The Goldwater Rule

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         The Goldwater Rule
The year 1964 was a big one for me. I had just graduated from the University of Michigan, and landed my first teaching job. I was assigned to teach American government and history to 47 senior students. This was also a presidential election year. The incumbent President Johnson who had been J.F.Kennedy's Vice President, was being challenged by the Republican  Senator Barry Goldwater.

The election took place on Tuesday November 3. I passed out an outline map of the U.S. and urged students to fill in each state as  soon as the results were known.

I should not have even bothered, as this election is the most lop-sided election in history. Johnson received 90.3 percent of the popular vote and Goldwater 9.7 percent.
Johnson carried 44 of the 50 states.

In addition to Goldwater's extreme conservative views, there was another factor which might have helped to cause him defeat. That year, "Fact" magazine published a petition signed by more than a thousand psychiatrists declaring that Goldwater was "psychologically unfit" to be President. Goldwater won a libel suit against the magazine.

This leads us to the erratic behavior of President Trump. Serious questions have been raised about his mental health and his control of nuclear weapons. We will just have to wait and see if this "Goldwater rule will be ignored. For more information see The New Yorker magazine May 22, 2017.

Also, I want to mention that two of my senior students that year, Vince Larocca and Bob Perry, following graduation enlisted in the Army, and were later killed in Vietnam.

    Aloha
    Grant

Buck v. Bell

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             Buck v. Bell

The U.S. Supreme Court has sometimes made some very bad rulings. Readers may remember for instance Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu v. United States, as prime examples. But one terrible ruling which is seldom mentioned is Buck v. Bell.

When Charles Darwin wrote about evolution and the survival of the fittest, he had no notion of what would follow. The question asked was "If this was true in the animal kingdom,must it also be true of humans as well?"The science of human improvement developed into an intellectual movement called "eugenics" from the Greek "eu" for "good" and "genes" for born. The science for improving stock.

The eugenics movement found support from the medical profession, lawyers, and journalists. Women supported the movement.
Magazines carried stories about eugenics. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald even wrote a playful song about eugenics.

All of this took place as the Immigration Act of 1924 favored immigrants from Northern Europe and greatly reduced the number of Jews and Italians. The fear was that they would dilute our superior gene pool.

Some state institutions were already sterilizing inmates, but the State of Virginia hesitated until sterilization was proven to be lawful. A test case was needed. For the sake of brevity here, the lower courts rulings led to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The poor unlucky person for this test case was Carrie Buck, a seventeen year old girl who had born a child out of wedlock. She had been raped by the nephew of the couple she had worked for. They wanted her out of the way and in an institution where her mother was, being judged as "feeble minded." Carrie was judged a a moron and as such was placed in the same institution for epileptics and feeble-minded. Where her mother was located. Evidence of her grades in school were average and that she was promoted every year until the sixth grade when she became employed in housework. These facts never were heard in court.

Room does not permit me to relate all the details of the case but I will have to say something about the Supreme Court at that time. The Chief Justice was William Howard Taft, who had once served as President. Another well-known justice was Louis Bandeis,but the one outstanding member of the court was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Homes was a Boston Brahmin-a member of the most rarefied social caste. His father father was a doctor and had written the famous poem "Old Ironsides," credited to saving the USS Constitution from being scrapped. Holmes attended Harvard, and through family connections, including Teddy Roosevelt, was appointed to the Supreme Court.

Holmes was admired for his wisdom and his service during the Civil War. Praise was showered upon him. But his public persona was far different from his private one.

Holmes's support for eugenics was notable for the extremity of his views. He was not a supporter of causes. He was indifferent to laws concerning child labor, antitrust laws, and other progressive goals.

As Wold War I approached Holmes supported the war, and wrote the majority opinion, upholding the ten year conviction of E  gene V. Debs, a socialist leader for giving an antiwar, anti draft speech.

Holmes wrote the majority opinion for the court declaring that Carrie Buck should be sterilized-and that "three generations of imbeciles are enough." The one dissent to the ruling came from Pierce Butler, and he wrote no dissenting opinion.

Virginia had won the case. Carrie was sterilized, as were others. She was released from the colony, later was twice married and found that she could not conceive and discovered what she thought was for an appendix operation. Her later life was one of hardship, but people who knew her said that she was highly intelligent and loved reading the daily paper, and doing crossword puzzles.

The effect of the court's ruling was felt beyond the United States. Sweden,Norway, Iceland,Estonia, and of course Germany. Following the defeat of the Nazis, and the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the defense cited Buck v, Bell arguing that the sterilizing was proper. Estimates are that Nazi leaders sterilized 375,000 people.    

Buck v. Bell is little remembered today and has never been over-turned. Of all the cases I learned about in college, this was never discussed. And it is one of the great miscarriages of justice. The pendulum has swung against eugenic sterilization, but will it swing back?

I owe a huge debt to Adam Cohen, author of
"Imbeciles, The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck." Penguin Books 2016.

     Aloha
     Grant

Nascar 101

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           NASCAR 101
I never paid much attention to NASCAR races. I figured they were a bunch of Hillbillies dressed in overalls, chugging beer while being surrounded by pretty girls with low-cut blouses, watching cars go rapidly around a track.

The reality of NASCAR is much different. Teena and I listened as her cousin Don Collins explained this racing world to us. We were watching a race at Talladega,Alabama. The oval track he explained, is two and a -half long, and the race cars run at speeds of 195 to 212 miles an hour for a distance of 500 miles. Each car has a spotter located high in the grandstands connected to the driver by a radio. The spotters job is to tell the driver if the way to the left of the car is open or to the right, so that he can move forward. This is because the driver's head is only able to move slightly, and he is unable to see either right or left without his spotter.

The driver is enclosed in a cage of steel bars for protection, and steel panels on each sides of the car. Also, cool air is fed to the driver from behind his seat. As Don continued to explain, I began to wonder about getting the driver out of the car as the only entry and exit is through the window on the driver's side. This is so different than the Formula One cars where the driver sit upright and exposed.

Don told us that there are two flaps to the rear of the driver which like flaps on an airplane, help to prevent the car from turning over.

One other very interesting fact we learned   was that a piece of paper on the track and stuck to the air intake of the car must be removed, because if not, the engine will overheat and be ruined. Another driver on the same team will pull in front of the affected car and create a draft which will cause the paper to fly away.

In the course of the 500 mile race there are frequent pit stops for the car, not the driver. The pit crew in seven seconds change tires, pour in 20 gallons of fuel, and pull away one of the plastic windshields, revealing a clear one underneath. And away goes the car.

I must admit that the race can get boring at times, it is after all 500 miles on a two and-a-half mile track. But there are crashes. Don said that near the end of the race there are often crashes, some hitting the 15 degree wall, others spinning out of control, or flipping upside down. When that happens the race stops, as the cars with their drivers are removed. Then the race resumes. Pretty damn exciting.

Thanks to Don's teaching we now have a better understanding of what NASCAR is all about. As for me in order to become a fan I already have a pretty girl, all I need now is a cold beer.

     Aloha
     Grant