagues in the administration in a meeting with the president to advise him that he had inherent constitutional authority to defend vital U.S. national interests with force, even if Congress did not adopt a resolution authorizing such action. Of course, the advice proved moot. He rallied international opposition to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and avoided making the crisis a U.S.-Iraq conflict. Bush lined up the United Nations in Security Council resolution after resolution culminating in an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to pull his forces out of Kuwait. In January 1991, Congress authorized what became Operation Desert Storm. That was Bush the brilliant tactician, maneuvering Congress to where it had to support him even though he did not command automatic majorities in

either House. He brought that tactical skill and finesse to his dealings with NATO allies and Gorbachev to end the Cold War. There was no triumphalism or claims of victory.

In the Bush Administration, lawyers were not part of the inner circle.

Under George P. Shultz, the State Department’s legal adviser was a central figure. Under George W. Bush, the NSC’s legal adviser was a close confidant of the national security adviser. Baker and Scowcroft operated differently.

Baker is an accomplished lawyer. His Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and subsequently Ambassador to Germany, Robert Kimmitt, had served as general counsel to the Treasury when Baker was secretary and doubtless advised Baker at State. Cheney would not look at a memorandum recommending action unless his general counsel had concurred in it. This admirable practice reflected recognition of the web of law that is woven around the Department of Defense and the significance of decisions the secretary makes.

As a person, Bush was approachable in the hallways and at gatherings.

He was not stuffy or pompous. I recall meeting in Scowcroft’s office with Scowcroft and Gates to discuss a letter to Congress about the U.S. deployment to the Persian Gulf in the summer or early fall of 1990. Bush bounced in and sat down. No one asked me to leave. He looked at the letter, which stated that hostilities were “not imminent,” and said, “They are not imminent, they are inevitable.” He understood that Saddam Hussein would not and perhaps could not reverse course. The president knew me and took it as perfectly normal that he and I should share a couch.

On another occasion, this time in the Oval Office, he confronted a flood of congressional requests for documents about Operation Desert Storm and accusations that the administration had sold Iraq the weapons it had used against American troops. Bush disagreed with Baker on how to respond.

Baker wanted to give Congress what it wanted, even documents recording internal deliberations. Such documents normally are kept secret so that the president’s advisers feel free to offer the best counsel. Disclosure of such advice chills deliberation. Bush withheld such documents on the grounds that Congress is not entitled to them and that he wanted to pass unimpaired to his successor the powers of the president.

In a tumultuous four years, some episodes were more flattering to the United States and the competency of American statesmanship than others.

The Bush administration handled a coup attempt in the Philippines so well that few remember it. It engaged in serious attempts to broker Arab-Israeli peace. It faced, but did not manage, tumult in the Balkans and famine in Somalia. It had no magic wand for eliminating terrorism. In Iraq, it showed the gap between the U.S. military’s capabilities and those of other countries

The American Dream means giving it your all, trying your hardest, accomplishing something. And then I’d add to that, giving something back.

No definition of a successful life can do anything but include serving others.

George H.W. Bush

67

This note was sent to Nicholas Rostow from President George Bush on August 4, 1989, in recognition of Rostow’s work on the establishment of the presidential commission on the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Bush regularly took the time to write notes of encouragement, recognition and congratulations to White House staff.

68

360

REVIEW

without trying to do more than the diplomatic traffic would bear.

Some episodes did not show the United States to advantage. The Bush administration ended our informal role as the protector of Liberia, which we had played since the country’s founding in 1821, at a moment of terrible violence and butchery there. The administration did nothing to save the Liberian government. American armed forces stood by as Iraqi gunships slaughtered Iraqi Shia and others in 1991.

Yet, at the same time, the United States expended effort and treasure to keep Salman Rushdie alive after a 1989 fatwa—an edict—by Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling for his murder for writing Satanic Verses. The administration did so because of the centrality of the First Amendment to American identity.

The successes, great and small, and the failures marked a richly significant presidency that had a transformative impact. It gave the world the hope that international relations in accordance with the rules of the United Nations Charter were possible. Bush did not win the Nobel Prize. He and Scowcroft justly called their joint memoir, A World Transformed. The Norwegian Nobel Committee paid no attention to how much it and we owed and owe George H.W. Bush. ±

G

eorge H.W. Bush “was the kindest, most decent man I’ve ever known. … As a boy, one of his nicknames … was “Have-Half,” after his habit of always sharing half of his sandwich with whoever was there. … As vice president, Mr. Bush would stay over in Washington for Christmas rather than go home to Houston, so that his Secret Service detail could spend the day with their families. When a few years ago, the two-year-old child of one of his Secret Service agents was stricken with cancer, Mr. Bush shaved his own head bald in solidarity. … He was, to use a term that has suffered late from desuetude, a Christian gentleman. Paradigmatically so. His love was total, unconditional. He embodied Shakespeare’s admonition that ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’ His soul was visible on his sleeve.”

Christopher Buckley, Yale Alumni Magazine January/February 2019 69

Technology

Robophobia Work in the Age of Robots Mark P. Mills, based on his book, Work in the Age of Robots, Encounter Books, 2018

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Isaac Asimov

70

360

REVIEW

T

he nation today is operating at a record low unemployment level. We are near what economists call full employment. And, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show, employment is growing faster in industrial domains than in health care and in “professional and technical services.”

The talk in business circles these days is about the shortage of skilled labor, and about the availability—or willingness—of enough people to fill future job openings.

But the talk amongst pundits and Silicon Valley’s self-reverential futurists is quite different. They claim that the labor-savings, about to come from algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robots, will destroy so many jobs that unemployment will radically, permanently increase.

In response, this will require, the proponents argue, the creation of a universal basic income, not just for the temporarily unemployed, but for those doomed to be never-again-employable. We’ve seen this movie more than once.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered a message to Congress focused on what he called “the inevitability” of job destruction from automation. He created an Office of Automation and Manpower and proposed that Congress fund training programs and create a readjustment allowance for displaced workers.

A few years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson convened a blue-ribbon commission on the impact of automation on work. One of its recommendations: a universal basic income.

Fast forward to May 2018 when the White House held a Summit with 40 tech companies, including the likes of Google and Amazon. The focus: handwringing over the inevitability of “job displacement” from automation and artificial intelligence.

So, we find ourselves at a curious point in history.

For a decade now, despite the wonders of Uber, Amazon and Apple, the U.S. has actually been in a productivity deficit. The definition of productivity is the reduction in inputs—labor and materials—per unit of output. In other words, our productivity deficit means that America is currently underinvested in automation technologies.

On the morning of October 4, 2010, the manager of the Grosvenor Hotel discovered this painting—which has been attributed to Banksy, a world-famous but anonymous English street artist—on an exterior wall. The Grosvenor Hotel overlooks the seafront in Torquay, a resort town in southern England.

71

The Rise of Infrastructure Technologies Maximum Network Size 100% 90%

Canals

80%

Railroads

70%

Telegraph

Oil Pipelines

60% 50%

Roads

40%

Airways

30%

Cloud

20%

Robots

10% 0% 1800

With regard to robots, in the early days of robots people said, ‘Oh, let’s build a robot’ and what’s the first thought? You make a robot look like a human and do human things. That’s so 1950s.

We are so past that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

72

360

REVIEW

1820

1840

1860

1880

1900

1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

But now, we’re told, we are about to see a new kind of productivity that will spur economic growth, but for the first time in human history, it will also lead to the long-term net destruction of work.

Ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution, we have witnessed continual and profound advances in technologies that have improved productivity. In fact, the magnitude of labor-saving now expected to come from AI and robots won’t match what happened, for example, a century ago.

In just 20 years, from 1910 to 1930, there was a 400 percent drop in laborhours needed per car manufactured, and a 700 percent decline in laborhours to produce a ton of steel. And those are not exceptions, but typical of what technology progress has brought to many industries over the past century and a half.

Over that time, despite this massive “labor saving” and despite population growth, which increased the total number of labor-seekers, 95 percent of job-seekers, on average, found employment. In other words, the unemployment rate has oscillated around 5 percent, despite serial technological disruptions.

Of course, there have been periods of high unemployment during that time span. But those episodes were caused not by technology but by poor policies and economic malpractice.

The essence of today’s dystopian argument about the future is, in the immortal phrase of every failed forecaster: This time it’s different.

The implicit, if not explicit, argument is that AI and robots are, well, different. Of course, the specific technologies underlying every revolution are different.

Uses of Artificial Intelligence Cybersecurity User tech support Production management

Cybersecurity

Compliance IT automation Customer forecasting Advertising

Marketing

Monitoring social media Marketing Financial trading

Finance & Accounting

Call automation

Customer service 0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

The central question is whether the effects of new technologies are different than in the past.

A core tenet of the peak jobs thesis is anchored in offering an analogy to the historical fact every schoolchild learns: Technology eliminated nearly all farm work. But there is something fundamentally wrong with using that model as a predictor for other work.

The critical difference between work associated with producing food compared to fabricating things and producing services is found on the demand side, not the productivity side of the equation.

Growth in demand for food is bounded by the combination of two obvious variables: population growth, plus the rise in per-person consumption for those underfed.

Population growth is slow and very predictable over very long periods.

And there is only a maximum of a two-fold difference between the per capita calorie intake of a subsistence diet and that of wealthy nation.

Even modest gains in agricultural productivity—again, the rate of laborreduction per unit of product—can be far faster than the rate of growth in demand. Thus, one would expect, and we’ve seen, a rapid reduction in total farm-labor-hours needed.

Meanwhile, for the things we invent and fabricate, the demand growth isn’t limited like food but is essentially unlimited. This arises from an obvious fact, but one that seems to elude economists and forecasters: Engineers and innovators continually invent new things that create new demands.

Rising consumption of fabricated things—and the services they enable, such as tourism enabled by aircraft or entertainment enabled by computers—

35%

40%

45%

Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics:” A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

73

These stamps were issued by Sweden in 1984 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the first commercially available, all-electric, anthropomorphic, microprocessor-controlled industrial robot. Since then, the design and functionality of industrial robots has remained largely the same.

74

360

REVIEW

comes not just from increased wealth enabling more people to own what only a few had previously been able to afford. It also comes from the continual invention of new products and services that create new demands, which in turn create new requirements for jobs in both manufacturing and services.

Evidence of this reality is clear over the last 50 years. Consumption of agricultural goods in the U.S. has risen only slightly more than the population. But consumption of things from industries has grown 300 percent more than population. And the consumption of healthcare services has grown triple that ratio—at nine times the rate of population growth.

Of course, automation has eliminated many specific kinds of jobs. It’s easy to identify jobs that will disappear. It’s harder to identify the jobs that will appear due to innovations. Some 60 percent of the kinds of jobs that existed in the 1960s don’t exist today, such as draftsmen and typists. And today we are at full employment.

There was no demand for cars or computers before their invention. The computing industry employed about 100,000 people circa 1960, compared to more than a million workers today.

The fact is global demand for manufactured goods—and for the services the new kinds of goods enable—is on the cusp of the greatest expansion in history. We are already seeing evidence of that and the collateral requirement for productivity from robots and AI to meet the scale of demand.

We’re long overdue for improving labor productivity in nearly every part of the service sector, especially healthcare. Over the past couple of decades, healthcare productivity—value added per labor-hour—has been stagnant.

Adding knowledge automation won’t destroy work in healthcare, it will make it more affordable, better and, yes, expand employment.

We can look to recent history for some obvious examples. We’ve seen word processors replace typing pools, spreadsheets replace rooms full of accountants doing “ciphering,” software replace draftsmen and many more similar examples. But over these decades, both employment and the economy have grown.

Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that, on average, the industries that spent more on software increased rather than decreased employment. The data also shows that most industries are still underinvested in software. We should hope for software investment to accelerate.

The central challenge in the current transition era is as it has always been. It is not the prospect of the end of work. It is the moral and political imperative to deal with the inevitable loss of specific types of jobs and the related—and challenging—task to help a minority of workers find new jobs.

But this time, for the first time, the technology causing the disruption also constitutes part of the solution.

One can easily imagine developing social media algorithms similar to the kind that enable platforms such as Uber’s sharing and Netflix’s preference engines. AI will make it both easier and more efficient to manage the complex and inherently social process of helping displaced employees find new work, or requalify or retrain people for new kinds of work.

A central goal in engineering has always been to make technologies easier to operate by non-experts. AI in the future will become increasingly easy for everyone to use. That will democratize artificial intelligence. And that will inevitably help far more people become productive and greatly expand the base of so-called “knowledge workers” too.

And that might be the single feature of our new age that is in fact different from previous machine disruptions. ±

The Robotification of Healthcare

H

ealthcare is an enormous, rapidly growing and selfevidently critical service industry. It is also the sector in most need of robotification to improve productivity.

Productivity—that is, value added per labor-hour—in healthcare has been stagnant for 15 years. That single fact explains why the costs of medical services have increased by as much as four times the rate of inflation.

We should hope and pray that artificial intelligence (AI) and robots can advance quickly to become commercially viable for medical applications. Automation is needed in every corner of healthcare from diagnostics and therapeutics to cleaning hospitals and moving patients.

There are signs of progress, such as using Intelligent Virtual Assistants for physician diagnoses, deploying robots to help surgeons and to assist with ambulatory care and rehab. This will precipitate decreased costs and improved care, and also—as discussed above—the creation of more jobs.

Automation, both physical and in the cloud, will democratize healthcare and create new classes of services. It will also enable many of these services to migrate from expensive, and often hazardous, institutional settings into people’s homes.

Longer term, there’s the intriguing potential to use the new AI infrastructure to create a “digital twin,” which is

a supercomputer’s digital model of a machine, a system or even a person. The model can be compared in real time to the real world thing or person, using highly granular real-time data gathered by sensors embedded in the physical-world counterpart. In principle, and still aspirational, a digital twin could predict the effect of a particular medication or procedure down to the cellular level. Who wouldn’t want that? ±

The da Vinci Surgical System is a robotic system designed to facilitate complex, yet minimally invasive, surgery. The system is controlled by a surgeon from a console and replicates the movement of the surgeon’s hands with the tips of micro-instruments. Currently, long-distance surgery is in the early stages of development via the da Vinci Surgical System.

75

This article was published at the height of the Great Depression in 1934 when the unemployment rate was over 21 percent. Americans who still had jobs were very concerned about losing them, and those looking for work were more anxious. The word “robot� was coined in 1921 and

76

360

REVIEW

increasingly symbolized the ultimate technological threat to economic insecurity—even to the point of replacing world heavyweight champion boxers. The article chronicles Dempsey’s counterpunch to this fear.

77

Politics

Monstrous Modernity Western Roots of Islamic Radicalism Ivan Jankovic, PhD Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Mary

“I

“I never saw Hitler so beside himself as when, as if in delirium, he was picturing to himself and to us the downfall of New York in towers of flame,” wrote Albert Speer.

78

360

REVIEW

never saw Hitler so beside himself as when, as if in delirium, he was picturing to himself and to us the downfall of New York in towers of flame,” wrote Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, in Spandau: The Secret Diaries. “He described the skyscrapers turning into huge burning torches and falling hither and thither, and the reflection of the disintegrating city in the dark sky.”

This vision seems remarkably like September 11, 2001. “The idea was for kamikaze pilots to fly explosives-crammed aircraft, lacking landing gear, into the Manhattan skyscrapers,” Speer continued. “The drawings for the Daimler-Benz Amerikabomber from spring 1944 actually exist. They show giant four-engine planes with raised underbellies, beneath which small bombers could be strapped. The bombers were to be released shortly before the plane reached the East Coast, after which the mother plane would return to Europe.”

Not only were the technical details of how to turn Manhattan skyscrapers into burning torches similar to Osama Bin Laden’s, but the motives were much the same. Bombing New York obviously provided no military advantage in World War II nor now for radical Islamists. Rather, the attack was intended to be a part of a symbolic war against the supposed worldwide Jewish conspiracy, since in Hitler’s view, Wall Street was “the center of the international Jewry.”

Mohamed Atta, the chief 9/11 bomber, also considered New York City to be the center of world Jewry. In “Letter to the American People,” Bin Laden wrote: “In all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have taken control of your media and now control of all aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense.”

It’s not a mere coincidence that Nazis and radical Islamists hate Jews to the point of extermination. The Nazis and their philosophy converted radicals such as Bin Laden into monstrous prophets for a new perverted form of Islam based on Western influences.

Most commentators explain 9/11 as a seminal point in a war against the West to destroy unbelievers based on a pure, ancient form of Islam. To

explain how this produced an ideology of terror, Western analysts usually invoke the narrative of the Enlightenment and Reformation to explain both religious tolerance in the West and its total absence in the Islamic world. In short, because there has been no Enlightenment-Reformation there, religious and other forms of tolerance and moderation never developed.

The deeper point this analysis proposes is that the task of eradicating today’s Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism coincides with the task of modernizing Islam. When Islam gets its Enlightenment-Reformation, radicalism will give way to liberty and tolerance.

Yet, Islamic jihadists kill believers and nonbelievers alike. In November 2017, for example, they attacked an old mosque in Northern Egypt, slaugh-

Illustration of Hitler’s plan to deploy the Amerikabomber, an ultra long-range four engine aircraft, to attack New York City from airfields in Germany. Several such projects were initiated, and the Messerschmitt Me 264 (pictured above) was the most advanced and closest to being put into production before the end of WWII.

79

tering more than 300 Muslims at prayer on the holy day of Friday. What kind of ancient “Islamic” tradition condones such atrocities? Traditional Islam clearly condemns sending boys and girls with explosives strapped to their waists to blow up themselves and civilians in a crowded space.

The view most Westerners have of Islamic radicalism is seriously misguided. Instead of being an impossible evocation of the mythical past, Islamic radicalism is thoroughly modern with heavy European influences.

It emerged by amalgamating distorted Koranic foundations with Western totalitarianism of both fascist and communist varieties. This transformation of Islam included the idea of revolution promising worldly redemption, the concepts of violence and terror against innocents as legitimate tools of political salvation, suicidal martyrdom as a revolutionary means, and elevating the state to the level of supreme religious authority.

Modern Islamists are actually Islamic apostates, substituting European political religion and totalitarian violence for traditional, conservative Islamic faith.

Jihad & the New Religiosity Modern Islamists are actually Islamic apostates, substituting European political religion and totalitarian violence for traditional, conservative Islamic faith.

80

360

REVIEW

A vivid example of Islam’s Westernization is demonstrated in how fundamentalists perverted the doctrine of holy war or jihad. This was not always a key pillar of Islam and, in fact, almost forgotten in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as Islamic societies opened to the West and many Islamic rulers tried to emulate the West’s positive social and political achievements.

Although traditional Islam is not a religion of terrorism, it has never been a “religion of peace” as often claimed. Islam has its share of conquests and wars, many of which were justified by Islamic rulers on religious grounds. As well, a very prominent meaning of jihad in the Middle Ages during the Crusades was war against the infidels. Yet, the theological imprint of jihad was always limited—and it was decreasing. By the 18th and early 19th centuries, jihad had almost disappeared from the public discourse. “The concept of jihad was almost completely absent from Islamic education before the foundation of the Muslim Brothers,” wrote Islamic scholar Abd al Fattah al-Awaisi.

The Muslim Brotherhood (or Brothers), founded by Hasan al-Banna in 1928, revived and radically reinterpreted jihad with a peculiar, totalitarian-fascist twist. The old Koranic language was infused with a modern view of political violence and love of death as a supreme “religious” virtue. This explosive reinvention fused militaristic virtues with contempt for the West’s commercialism—following the statist intellectual tradition that had developed in the West as a reaction against capitalism and industrialization.

This reaction took on apocalyptic dimensions in Occidentalism, defined

by German philosopher Werner Sombart in 1915 as follows: The view

that the ideas of the Renaissance, Reformation and French Revolution— together with capitalism and the Industrial revolution—destroyed the spiritual substance of the Western world; confined religion to the private sphere; imposed the virtues of merchants on all citizens; and eliminated all heroic, self-sacrificing ethical impulses in citizens. These effete tendencies contrasted sharply, in Sombart’s view, with German militaristic virtues, collectivist devotion and political discipline as the embodiment of spiritual authenticity.

To this, Ernst Juenger, a WWI veteran and public intellectual, added the divinization of death. War, he wrote, elevates life above the superficiality of the bourgeois existence and transforms it into a mystical experience. In his essay “Epistle to the Young,” al-Banna reconfigured jihad along Occidentalist lines as the “art of death.” Al-Banna’s position, according to his authoritative biographer Richard Mitchell, was: “The Qur’an has commanded people to love death more than life.” Al-Banna articulated his vision for the creation of the proper Muslim individual, family and society, rejecting individual freedom, nationalism and secularism. The ultimate goal was the resurrection of the ancient Islamic Empire, which he described via references to the Third

On November 28, 1941, Adolf Hitler met with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (1921-48) and Chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council (photo

by Heinrich Hoffman).

Historical sources indicate that al-Husseini asked for support for Arab independence and for help opposing the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine. Al-Husseini was a founding father of radical Islam, and both a close associate of al-Banna and major supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

81

The first step in this revolution would be the victory of the Islamic “vanguard” of true believers in the Muslim world, and the next step involves a world revolution in which the entire globe is subjugated to Islamist rule.

Reich and Mussolini’s dream of resurrecting the Roman Empire.

Al-Banna tried to portray the love of death as stemming from Koranic tenets and as an important spiritual device to redeem Muslims, wallowing in the swamp of Western materialism and moral corruption.

A paramilitary wing of the Muslim Brotherhood held Nazi-like marches through Cairo in the 1930s, chanting slogans mimicking WW II Japanese kamikaze pilots about sacrifice through suicidal death as national moral redemption: “We are afraid not of death, but we desire it ... . How wonderful death is ... . Let us die in redemption for Muslims.” Such attitudes closely correspond to how Bin Laden and Taliban extremists today understand the essence of Islam and the Koranic message.

The first suicide attack in the Middle East was carried out by the Red Army, a Japanese communist organization (again, adopting perverted Western ideology), which was an ideological partner of a Marxist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In 1972, four Red Army members attacked tourists at Lod Airport (currently named Ben Gurion Airport) in Israel with hand grenades and machine guns, killing 48 people. The Red Army’s ideology blended the “Bushido” kamikaze justification of suicidal struggle with the Leninist idea of the legitimacy of terrorizing innocents for political purposes.

The only surviving attacker later accused Arabs of being cowards, lacking the revolutionary zeal to self-sacrifice. Muammar al-Gadafi (a Libyan military officer who engineered a coup in 1969 and then governed Libya until 2011) also contemptuously criticized Palestinian revolutionary organizations for failing to carry out similarly spectacular attacks.

Islamists were relative latecomers to this suicidal terrorism business: Not only was suicidal martyrdom imported from Japan, but the first domestic suicidal terrorists were members of a communist-nationalist organization, rather than of any religiously inspired group. It was only later that the same Leninist-kamikaze tactics were adopted by Islamic fundamentalists.

Jihad as Worldwide Revolution Abul Ala al-Maududi, a top Pakistani ideologue of Islamic fundamentalism, expanded al-Banna’s definition of jihad to encompass a worldwide social revolution, transforming Islam into a global ideology, rather than a traditional religion. This new Islam, he wrote, seeks to “revolutionize the world social order” with Muslims as “an international revolutionary party organized under the ideology of Islam.” Jihad becomes a radical political revolution—really, a religious mutiny inside Islam—led by a vanguard of Islamic ideologues who are professional revolutionaries.

82

360

REVIEW

Sayyid Qutb, the radical follower of al-Banna and true founder of al-Quaeda, understood jihad very similarly to al-Maududi as a “permanent Islamic revolution” (one more concept borrowed directly from Western radical thought, namely from Leninism).

The first step in this revolution would be the victory of the Islamic “vanguard” of true believers in the Muslim world, and the next step involves a world revolution in which the entire globe is subjugated to Islamist rule.

According to Vladimir Lenin—leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the Soviet Union—proletarians would not be able to carry out revolutionary action without the help of a vanguard of highly professional and morally incorruptible leaders, who would direct and control the unwashed masses in their emancipatory strivings. In the Stalinist reformulation of this idea, communist revolutionaries were depicted as “people of a special kind.” Qutb reserved the same role for his Islamic vanguard.

Muslim Brotherhood as a Totalitarian Organization The influence of this Western “monstrous modernity,” as philosopher John Gray called it, on Islam reaches far beyond refashioning the traditional concept of jihad in conformity with the Western tradition of politicized violence. The second pillar of this modern revolution in the Islamic world is the influence of European secular totalitarian ideas on the activities and ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and its leader, al-Banna. This organization served as a vehicle for transplanting Western radical ideas, especially fascism and later communism.

It might seem a strange exaggeration to describe the Muslim Brotherhood as a fascist or totalitarian organization. How could a movement professing Islamic renewal and dedication to humanitarian and cultural work, with a strong religious component, be described as totalitarian or fascistic? In recent years, the Muslim Brotherhood was in power in Egypt and denounced political violence—but only nominally, while maintaining adherence to the radical Islamist notions.

Historically, fascism was not seen by many as a reactionary, racist tyranny but as a modern revolutionary movement advocating total care for the individual in exchange for control by the state. This was portrayed in massive propaganda efforts as inspired by the spirit of unity, brotherhood and solidarity. Fascism motivated many well-intentioned reformists seeking “social justice” to find some kind of secular redemption.

Instead of genocidal warmongers, Hitler and Mussolini were depicted (and revered), both by the Western and non-Western progressives, as strong leaders able to overcome the shortcomings of capitalism and decadent bourgeois democracy by resolute political action and mobilization of the

Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

83

Mussolini’s famous formula for good government was: “Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state.”

84

360

REVIEW

masses to fight societal evils. American progressives saw Mussolini and Hitler in the same favorable light they saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The very concept of a “totalitarian state” that today we associate with evil, tyrannical regimes was coined originally by Mussolini as a positive means of satisfying all economic and spiritual needs. Mussolini’s famous formula for good government was: “Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state.”

Understandably in this context, al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood shared the same admiration for fascism’s collectivistic mobilization and political religiosity. As a part of this global ideological trend, the Brotherhood epitomized the progressive, revolutionary ethos in which collectivism was seen as the “wave of the future.”

Most of the cultural symbols and narratives used to give an “Islamic” patina to fascist, totalitarian ideas were forgeries. The first striking example was al-Banna’s interpretation of the Islamic religious concept of shura.

Traditionally, shura referred to Muhammad’s practice of consultation with his companions about the important decisions. However, there is no authoritative interpretation of what shura should mean in the modern politics of a nation state. Jamal al-Din al-Afgani and Muhammad Abduh, early reformers and modernizers of Islam in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, invoked the concept of shura as a doctrinal justification for the parliamentary democratic system and liberal constitutionalism of the European kind.

In contrast, al-Banna interpreted shura to mean something similar to Mussolini’s idea of stato corporativo: the unified national council, consisting of the representatives of various social groups, that “overcomes” the limitations of parliamentary democracy. In al-Banna’s “The 50-Point Manifesto,” he offered a typical Mussolinian vision of a true democracy as: “An end to party rivalry, and a channeling of the political forces of the nation into a common front and a single phalanx ... . A strengthening of the armed forces, and an increase in the number of youth groups; the inspiration of the latter with zeal on the basis of Islamic jihad ... . The surveillance of the personal conduct of all its employees, and an end to the dichotomy between the private and professional spheres.” The recycling of European fascist ideas is obvious here.

Under al-Banna’s chairmanship, the Muslim Brotherhood formed a secret paramilitary organization (numbering 40,000 in the 1940s) called al-jihaz al-sim (secret apparatus) and modeled after Mussolini’s black shirts. Their slogan, al-jihaz al-sin (action, obedience, silence) closely mimicked the slogan of Italian fascisti (believe, obey, fight). The purpose of the Brotherhood’s paramilitary was to execute the second phase of the revolution, which would include political takeover and creation of an Islamic government.

So, when today’s Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, say their “true” political tradition is pitted against rotten Western democracy, they are right. However, they are perfectly unaware that what they call “their” tradition is a second-hand Western ideology, derived from European fascism and socialism.

Al-Banna also interpreted the traditional concept of umma (community of Muslim believers) as shorthand for the worldwide Islamic totalitarian empire (caliphate), with the religious leader as head of state. That was a transfiguration of a religious symbol (spiritual unity of Muslim believers) into a totalitarian political ideologeme (fundamental ideological unit). In his essay “Peace in Islam,” al-Banna approvingly cited Hitler’s concept of the Third Reich and Mussolini’s idea of the renewal of the Roman Empire as solid approximations of umma. Still, he considered his concept of caliphate as theologically and ideologically superior. In the same essay, al-Banna expressed disappointment in the final achievements of fascism and Nazism, nevertheless stating: “Nazism came to power in Germany, Fascism in Italy, and both Hitler and Mussolini began to force their people to conform to what they thought: unity, order, development and power. Certainly, this

In November 1943, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, greets Bosnian Waffen-SS volunteers with a Nazi salute. On his left is SS General Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig. The Grand Mufti’s memoirs show he was aware of the Holocaust at the time.

Al-Husseini collaborated with German and Italian fascists via propagandist radio broadcasts. “German propaganda contributed to combine in people’s minds Islam and antiJewish campaigns in a dimension that was until then unknown to the Muslim world,” wrote historian Jeffrey Herf in Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World.

85

Sayid Qutb, the most radical and influential of al-Banna’s followers, also took traditional Koranic concepts and gave them completely new and distorted meanings borrowed from totalitarian European thought.

86

360

REVIEW

system led the two countries to stability and a vital international role. This cultivated much hope, reawakened aspiration and united the whole country under one leader.”

Sayid Qutb, the most radical and influential of al-Banna’s followers, also took traditional Koranic concepts and gave them completely new and distorted meanings borrowed from totalitarian European thought. For example, he appropriated the concept of jahiliyya from the Koran, which traditionally referred to the state of ignorance of polytheistic Arabic tribes before Muhammad’s revelations, to mean something entirely different: the Occidentalist spiritual decadence of both Muslims and non-Muslims in the modern capitalist and individualistic society. In his view, everyone (except Qutb and his followers) was living in darkness, even though, like al-Banna, he followed historian Oswald Spengler, as well as Sombart and Juenger, in praising the achievements of Western science and technology despite spiritual decline. Qutb objected that these achievements were misused to perpetuate unjust exploitation and Western imperialism.

Qutb developed this new concept of jahiliyya under the influence of the French social-Darwinist and eugenicist Alexis Carrel. Originally a medical doctor who won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1912, “Carrel put himself forward as a social philosopher (if not, indeed, a prophet),” wrote L.C. Brown in Religion and State, “deploring the presumed dehumanizing impact of modern Western materialism (especially capitalism). A social Darwinist elitist, he went all the way into advocating eugenics and euthanasia to breed the best and weed out the unfit.”

Carrel is the most-cited source in Qutb’s book Milestones, apart from the Koran and Hadiths. Qutb imported Carrel’s theory of barbarism to describe modern Europe and adapted it for the Arab world to formulate “a Third World version of fascism,” according to Islamic scholar Youssef Choueiri.

Qutb’s jahiliyya is actually Carrel’s barbarism, slightly repackaged to suit Islamic religious symbolism.

For Carrel, Western barbaric materialism is a condition of disintegration of humanity’s spiritual and biological nature that must be healed by a radical therapy of eugenic control, performed by the priest-healers living in a “scientific Monastery.” Similarly, Qutb saw the fatal illness of Muslim civilization as jahiliyya, as a separation of religion and politics that must be overcome by an Islamic vanguard composed of agents of the future, true Islam, operating in a Carrelian “scientific Mosque.”

Accordingly, Carrel wrote about “the unification of all capabilities and their coordination to a single belief.” Qutb renamed this model the “Islamic method” that should unite science, religion, ethics, economics and education to produce a “divine uniqueness,” a replica of Carrel’s “super-science.”

Islamists & Economic Socialism The extent of Islamic Westernization can be seen in how often the Muslim Brotherhood’s humanitarian work is hailed as socially progressive and, hence, irreconcilable with fascism. However, the Nazi platform in the 1920s and ’30s included the same emphasis on free education, workers’ rights (even profit-sharing schemes), universal health care, old-age programs, community service and so on. Once in power, the Nazis expanded social welfare programs to promote economic dependence on government.

Similarly, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood established a network of charities to help the poor, which contributed to their widespread popularity. The Nazi Party mobilized youth by the thousands to help the elderly fix up their homes and assist in everyday activities. Rather than a specifically “Muslim” Brotherhood, this emphasis on social welfare was an ideological feature of all European totalitarian movements.

Following the fascist script, al Banna interpreted the traditional obligation of charity (zakat) as a license for the government not only to impose the welfare state but also strengthen the military. Qutb developed this into a full-blown Marxist-style theory of legitimate confiscation and redistribution of private property, replete with radical socialist terminology and

Today’s militant members of Hezbollah making Nazi salutes in unison. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization headquartered in Lebanon and financed largely by Iran.

87

argumentation. In The Battle of Islam with Capitalism, Qutb tried to explain how confiscation of private property accords with Islam.

But this marked a dramatic departure from the traditional Islamic understanding of shari’a (traditional Islamic law based on religious precepts) that requires a believer to pay zakath or charity as a voluntary contribution—not as a tax. In traditional shari’a, the only coercive transfer of wealth permitted is taxation in the case of war—not for social redistribution as Qutb proposed.

In Social Justice in Islam, Qutb further developed his theory of just ownership, adopting the Marxist and modern socialist conception of society as the state, which is the sole owner of all resources. The only change was deploying Islamic symbols and references as packaging. The following passage is a typical display of Qutbian Islamic communism:

Westerners can find common ground with traditional and truly moderate Muslims in rejecting, not Western civilization, but these distortions of Western ideas that history has shown to be destructive to the point of pure evil.

88

360

REVIEW

The essence of the reality regarding the nature of private (individual) ownership (of wealth, property) in Islam is: 1) that the foundational principle is that the wealth belongs to the group (society) in its generality; 2) that [the holding of] private property is simply a functional duty, which has conditions and restrictions; 3) that some wealth is common and no one has any right to possess it, and everyone ought to be benefit from it communally; 4) and a portion of it likewise is a right that is to be returned to the group (society) so that it (the society) can give it to specific factions within it, which are in need of it to rectify their condition and the condition of the society (in turn) along with it.

In this passage Qutb mixes the standard Koranic view—that all the earth’s material blessing belong to God—with the Marxist theory of distribution, according to which all material wealth belongs to society, which has the right to confiscate and redistribute any portion of anyone’s possession and “give it to specific factions.” Here an important ideologue of so-called Islamic revival equated God with the state (society) explicitly, just as a radical Western socialist.

Qutb even redefined Islam as a combination of the best elements of Christianity and socialism: “And it is necessary for Islam to judge, since it is a unique, constructive and positivist aquidah (belief system) which has been molded and shaped from Christianity and communism together, with a blending in the most perfect of ways and which comprises all of their objectives and adds in addition to them harmony, balance and justice.”

Is it not strangely shocking that a very influential Islamist thinker considered “true Islam” to be merely a combination of Christianity and communism? In effect, Qutb treated Islam as counterfeit, rather than as revealed,

absolute truth. Of course, this was necessary since Qutb wanted to remake Islam in the image of foreign and completely un-Islamic gods.

Eyes Wide Open

Western observers and policymakers should be mindful of the true Western influences that created contemporary Islamic radicalism, in order to properly understand and devise policies to deal with Islamic terrorism.

To date, unfortunately, most Westerners have misunderstood radical Islam as a revival of an original form of Islam, as Islamic “purism” or “literalism.”

This is an extremely dangerous delusion. As this article demonstrates, the sources of terrorism’s ideology are foreign and, ironically, originated in the West—ironically again, the main (but not only) target of Islamic terror. It is these sources—primarily fascism and communism—that must be seen for what they are: perverse, criminal attempts at undermining Western Civilization in order to establish an oppressive, totalitarian police state. Beginning in the 1920s, these criminal plots spread beyond the confines of Western societies into the domains of “subjugated” peoples. In their thirst to destroy Western Civilization in the name of their “religious” tradition, radical Islamists are comically and tragically unaware of their intellectual slavery to the West’s worst political ideas.

As such, Westerners can find common ground with traditional and truly moderate Muslims in rejecting, not Western Civilization, but these distortions of Western ideas that history has shown to be destructive to the point of pure evil.

A recent hopeful sign was the Declaration of Islamabad, signed in January 2019 by more than 500 Muslim religious leaders in Pakistan, publicly condemning terrorism and all forms of violence committed in the name of religion.

A month later in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, a historic declaration (below) was signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb. Tayeb holds one of the most prominent titles in Sunni Islam and is head of the al-Azhar Mosque and al-Azhar University in Egypt.

The American CounterRevolution in Favor of Liberty: How Americans Resisted Modern State 1765-1850, Ivan Jankovic, Palgrave Macmillan (2018).

[W]e resolutely declare that religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood. These tragic realities are the consequence of a deviation from religious teachings. They result from a political manipulation of religions and from interpretations made by religious groups who, in the course of history, have taken advantage of the power of religious sentiment in the hearts of men and women in order to make them act in a way that has nothing to do with the truth of religion.

Deo gratias. ± 89

Photography

Hope in Africa Overcoming Poverty & Trauma

I

Ashton Hauff working in her home studio on the photo she took of George Deng, a former Sudanese “Lost Boy” and the current principal of Sud Academy on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya.

90

360

REVIEW

n February 2018, Bismarck natives Ashton Hauff and her husband, Caleb, traveled with family members to Kenya to take photographs and make videos of several projects and schools supported by Christian Mission Aid (CMA). Leading the journey was Ashton’s aunt Debra Kitchel, who founded CMA with her husband, Larry, in 1986.

CMA is a Christian non-profit organization dedicated to freeing communities in Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan from “spiritual, socio-economic poverty,” according to the website. CMA focuses on helping people help themselves.

The organization partners with donors, churches and other NGOs to provide training and resources towards gaining self-sufficiency.

For millions of people in East Africa, crushing poverty, famine, drought and murderous militia raids occur too often. In response, CMA also offers emergency relief from natural and man-made disasters.

Debra lives in Jamestown, North Dakota, in the late summer and early fall, when she fundraises for CMA in the U.S. and Canada, before returning to Africa. Debra asked Ashton and Caleb to make the trip in order to develop media resources for CMA’s website and publications to help raise awareness and support fundraising efforts.

Ashton graduated from the University of Northwestern-St. Paul in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. She returned home to Bismarck, married in 2016 and established Genuine Photography, while also freelancing as a graphic designer and branding specialist. Her husband, Caleb, and his brother, Keenan, cofounded Threefold, an award-winning video production company in downtown Bismarck.

Also making the journey to Africa were Ashton’s parents, Dion (a software engineer) and Shannon (a portrait painter and art teacher) Wirrenga, and her brother, Jaden (also a software engineer).

Here is Ashton’s photographic chronicle of the seven-day trip to schools, churches, slums and projects where hope is overcoming trauma and despair.

This youngster just took part in his first art class, which involved face painting. The class was given by Shannon Wirrenga at the school attached to Pastor Jackson Thiiru’s Baptist church in Kuwinda, a slum on the southwest side of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

Kuwinda residents live on less than $1.25 per day in tiny houses without running water, electricity or indoor plumbing. CMA has supported the growth of Pastor Jackson’s church since the 1990s.

91

Above, left: Students at Sud Academy in a health and life-skills class given

by Ashton’s father and brother.

Above, right: Students playing volleyball on the dirt court behind Sud Academy’s classrooms.

92

360

REVIEW

Saving Lost Boys & Girls Following Sudan’s independence from British rule in 1956, two bloody civil wars were waged. Muslim Arab-speakers in the north, who dominated the central government, tried to brutally transform southern Sudan—whose people are mostly Christian, speak English and are culturally African—into an Islamic state. George Deng (Deng Manyang Buoch) was born in 1984 in southern Sudan, during the second civil war (1983-2005). More than two million people died in the conflict.

Below is Deng’s story, in his own words, of how he was forced to become a child soldier and then made a harrowing escape. Eventually, Deng became the principal of Sud Academy in a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, which has 6.5 million residents in the metropolitan area. The school was founded in 2002 by the Sudanese refugee community for refugee children, including the child soldiers, known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” According to mental health professionals, the Lost Boys were the most badly war-traumatized children they had ever examined.

CMA supports the SUD Academy by providing food and financial resources. Ashton and her husband visited the co-ed school on the first day of their African journey. ±

In Deng’s Own Words I was a happy boy growing up with my parents, two brother and three sisters, until my three sisters and one brother died in the war. There were constant attacks by Arab forces on our village, killing many people including my parents and siblings.

I was the lucky one who managed to escape with my uncle, Dier Manyang, to Rumbek, a small town in South Sudan. We stayed there for two months, and then my uncle was forced to join the military to help fight. I was separated from him and taken to a group of young orphans called “Jech Amer” (Red Youth), which was formed by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Two months later, we were moved to Panyudo near the Ethiopian border, where we stayed for almost two and a half years. In 1990, we were taken into Ethiopia for military training until the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown in 1991.

We were chased and forced out of the Ethiopian side of the border into South Sudan by the new government’s military. On the way, we had to cross the Gilo River and almost 3,000 Jech Amer boys drowned, including my best friend, Joshua Dau. A month later, we were forced by the SPLA to join the war to fight the Arabs, making us boy soldiers. We were all given AK-47 machine guns to fight on the front lines. I was forced to fight in the war until I got shot in 1994. I was taken to the International Committee of the Red Cross hospital in Lokichogio in northwest Kenya, where I spent six months.

During this time, a friend told me about the United Nations refugee camp not far away in Kakuma, where they take in refugees and give them food and shelter. I took his advice and went to Kakuma in 1995. I got my education there and finished Form 4 (high school) in 2007. Then I taught the younger grades in the refugee camp through 2008.

During this time, I got a call from John Mayiik, the founder of Sud Academy. He asked me to come and help him. I did so and, in 2009, I took a teaching certificate course and became certified.

Then in 2011, while teaching at Sud Academy, I met a pastor from Ghana who helped sponsor me to complete my college diploma in education. I am now the principal of Sud Academy.

George Deng, principal of Sud Academy, in his office.

93

Above: Debra Kitchel, who cofounded CMA with her husband, Larry, walks with students at Nkaimurunya Primary School, a government school located beside Gataka Slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Right: A young woman of the Maasai tribe waits for supplies, such as rice and beans, which Debra delivered on behalf of CMA as Christmas gifts.

Opposite, above: Entrance to the Girls Rescue Center at an undisclosed location in Kenya. To date, more than 70 girls, ages 10 to 16, have been saved from sex abuse and such traditional practices as female genital mutilation and forced early marriage. Debra’s husband died in 2011 and is buried on the center’s grounds.

Opposite: A young female student runs on the soccer field at the Kambui School for the Deaf, located about 25 miles north of Nairobi.

94

360

REVIEW

95

Medicine

Hyperbaric or Hyperbolic?

Treating Brain Injuries with Oxygen Under Pressure Shae Ryalls ’18, University of Mary, & Patrick J. McCloskey, Editor-in-Chief, 360 Review Magazine

I Every year, there are more than 2.5 million TBI-related emergency department visits in the U.S. This results in about 282,000 TBI-related hospitalizations and 56,000 TBI-related deaths.

96

360

REVIEW

n January this year, Dr. Daphne Denham testified before the North Dakota House Human Services Committee in Bismarck to promote the use of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) to treat traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Also testifying were TBI survivors in support of the bill before the committee to create a Medicaid-funded pilot study to treat 30 TBI patients with HBOT. The study would be conducted by Dr. Denham, who opened a Healing with Hyperbarics of North Dakota clinic in Fargo last summer, after opening her first hyperbaric clinic in the Chicago area three years before.

There are about 1,200 North Dakota residents living with severe brain injuries, which cost Medicaid more than $9 million yearly. Remarkably, the pilot study would seek patients still suffering debilitating symptoms after exhausting all standard care treatments. These symptoms include short-term memory deficits, cognitive impairment, disorientation, depression, frequent headaches and fatigue. In short, the study seeks to help TBI patients whose injuries are beyond the healing powers of traditional medicine.

Nationwide, the long-term outcomes for people with moderate to severe TBI are daunting. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 57 percent remain moderately to severely disabled, 55 percent are unemployed (but had jobs when injured), 29 percent abuse alcohol and/or drugs, and half die within five years of injury.

The bill is receiving strong support from North Dakota American Veterans (AMVETS), since many veterans suffer from the long-term and often devastating effects of TBI, including post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).

Given the data currently available on HBOT’s efficacy, the pilot study would likely demonstrate significantly improved outcomes for these TBI patients. The study would also likely show how to greatly reduce TBI’s direct and indirect costs, since HBOT can be much less expensive than standard protocols and can bring near complete resolution of all symptoms.

Hyperbaric chambers at Healing with Hyperbarics of North Dakota in Fargo. On the left, hyperbaric technician James Scheerenburg monitors a patient in a “dive” inside a chamber, which is transparent, allowing patients to watch TV shows and movies.

Dr. Denham plans to provide data from the study to Medicaid, Medicare and insurance companies to make the case for coverage of HBOT as part of the standard of care in treating TBI patients.

Prevalence of TBIs & Concussions Every year, there are more than 2.5 million TBI-related emergency department visits in the U.S. This results in about 282,000 TBI-related hospitalizations and 56,000 TBI-related deaths.

A TBI is “an alteration in brain function, or other evidence of brain pathology, caused by an external force,” according to the Brain Injury Association of America. A TBI “can be caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head, or a penetrating head injury,” stated the CDC’s recent Report to Congress titled “The Management of Traumatic Brain Injury in Children.” A TBI can also be caused by violent shaking or an indirect event such as a nearby explosion that impacts the brain severely enough to cause injury.

During a TBI, the head and brain move rapidly back and forth, with the brain hitting the skull, causing brain tissue to change shape, which can damage brain cells. Chemical and metabolic changes often occur within brain cells diminishing their ability to function and communicate with each other.

According to the Dakota Medical Foundation, about 15 percent of the state’s 27,000 high school athletes are concussed yearly.

97

Surprisingly, the Report to Congress stated there is a “lack of robust scientific evidence identifying optimal pathways to recovery.” However, the Report did not consider HBOT, for which there is ample clinical and research evidence to count as an “optimal pathway.” A recent article in the Journal of Neurotrauma noted there has been no major advancement in the treatment of TBI in the previous quarter century—except HBOT. The article reviewed the last 40 years of research regarding severe TBI and concluded that HBOT “has the potential to be the first significant treatment.”

As the reader will see, HBOT’s healing powers are remarkable and wide-ranging. This leads many researchers and physicians to worry initially that HBOT might be too good to be true. Such skepticism is prudent but has proven unwarranted. HBOT practitioners make no hyperbolic claims beyond what the evidence shows. As well, HBOT is increasingly being used with other therapies. For example, a 2017 study reported the reversal of Stage 4 breast cancer with a combination of standard chemotherapy and HBOT.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Increased oxygen both enhances cellular repair and reduces inflammation, which is responsible for a majority of the longterm damage seen in [traumatic brain injury].

98

360

REVIEW

HBOT is a form of medical treatment in which patients breathe pure oxygen in a total body chamber, where atmospheric pressure is increased and controlled. The combination of pressure and 100 percent oxygen greatly enhances the body’s natural healing capacities.

Oxygen is a natural gas that is necessary for life and healing. Pure oxygen is the most natural of all drugs. However, HBOT is primarily the application of physics, rather than chemistry, to medicine. The amount of gas dissolved in a liquid, according to Henry’s Law, is proportional to the pressure of the gas above the liquid, provided that no chemical reaction occurs.

The oxygen content of normal dry air is about 20 percent. When a patient inhales 100 percent oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber, which increases the pressure up to 3 atmospheres, the amount of dissolved oxygen in the blood stream increases up to 50-fold (from .3 to 15 percent).

Normally, oxygen is carried mostly by red blood cells, but HBOT dissolves oxygen in all the body’s fluids, which has been documented to improve healing. The high level of dissolved oxygen in blood and other fluids enables—actually forces—oxygen to penetrate damaged tissue where blood flow is hindered. Increased oxygen both enhances cellular repair and reduces inflammation, which is responsible for a majority of the long-term damage seen in TBI. The resulting decrease in swelling restores previous blood flow. Tissues are also stimulated to grow new blood vessels. The increased oxygen augments the ability of white blood cells, which power the body’s immune system, to kill bacteria, viruses and intracellular pathogens.

HBOT is a simple, non-invasive and painless treatment, which is quite safe. Side effects are rare and typically minimal. Much care is taken to screen and monitor patients. For example, patients with diabetes might experience a drop in blood sugar while in the chamber. They are advised to eat before treatment, and their blood glucose levels are monitored prior to a “dive,” the term used to describe a treatment, which is reminiscent of the beginnings of HBOT’s first application in the U.S. by the military, which began testing HBOT after World War I. The treatment has been used safely since the 1930s to treat divers suffering from decompression sickness, also known as “the bends” as often referenced in TV shows and movies.

Dr. Daphne Denham (middle) with hyperbaric technicians James Scheerenburg (left) and Tyson Shade (right).

Healing with Hyperbarics of North Dakota Dr. Denham established the Healing with Hyperbarics of North Dakota clinic in Fargo last July with the goal of treating concussions and wound healing. Hotel magnate Gary Tharaldson was instrumental in attracting Dr. Denham to Fargo and getting the clinic built, in order to bring the benefits of hyperbaric medicine to North Dakotans.

Certainly there is a need. According to the Dakota Medical Foundation, about 15 percent of the state’s 27,000 high school athletes are concussed yearly.

In 2015, Dr. Denham opened her first Healing with Hyperbarics clinic in Northbrook, Illinois, where she and her family were living. Dr. Denham gave up her surgical career to spend more time with her six children. As a career 99

change, she became passionate about hyberbaric medicine.

As Dr. Denham observed what HBOT could do, she noticed the high rate of concussion among student athletes. In fact, three of her daughters compete at the collegiate level in rowing and volleyball. One daughter suffered a concussion in January 2016, shortly after the clinic opened.

“I treated her in our hyperbaric chambers,” related Dr. Denham, “and developed the protocol we currently use. She needed only one treatment.”

Athletes Under Pressure

“Concussion,” starring Will Smith, was released in 2015.

What do Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Peyton Manning and Novak Djokovic have in common regarding recovery from performance exhaustion and injury? The answer, often reported in the news but without explanation, includes HBOT as one of the main therapies.

At the Masters Tournament in 2010, when Tiger was ranked as the world’s top golfer—a position he held for a record 683 weeks in total—he was questioned about how he was able to recover from recent injuries so quickly. He answered he’d been utilizing HBOT. Quarterback Peyton Manning missed the 2011 NFL season recovering from serious neck injuries. He was accused of using human growth hormone to speed healing but instead was receiving hyperbaric treatments. Manning returned to win league MVP in 2013 and his second Super Bowl in 2016.

Both Phelps, who won a record 28 Olympic medals, and Djokovic, currently the world’s top-ranked tennis player, have used HBOT regularly to speed up recovery from competition, training and injury. Djokovic attests to seeing many other top tennis pros using HBOT. In fact, in recent years, increasing numbers of professional athletes and sports teams are using HBOT to improve performance, recover from concussions and help heal more rapidly from other injuries.

National Forget-about-it League In 2016, a study by the Academy of Neurology indicated that “more than 40 percent of retired National Football League players … had signs of traumatic brain injury.”

100 3 6 0

REVIEW

Unfortunately, until recent years, athletes in contact sports, such as Mike Webster, didn’t have access to HBOT. Webster suffered the equivalent of “25,000 automobile crashes,” according to medical experts, during his NFL career without the benefit of the most effective therapy for head injuries, HBOT. In effect, Webster was a human crash test dummy in a sports culture dictating that players shake off head injuries and get back in the game.

Webster played football for 25 years in high school, college and in the pros as an offensive center, mostly for the Pittsburgh Steelers (1974-88). He teamed with Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw to win four Super Bowls and played in nine Pro Bowls. In retirement, he suffered for years from severe depression, dementia and amnesia. Then in 2002, at only 50

years of age, Webster died.

Dr. Bennet Omalu performed an autopsy revealing that Webster suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a devastating condition seen in boxers and elderly patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Webster’s tragic struggles and the connection between the multiple concussions he suffered and CTE became the subject of the movie “Concussion,” which was released in 2015, starring Will Smith.

Lawsuits by former players resulted in a billion-dollar NFL concussion settlement. In 2016, a study by the Academy of Neurology indicated that “more than 40 percent of retired National Football League players … had signs of traumatic brain injury.”

High Concussion Rate Among Young Athletes Because of the movie “Concussion” and many news reports, much more attention is now being given to the prevalence and long-term risks involved in concussions. Most states have passed what are termed “shakeit-off laws” requiring medical clearance of young athletes suspected of sustaining a concussion, before sending them back into a game, practice or training. Better reporting and record-keeping has resulted in more accurate assessment of concussion’s prevalence.

About three-quarters of TBIs are classified as mild TBIs or concussions.

Many concussions go unreported and untreated, so the best estimate of occurrence by the CDC is 3.8 million concussions per year in sporting and other recreational activities in 2017. Two-thirds of these (2.5 million) are suffered by

Yearly Concussion Rates By age group and year (per 1,000 Blue Cross Blue Shield members)

16 13.6

12

14.7

14.9

15.2

AGE 10-19

11.0

Concussion Diagnoses

8.9

8

4

0

71%

2.7

2.9

3.1

3.2

3.2

3.3

2.7

2.9

3.1

3.2

3.2

3.3

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

AGE <10 AGE 20-64

22% 26% 101

Severe TBIs and mild TBIs (concussions) usually affect children and teenagers more negatively than adults.

teenagers, a million of whom reported two concussions in the previous year.

A study based on Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) medical claims data showed a 71 percent increase in concussions for patients aged 10 to 19 from 2010 through 2015. Most of the increase—from 8.9 to 15.2 percent per 1,000 BCBS members—occurred as “shake-it-off ” laws were being enacted.

For 10 to 19 year-olds, fall—during football and the beginning of hockey seasons—is the peak period for concussions, with young males suffering almost twice as many concussions as females. On the previous page is a graph illustrating the distribution of concussion rates by age group. Youngsters in the prime of their middle- and high-school sports careers suffer the most concussions.

Young males were diagnosed with concussions more often than young females at 17 compared to 13.3 diagnoses per 1,000 members. Yet the diagnosis rate for young males increased by 48 percent during the study period, while the increased rate for young females was 150 percent higher.

Concussions also occur often among soccer and volleyball players. Overall, patients aged 10 to 19 were over five times more likely to be diagnosed with a concussion than all other age groups combined.

Worse for Children & Teens

Opposite: Clinical eye-tracking results for a male high school athlete who suffered a severe concussion. The results in the top graphic were measured after the concussion and before HBOT. The eye-tracking results on the bottom were measured five days later after eight HBOT sessions.

102 3 6 0

REVIEW

Severe TBIs and mild TBIs (concussions) usually affect children and teenagers more negatively than adults. “An injury of any severity to the developing brain can disrupt a child’s developmental trajectory and may result in restrictions in school and participation in activities,” the Report to Congress stated. “As a result of TBI, children can experience changes in their health, thinking and behavior that affect learning, self-regulation and social participation, all of which are important in becoming productive adults.”

While most youngsters recover physically from concussions, sometimes there are changes in cognition and behavior that appear months or years later. Typically, symptoms such as dizziness, light sensitivity and headaches manifest in the first week after a concussion. Sometimes, these symptoms persist for months or a year or more, developing into what is called post-concussion syndrome. What’s especially puzzling is that post-concussion syndrome, which includes cognitive, linguistic and neurobiological symptoms, can occur regardless of the severity of the concussion.

Multiple concussions compound this syndrome producing chronic conditions, such as severe depression, impulse control disorder and memory loss, which often lead to alcohol and drug abuse—and worse.

In January 2018, Andrew Carroll, 32, the former captain of the University of Minnesota Duluth hockey team, who played several seasons in the American Hockey League, leapt to his death. Carroll’s family donated

Andrew’s brain to Boston University’s CTE Center, which conducts research into the progressive degenerative disease often due to multiple concussions.

The same month, Shane Callahan, a Valley City resident who suffered from deteriorating brain function and acute personality changes due to multiple concussions playing sports, committed suicide at 27 years of age.

In March 2019, Kelly Caitlin, an Olympic silver medalist, committed suicide after suffering a concussion three months earlier. She was 23 years of age.

None of these athletes were treated with HBOT.

BEFORE HBOT

Student-Athlete Pilot Study in Fargo Dr. Denham treats concussions in patients of all ages at both clinics.

However, her focus has been mostly on student athletes as she is currently running a pilot concussion study at the Fargo clinic. The study is funded by the Dakota Medical Foundation, which enables her to treat student athletes at no charge to the family. To date, Dr. Denham has treated 140 student athletes in Fargo. On average, each student needed three one-hour treatments to recover fully from concussion—that is, complete resolution of all symptoms.

Unfortunately, some athletes didn’t return to finish the protocol, perhaps because their families live far from Fargo, and they might never fully recover.

To help diagnose concussions and confirm HBOT’s efficacy, Dr. Denham uses clinical eye-tracking. A concussion causes a disruption between the brain and eye function. Dr. Denham recently treated an elite male athlete who suffered a concussion while playing for an NHL farm team. His eyes initially reacted erratically in both circular and horizontal tracking and overall stability, similar to the graphics on the right. The young man’s Brain Health Indicator score was 59 out of 100, which is just below functional. After six HBOT treatments over 72.5 hours, his symptoms were completely resolved, as shown by his improved eye-tracking and by his Brain Health Indicator score improving to 91, which is in the normal range for elite athletes.

AFTER HBOT

Cost Savings TBIs impose a significant financial burden on the nation, in both direct and indirect costs, totaling about $82 billion yearly. To illustrate how HBOT could dramatically reduce health care expenditures, consider the cost differential in the case of a female high-schooler who suffered a severe concussion in August 2017.

Over the next year, this girl and her family followed the conventional protocol, which involved an emergency department visit and multiple appointments with the family physician, a physical therapist and a chiropractor. The cost to the family was $2000, partly in travel expenses, and the insurance company paid out about $11,000, for a total of $13,000. However, 103

To date, Dr. Denham has treated 140 student athletes in Fargo. On average, each student needed three onehour treatments to recover fully from concussion—that is, complete resolution of all symptoms.

when this student started back to school in August 2018, a full year after the injury, it soon became obvious that she was far from full recovery.

“She was a straight-A student who was failing,” Dr. Denham related. “She couldn’t keep up with the increased cognitive demands of being back at school since her brain had not completely healed.”

The girl’s family heard about the pilot study at Healing with Hyperbarics of North Dakota in Fargo and made an appointment with Dr. Denham. After 13 one-hour treatments over a month that fall, the young lady recovered fully— and at 4.3 times less cost. Each hyperbaric treatment was administered at the Medicare fee level (about $225) for a total cost of $3,000.

Considering the large number of TBIs per year, the savings would soon mount into billions of dollars if HBOT became the standard protocol. The savings in indirect costs would be much greater, considering that a significant percentage of patients suffer long-term issues, including 12 percent of severe TBI patients who live in a nursing home or other institution.

While student athletes won’t experience such devastating outcomes from a single concussion, the long-term effects are often life-altering as well.

The young female discussed here might have dropped out of school, which would have greatly dampened her quality of life, limited her career choices and diminished her earnings potential. Also, given her persistent sensitivity to light and motion, she might never have played sports again and certainly never competed again.

HBOT Pioneer

The Oxygen Revolution: Breakthrough Gene Therapy for Traumatic Brain Injury & Other Disorders, Paul G. Harch and Virginia McCullough, Hatherleigh Press (2016).

104 3 6 0

REVIEW

There is now “unequivocal proof that HBOT is effective in the treatment of traumatic brain injury of all severities and injuries of any age in any person,” wrote Dr. Paul G. Harch in the preface to his book, The Oxygen Revolution. Dr. Harch is the Director of the Department of Internal Medicine at Louisiana State University’s School of Medicine and the most renowned pioneer in hyperbaric medicine. Since 1986, he has treated more than 70 cerebral disorders, including stroke, dementia and TBI with HBOT with remarkable success.

“The evidence is so compelling,” Dr. Harch continued, “that every patient with a brain injury should seek this treatment as soon as possible after receiving a brain injury.” His research shows that HBOT, administered within two to three hours after injury, “significantly quenches the secondary destructive inflammatory reaction.”

Severe brain injuries can also be caused by lack of oxygen (anoxic) as in drowning or stroke. In February 2016, Eden Carlson’s mother thought she was with her siblings, who thought she was with mom. But two-year-old Eden was drowning in the pool at the family home in Arkansas. Somehow

she got through a baby gate and was found floating face down in the pool.

She had been there for about 15 minutes. Her parents started CPR and EMT continued it, in total for 100 minutes before her heart beat independently.

Eden was taken to Arkansas Children’s Hospital where she was treated for 35 days. The medical staff did everything they knew how to do for her. When Eden was finally sent home, her mother said, “She was a vegetable, unable to do anything.” She didn’t respond to stimuli, squirmed constantly or was otherwise immobile. Eden had suffered serious injury to her brain with the loss of both white and gray matter.

Today, Eden has recovered much of her brain and motor function, and she continues to improve. Her recovery marked the first documented case of reversal of gray matter loss and white matter atrophy (types of brain damage).

Closer to home, Rusty Ouart has been steadily recovering from injuries— for which he was awarded a Purple Heart—suffered in a mortar attack in Iraq in 2008, while serving in the North Dakota National Guard. He was sent home and for eight months suffered short-term memory loss, vertigo, debilitating headaches and constant fatigue, before military physicians diagnosed him with a severe TBI. Ouart has since recovered for the most part, continues to improve and travels nationwide promoting veterans’ rights.

What healed Eden, Ouart and many other patients with severe TBIs was HBOT, primarily under Dr. Harch’s supervision.

Hyperbaric or Hyperbolic?

These outcomes highlight HBOT’s healing powers. As mentioned earlier, many people, regardless of medical background, believe that accounts of HBOT’s efficacy are hyperbolic—at first. How could something as simple and inexpensive as oxygen under pressure produce such positive results?

This is not fully understood and requires more research. Yet, HBOT is being used more widely and integrated into treatment regimes for many conditions precisely because of the mounting supportive evidence.

HBOT practitioners make no claim that hyperbaric medicine is a panacea.

Results vary, but virtually all patients benefit with almost no risk of side effects. Currently, HBOT is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for 14 medical conditions, including burns and carbon monoxide poisoning. Typically, this means major insurance companies won’t pay for HBOT in “off-label” applications, such as treating concussions. Hopefully, HBOT will soon be approved for treatment of TBIs and other injuries.

A significant step in this direction would be approval of the bill in the North Dakota legislature to fund the HBOT pilot study that Dr. Denham would conduct. When this publication was sent to the printer in March, the bill had passed the House and the Senate, but had yet to be signed by the governor. ±

There is now “unequivocal proof that HBOT is effective in the treatment of traumatic brain injury of all severities and injuries of any age in any person,” wrote Dr. Paul G. Harsh.

105

Culture

Journey to THE CENTER™

Geography, Identity & Serendipity on the Prairie Karen Herzog, Editor-in-Chief, Momentum Magazine, University of Mary

Elsewhere, the sky is the roof of the world; here, the earth is the floor of the sky.

Willa Cather

Opposite: Mariah Koenig (left) represents the Rugby Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Cathy Jelsing (right) is the former director of Rugby’s Prairie Village Museum. Both executives spoke highly of Rugby’s civic pride, as they stood under the “HUB” sign, which hangs in the new First International Bank and Trust building at the intersection of US Route 2 and ND Highway 3, across from Rugby’s Geographic Center of North America monument. The “HUB” sign was originally an iconic feature of the Hub complex, which included a service station, truck stop and a restaurant and stood at this intersection from the late 1960s until 2015.

106 3 6 0

REVIEW

I

t’s ironic that rural North Dakota—which most Americans view akin to Garrison Keillor’s quip: “not the end of the world, but you can see it from there”—is actually the center of North America.

In January 1931, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) determined the continent’s center literally by balancing a cutout paper map of North America on a fingertip. The balance point turned out to be the city of Rugby, which today has about 2,700 residents, making it the 18th largest metropolis in North Dakota. Rugby is located about 150 miles mostly north and a bit east of Bismarck, the state capital. Definitely in the middle of nowhere as much as in the middle of everywhere.

Rugby was founded in 1886, three years before the Dakota Territory was divided into North and South Dakota. The city was originally named Rugby Junction for the town of Rugby in Warwickshire, England. Rugby Junction was a stop on the Great Northern Railway (now the Burlington Northern Santa Fe [BNSF] Railway), the nation’s northernmost transcontinental railway.

Surrounding Rugby is a highly productive agricultural region, and there are towering grain elevators lining the BNSF railway tracks running through town to prove it. The area’s wheat-growing prowess is also illustrated in the local phone book’s title, “The Durum Triangle.”

Unlike many small urban centers, Rugby is fortunate not to be located near the gravitational pull of larger cities with more comprehensive shopping districts and malls. Instead, Rugby sits in a sweet empty-ish spot that allows a thriving retail and commercial center to survive.

For more than 85 years, Rugby has taken pride in and prospered due to its designation as the “Geographical Center of North America” and has long had the trademark to prove it.

Then the unthinkable happened. Actually, two unthinkables.

107

Trademark War Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

Leonardo da Vinci

The first unthinkable, some might call claim-jumping. Other people might just shrug—all’s fair in love and war. While rustling a town’s title is not exactly ‘war’—North Dakotans are uncomfortable with hyperbole—the appropriation of the title “Geographical Center of North America” did reach the scale of a serious public scuffle between two prairie communities.

In 2015, Rugby was shaken by a dismaying revelation. Through an oversight, its registration of that title, which must be renewed every 10 years with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, had lapsed. Worse, a bar owner in the little town of Robinson, North Dakota, had discovered this and registered the title at the trademark office, thereby officially claiming to be the Geographical Center of North America.

Rugby’s history and core identity were in jeopardy.

So What?

Markers matter to people living on vast stretches of flat prairie with few visible landmarks. The reassuring spire of a church steeple or grain elevator on a featureless landscape is a way-finder, a home-beacon. It has a name that anchors people on this windswept ocean of grass.

In 1931, Rugby built a 15-foot fieldstone obelisk to mark the exact spot the USGS calculated as the continent’s center. Forty years later, the monument had to be moved to accommodate a highway expansion. After all, as a geographer once quipped to Cathy Jelsing, the former director of Rugby’s Prairie Village museum, just a short walk from the obelisk, “close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and geographical centers.”

108 3 6 0

REVIEW

But when Robinson claimed the obelisk’s inscription as “Geographical Center of North America,” this longstanding marker was in danger of toppling—and that mattered to Rugby’s identity and well-being.

The obelisk was relocated in 1971 to was the busy intersection of U.S. Route 2 and North Dakota Highway 3, where tourists are more likely to stop, especially in the summer. Tourists in vans, sedans, pickups, campers and motorcycles pull up to take photos in front of the now 21-foot-high marker.

Travelers also visit Rugby’s Prairie Village Museum, where they buy souvenir T-shirts and mugs in the gift shop. Visiting families often have lunch at a local franchise or pick up delicious pastries at the Farmer’s Wife Cakes and then buy gas before heading on their way.

“We see people from Norway, Israel, British Columbia,” said Mariah Koenig, the executive director of Rugby’s Chamber of Commerce and of the Convention and Visitor Bureau. “People from all over the world come to see the obelisk.”

“Rugby is a place people want to check off their list,” said Jelsing. One visitor even asked for a piece of the obelisk, she said.

In September, Rugby celebrates Geographical Center Days, with craft vendors, food trucks, kids’ inflatables, a parade and a dance. There is also a Miss Geographical Center beauty pageant, attended every year by Miss North Dakota—who in 2018 was Cara Mund, also Miss America.

“That’s what happens in small towns like Rugby, because you are so far away from bigger places,” said Koenig. “You create things that create interest.

It becomes part of your identity.”

Proudly, as well, Rugby named several institutions to honor its distinctive character, such as the Heart of America Library, the Heart

Upper Left: Rugby’s fieldstone monument, which marked North America’s Geographic Center for more than 85 years.

Upper Middle: T-shirts honoring Rugby’s monument and its place as the historical center of North America for sale at Rugby’s Prairie Village Museum.

Above: A road sign near the Geographic Center of North America monument in Rugby indicating distances to faraway destinations on the continent.

109

110 3 6 0

REVIEW

of America Medical Center and the Heart of America Correctional & Treatment Center.

All of this tourism and economic activity was threatened as Rugby’s claim to fame, its specialness, was in peril.

Hanson’s Bar Caper In 2015, Bill Bender, the co-owner of Hanson’s Bar in Robinson, discovered the lapse in Rugby’s trademark registration and blindsided the city with a title raid.

Robinson is located 98 miles south of Rugby and, ironically, with only 37 residents, according to the 2010 U.S. census, barely registers as a pinprick on the map. The town remains officially tethered to geography by retaining its post office and ZIP code, 58478.

Understandably, Bender claimed the title as an effort to resuscitate Robinson, which had almost 200 residents at its peak in 1930. The oil and natural gas boom that regenerated many North Dakota communities is happening many miles away in the northwestern corner of the state.

Now, a blue metal road sign on a power pole at the turn onto Robinson’s Main Street reads “Geographical Center of North America™.” Below, an arrow points north towards Hanson’s Bar at the end of a short three-blocklong main drag.

With the exception of a new brick bank, the street is lined with several white false-front stores, which could be straight out of a western movie, and some corrugated metal Quonset storage buildings.

The last stop on the main street, as it trails off to meet a fence where the prairie takes over, is Hanson’s Bar, which was originally Ernie’s (à la Ernie Hanson) and then Hanson’s Bar since 1936. Bender and a friend bought the bar in 2015, and they saw no reason to change the name or update the decor.

Then one night, “we were sitting at one of the booths,” Bender related, “and a guy from Canada said he’d read about Rugby being the geographical center of North America.”

“Everybody knows that’s kind of suspect,” Bender replied. “Even the U.S. Geological Survey says it’s just their best guess. So we started looking into it.”

The USGS calculation in 1931 was hardly precise; determining the center of a geographical regions, especially with coastlines, is notoriously difficult.

Bender did some online checking and discovered by accident that Rugby had let their trademark expire in the late 1990s.

“So we got out some maps,” Bender recounted, and with the help of a friend who was a geography major, they made a lot of mathematical calculations and determined they had as good a claim as anybody to the geographical center title.

The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.

Neil Gaiman

Opposite: Bill Bender, the co-owner of Hanson’s Bar in Robinson, ND, sits by the sign on the floor marking his tonguein-cheek claim to have determined the correct geographical center of North America. In August 2018, Bender announced that the bar will house— between draft beer spigots—the International Center for Determining the Center of Centers that will be dedicated to finding the center of cities, counties, states, countries and, well, anything.

Bender certainly has a track record for putting himself and Hanson’s Bar at the exact center of a controversy.

111

So today, the quintessential dark-wood, memorabilia-decorated, smalltown bar takes pride in a new addition, a large floor medallion announcing that you are standing at the Geographical Center of North America.

Shock in Rugby

Believable fairy stories must be intensely practical. You must have a map, no matter how rough. Otherwise you wander all over the place.

J.R.R. Tolkien

The loss of Rugby’s title was unfortunate, said Koenig, with some understatement.

When the news struck that another town had picked off the title, residents were shocked.

“How could this happen?” they asked. Although bewildered, no one in Rugby was ‘not nice’ enough to point fingers at anyone specific.

Rugbyans were also puzzled. This was not the North Dakota way of going about things.

“If we had even just gotten a courtesy phone call, asking ‘if you guys aren’t interested in it anymore, would you mind if we took it?’” Koenig said.

Bender’s statement that he believes in “coexistence”—I think that’s the word he used,” she said, “didn’t clear anything up in minds of Rugby citizens.”

“We think it’s just confusing to visitors to the state,” Jelsing added. “At first we were scared. Can we still put the monument on our T-shirts? How did this happen?”

The Media Loved It

Meanwhile, word spread. By happenstance, the media discovered the small-town Hatfields vs. McCoys tale.

Readers were fascinated and more than a little amused.

“It was a quirky story,” Koenig said.

As Bender put it, “my buddy’s wife was at a wedding in Wisconsin.

She was telling her friends we put in the marker and declared ourselves the geographical center of North America. A reporter from the Fargo Forum was there. So she gives him our info and the story got into the Forum. We hadn’t even gotten the trademark yet. After getting some calls, the Associated Press picked it up. Then I registered it. Once the Wall Street Journal picked it up, it went all over the place. That was the big break.”

Although the title tug-of-war between Rugby and Robinson has been characterized as a humorous tempest in a teacup, capturing the geographical center title was more than a lark to Bender. Part of claiming and holding a trademark is to “prove use,” Bender said, “that we’re actually doing something with it.”

The “doing something” became a yearly festival called Centerfest, which began in August 2016. Centerfest involved free camping, a food truck, street performers, comedians, souped-up trucks and tractors, and lots of music by local bands and musicians.

112

360

REVIEW

“We really didn’t market it,” Bender said. “All we did was Facebook. We had a good turnout. It was busy. The rest of the town loved it. At the town café, it was their biggest weekend.”

Looking forward, Bender said, “Next year, it will be even better. I want to keep it all original and local. Now we’re putting an outdoor stage in. We want Robinson to become a local live-music hub.”

Hanson’s Bar in Robinson, ND.

No More Surprises?

The wrangle between Rugby and Robinson has lingered for three years.

Meanwhile, with the help of an attorney, a lot of research and presentation of evidence to the trademark office that Rugby has a “continuous historical claim” to the title, Rugby enjoyed a huge civic sigh of relief when it regained its registration for the “Geographical Center of North America” on August 22, 2017—well, almost.

Robinson is still listed as the “Geographical Center of North America” in the trademark register. And Rugby was able to claim the “Rugby Geographical Center of North America Rugby ND” trademark.

“They couldn’t register ours. What they did was put ‘Rugby’ on either end of the trademark,” Bender said. “Who cares? Let them have that. That’s what finally became official. We didn’t challenge it. We could have, but we didn’t.”

Bender is unabashed by the whole affair.

“I think a lot of people get the humor involved in it, especially on our end,” he said. “Some people don’t care. Some didn’t like it. Depends on where their farm is, if they deal with people from Rugby. They don’t like to step on anyone’s toes.”

113

Alaska

Yukon Territory Northwest Territories

Nunavut

Newfoundland & Labrador British Columbia

Newfoundland Alberta Saskatchewan

Québec

Manitoba

Saint Pierre and Miq

New Brunswick

Ontario

Maine Nova Scotia North Dakota

Washington

Minnesota

Montana

Oregon

Wyoming Nevada

Iowa Nebraska

Utah

Colorado

California Arizona

Wisconsin

South Dakota

Idaho

Kansas

Oklahoma

New Mexico

Michigan

Illinois

Indiana

Pennsylvania New Jersey Ohio Delaware West Virginia

Kentucky

Missouri

Vermont New Hampshire New York Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut

Tennessee Arkansas

Virginia North Carolina South Carolina

Alabama Georgia Mississippi

Texas

Louisiana

Florida Bahamas

Cuba

Dominica R Haiti

Mexico Cayman Islands

Jamaica

Belize

Ar

Honduras Guatemala El Salvador Nicaragua

22

0°

Costa Rica

21

0°

0°

200

°

114

360

REVIEW

Panama

190°

180°

170°

°

160

15

°

0 14

°

° 60

70°

80°

quelon

Others, though, placed big decals of Robinson’s slogan on the sides of their equipment and buy the “Geographical Center of North America Hanson’s Bar, Robinson, ND” T-shirts that Bender has for sale at the bar.

Bender doesn’t break much of a sweat about reactions to the whole kerfuffle. Instead, he comes across as, while perhaps not exactly a prairie agent provocateur, a guy who doesn’t mind tossing a pebble at a hornet’s nest, just to see what happens.

Bender, who is also Robinson’s mayor, even issued a tongue-in-cheek challenge to the mayor of Rugby to a boxing match to decide the matter, which was ignored.

Perhaps a rugby match—not that the game has ever been played in Rugby—would have been more appealing.

But in the end, Bender said, “We wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun.”

Back in Rugby, an automatic update has been set up to register its altered title before it expires—and to avoid another unwelcome surprise.

A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.

Gilbert H. Grosvenor, Editor of National Geographic

110

°

100°

90°

There really weren’t any real conversations between people in Robinson and Rugby, as far as Koenig, who represents the Rugby Chamber of Commerce, knows. This wasn’t surprising to those who understand the North Dakota instinct for hunkering down to avoid conflict.

“I’ve never even driven through Robinson,” Koenig said. “Honestly, some Rugby folks have driven through the town, just to see the bar. Just drove by it.”

Bender said he reached out to Rugby residents, just to receive “radio silence.” His take was, “I think Rugby is happy about it. They haven’t had this much press about it for decades. If there are hard feelings on their part, we haven’t heard about it.”

Bender acknowledged that keeping the buzz alive has its challenges.

“Winters are tough,” Bender acknowledged. “In the fall, there are a lot of hunters. I bring in microbrews in the summer, and we have an open mike night once a month. We want to have one really good event a month. It’s all about the events. We are doing things other bars aren’t doing.”

Hanson’s Bar is open just three days a week, and, when Bender isn’t there since he also works as a construction contractor, another

0°

British Saint VirginKitts Islands and Nevis Puerto Rico

13 0

°

12

Republic

ruba

Radio Silence

In 2015, Peter Rogerson, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Geography at the State University of New York at Buffalo, published a paper titled “A New Method for Finding Geographic Centers, with Application to U.S. States” in the Professional Geographer, in which he developed a more precise methodology for determining the center of geographic regions. Combining azimuthal and equidistant projections—which more accurately calculate distances between points on the surface of irregular, three-dimensional objects, such as a state or continent, projected onto two-dimensional maps— Rogerson determined that the geographic center of North America is in Center, North Dakota.

115

bartender serves up his customers’ favorites—Bud Lite and Busch Lite, which, respectively, are the first and ninth most popular beers nationwide.

Apparently, hops and yeast are not affected by geographical controversies.

The Center of Quirk

There is no generally accepted definition of geographic center, and no completely satisfactory method for determining it.

Because of this, there may be as many geographic centers … as there are definitions of the term.

United States Geological Survey

116

360

REVIEW

So here, the saga’s second unthinkable emerges. Apparently, once the “Center” title seemed like it was up for grabs and garnered nationwide publicity, recalculating the geographical center of North America became an irresistible challenge.

“Earlier this year a new player [was added] to the geographical center matter,” Bryce Berginski wrote in the Pierce County Tribune on February 21, 2017. “Using azimuthal equidistant map projections and determining final latitude and longitude, University at Buffalo (a campus of the State University of New York) geography professor Peter Rogerson determined the geographical center to be … .”

This is too deliciously serendipitous to serve up without an appetizer.

As North Dakotans say, the state’s mountain and tree removal programs were highly successful. Traveling east to west, the Red River Valley is literally flatter than a pancake. Fields of sugar beets, soybeans, corn and wheat stretch to faraway horizons. The topography starts to roll towards Jamestown, as if a still dawn lake in Fargo produces waves 90 miles west.

The climate turns drier. Rolling farmland around Bismarck cedes to ranch range as the traveler approaches the shimmering, bone-dry canyons of the Badlands.

Punctuating what seems like agrarian infinity are ubiquitous grain elevators and oversized, one-of-a-kind statues, mostly of animals. Travel through the state and you will see a giant Holstein cow, a giant buffalo, a walleye, a turtle, a clutch of metal pheasants, even human figures made of immense round bales of hay. None of these gargantuan sculptures pretend to be great works of art; rather, they are straightforward exclamation points.

The sort of shouting that North Dakotans are too polite to do vocally.

And behind these newish constructions are the older relics of generations past—rusting threshing machines dotting some slight rise in a pasture, like mummified locusts still serving to break up the horizon’s endless arc.

To find the center of this expanse and mark it horizontally—and whimsically—with a monument is like heaving an anchor into the sea. “Here” means something. And for that “here” to be the center of what lies beyond in the New World, which most residents settled in only a few generations ago, carries the incalculable weight of specificity.

Until it moves, that is.

The city-slicker geography professor’s fancy math recalibrated the center of North America to be none other than Center. Yes, there is a town called Center, North Dakota, that by the quirkiest fate of the geographical muses is really the Geographical Center of North America.

Center is a small agricultural community with about 560 residents. It is located 144 miles southwest of Rugby and 90 miles west of Robinson. These three points are all within the standard 3 percent margin of error relative to North America’s 4,400-mile diameter. They form a triangle within which is what most people would call nothing—big farms and ranches and small towns—but without which, we’d all starve to death.

So what’s really at the center of the continent?

Farming.

And another sigh of relief in Rugby. Berginski’s story concluded: “[William] Weimer [Rugby native and partner at Faegre Baker Daniels law firm in Minneapolis] said regardless of what method might be the most scientifically sound, ‘by long ago staking its right to the mark based on the 1931 study’ the Chamber ‘has rights in the trademark that can’t be overcome by alternative calculations.’”

It’s all a bit off-center. ±

Harold Wilkens, mayor of Center, ND, stands beside the granite boulder marking the newly calculated center of North America.

117

Film Commentary

Lament for “Darkest Hour” Losing Churchill’s Character & Resolve Lawrence J. McCloskey, author and Director of the Paul Menton Centre, Carleton University

A Doing your best may not be enough; sometimes one has to do what is required.

Winston Churchill

Opposite, “Darkest Hour,” released in 2017, stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. The film received 68 film award nominations and won 48 times. These included six Academy Award nominations and two wins, including Best Actor.

118

360

REVIEW

nthony McCarten’s book Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink and the 2017 movie based on the book, raise several disturbing questions: Could a leader’s words galvanize large numbers of today’s young men (mostly) and women to march willingly into a war against a maniacal tyrant—at the moment of greatest crisis when that war seemed lost? Further, could they accept severe privation, persevere against adversity, apply personal resilience for the common good and find meaning in the messy mix?

Although far from empirical, asking these questions of friends, family, acquaintances and, more recently, their children has been a fascination of mine with interesting results. About two thirds of respondents say that humans have an inherent, archetypal defense mechanism for dealing with existential threats. But this assumption of collective resolve seems wildly optimistic for no particular reason.

In 1940, Churchill was far from optimistic. The French surrendered, leaving Britain standing alone against—and severely outmatched by— Hitler’s military forces. Churchill doubted whether the war could be won, whether the English Parliament and his cabinet would support him, and whether the common man would respond to the common—and seemingly, losing—cause. These fears were well founded and none of his eventual optimism was founded on anything objective.

Churchill’s ascendancy to prime minister was an act of desperation. He was considered wholly unsuitable, but there was no one else in the British war cabinet for the job. The prevalence of doubt might seem to undermine the legacy of Churchill’s steely resolve against all odds. But in the film and book, conquering doubt is portrayed as a strength. In fact, the resolution of doubt constitutes the narrative arc of “Darkest Hour”—more than the eminent collapse of Europe, more than the bombing blitz of London and even more than fear of an impending Nazi invasion. In fact, doubt

119

“The Gang” posing in front of a corner store beside Gladstone Park in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1938—months before shipping off to fight in World War II. Leonard P. McCloskey, who served in the Royal Canadian Navy as a Chief Petty Officer aboard the destroyer HMCS Matapedia, is on the lower right wearing a fedora.

is the necessary precursor to unflinching resolve. Blind optimism that doesn’t stop to assess challenges will produce courage but seldom successful strategies. “Darkest Hour” progresses narratively from darkness, open-eyed, into light for the 20th century’s greatest leader and the people who found within themselves the will to follow.

Still, there is one significant oversight the book and especially the film commit. While Churchill was having his hour in the Garden of Gethsemane, the fate of more than 300,000 troops—which constituted the core of the British army—who were stranded on the beach at Dunkirk in northern France, was being decided. It seemed certain that few of these soldiers were going to be salvaged. Although “Darkest Hour” recognizes that Churchill implemented the brilliant plan to use hundreds of small private boats to rescue the troops, the movie gives Dunkirk scant treatment. If the Nazis had prevailed at Dunkirk, Churchill’s momentous resolve would have been nothing but a vain flicker. England would have been rendered helpless before a full-scale invasion.

This caveat aside, it’s no exaggeration to say that the war could not have been won without Churchill’s determination and the willingness of British soldiers and citizens to fight, sacrifice and be led, come what may. It is important to keep in mind that the odds of success were spectacularly long.

Resolve in the face of likely victory is one thing, but the decision to fight without compromise in 1940 was an act of defiant courage that is barely understood today.

What was so Great about the Greatest Generation?

I grew up in the shadow of that unflinching resolve. My father enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy in September 1939, only days after Britain declared war on Germany. As a member of the Commonwealth, Canada joined the British war effort within a week, and there was no question for my father and “the gang” (in the photo above) that protecting Mother England was worth any sacrifice. Two of my dad’s brothers also enlisted in the Canadian Navy, while the other brother was too young for service. As well, six McCloskey cousins, just from my dad’s parish, also served.

120 3 6 0

REVIEW

Interestingly, most of the young men in the photo were from Irish Catholic families and didn’t have the warmest feelings for the English. But they were well aware of what duty demanded. They, the common people from the colonies, enlisted in large numbers to fight against totalitarianism and for freedom.

To catch a glimpse of this generation’s character, examine the gang in the photo. Here were 10 teenagers dressed in suits and ties in 1938, posing for a rare—and deceptive—memorialization. The smiles, joviality and elegant clothing mask that this was one of the poorest and toughest neighborhoods in the nation’s capital. My dad, on the lower right, was sporting his only suit and fedora, which he had earned.

My dad started high school during the Great Depression when his father, a master carpenter, was often out of work. To help out the family, which included six siblings, my dad got up at 2 a.m. on school days to work on a milk run. No matter how cold or stormy in the predawn hours, he ran back and forth from the unheated horse-drawn vehicle to carefully deposit glass bottles of milk on doorsteps. After school, he had practices for the gymnastics team and then did homework and chores. At week’s end, he surrendered his earnings to his mother, who gave him back 25 cents for tobacco and cigarette papers.

My dad weighed a boyish 120 pounds at the end of high school. Photos after only a year of service at sea show him as a muscular 160-pound man with a look of fulfillment and purpose on his face—no doubt assisted by the introduction of three square meals into his daily life’s equation. This palpable sense of self-esteem and happiness, radiating from these photos, is a direct consequence of his generation’s commitment of service to others.

This service came with a high cost. More than 45,000 Canadian servicemen and women were killed during the war and about twice as many were wounded. Casualty rates were higher for Canadian than American warfighters since Canada entered the war years earlier. The three McCloskey brothers survived, but one suffered from PTSD and never recovered. Another had burns on his arms that never healed completely, nor was he exempt from psychological

Leonard P. McCloskey on the right with fellow newly minted sailor, Robert Dibben. Both men became Chief Petty Officers aboard the HMCS Matapedia, which was a Corvette class destroyer that escorted transport ships and hunted Nazi U-boats in the North Atlantic during World War II.

121

injury. My dad suffered a severe back injury, which restricted his mobility and left him in considerable pain for the rest of his life.

Never did he utter a word of complaint, which was not exceptional. Nor was he an angry man who took out his misfortune on his family. That was not exceptional either. These men were far from perfect. Many of them drank too much, exercised too little and died early. But they were good men, just as their sisters and wives were good women, many of whom served, if not directly in the armed forces, in the civilian war effort.

What was great about the Greatest Generation, as they have been deservedly deemed, was their genuine altruism in their service to others during the war and then to their communities afterwards.

The Great Disservice

Out of the depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind.

Winston Churchill

122 3 6 0

REVIEW

Churchill had good material to work with: the post-Depression generation who were tough, resilient and willing to sacrifice for the common good in a way that is alien to most people today. In fact, we are so distant from the social cohesion of that era that we can no longer agree on values to hold in common or even that there exists a reason for their existence. The hard truth is, we boomers rebelled against our parents’ “square,” predictable adherence to God, family and country. We took the individual route to self-fulfillment, which is an expressway to hell. We spoiled our kids and damaged their ability to navigate the reality of what this world and life has to offer.

Case in point, the American College Health Association conducts a survey to assess the physical and mental health of college students. From 2000 to 2018, the percentage of students reporting that anxiety or depression negatively affecting academic performance increased from 11.3 to 45.2 percent. Almost two-thirds of today’s students report “overwhelming anxiety, “—a 50-percent increase in just five years. Another marker of the acute increase in health issues is the doubling of obesity rates (classes I, II & III), which are strongly related to anxiety and depression, from 8 to 16.2 percent of students since 2000.

Parental overprotection and the pathologizing of every life obstacle by the media haven’t helped. To be sure, globalization, uncertain job markets after college and the ceaseless blurring of the future that technology creates make everyone uneasy. But compared to their grandparents—who faced the Great Depression, when joblessness and poverty were the norm, and then World War II, during which loss of life or serious injury were likely—today’s youth has little to fear.

Yet many people of war-fighting age routinely talk about their darkest hour in terms of not having access to “safe spaces” when exposed to the “violence of words.” At many institutions of higher learning, including Ivy

League universities, rooms are set aside to deal with student trauma when a speaker is invited to campus who espouses views differing from their ideology. They defend themselves literally by taking up crayons, not guns as past generations.

Too often, we, the children of the Greatest Generation, have performed a tremendous disservice to our children, which is being passed on in large measure to our grandchildren. Coddling instead of discipline and true love, inflated self-esteem instead of honest appraisal and unconditional yet uncompromising love, the illusion of endless choice instead of commitment and resolve. Indeed, anxiety is greatly heightened in a culture where one doesn’t ever have to really commit to a spouse, a career, a community, a life. Flux obscures focus, between which is an unbridgeable chasm of doubt.

On July 4, 1965, less than 20 years after V-Day, English playwright Noel Coward attended a performance of the Beatles in Rome. In his diaries, Coward—hardly an old-fashioned prude—described the boomer generation in its youth:

Beatles fans try to break through a police line at Buckingham Palace, where the group were due to receive the Member of the British Empire decoration from the Queen on October 26, 1965.

I was truly shocked and horrified by the audience. It was like a mass masturbation orgy; although apparently mild compared to what it usually is. … Mob hysteria when commercially promoted, or in whatever way promoted, always sickens me. To realize that the majority of the modern adolescent world goes ritualistically mad over those four innocuous, rather silly-looking men is a disturbing thought.

Perhaps we are whirling more swiftly into extinction than we know.

Today’s young people, who are products of the pervasive self-esteem and identity-politics industries, are led to fixate on inward preoccupations in an age of anxiety and the concomitant mystery of increasing mental illness.

These are primarily symptoms of a crisis of meaning. Most of today’s youth don’t have early morning jobs to help support their family; they don’t believe they are an integral part of something larger than themselves; they 123

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Winston Churchill

aren’t given relief from the burden of self in the service of others; they have been led to believe in the material world but, deep down, they suffer from the knowledge that self-centered, superficial realities are fraudulent. This nihilistic worldview has metastasized in less than half a century to create a spiritual ennui that is literally making our kids sick.

My parents’ world, Churchill’s generation, embraced the adversity that naturally breeds resilience, but which boomers decided to throw off—that is, we did not move forward, taking some of our parents’ generational attributes and discarding others; we threw out the proverbial baby with the bath water and proceeded to raise our kids without the context of common values.

But it isn’t working out, and it isn’t going to work out until we get back some purpose, something outside of self, something that admits to the self-evident truth of the existence of God, or put in ultra-modern terms, the reality that allegiance to self is self-destruction. We need to alleviate the selfish notions we have instilled in our kids or else face our darkest hour, for which there will not be a modern-day Winston Churchill to rise and save us. ±

Lament for Spilt Porter: Longing for Family and Home, Larry J. McCloskey, Castle Quay Books (2018). The photo on the book cover is Larry’s mother, Irene McCloskey (née O’Neill) at three years of age on the family farm in Navan, Ontario.

I found the issues raised in Lament for Spilt Porter to be stimulating and worth exploring, and I particularly enjoyed the narrative related to Larry’s Irish Catholic background.

– Dr. Bette Stephenson, Former Ontario Minister of Education, Colleges and Universities; Officer of the Order of Canada

124 3 6 0

REVIEW

Film Commentary

Apocalypse Now & Then A Quiet Place, Annihilation & Blade Runner 2049 in King Lear’s Shadow Nathan M. Kilpatrick, PhD, Administrative Chair of Language, Communication and Fine Arts, University of Mary

T

he end of the world is a strange thing to think about, but the Christian Church does so yearly as believers await the coming of Christ at the nativity. Looking back to celebrate the birth of Christ two millennia ago is also the season of looking ahead to the Second Coming of Christ and End of Days. Thinking about this religious vision of the end of the world brings hope in the final redemption. At best, apocalyptic narratives in literature and film offer what novelist Cormac McCarthy calls “the ponderous counter-spectacle of things ceasing to be” in his Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Road. By stripping away the things of this world, apocalyptic narratives attempt to arrive back at the hand that made the world, the creator whose work radiates throughout the created order and whose sustaining has preserved that world from its own destruction.

Typically, contemporary film is anything but religious, and cinematic apocalyptic narratives usually trigger despair: the destruction of this world and the potential obliteration of the human species. Instead of providing McCarthy’s “counter-spectacle,” most of today’s apocalyptic films present cinematic funhouse mirrors that distort the audience’s reflection: What they see is a disfigured view of themselves clarified by simplification in the unmaking of the world.

Yet three recent films demand closer consideration, for they begin to explain both the appeal of peering into the breaking glass of an apocalyptic world and the reward of sifting through these dark narratives to arrive back at the source of life.

“Annihilation,” starring Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh, was released in 2018. The film received 44 award nominations with 12 wins, including several for best visual effects and best science fiction film.

125

“King Lear,” a TV movie based on Shakespeare’s play, was released in 2018. The film stars Anthony Hopkins (right) as King Lear and Florence Pugh (left) as Cordelia.

Director Alex Garland’s adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel Annihilation and the long-awaited follow up to Ridley Scott’s acclaimed film “Blade Runner,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049,” reveal a desire for relationship. At the same time, they posit the modern world’s belief that such relationship depends on human redesign—and precisely because we are so broken, there is little hope of salvation.

John Krasinski’s 2018 film, “A Quiet Place,” provides a startling counterpoint to these sci-fi apocalypses in its horror-based recovery of the sacramental meaning of family life. While “Annihilation” (the film) and “Blade Runner 2049” clarify mankind’s desire for relationship, their reliance on a closed cosmos inherited from the modern world, devoid of transcendence, undercuts the genre’s appeal and settles on a half-heartedly nihilistic despair that awaits a final revelation—while denying this possibility—to restore meaning to the end of the world. In contrast, “A Quiet Place” locates an image of that meaning within the sacrifice attendant to raising children and thus reveals the very love that holds things together, even at the end of the world.

Apocalypse Then The first fully developed iterations of the apocalyptic genre were the scriptural apocalypses of the prophets Daniel and St. John the Divine, which responded to the oppression endured by their audiences. When the biblical Book of Revelation was written during the early persecution of an infant Church, St. John assured his readers of the eternal significance of their suffering. Encoding their experiences in rich images with multiple meanings, this biblical text bespoke hope insofar as it assured the audience of their eventual renewal and beatitude through a formulaic narrative: A seemingly 126 3 6 0

REVIEW

benign evil insidiously overtakes this world, the righteous suffer, a divine agent appears to save the righteous, and this world is remade into paradise through catastrophic turmoil that prepares the righteous for their eternal reward. By promising the future restoration of all lost things, the narrative of Christ’s return and establishment of a kingdom of justice increased the fortitude necessary to endure suffering by providing an understanding of suffering’s role in the ultimate entrance into Paradise.

This Christian understanding of the end of this world contrasted with that of the pagan world, represented in the haunting final moments of William Shakespeare’s masterpiece “King Lear.” Clutching his daughter Cordelia, the weary and possibly insane Lear shouts to the other players and the audience, “Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones.” The command to weep with those who weep invites the audience to share in Lear’s grief. One player responds to this cry of pain with a question left unresolved by the end of the play. Kent asks, “Is this the promised end?”—by which Shakespeare recasts the events of this play in a new genre: that of promised ends.

The downfall of a particular king in a long-dead kingdom seems paltry substance for a piece of apocalyptic literature. But Lear’s hope that Cordelia’s life will “redeem all sorrows/ That ever I have felt” sees in the midst of the tragic the possibility of a redemptive sacrifice. Yet this lacks transcendence because of Lear’s pagan acceptance of a fated and, thus ultimately closed, cosmos. This hope refutes Kent’s question—an apocalypse is not the promised end of a horror but instead the potential redemption of every earthly loss.

This paradox—that redemption is revealed in the sorrowful uncovering of ends—is what apocalyptic literature does at its best. The greatest apocalyptic narratives must both reveal ends and offer images of salvation.

In response to Kent’s characterization, then, it would be helpful to recognize how apocalyptic literature can define this “promised end.” To be a great apocalyptic work, the text must provide an image of that promised end that helps the audience understand itself and the world. Two meanings define the spectrum of apocalyptic revelations: that humanity’s promised end is a terminus, a final word to which there is no reply because there is nothing beyond this end. In other words, all of human life is nothing more than one damned thing after another, ending in a slow trudge toward nothingness eased by temporary bouts of pleasure that ultimately change nothing.

By contrast, this promised end could reveal a telos, the idea that man’s end has been put in place by a benevolent creator, and all human life prepares the person for participation in everlasting blessedness. Between these two extremes lie a number of examples that lean in either direction, but the proposed accounts illuminate how humankind can begin to understand the significance of this mortal coil and its countless vicissitudes.

By stripping away the things of this world, apocalyptic narratives attempt to arrive back at the hand that made the world, the creator whose work radiates throughout the created order and whose sustaining has preserved that world from its own destruction.

127

Annihilation as “New” Transcendence

Lena (Natalie Portman), a professor of cellular biology, examines an alligator in the Shimmer, where DNA is being refracted across species.

Lena has just extracted a shark tooth from the giant reptile’s jaw.

128 3 6 0

REVIEW

Such observations might seem off-the-wall for considering contemporary films, but the multiple meanings of a storyteller’s promised end become ways of considering the success of a popular apocalyptic narrative. “Annihilation” follows biologist and former U.S. Army soldier Lena (Natalie Portman) one year after her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) went on a classified mission.

Since then, Lena has attempted to maintain hope of his return as she teaches advanced courses on molecular biology.

The film begins properly when, without warning, a dazed Kane appears outside their bedroom one evening with little explanation about where he’s been and, almost immediately, coughs up blood. Attempting to take him to the hospital, Lena and Kane are abducted by military personnel who take them to Area X, a quarantined military camp stationed near the ominously named “Shimmer,” a menacing and growing phenomenon represented beautifully through prismatic, computer-generated effects. There, Lena meets Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who tells her Kane is the only survivor of a mission into the Shimmer to investigate the origins of the encroaching threat.

While Kane is on life support, Lena joins a team of investigators on a mission into the Shimmer to ascertain the cause of Kane’s illness. What they experience reveals the film’s nearly nihilistic assumptions about human nature and the closed status of the universe. These become evident during

encounters with species inside the environment and small moments of dialogue suggesting the problem the film is trying to solve: humanity’s death drive that manifests in a series of self-destructive behaviors that must be annihilated before any person can be saved.

Key to the film’s success is its careful establishment of a beautifully damaged world within the Shimmer, one to which the crew brings their broken humanity. As the five investigators—Lena, Dr. Ventress, anthropologist Cass, paramedic Anya and physicist Josie—discuss the possibilities of why no one except the perilously ill Kane has survived the missions, two theories emerge about what has happened: either something within the Shimmer—a mysterious force, perhaps alien—has been killing investigators, or something about the experience of the Shimmer triggers sociopathic violence. The effects of the Shimmer are almost immediate: the women lose huge blocks of time, the interference of the Shimmer on their communication equipment increases their isolation and genetically mutated animals attack without warning.

However, the most poignant moments of their first few days in the Shimmer come from the women’s revelations about themselves. Cass tells Lena, “We’re all damaged goods here,” noting Josie’s hidden self-harm, Dr. Ventress’s clinical absence of human emotion, and Anya’s addictive behaviors masked behind bursts of rage and paranoia. Of herself, Cass admits a motivation for participation in the mission: the death of her only child, which brought about her inclusion among the damaged women. As she describes, she suffers from “two bereavements—my beautiful girl and the woman I once was.” Each crew member volunteered for the mission because she has little to lose and even less to live for. The notable exception is Lena, who seeks an answer in the Shimmer that might save her dying husband and thus reestablish a clear purpose for her life.

Lena (middle) enters the Shimmer with the other members of her investigating team.

Key to the film’s success is its careful establishment of a beautifully damaged world within the Shimmer, one to which the crew brings their broken humanity.

129

It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning.

They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.

Soren Kierkegaard

130 3 6 0

REVIEW

This damage remains a significant theme throughout the movie, as it provides a common thread uniting various remnants of previous missions, encounters with mutations in the Shimmer and the discovery of the physical properties of the environment. Early in the movie, during Lena’s lecture to her students, she explains cellular death with a grim assessment of human potential: “The cell’s death is a result of a fault in our genes.” Blaming biological death on genetic conspiracy, Lena’s explanation suggests the failures she and the women have brought into the Shimmer are fated, chosen for them by genetic accident and inclusion within a damned and deluded species. Though each woman aspires to be more, each confronts her tendency toward self-destruction, a drive Dr. Ventress characterizes as “coded into each cell.” The unfortunate demise of each crew member comes from this coded failure, regardless of the motivation driving each person’s action.

Even the most noble of these deaths—self-sacrifice to protect a fellow investigator against a terrifying creature—results in the same end, the reshaping of human identity as one among many biological elements being refracted through the Shimmer.

Indeed, the film presents the Shimmer as indecipherably destructive in what is happening to the living species within its borders. The field created by an alien force refracts the DNA of biological specimens into each other— plant life begins to share genetic material with human life, animals are mutated across species, and flowers bloom brilliantly in iridescent shades because genus boundaries seem to disappear. More significantly, the film presents this dissolution of individuality as a good thing, for the human tendency toward self-destruction existed long before Lena enters the Shimmer.

At first glance, a seemingly random flashback in the movie reveals Lena engaging in a sexual relationship with a man other than her husband. While she breaks off the affair, describing the relationship as a mistake, the film reveals this as Kane’s motivation for signing up for the mission into the Shimmer in the first place. He entered this alien force because of Lena’s predetermined self-destructive activity. What Kane, the other investigators and, ultimately, Lena seek in the Shimmer is an escape from their failures, for each desires to be free of brokenness.

Significantly, Lena recognizes that her redemption requires the salvation of Kane as well. Because her offense was against her marriage vow, her sanctification must seek to restore that broken relationship. This assertion of self against the Shimmer’s dissolution of specificity points to what has made Lena distinctly herself. Given the closed cosmos of this film, such a concern for Lena’s betrayal is optimistic, for it suggests a meaning to their moral actions that transcends their world and the random violence of the Shimmer, even if it only grasps at that meaning.

The film’s solution comes in the nearly surrealistic climax of the film, when Lena arrives at the epicenter of the Shimmer’s expansion, a lone lighthouse on a nearly vacant beach that houses what could be described as an alien life force, beautiful in its destructive ability. There, she finds Dr. Ventress, who has so identified with the alien force that she dissolves into nothingness when speaking with Lena. The final ten minutes of this scene has Lena fighting with another being with no distinct personality but who precisely matches her every motion and action in a perfectly choreographed symbol of Lena’s battle with her self-destructive behavior.

How she survives this battle and the long-term effects of her experience in the Shimmer should remain a mystery to be discerned by a thoughtful viewer, but Lena’s final characterization of the beings she encountered in the Shimmer is noteworthy. When asked what these beings wanted, Lena responds, “It’s not like us. I don’t know what it wants. … It was changing everything, making something new.” The possibility that she has become something new, something more than Lena was before her journey into the Shimmer, begins to explain the content of this apocalypse’s revelation.

From Dr. Ventress’s dissipation to Lena’s seemingly changed nature after her experience to the disturbing video footage showing how Kane survived the Shimmer, the film suggests that humanity’s hope may lie only in its annihilation. To be clear, I don’t mean by this term that these characters cease to exist in some fashion; rather, the film seems to celebrate the annihilation of what has made them noticeably and particularly human, seeking an escape from the genetically determined self-destruction through an incorporation into a higher, alien species that seems to be above human concerns like the morality of destruction.

Kane’s final question haunts the audience, too: “Are you Lena?” to which there is no clear answer, though the film suggests a substantial change to Lena by shooting her through a glass of water, the image refracted to make her look out of place within her world, a shot that mirrors the establishing conversation with the newly returned Kane. Instead, the film seems to ask if Lena was worth preserving as herself and answers that question in the negative.

Garland’s film, then, posits the telos toward which humanity is aimed as an anti-humanist cessation of a species. Lena and Kane are only worth saving when they eliminate those very things that made them human, and they transcend their limitations by becoming less than what they were and at least partially alien. Such a remaking, however, means a terminus for the human species. There is nothing beyond this point of annihilation for what Lena and Kane have been. Instead, the movie seems to bid them, and their all too human audience, good riddance.

Total annihilation has a way of sharpening people’s minds.

Yuval Noah Harari

131

The Birth of a Soul in “Blade Runner 2049” In contrast to “Annihilation,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049” ostensibly celebrates what multiple characters throughout the film call the miracle of birth. Picking up the events of the previous “Blade Runner,” 30 years after that film’s conclusion (in 2019), Villeneuve’s film follows Agent K (Ryan Gosling), a blade runner for the Los Angeles Police Department.

A blade runner is a replicant commissioned to track down and “retire” rebellious replicants (artificial humans created to serve the needs of this post-apocalyptic world).

“Blade Runner 2019” presents a much darker world than in the original film, since the ecosystem has collapsed, and survival depends on tycoon Niander Wallace’s (Jared Leto) invention of synthetic farming. The film opens with K pursuing the replicant Sapper Morton and accidentally discovering the remains of a replicant who gave birth—an unheard of possibility for these artificial humans. Much of the movie then follows K as he attempts 132

360

REVIEW

to find the child born to the replicant, stave off aggression from the Wallace Corporation, and ascertain the significance of his life in a world reluctant to acknowledge his humanity but willing to sell him the illusion of human community in the form of his digital girlfriend, Joi (Ana de Armas).

“Blade Runner 2049” explores the question of what makes someone a human being. Because the film follows K, a replicant, director Villeneuve must work to have audiences identify with him. After the opening confrontation with Sapper Morton, the first half-hour of the movie slowly increases K’s isolation by showing both human rejection, because he is a replicant, and replicant rejection, because he kills their kind.

Indeed, K’s closest relationship is with the digital Joi, an almost perfect representation of ideal 1950s domesticity, first presented after having fussed with K’s dinner for hours. However, the film repeatedly illustrates Joi’s lack of substance, both with the flickering visuals of her fading hologram and the proliferation of other versions of her marketed throughout the community. Joi is the cyber projection of K’s desire for companionship,

“Blade Runner 2049,” starring Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, was released in 2017. The film received 144 award nominations with 88 wins, including Oscars for Best Achievement in Cinematography and for Best Achievement in Special Effects. The film also won Best Science Fiction Film from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA. Above, Agent K (Ryan Gosling) looks for Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the main character in the original “Blade Runner.”

133

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder.

And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Isaiah 9:6

134

360

REVIEW

but her appearance begs the question of the legitimacy of K’s humanity. If a replicant can desire human companionship, is that sufficient evidence for his or her humanity?

The shimmering illusion of K’s experience is also demonstrated in the confrontation with Sapper Morton. While Sapper’s life appears dreary on the synthetic protein farm, he growls at K, “You’re happy scraping shit because you’ve never seen a miracle.” In contrast to K’s perpetual acceptance of his isolation, Sapper’s barely contained rage comes from his experience of the miracle of the child born to a fellow replicant. Visually signified by a bright yellow flower growing over the remains of the child’s mother, Rachael, that miracle provides more meaning to Sapper’s life than obedience to his human superiors does for K. When K is tapped to investigate whether or not Rachael’s child survives, K must confront the possibility there is a meaning to his life that transcends the illusive circuit of imagined pleasure with Joi. Much of the movie’s success revolves around its consideration of how to measure human dignity. Despite being a replicant, K knows the significance of human life and the concomitant cost of taking that life. When asked by Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), a human, why the thought of killing this child bothers him, K notes that he’s never retired a thing that was born, which unsettles him because “to be born is to have a soul.” This declaration seems to come from nowhere—K is a replicant and thus would have no context for questions about the significance of birth.

For the audience, such a statement demonstrates Villeneuve’s attempt to grasp at meaning as the characters pursue Rachael’s child, because the film shifts the traditional Judeo-Christian definition of bearing the image of a creator to a simpler understanding of humans as born beings, a definition that could begin to include replicants.

In contrast to K’s discomfort with the mission to find Rachael’s child, Wallace’s arrogation of creator status resonates throughout his eerie allusions to Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

The linking of Rachael’s child to a messianic prophecy suggests that Wallace believes this child will bring hope for humanity’s future. However, a few moments later, he tells his confidante, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), about his plan for the replicants he’s created: “We could storm Eden and retake her.” Thousands of self-replicating artificial humans would simply serve to aggrandize his diabolic ambition.

In linking to this child of his creations’ creation, Wallace sets himself up as a rival to God, powerful enough to recapture Paradise after man has fallen. To

do so, Wallace must master the gift of life and capture the replicant’s child, so that he might establish his divine power over families.

Caught in the crosshairs of a variety of interests at play in the social and political implications of Rachael’s child, K starts recovering implanted memories that conjure the phantasm of lost childhood, stray moments in which he may have been involved from the beginning in the plot to hide this replicants’ child, either as the child or as a decoy in larger machinations.

Upon visiting an expert memory-maker for replicants, K must parse through the implications of these memories. When this doctor tells him that authentic memories were given to replicants, so they may have “real human responses,” K must consider the confusion this necessarily causes. However, the line separating the replicant blade runner from natural humans consistently shifts in response to the degree megalomaniacs like Wallace impart humanity to their creations.

The film’s conclusion takes a particularly dark turn when divergent agents (blade runners, replicants and humans) and groups of replicants and humans clash over the meaning of Rachael’s child. While Luv and Wallace see the child as the newly promised end—their elevated status as creators of a strange, terrible new world—their insistence on achieving this end requires violence. In contrast, the leader of the remaining rebellious replicants, Freysa, tells K, “That baby meant we were more than just slaves. If a baby can come from one of us, we were our own masters … more human than humans.” While Wallace and Luv saw the child as the means of enslaving future races of both humans and replicants, Freysa sees the child as the key to a liberated future in which replicants no longer need to obey their creators. Both parties see a chance for man’s place within the cosmos to be catastrophically overturned and replaced by replicants.

In the original “Blade Runner,” Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) was a former LAPD officer who worked as a blade runner. In “Blade Runner 2019,” Agent K, the main character who is a replicant blade runner, searches for and finds Deckard.

The reductio ad absurdum is God’s favorite argument.

George Tyrrelli

135

There will always be another reality to make fiction of the truth we think we‘ve arrived at.

Christopher Fry

136

360

REVIEW

What neither Wallace nor Freysa consider, however, is that Rachael’s child is a good unto itself, prior to achieving the instrumental and secondary goods of either political strategy. K gains this insight from the least likely of sources—the reappearance of Deckard from the movie’s prequel, played to perfection by the grizzled Harrison Ford, who is actually the father of Rachael’s child. In his conversations with Agent K, Deckard does not speak to the child’s political import or social significance. Instead, he loves the child, even as a stranger. After being captured by Wallace and tortured for information regarding the child’s location, Deckard continues his apolitical stance even when tempted to despair by the appearance of a faux Rachael, newly designed by Wallace. To this, Deckard simply rejects the illusion, unlike K’s regard for the holographic Joi, opting instead for knowing what’s real. Rachael is gone and cannot be brought back. By honoring that loss with his grief, Deckard rejects the reducibility of his beloved to an appearance, even if he doesn’t resolve the question of what constitutes a human.

Neither “Blade Runner 2049” nor “Annihilation” ultimately knows how to resolve the questions their apocalypses raise. Like Kent in “King Lear,” they look to the future and see only the image of the horror of what man might become. Because their worlds depend on a closed cosmos—one in which the closest a person can come to God is a destructive alien species or the megalomaniacal Wallace—both movies accept that man must be eradicated to redeem him from his failure to live as he ought.

Whether through the Shimmer’s refraction of one species into another in “Annihilation” or the usurpation of the human race by a better, more efficient, but less human species in “Blade Runner 2049,” the distorted image of humanity both movies reflect is of man genetically predisposed to destruction and ultimately isolated in depravity until time runs out and the last vestige of humanity is usurped by fitter species.

The shimmer, however, of what both movies rightly see about humanity’s promised end is its social nature. While peering into the chaos of humanity’s destruction, both filmmakers see that each human life coheres to another—Lena seeks to save her soul by seeking solutions for her husband, while Deckard attempts to preserve his child’s life, regardless of its political significance, and recruits Agent K to this mission, thus inviting him to a kind of humanity that might preserve his sanity following the death of his Joi. Like the great cloud of witnesses welcoming saints into paradise, these isolated figures grasp for simple human touch beyond the seclusion of their experiences. They invite their audiences, like Shakespeare’s Lear, to “Howl, howl, howl” over the broken body of fallen humanity crushed by its selfdestruction. Such a ruin awaits a savior to restore the lost things to their true promised end.

The Voice of God in “A Quiet Place” “Annihilation” and “Blade Runner 2049” root their exploration of the end of the world in the destruction of human society, both its material conditions and social relationships. Like Kurtz at the end of “Apocalypse Now,” audiences whisper “The horror!” as they see what man becomes without the relationships that define his place within the cosmos, for what is slowly revealed is the horror of humanity without transcendent meaning in the midst of an ostensibly sci-fi world.

By contrast, John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place” begins with horror—an alien species, which hunts by sound, landed on earth and killed almost all humans—but develops an understanding of the human family as a locus for hope within a seemingly doomed world. Krasinski, himself a father, details what human beings become if, unlike the other films, the audience can accept that relationships are what defines the human person—relationships that are still largely limited to this mortal coil but that hint at a transcendent understanding of sacrifice at the core of love.

Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, Krasinki establishes both the threat to the world and the family that will make up its central action.

Searching the dusty shelves of an abandoned small-town drug store, Evelyn Abbot (Emily Blunt) seeks antibiotics for her sick son Marcus (Noah Jupe), while teenaged, deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and younger son Beau (Cade Woodward) play silently among the aisles. When their father Lee (John Krasinski) enters the store, he signals to the family that it is time to return home. Gathering his household, the scene reaches a crisis when youngest son Beau finds a toy rocket that lights up and makes noise. Lee approaches the toy with the caution of a bomb-squad agent, slowly removing

Beau (Cade Woodward), the youngest child of Lee (John Krasinski) and Evelyn (Emily Blunt) Abbott, just put batteries back into a toy, reactivating the siren and attracting murderous aliens.

137

Lee silences his son Marcus (Noah Jupe) to prevent him from yelling, which would attract the monstrous aliens.

138

360

REVIEW

the batteries that brought the toy to life, reinforcing the command that everyone remain silent. When Regan sympathetically returns the toy to her younger brother, the audience knows what’s coming as Beau reinserts the batteries during the family’s journey home. Almost there, the movie’s silence is broken by the reactivated toy’s gaudy siren. Lee runs to rescue his son, but a murderous alien gets there first.

The movie cuts to black and words declare that 383 days have passed since Beau’s loss. That the smallest noise might bring death remains an ever-present threat, as revealed when the children accidentally knock over a lantern when playing Monopoly. They are immediately afraid they will meet their doom. When that doom turns out to be marauding raccoons, the movie shifts attention to the family’s attempt to make meaning of their lives in the daily tasks and burdens they bear in love for each other.

While “Annihilation” and “Blade Runner 2049” dramatize global apocalypses, “A Quiet Place” remains rooted in the local and domestic. Brief glimpses of the outside world are shown in newspaper clippings detailing the aliens’ monstrous destruction, but this family is isolated by necessity.

Small attempts at communication—the transmission of SOS signals with homemade radio equipment and the lighting of fire-signals atop their corn silo, reciprocated across the countryside—reveal that this family is neither myopic nor reclusive. Instead, their isolation focuses the concern of this apocalypse on the single institution potentially capable of withstanding the end of civilization: the family. While empires topple and corporations become dust, the family necessarily becomes stronger to preserve the wellbeing of its members.

This is what Krasinski’s film does so well: it makes this family real enough to avoid trite cliché, instead building their world with small moments of family interaction that would make sense in a less apocalyptic movie. Before their evening meal, the family holds hands in a silent moment of prayer; the homeschooling mother must cajole her son into doing his schoolwork; the teen daughter shows a bad attitude at various moments. However, the film also carefully shows how life in this decimated civilization requires a great deal of work, as the parents exhaust themselves to put food on the table, and the children contribute to the family’s wellbeing. Beyond the bare necessities, however, this family shows its love in sweet, significant moments.

Each night, after the kids have gone to bed, Lee attempts to manufacture a working cochlear emitter for his daughter, whose handicap makes her more vulnerable. Evelyn interrupts her husband to communicate through sign language, which characterizes the movie. She insists they dance to Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” which they listen to through headphones. The singer tells his beloved he is still in love with her, even as it’s getting late and the moon is climbing high. That song becomes the soundtrack for this family, for the love that motivates their care for each other.

Evelyn and Lee dance to Neil Young’s song “Harvest Moon.” They listen through headphones so the aliens won’t hear the music.

139

Family is the most effective form of government.

Robert Half

The film’s most startling revelation comes on Day 472: Evelyn is pregnant and due within a few days. Given the danger of noise in their situation, bringing a child into the world seems suicidal. However, the love that motivates their family life is optimistically oriented to things working out because they need to. In a moment of frustration when Lee asks Regan to try his newest model of hearing aid, she emphatically signs to her father, “It. Never.

Works,” each word underscored by her anger at her handicap and her father’s optimism. His response—“We’ll keep trying until it does”—communicates what has helped this family to survive. It is not a sentimental communication of affection but the dogged fidelity to each other that tries action after action to achieve what will help the other survive. This resolve seems to be the method by which they will protect their newborn, as well as their present children, and the family arranges an ingenious plan to protect the infant.

However, this tenacity does not deny the grief this family is enduring. The primary tension exists between Regan and the other members of her family, for she feels guilty over Beau’s death. Indeed, she gave the toy back to her brother after her father expressly forbade it. Marcus and Lee, seated near a river that muffles their conversation, talk about how they might increase their strength as a family: Marcus: Do you blame her for what happened?

Lee: No. Marcus: ‘Cause she blames herself.

Lee: It was no one’s fault.

Marcus: You still love her, right?

Lee: Of course I do.

Marcus: You should tell her.

Despite their capacity to outwit the aliens, this scene points to the further revelation needed to overcome the despair over losing Beau. To stave off resentment and guilt, this family must figure out how to tell each other they still love each other—beyond the banalities of our current “love languages.”

“A Quiet Place” offers two images of love rooted in pain and self-sacrifice.

The first is the most gruesome image in the whole movie: Evelyn’s bloody hand pressed against a glass shower stall just after having given birth. After stepping on an uprooted nail and crying out in pain, Evelyn goes into labor and has to deliver the baby while the aliens prowl about her house. Shot after shot shows Evelyn stifling her cry, while the rest of the family works together to distract the aliens with a coordinated plan to launch fireworks, thus luring the aliens away from the newborn. By focusing on childbirth, the film shows that the first act of love—birth itself—is rooted in pain.

140 3 6 0

REVIEW

Then when Evelyn realizes that her two other children are not with their father, she asks, “Who are we if we can’t protect them?”, thereby clarifying her identity as a mother in self-sacrificing protection. In response, Lee seeks out the missing children who have also put their safety at risk by luring the monsters with the sound of fireworks to the foot of the corn silo they mounted. After narrowly escaping the aliens, Lee hides the children in an abandoned car and accepts the choice he must make after being badly wounded by one of the creatures. As the monsters pummel the car, Lee makes eye contact with his daughter and signs carefully, “I love you. I have always loved you,” and then yells at the top of his lungs to draw the aliens’ attention.

How the movie ends, how the family is able to overcome these monsters should remain a mystery, but Krasinski roots his apocalypse in this revelation of love from father to daughter, proving the truthfulness of the earlier declaration that they will keep trying until they find what works. What survives is the family’s love for another and the mutual willingness to sacrifice their lives for each other. The family meets its terminus in arriving back at its telos, the community of love that was its origin point.

Such an apocalypse returns us to the liturgical pairing of the Virgin Mary awaiting the birth of the Christ-child and the Church’s awaiting the Savior’s second coming. What Krasinki’s film corroborates is that redemption for a fallen world comes through the sacrifice that love is willing to make, as Evelyn and Lee prove. They reveal their love for their children and reveal themselves as parents to their audience. Like the Blessed Mother, Lee and Evelyn find that, even in the midst of death, there is life, for the sustaining work of God in such sacrifice redeems the germinal good into a magnificent declaration against the overwhelming chaos.

In such a revelation, we begin to see the appeal of these apocalyptic films, for they reveal what T.S. Eliot was getting at in his masterful poem “The Four Quartets,” which details the passing of time and this world into Paradise: “We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.”

In following the trajectories of three modern apocalypses, we arrive where we started, not in reestablishing national or global structures but in the community of a family and the gift of life it provides for each member. This, perhaps, is what these apocalypses are seeking, and they have arrived back where they started to know the place for the first time. ±

“A Quiet Place,” starring John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, who are married in real life, was released in 2018. The poster depicts the climatic scene, in which Evelyn (Emily Blunt) gives birth as an alien monster stalks her and her children. The film received 92 award nominations with 28 wins, including Best Movie of the Year by the American Film Institute.

141

Contributors u Jerry Anderson is the Art Director at the University of Mary. He earned a Bachelor of University Studies from North Dakota State University and a BS in Design from Minnesota State University Moorhead. Anderson has published photos in many publications, including the New York Times, US News & World Report and Newsweek. He has also published photos in numerous books, including Every Place with a Name (State Historical Society of North Dakota, 1976) and North Dakota 24/7 (Penguin Random House, 2003).

work has been screened at national and international venues. In 2008, Dojs won a grant from the Southwest Alternative Media Project’s Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship Program and completed a documentary titled, “Return to Stolowicze,” which was screened at Encuentro Bicultural De Cine Migracion in Mexico City and broadcast on PBS. u Samuel G. Freedman is the author of seven books, a former columnist on religion and education for The New York Times, and a tenured Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Freedman was named the nation’s outstanding journalism educator in 1997 by the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2012, he received Columbia University’s coveted Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. Freedman’s book-writing seminar has developed more than 85 published authors. Freedman’s most recent book, Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights, was published in 2013 to remarkable critical acclaim.

Freedman’s first book, Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students, and Their High School, was a National Book Award finalist, and The Inheritance: How Three Families and the American Political Majority Moved from Left to Right was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

u Mike Aquilina is the Executive Vice President and a trustee of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, a Roman Catholic research center based in Steubenville, Ohio. He is also a contributing editor for Angelus Magazine. Aquilina has authored more than 50 books, many involving Church history and especially patristics, the study of early Church Fathers. His books include A History of the Church in 100 Objects and How the Choir Converted the World: Through Hymns, With Hymns, and In Hymns. Aquilina’s articles and essays have appeared in numerous magazines, including First Things, Touchstone, Crisis and National Catholic Register. In recent years, Aquilina has hosted 11 television series on the Eternal Word Television Network (ETWN) and hosted feature documentaries on u Karen Herzog has been a working St. Perpetua and St. Augustine. He is a journalist for more than 30 years, frequent guest commentator on Relevant including 20 years as the faith and Radio and EWTN Radio. religion reporter for the Bismarck u Marek R. Dojs is an Associate Tribune. As well as covering religious Professor of Communication at the issues in-depth for two decades, she University of Mary. Dojs earned a BA has written in areas including opinion, in History and Communications from legislation, feature stories, breaking the University of St. Thomas and an news, multipart series, and the social, MFA in Radio, Television and Film historical and cultural issues of the (focusing on Documentary Production) Northern Great Plains. She has served as a writing coach and as a newspaper from the University of North Texas. He editor for various publications on the is a documentary filmmaker whose 142 3 6 0

REVIEW

northern Great Plains. She was the recipient of the Mark Kellogg Award from the Lee Enterprises newspaper chain for her work on “New Directions for News.” Herzog’s stories have won numerous awards from the North Dakota Newspaper Association, including for “Beyond Control,” a news series examining the impact of Missouri River flooding, and for “Living History,” a series of memoirs of North Dakotans who served in World War II. In 2006, Herzog accompanied veterans on the state’s Roughrider Honor Flight to Washington, DC. Herzog earned a BA in English from the University of Jamestown. Currently, she is the editorin-chief of Momentum Magazine at the University of Mary. u Ivan Jankovic, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Mary. He earned a BA in Philosophy at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and a PhD in Political Economy at Simon Fraser University. Jankovic’s writings focus on free market economics, political theory, and American history and culture. His articles have appeared in many prestigious economic and political journals, including the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines and American Political Thought. In January 2019, Jankovic’s book, The American Counter-Revolution in Favor of Liberty: How Americans Resisted Modern State, 1765-1850, was published by Palgrave Macmillan. u Nathan Kilpatrick, PhD, is an Associate Professor of English and Catholic Studies and the Administrative Chair of Language, Communication and the Fine Arts at the University of Mary.

Kilpatrick earned a BA in English and Theology from Azusa Pacific University and a PhD in Literature and Religion from Baylor University. Dr. Kilpatrick’s articles—which have appeared in

for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and New York Times Magazine. Early in Mills’ career, he was an experimental physicist and development engineer in the fields of microprocessors, fiber optics and missile guidance. Mills was also a partner at a boutique venture fund and co-authored a tech investment newsletter. Mills served in the White House Science Office under President Ronald Reagan.

He earned a BA in Humanities from Franciscan University of Steubenville, an AAS in Surveying Technology from Ferris State University, an MLitt in Modern History from the University of St. Andrews and a PhD in Modern Intellectual History from the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Stuart has published articles in numerous academic publications, including The Newman Rambler and Logos.

u The Hon. Nicholas Rostow, PhD, is a Senior Research Scholar at the Yale Law School, specializing in international and national security law and affairs, and U.S. government and international decision-making in foreign and national security policy. From 2016 to 2018, he served as the Charles Evans Hughes u Patrick J. McCloskey is the Director Visiting Professor of Government and Jurisprudence at Colgate University and of Research and Publications at the also held the visiting Linowitz Chair University of Mary and serves as the editor-in-chief of 360 Review Magazine. at Hamilton College. Rostow’s public service positions include: General He earned a BA in Philosophy from Counsel and Senior Policy Adviser to Carleton University and an MS in the U.S. Permanent Representative to Journalism from Columbia University. the United Nations, 2001-05; Charles H. McCloskey has written for many Stockton Chair in International Law, U.S. publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Post Naval War College, 2001; Staff Director, and City Journal. He served as the press Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, secretary for the Minister of Agriculture 1999-2000; Counsel and Deputy Staff Director to the House Select Committee and Agri-Food Canada. His books on Military/Commercial Concerns with include Open Secrets of Success: The Gary Tharaldson Story and Frank’s Extra the People’s Republic of China, 1998-99; Special Assistant to Presidents Reagan Mile: A Gentleman’s Story published by and George H.W. Bush for National the University of Mary; and The Street Security Affairs and Legal Adviser to the Stops Here: A Year at a Catholic High National Security Council under Colin School in Harlem, published by the Powell and Brent Scowcroft, 1987-93; and University of California Press.

Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser, u Mark Mills is a Manhattan Institute U.S. Department of State, 1985-1987.

Senior Fellow, a Faculty Fellow in the Rostow earned a BA, PhD and JD from McCormick School of Engineering at Yale University. His publications focus Northwestern University and a partner on diplomatic history, international law, at Cottonwood Venture Partners, a new and issues of U.S. national security and boutique venture fund focused on digital foreign policy. oilfield technologies. He writes a tech u Joseph Stuart, PhD, is an Associate column for Forbes and co-authored Professor of History and Catholic a book titled, The Bottomless Well (Basic Books, 2006). Mills has written Studies at the University of Mary.

u Shae Ryalls earned a BA in History and Catholic Studies with minors in Biology and Classics from the University of Mary in 2018. Currently, Shae volunteers as a catechist for middle schoolers and studies martial arts, while applying to graduate programs to study either medieval history or underwater archeology.

academic journals such as Logos, Christianity and Literature, and Religion and Literature—focus on missions in Africa, the post-Vatican II priesthood and medieval hagiography. u Larry McCloskey is the Director of the Paul Menton Centre for Students with Disabilities at Carleton University.

He earned a BA in English, an MA in Canadian Studies and an MSW at Carleton University. He has published six young adult novels with several publishing houses. McCloskey has also written articles for the National Post, Ottawa Citizen and the Globe and Mail.

In December 2018, his first adult nonfiction book, Lament for Spilt Porter: Longing for Family and Home, was published by Castle Quay Books.

u Karen Syvertson earned a BS in Education from Moorhead State University, a BS in Elementary Education from the University of Mary and an MS in Education from the University of North Dakota. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and studied culture and education in Japan.

She taught art at the University of Mary and in the Sioux Falls and Bismarck Public School Districts for more than 30 years. Syvertson also served as the Executive Director of the Bismarck Art and Galleries Association for 12 years. u Travis Wolf, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Mary. He earned a BS in Mathematics from the University of North Dakota in 2007, and an MS and PhD in Mathematics from the University of Iowa in 2008 and 2013, respectively.

Wolf was named a Project NExT Fellow (a professional development program for recent PhDs in the mathematical sciences, sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America) in 2013. Wolf serves as the primary advisor for the University of Mary Math Club.

143

city-journal.org/subscribe 144 3 6 0

REVIEW

The University of Mary is a private, co-educational Catholic university that welcomes students of all faiths and backgrounds. The university has its origins in the St. Alexius College of Nursing, opened by Benedictine Sisters in 1915. In 1947, these Sisters established Annunciation Priory in Bismarck, a monastic community independent of the original motherhouse in St. Joseph, Minnesota. Meanwhile, the nursing college evolved into a two-year women’s junior college, and in 1959, the Sisters founded Mary College as a four-year, degree-granting institution. Full university status was achieved in 1986. The University of Mary has been accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools since 1968, and continues under the sponsorship of the Benedictine Sisters of Annunciation Monastery.

Since its beginning, the University of Mary has sought to respond to the needs of people in this region and beyond. Enrollment grew quickly from 69 students to more than 3,000 students today. The university offers 57 undergraduate majors, 12 master’s degree programs and four doctoral degrees. Classes are conducted at the main campus and other facilities in Bismarck; online; at satellite locations in Arizona, Montana, Kansas and North Dakota; and at campuses in Arequipa, Peru and Rome, Italy.

The University of Mary educates the whole student for a full life, characterized by moral courage and leadership in chosen professions and service to the community. Every aspect of academic and social life is infused with the Benedictine values of community, hospitality, moderation, prayer, respect for persons, and service.

Already one of the most affordable, high-quality private universities in the nation, the University of Mary now offers “Year-Round Campus,” a unique college-career option that enables students to earn a bachelor’s degree in just 2.6 years and a master’s degree in four years. This greatly reduces costs and allows students to begin their careers much sooner. The University of Mary offers exceptional educational value, as well as outstanding scholarship and financial aid opportunities. Within six months of graduation, 95 percent of graduates are working or pursuing additional education.

Student athletes at the University of Mary participate in 17 varsity sports in NCAA Division II. Go Marauders!

Maasi children holding the hand of Shannon Wirrenga, a Bismarck native, who accompanied her family to Kenya to help generate photographs and videos to support Christian Mission Aid, which her sister cofounded with her husband. This photograph was taken in the Mara (ancestral Maasi territory) by Wirrenga’s daughter Ashton Hauff, along with photographs featured in “Hope in Africa,” beginning on page 90.

360 REVIEW MAGAZINE US $14 CN $18

“360 Review—edited and designed with a sharp eye to the essential reported detail or arresting chart—provides coastal readers (or anyone else interested) with important information about the Northern Great Plains, where American virtues and aspirations continue to thrive.”

Brian C. Anderson, Editor, City Journal (New York City)

“360 Review is an exciting new venture that should engender discussion and debate!”

Naomi Schneider, Executive Editor University of California Press