Niall Ferguson on the Breakdown of the Rule of Law

Lady Justice: Blindfold, Scales
and Sword*

The other day I shared the values and principles that transformed Western Civilization from a network of regional peoples to a global force. These four forces that came together in Europe (and were exported to North America) were Democracy, Capitalism, the Rule of Law, and Civil Society. 

In my second reading it became apparent that the historian Niall Ferguson's aim here was to draw attention not only to what made Western Civilization strong but to the dangers facing us as these very qualities deteriorate. 

Here are some of my notes and quotes from a section in which historian Niall Ferguson discusses the breakdown of the Rule of Law, opening with this question:

"How effective is the rule of law in the West in general and specifically in the English speaking world today?"

The Rule of Law's Enemies

Ferguson sees four threats to the Rule of Law.

1. How far have our civil liberties been eroded by the National Security state? At the outbreak of WWI Britain enacted the Defense of the Realm Act. The post-9/11 protracted detention of terrorist suspects veiled a similar overreach. And then there's the issue of surveillance on citizens in the name of National Security.

2. The intrusion of European Law with its Civil Law character is a second threat. Specifically, the 1953 European Convention on Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Ferguson calls it Napoleon's Revenge, a creeping Frenchification of the Common Law. 

3. The third threat is the growing complexity and sloppiness of Statute Law which has become a "mania for elaborate regulations." We need a legal "spring cleaning" of obsolete legislation and the addition of sunset dates for new laws. 

4. The mounting cost of the law. He's not referring to the $95 billion a year the U.S. spends on law making, law interpretation and law enforcement. Nor does he mean the spiraling cost of lobbyists seeking to protect themselves or hurt their competitors by skewing legislation in their favor.  Though companies and cities spend only 3.3 billion dollars on lobbying, the real cost is found in the consequences of their work. How much? According to the U.S. Small Business Association this amounts to 1.75 trillion dollars a year.  And this doesn't include the costs extracted via tort law. Bottom line: It costs way more money to set up a business in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world due to all the legal red tape and the cost of lawyers.

Ferguson points us to a book by Joseph Steiglitz and David Kennedy who cite three egregious failings of the rule of law in the U.S. today. 

First: New bankruptcy laws and predatory lending by banking firms have created a new class of partially indentured servants. There are people so in debt that they have to give as much as 25% of their earnings to the banks for the rest of their lives.

Second: Intellectual property law has become absurdly and excessively restrictive. 

Third: With regard to laws concerning toxic waste, litigation costs represent more than a quarter of the amount spent on cleanup. 

Bottom line is that the game is rigged. The unnecessary costs and inefficiency of our legal system are apparent to all, but what is being done about it? 

"Experts on economic competitiveness (interviewed by) Michael Porter of Harvard Business School (HBS) define the term to include the ability of the government to pass effective laws, the protection of physical and intellectual property rights and lack of corruption, the efficiency of the legal framework including modest costs and swift adjudication, the ease of setting up new businesses, and effective and predictable regulations. It is startling how poorly the United States fares when judged by these criteria." 

When 600+ HBS alumni were queried by Porter as to whether or not to off-shore their operations, only 16% said they would choose the U.S. as a place to set up their business. Here are the Top Five reasons the other 84% would NOT. 

1. The effectiveness of the political system (lack of)

2. The complexity of the tax code

3. Regulation (Red Tape)

4. The efficiency of the legal framework (extremely inefficient)

5. Flexibility in hiring and firing (lack of)

By nearly every measure, our reputation "is shockingly bad," says Ferguson.

According to the Heritage Foundation's "Freedom Index" the U.S. ranks 21st in the world in terms of freedom from corruption, way behind Hong Kong and Singapore.

Ferguson goes on to list a dozen more ways that the U.S. has fallen behind when it comes to the Rule of Law, not just in the business realm but in both the personal and political spheres.

* * * 

My Two Cents

In many ways I believe people fail to observe what is happening today because they have a mental image of what it used to be. For example, it has been nearly 100 years since the Pittsburgh skyline was an abundance of steel factories belching black smoke. There has been immense progress in this realm of business pollution. They no longer need a fire department to put out fires on the Cuyahoga River that flow through Cleveland.

In the same way, many of us have a false image of our superiority as a nation compared to other countries when it comes to justice and freedom. Some make a case that there's never been a level playing field in this country, and that's certainly been true for many. Today, however, the cracks are increasingly visible, and an honest observer has to ask how or when--if ever--these things will be fixed. 

The Radical solution is to bulldoze the entirety into the sea. Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals, states that Machiavelli wrote his opus as a guide for the Haves to preserve power and what they have. Alinsky claims his book is a guide for the Have Nots. The path he outlines makes me cringe, but so does the path we're on. 

Is there a third way? Ultimately I find comfort in the notion that "this world is not my home." And yet....

*Photo courtesy ChvhLR10, Creative Commons.

Field of Dreams and Memories

I was born in Cleveland in 1952 , a year in which the Tribe--as the Cleveland Indians were called--had the best starting rotation in baseball, three of whom would become future Hall of Famers. My parents must have been baseball fans because they named the four teddy bears in my crib after those four pitchers. my favorite being a black white bear with skinny arms and legs called Feller.

Bob Feller was a famous fireballer with a classic story of heart and heroism. His roots were middle America, a small town Southwest of Ames, Iowa.

Iowa is also where the film Field of Dreams takes place. The movie, starring Kevin Costner, was based on the novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. 

* * * 

Recent events brought to mind this memory from the first year after we moved to Duluth in 1986. I'd landed my first full time job as a writer. My boss, himself an excellent writer, introduced me to another writer friend and the three of us--Terry, Art and I--attended several monthly readings by authors flown into town by a prof in the lit department of UMD. One of these notables was W.P. Kinsella.

Kinsella began by describing his childhood and how he came to be a writer. He said that his family lived in a remote area in Canada Northwest of here. It was so remote, in fact, the the nearest family with children was a hundred miles away and he was, if memory serves me well, an only child. This led to his developing the fertile imagination which produced his literary career as a storyteller.

You may recall that the lead character in Field of Dreams, played by Costner, is an Iowa farmer named Ray Kinsella. It's a character who is misunderstood, and in some ways a product of the Sixties, which left a lot of us misunderstood. The following conversation between Ray and his wife Annie (Amy Madigan) is part of the story's setup.

Ray Kinsella: I think I know what "If you build it, he will come" means.

Annie Kinsella: Ooh... why do I not think this is such a good thing?

Ray Kinsella: I think it means that if I build a baseball field out there that Shoeless Joe Jackson will get to come back and play ball again.

Annie Kinsella: [staring in disbelief] You're kidding.

Ray Kinsella: Huh-uh.

Annie Kinsella: Wow.

Ray Kinsella: Yeah.

Annie Kinsella: Ha. You're kidding.

James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta and Burt Lancaster, in his final screen performance, are also part of this saga that echoes the magical realism of Jorge Luis Borges, one of my all-time favorite authors.

All this is just an excuse to share some photos from the Field of Dreams location in Iowa that was created for this movie. And maybe an excuse to take a trip down memory lane.

Photos courtesy Gary Firstenburg

Here's a link to his website. Ye shall be impressed.

www.firstinphoto.smugmug.com

FWIW
My short volume of stories titled Unremembered Histories falls into this genre of supra-normal, magical realism. Subtitled Six Stories with a Supernatural Twist, you can find it here on Amazon.

TRIVIA: If I were ever to have my stories turned into an audio book, I would have James Earl Jones be the one to read it. I just love that deep baritone vibe. Thank you, Mr. Jones, for your contribution toward make this film a very special experience.

TRIVIA TWO: "Doc" Graham of Chisholm, whose full name was Archibald Wright "Moonlight" Graham, had the opportunity to play two innings of Major League Baseball, on June 29, 1905. Played by Burt Lancaster, he appeared in a single game for the New York Giants as a right fielder, entering in the bottom of the eighth inning during a game against Brooklyn, but he never got a chance to take a swing at the plate.

TRIVIA THREE: In Chisholm, MN there is more signage honoring Doc Graham than there is signage in Duluth, MN honoring the Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan who was born here.

Eleven Minutes Is All It Takes. Go Browns

"At some point, and I really don't know when, the city of Cleveland became one with its football team. Together they rise and fall, in victory, in defeat. It's inseparable. For better or worse, the Browns are Cleveland." --Opening lines of the History of the Cleveland Browns

In the first ten years of the Browns franchise, the Cleveland Browns won 84% of their games and won seven titles. The team was organized in 1946 and many, if not most, of the players were just back from military service. Paul Brown was a tough disciplinarian, but these guys weren't intimidated by that. Football, compared to combat, was a piece of cake.

The Browns were charter members of the All-America Football Conference which began in 1946. They won the AAFC title in every year of its 4-year existence. The had a 29 game winning streak that went from late 1947 to 1949. They never lost a game in 1948 and finished the season 14 and 0.

In 1950 the Browns joined the NFL and they were ready. All the sportwriters picked the NFL 1949 champion Philadelphia Eagle to win. They assumed the Browns domination of the AAFC was due to the weak competition. NOW they would play real football teams.

Haha. Browns crushed the Eagles 35 -10. The Browns were emotionally ready to show the NFL that they were not a fluke. Marion Motley running back led the league in rushing. The defense led the league in fewest points allowed with 55 takeaways under their belts. 

Paul Brown was one of the great coaches of all time and some of the game's other great coaches years later had been players for Brown and his Browns: Don Shula and Chuck Noll. (I touched Chuck Noll's mailbox once in suburban Pittsburgh. I was walking with someone who said, "Chuck Noll lives there." Such an ordinary nice house in an ordinary nice neighborhood.) 

Paul Brown was the greatest innovator in football coaching history. It was he who invented the concept of the playbook. He famously said, "Football is played with the mind as well as with the heart."

* * * 

According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.

This afternoon the Cleveland Browns will be playing the Kansas City Chiefs in Round 2 of the playoffs. Two talented young quarterbacks will be on display here, Pat Mahomes and the Browns' Baker Mayfield. The Chiefs are favored, but Browns fans are undaunted. Something historical can happen on any given Sunday.

What Was Fireballer Bob Feller's Greatest Achievement?

Bob Feller. (Public domain)

When I came home from the hospital after I was born, there were four teddy bears in my crib, named after the starting rotation of the Cleveland Indians. Three of these became Hall of Famers--Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and Bog Feller. The fourth, Mike Garcia, twice led the league in ERA and was a 20 game winner the year I was born.

Like the 1980s and 90s Atlanta Braves, the Indians were loaded with pitching talent. Premiere among them was an Iowa farm boy who in his prime threw a nearly unhittable fireball, Bob Feller.

I'll interject here that of my four teddy bears, Feller and Lemon were my favorites, in that order. Both were black and stuffed bears. Feller had a white torso with skinny black arms and legs, and black head with button eyes and pinched face. If you see pictures of toddler holding a teddy bear at their side with the hand gripping an arm, that would have been me and Feller.

While thinking about our Major League Baseball season that's gone AWOL this year, I began reflecting on some of the baseball memories of my youth. This led me to looking up stats whereupon I came across a webpage dedicated to Bob Feller. Or more correctly, it was a 2010 poll that asked readers to choose what they considered his greatest achievement. Mike Peticca is listed as the author.

This is what Lemon looked like. My
Feller had skinnier arms and legs.

Frankly, I am always impressed when young people achieve big things early on and somehow keep it from getting into their heads. Bob Feller was a smoking hot pitcher from the start, going to work on the mound for Cleveland while he was still in high school, age 17. In his first start he struck out 15 batters. Before the season ended he went back to high school, but not before typing the major league single-game record for strikeouts in a single game: 17.

I can picture the first day of school. "So, what did you do this summer, Bobby?" 

At the end of his school year his high school graduation in the spring of 1937 was broadcast nationally by NBC Radio. As a parent one might worry all that celebrity would go to the kid's head. Somehow he hung in there and went back to work with zeal. The following year, before he had even turned 20, Feller became the first pitcher in the 20th century to strike out 18 batters in a game.

Now, let's get into the meat of it. What was Bob Feller's greatest pitching achievement? What would you choose?

__ A 5-3 record, 3.34 ERA, 76 strikeouts in 62 innings, a record-tying 17-strikeout game, in 1936, before his senior year in high school.

__ Winning 107 games, with 54 losses, at age 22, before enlisting in the U.S. Navy and serving in World War II.

__ Leading the majors in wins (27-11 record) and strikeouts (261) and leading American League in ERA (2.61) at age 21 in 1940.

__ A 26-15 record, 2.18 ERA, a then-record 348 strikeouts, 36 complete games, 10 shutouts, four saves in 1946, his first full season after World War II.

__ Leading American League in wins five straight years (1939-41, 46-47), not counting the nearly four seasons he fought in World War II.

__ Leading majors in strikeouts in each of his first seven seasons (1938-41, 46-48) as a full-time starting pitcher.

__ Retiring as first pitcher to throw three no-hitters in the 20th century, and tied with Nolan Ryan for most one-hitters (12).

THE ANSWER
According to Mike Peticca: "Feller's greatest achievement, though, was that he gave up nearly four prime years of his baseball career to serve the United States in World War II. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Dec. 9, 1941, the first major leaguer to join the military after the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor that Dec. 7."

The Sporting News called him the greatest pitcher of his time. Ted Williams said he was the fastest and best pitcher he ever faced. But his enlistment and service on the USS Alabama in the South Pacific theater speaks much about his character that goes beyond his record as a fireballer.

* * * *
Here is a link to the original article:
https://www.cleveland.com/tribe/2010/12/bob_feller_what_was_the_greate.html

Related Links
Reflections on The Natural
Moneyball Worth More Than the Price of Admission

River Memories -- Cleveland's Cuyahoga River Fire Department

The first years of my life I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland called Maple Heights. It was a new development with new houses and new families, and lots of kids to play baseball and football with. The elementary school was a half block away, and beyond there was a forest, and great places to go sledding.

Nearly all my memories from that time are good ones. The 1950s was something of an age of innocence for kids like me. Only later did I come to learn that not everyone grew up with such a carefree existence.

There are, however, many experiences that we have that lay dormant and unremembered, but they are in there, only awaiting a trigger to unwrap them. One of these for me was our class trip to one of the fire station on the Cuyahoga River. That's right. The river had a fire department with four fire stations because this river was so polluted it would catch on fire.

One memory from that time was a political cartoon in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It showed a man and his son fishing from a little boat that was being eaten by chemicals as they sank. An editorial that day talked about how there were no fish left in Lake Erie because of the pollution and that the great lake's beaches were closed because the water was no longer safe for swimming. Something needed to be done.

Strange how far along the river's condition had gone before it was recognized that something needed to be done.

Here in Duluth the One River, Many Stories project has been in full swing with its focus on the St. Louis River upon whose shores reside the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior. As a result of attending a few of their meetings my memory of the Cuyahoga and that class trip to the river's fire station came up to the surface. I was probably in fifth or sixth grade at the time. And the stat I remember most vividly was that the river had caught fire four times that year.

Reflecting on that experience I decided to do a Google search to see how accurate all this was. Turns out that the quality of life for that river was far more shocking than I'd realized, and this fire business went on for a far longer time frame than I'd imagined. According to this story in Time the Cuyahoga's woes became a catalyst to draw attention to all our nation's waterways. In 1969.

My class trip was in 1962 or '63. And the river had been catching fire since the 1930s, if not earlier. That stat from this Tony Long article was my biggest surprise. The river had been catching fire all my life. Fortunately, those fire stations are now closed and Lake Erie is now living. The lesson there is that things really can change when people put their minds to it.

Today it's the 46th anniversary of Earth Day. Here in the Twin Ports they celebrate with an annual Art for Earth Day Gallery Hop. As we think about the future, let's each do our part. Don't give up the fight.

Photo Credit: Photo from Time.com story shows a fireboat tug putting out a fire on the Cuyahoga in 1952. Used without permission and will be replaced if requested. 

Radio Stories

Yesterday, while listening to the radio, I heard tell of a 101 year of man from India who ran a marathon. It was not the full 26 miles this year but an abbreviated race, six-point-something miles. He did, however, run a full marathon in 2011 when he was one hundred.

The story goes that he took up running at age 89 to deal with his depression after witnessing the horrific death of his son in a freak accident. It’s hard to imagine that in 2011 he ran 26 miles and didn’t receive any kind of acknowledgements from the Guinness Book folks, but here’s the rest of the story. He did not have a birth certificate. Problem is, he was born before they issued birth certificates in India. It doesn’t count that his passport says he was born in 1911. The decision-makers want that birth certificate. With or without it, in April he will be 102.

There was another story I heard yesterday on the radio that was also interesting. The correspondent was at a funeral home in Cleveland that spent $22,000 to deck out its parlors with monitors and a high tech system that allowed family members and close friends who lived far away to attend funerals conducted there via the internet.

Flying home for a funeral would be expensive enough, but tickets are doubly expensive when purchased at the last minute. Weddings may be placed on calendars months in advance, but I know of few funerals that are so scheduled.

So it is that there are a growing number of funeral homes that are creating setups where family members can Skype in from afar. I know that had it been possible I would have been present in such a manner at my own father’s memorial service several years ago.

This past week I watched two films based on novels by Graham Greene, The Third Man and The Tenth Man. The former is a stellar classic starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton. The latter is an exceptional story starring Anthony Hopkins. And so it was with interest that I listened to a radio interview with Keith Jeffrey, who wrote a book about the British Secret Service branch M16. The book has a three star rating on Amazon.com but that doesn't keep it from selling hard and fast. Perhaps it has something to do with last year's 50th anniversary of Dr. No, the James Bond film that initiated Hollywood's Bond franchise.

At one point they were talking about authors who had been recruited to be spies. I’ve known for some time that Greene had been used by the British Secret Service. What I did not know was how many other writers of note worked as spies, amongst them (and to my greatest surprise) Somerset Maugham and Malcolm Muggeridge.

I've not read Jeffrey's book, but I can imagine it was not an easy one to assemble. It is an "authorized" story, which means there must have been many people looking over his shoulder to approve what was left in and what was taken out. A lot of the reviewers expressed disappointment at the outcome.

For what it's worth, there’s a great line in The Tenth Man that gets repeated twice. “Everyone is tested sooner and later, and then you know what you are.” If your time of testing comes and you fail, may you be fortunate enough to get a second chance.

The Roots of Rock and Roll

In 1970, when I began my college career at Ohio University, student enrollments were in the neighborhood of 20,000. The campus was bursting at the seams. The lines were especially long in the great hall where we were required to get our student I.D.'s, a chore which was eased considerably by the girl in line behind me with whom I had struck up a conversation. Her name was Pam. She had a nice smile and happened to be from Cleveland, my own place of birth.

Whatever small talk we made during that hour in line has been forgotten, but by the time we were through with registrations I had her phone number and she agreed to see me again.

Few details of that first college date are worth repeating and most of them unremembered. For her it was a dud because she was with me. But I'll not forget one thing we talked about that night amongst the trees behind Scot Quad, she in her brushed leather jacket with fringes. She said that friends of hers were involved in building a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

I was pretty much in disbelief. Why would they put a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland? She undoubtedly answered that, though it seems to be one of the details missing from my memory. All I remember is that it just seemed too far out. The only bands we had in Ohio of national significance were Grand Funk Railroad and The Glass Harp. But little did I know...

Sixteen years later when it came to pass, those who had dreamed were rewarded. But still, why Cleveland? Chiefly, it's because of the efforts of a disc jockey named Alan Freed who promoted the new genre of music.

There were many disc jockeys of the time taken up in the euphoric new sound, which was a blend of African-American rhythms and blues while borrowing from traditions of cowboy music, jazz, country and folk. The key thing, though, was making music kids could dance to.

As history has it, Freed, aka Moondog, put together a five band event at the Cleveland Arena which he called the Moondog Coronation Ball on March 21, 1952. Promoting it on the air brought untold numbers of youth, and a riot ultimately broke out. This event has been labelled the first rock and roll concert.

Freed's career was later marred by the Payola Scandal that hurt a lot of disc jockeys of the time, but pretty much left rock and roll unscathed, as witnessed by its pervasiveness through the Sixties and beyond.

There you have it. Rock on. And enjoy the day.