Chicago Daily Observer

The BBC Comes to Town.

Not long ago my phone rang at home and I was connected to a woman’s voice from London. She told me that BBC…the most radically left media institution in Europe…was coming to Chicago to do a radio documentary on the Chicago convention of 1968. It so happened she had been referred to me by my friend Karl Maurer and that she then read my reminiscences of Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy in the archives of this website. She was intrigued that I am also a Republican, something that is definitely a “rara avis” to the Brits.

So she signed me up gratis for a 3-hour panel discussion at WBEZ Navy Pier with others who remember those days. Given the BBC’s leftwing proclivities I knew exactly what I would be confronted with. Four elderly ex-hippie radicals including an organizer of SDS ... Read More...

A note from Tom Roeser about a new addition, Kenan Heise.

Barack Obama is carrying some of Chicago, its image and its reality on stage with him; but what is the image and what is the reality of Chicago?

What is the image of Chicago and the reality, not just in terms of a Presidential candidate, but also ourselves and the world in which we live?

“What does Chicago mean, when we put it before such words as architecture, art, weather, politics, language, hot dog, sports, weather, culture, literature, theater or Presidential candidate?

The Chicago Daily Observer has decided to go to Kenan Heise not so much to answer as to probe that question…

…with your help.

We are initiating an interactive column that uses the question and answer approach to probe not only the who, what and when of Chicago’s past and present, but also the how and why.

Recently, psychologists have begun to describe a growing phenomenon—the
“Christmas Blues”.

Christmas Blues?

Paradoxical but true, in the midst of a season when our streets are filled with colorful decorations and our public places all resounding with jolly songs, many people feel depressed and sad. “None of this joy applies to me,” they silently lament. “There is no Santa Claus who comes down my chimney!” “Every year I get deeper in debt at this time of year.” A datum that we all know, but don’t like to talk about, is that suicides and other lonely deaths are higher than normal at this time of year.

By way of contrast, in the early Christian centuries, the feast of Christmas was actually preceded by a period of fasting, not feasting. In today’s culture of holiday, client, and office parties, awash with succulent hors d’oeuvres, caloric beverages, and delectable cookies, fasting ... Read More...

Many gentile Americans under 50 don’t know what Yiddish is. More’s the pity. Yiddish is an anglicization of a Germanic word for “Jewish.” The Yiddish language was the dialect spoken by the Jews of central and eastern Europe, and was a unique combination of German and Hebrew, written with Hebrew letters. Before the restoration of Hebrew as a spoken language, it was the household language of Jews in western, central and eastern Europe.

Beginning with the pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th century, tens of thousands of European Jews emigrated to America. Non-English speaking at first, with very limited resources, and with no support network whatsoever, they very rapidly adapted to America and became remarkably successful in a very short time.

How did they do it? How did this group who didn’t speak English, and didn’t profess a version of the overwhelmingly predominant religion of American Protestantism become ... Read More...

SPRINGFIELD, IL—He may be the father of modern economics, or perhaps the father of social science but to call Adam Smith the father of capitalism – as one close colleague puts it – is like calling Sir Isaac Newton the father of gravity. Newton didn’t invent gravity; he just figured it out. Ditto for Smith.

I say this in reference to the adoption of Adam Smith by the American left in recent years in an attempt to suggest that Adam Smith would be a proponent of their policies. The reference alone of Adam Smith being the father or inventor of capitalism gives away the lie.

Capitalism was a term coined by Karl Marx to demean liberty and free markets. By labeling free markets as an ideology – rather than an empirical observation (the methodology of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment) into what was occurring in Smith’s world – it was hoped ... Read More...

I read Chris Check’s reflections on the death of Brigadier General Paul Tibbets with great interest. Most historians believe that Tibbet’s role in the atom bombing of Hiroshima was the caused U. S. victory and the end of the Second World War. Check expresses reservations as to the necessity of this action, indeed whether or not the theory, practice and technology of modern warfare allows any war to be prosecuted in accordance with the Just War theory. Check does not seem to fall into the camp of those historical revisionists who make spurious claims that the Japanese were readying plans to surrender anyhow—which negated using the A-Bomb. Instead he offers a pointed criticism that the bomb was employed under any rationale and a concomitant reappraisal of Gen. Tibbets’ role on that historic mission.

Cicero, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, St. Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotious attempted to codify the requirements for ... Read More...

Quincy, Illinois’ most famous (or infamous: there’s no statue), son has died at 92: Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, Jr., pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress named for his mother. Only 30-years-old when he dropped Little Boy on the citizens of Hiroshima, Tibbets spent the rest of his life defending his action with a simple, utilitarian argument: Dropping the atomic bomb saved lives, Japanese as well as American, by ending the war. Would he have done it again? “Hell, yeah.” And he slept well at night, thank you. “There is no morality in war,” Tibbets said in 2002.
Now he knows the truth.
But do we? Americans are more than ... Read More...

Imagine you are a contestant on Jeopardy, and the category is “Sea Battles of the Late 16th Century.” Two choices remain: 1588 or 1571. Recent graduates of our public schools may not recognize either, but if you went to high school decades ago, you would know that 1588 was the year of the Spanish Armada.
In fact, the victory of Francis Drake and the rest of Queen Elizabeth’s pirates on that tragic day in August 1588 is the reason 1571 is unknown to most Americans. The defeat of the Armada heralded a new era during which Britannia, not Hispania, ruled the waves. As result, America ended up an English Protestant country, and in school we all learned English Protestant history.
Nonetheless, on October 7, 1571 a far more important battle raged at the mouth of the Gulf of Patras, which divided mainland Greece from Corinth. It was ... Read More...