In Praise of Oral History: A Dispatch from Fulton, Missouri

Philip White

In a 1940s-style coffee stand in the middle of a drug store, six grey-haired gentlemen sit around a long, light-wood table sipping coffee and swapping stories. They’re here at 10am six days a week (Sunday is a church day, and the drug store, as with many businesses in the town, is closed then), and the proprietor holds the same table for his most consistent patrons, who have gathered in this manner for over 25 years.

Today’s topic of conversation is the day Winston Churchill came to tiny Fulton, MO, 65 years ago to the day. Fulton mayoral candidate Bob Craghead recalls his father charging out-of-towners a whopping 25 cents a pop to park at his farm just outside the city limits. O.T. Harris, whose family is a part owner of the Callaway County Bank across Court Street, is laughing as he recollects the bank’s CFO Tom Van Sant (a frequent visitor at Truman’s White House, and the man who encouraged Westminster College president Franc McCluer in his unlikely bid to bring Churchill to town) reputation as what Jerry Seinfeld called a “close talker.”

My pen is working overtime to scribble down these priceless recollections, in case the batteries in the voice recorder on the table betray me. In the weeks before my Fulton visit, I’ve had similar conversations, albeit by phone, with half a dozen Fultonians. One gentleman was so eager to share his memories that the aforementioned recorder ran to more than 90 minutes. Then he called back the next day with another half hour’s worth of vivid descriptions of the Missouri town as it was in the mid-1940s. I relished each word.

Certainly, oral histories can be distorted by forgetfulness, romanticism and exaggeration, but they remain an indispensable way for a historian (or any writer, for that matter) to add color and personality to his or her work. It is simple (and, sadly, the modus operandi for writers of history that’s as dry as a pile of October leaves) to read a couple of written sources and apply their second-hand generalizations to a time and place. But to talk to people who were in the moment is to see what they saw, hear what they heard, touch what they touched. Such accounts also serve the purpose of putting events that fall into so-called “Great Man” history (in this case, Truman and Churchill parading through town and the latter then delivering his “Iron Curtain” speech) in the context of “regular” folks’ lives. It’s also all too easy to reflect on the impact of such an occurrence through other world leaders’ perspectives or with the benefit of hindsight, but to obtain the real reactions of people who were there adds a new dimension.

Perhaps one reason certain writers avoid oral history is because it requires a different sort of effort. It can take weeks to track down people who were present at a particular event. Some writers surely think “who can effectively describe a bygone era.” You can have 10 conversations before you get one piece of usable information. In addition to prepping for the interview, jotting notes and/or recording, and transcribing, you need to cross-reference certain facts to verify authenticity, and to compare testimonies to establish sources.

And yet, even if it takes 10 hours of panning for every gold nugget minute, such treasures are hidden in the memories of people everywhere. Beyond the benefits of oral history for your project, there is the immeasurable value of creating connections and, if you’re fortunate, new friendships with your interviewees.

Then there is the time capsule bonus of recording first-person impressions for posterity. Recently, Frank W. Buckles, the last surviving American World War I veteran, passed away, marking the end for new oral histories of the Great War. The same will be true in just a few years for World War II, the Great Depression, and all sorts of other 20th-century subjects.

I feel fortunate to be speaking with these fine, 80-something individuals from Fulton while time remains.

Tearing Down the Wall

Twenty years ago an amazing event happened, one that two generations of Americans and lovers of freedom the world over had a hard time imagining would ever happen in our lifetimes. On November 9th, 1989, at the crest of a wave of liberty sweeping across Eastern Europe, the East German government announced that its citizens could openly visit West Berlin.

The problem with such visits for decades had been the presence of one of the single most blatant symbols of political and cultural oppression in modern history, the Berlin Wall. The Wall was not just symbolic of socialist and communist oppression, it was a literal wall that encircled the 'free' city of West Berlin and included a thick concrete wall, barbed wire, guard towers, and patrolled trenches that would become known as 'the death strip' in history.

During the period of the Wall's existence between 1961 and 1989, estimates show that a couple of hundred people were killed in approximately 5,000 attempted crossings. All were trying to move one way, across the 'Iron Curtain' from the oppression of the Eastern Bloc to the freedom of Western Europe.

The roots of the Berlin Wall stretched back to the end of World War II, when what remained of Nazi Germany was divided by the Potsdam Agreement into four 'occupation zones', each controlled by one of the victorious Allied powers: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.

Despite the fact that the capital city of Berlin lay entirely within the Soviet zone, that city was also divided into four controlling zones for the Allied powers. Within short order, rifts began to appear between the Soviets and the others on a number of post-war issues regarding reconstruction of Germany, as well as political and ideological differences between the nations.

Almost immediately after the war, Soviet leader Josef Stalin began to orchestrate the creation of and control over an 'Eastern bloc' of nations including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Soviet-controlled section of Germany which he envisioned as a buffer zone of protection for the USSR against the influence or advances of the European democracies.

In 1948, Stalin began to finalize his ultimate plans of a complete takeover of Germany by instituting a blockade of West Berlin, the section controlled by the other Allied powers. His hope was to see the others withdraw from control over and interest in the city. But the Americans and British responded with the 'Berlin airlift' efforts that kept the free section of the city supplied with goods and materials. After almost a year, Stalin finally lifted the blockade.

In October of 1949, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was declared and would become known as East Germany. This section of Germany was highly influenced by the Soviets and was oppressive to its people. West Germany developed as a capitalist nation in alliance with the United States and the other western nations. Over the years, West German economic growth and political freedoms became increasingly attractive to hundreds of thousands of East Germans, who fled their nation for the freedom and prosperity of the west.

In the first few years, nearly a million people fled the Eastern bloc to West Germany as people began to recognize the oppressive tactics and governing principles of socialism and communism. What became known officially as the 'German inner border' but was more popularly christened as the 'Iron Curtain' by Winston Churchill was the response. Initially a recognized but open border between the post-war zones controlled by the Soviets and the western powers, the 'Curtain' was formally closed with the erection first of barbed wire fences and later more substantial security in 1952 and 1953.

With this major path to freedom blocked, more and more citizens of East Berlin began to flee into West Berlin, the only remaining bastion of freedom behind the Iron Curtain of Soviet and East German oppression. The East German authorities attempted many measure to thwart the massive emigration that ensued, as approximately 20% of the entire GDR population escaped to the freedom of the west up until 1961.

Finally, Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev gave the East Germans the orders to build a physical wall separating East and West Berlin. At midnight on August 13th, 1961, the police and units of the East German army began to close the border. Streets were torn up and barbed wire fences installed to prevent passage. By August 15th, construction of a concrete wall had begun. Many families were literally split apart suddenly, and people were unable to travel to their jobs.

The Berlin Wall was ultimately built up and strengthened over decades in four main elements. The initial 'Wire Fence' effort of 1961 was followed quickly by improvement to that fence between 1962 and 1965. A concrete wall was completed and extended between 1965 and 1975. Finally, the 'Border Wall' was built, extended, and improved between 1975 and 1980, but was continually improved right up until the end in 1989. In the end, the Berlin Wall was more than 87 miles long.

In the beginning, no crossings at all were allowed for over two years between 1961 and 1963. Negotiations between the powers allowed for Christmas visits over the next four years. There were ultimately 8 different official border crossing points between East and West Berlin which were all heavily secured and controlled. It was far easier for West Berliners to cross into the east than vice versa. For the most part, no East Germans were permitted to cross into West Berlin until the fall of the Wall in 1989.

Located near the center of West Berlin, the 'Brandenburg Gate' is one of the main historic symbols of Germany in general and Berlin in particular. On June 12th, 1987, American president Ronald Reagan appeared there and made a speech to help celebrate the 750th anniversary of the city of Berlin. Reagan had throughout his presidency challenged the ideology and authority of communist and socialist regimes, publicly calling the Soviet Union an 'Evil Empire' at one point.

In his speech that day, Reagan directly addressed Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev: "..we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"

Inspired by events such as Mr. Reagan's speech, citizens and governments across the Soviet sphere of influence began to crack. In August of 1989, "red" Hungary removed its border fence with a free Austria, and 13,000 East German tourists escaped to freedom. This set off a chain reaction of similar activity in Czechoslovakia, and finally in East Germany itself. Mass demonstrations resulted in the resignation of the East German president in October 1989.

These generally peaceful demonstrations continued to build throughout East Germany, culminating in what was known as the "Peaceful Revolution" and the gathering of a million people in East Berlin on November 4th. In response, the East German government and its puppet-string pullers in the USSR had little recourse but to loosen their grip, and when some pieces of a plan to do so were leaked to a German television network, the story was run on November 9th that "the borders were open to everyone" on what was called a historic day.

After this public announcement on television, which was actually a complete jumping-of-the-gun by the network, Germans began gathering at the Wall, completely surprising and overwhelming the guards. In contacting their superiors for orders, the guards were given no direction, and became overwhelmed by the throngs. The gates were opened and people flocked from both sides, embracing one another in glee. Over the ensuing days and weeks, people gathered daily to climb the Wall, break off pieces, and begin to informally demolish the structure.

Over the next few months, restrictions on crossings became officially lifted, including at the Brandenburg Gate on December 22nd. The following day, visa-free travel began between the states. On June 13th, 1990, official dismantling of the Wall began, and continued until being completed in November 1991. Only a few guard towers and portions remain as memorials.

For three decades, the Berlin Wall stood as a wall of oppression, keeping people from seeking their freedom and liberty and entombing them inside a world of failed communist and socialist ideologies. It was ultimately the will of these freedom-seeking and loving peoples, aided by those of us around the world who share these ideals, that resulted in the awe-inspiring events which began on November 9th, 1989.

Obama's 'Peace for Our Time'

"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

On 30 September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain addressed his countrymen in regard to the Munich Agreement, which assured Adolf Hitler that Britain would "wink and nod" at Der Fuhrer's annexation of western Czechoslovakia to satiate Germany's need for additional "living space." (Six months earlier, Hitler had annexed Austria, without so much as a whimper from Britain and France.)

Chamberlain insisted, infamously, that appeasing Hitler with the Munich Agreement would provide "peace for our time." But on 1 September 1939, Herr Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II, the bloodiest conflict and genocide in history, was underway.

Fortunately, Chamberlain was replaced by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940, the same day Hitler invaded France and the Low Countries.

A month later, Churchill delivered his "finest hour" speech, to the House of Commons: "I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that ... if we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

This week, Barack Hussein Obama endeavored to appease the world's most dangerous fascist movement since the Third Reich. Islam has long provided safe haven for the Islamist movement of "Jihadistan," that borderless nation of countless jihadis devoted to the destruction of the West and the imposition of a worldwide caliphate and Shariah law. If we seek to appease this abominable movement rather than confront it, the world most certainly will, as Churchill warned, "sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age."

Last fall, Obama campaigned on a promise to mollify our Islamic foes and "re-set" the terms of understanding between American democracy and Middle Eastern tyranny -- to great applause from his legions of mesmerized peacenik sycophants.

In January, Obama recommitted to making peace with Islam, saying, "I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."

Before his departure this week, a key Obama aide reiterated Obama's Muslim roots: "The president himself experienced Islam on three continents ... you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans are a key part of Illinois and Chicago."

Then Obama served up this gem: "Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

Huh? There are currently some 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. Indonesia has 200 million, Pakistan has 165 million, dozens of other countries have tens of millions more, and the U.S. has less than 3 million.

Obama's "ignorance" of Muslim demographics is appalling. Yet he has the audacity to say, "We have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam."

Lest anyone doubt Obama's determination to appease Islam, consider the fact that on Monday, the day before his departure, American Islamic convert Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad shot two young military recruiters in Arkansas, murdering Pvt. William Long -- and Obama initially offered no official comment.

Contrast that to the killing the previous day of George Tiller, infamous for murdering thousands of babies just prior to birth. Within hours of that incident, Obama served up an official statement of "shock and outrage." Obama's Attorney General also dispatched U.S. Marshals to protect "appropriate people and facilities around the nation."

But law enforcement resources have not been dispatched to protect recruiting centers (even though hundreds of those have been attacked in recent years), nor is Obama sending Marshals to protect synagogues, after last month's arrest of four Islamists who planned to bomb Jewish houses of worship in New York.

Ironically, the last time a sitting president attempted to appease his abortion constituency by mobilizing federal law enforcement resources was when Bill Clinton sent the FBI, ATF and U.S. Marshals to search for lone abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph -- ironic, I say, because at the same time thousands of agents were unsuccessfully attempting to apprehend Rudolph in North Carolina, al-Qa'ida terrorists were taking flight lessons a few hundred miles down the road in Florida, preparing to crash civilian airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol Building to the tune of "Allahu akbar."

In other words, Obama appeased his pro-abortion constituency with a show of force and appeased his Islamic constituency with inaction.

Under increasing pressure, Obama's handlers finally posted a comment late Wednesday on the murder of the military recruiter, indicating that he was "deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence." Personally, I am "shocked and outraged."

Suffice it to say that BHO didn't want to offend our Islamist enemy in the same week he is trying to appease them.

But I digress.

After stopping for another bow to Saudi King Abdullah, Obama crossed the Red Sea (perhaps he actually walked on it) to address his peace-loving brethren in Egypt -- accompanied by a security force of more than 3,000 agents, far exceeding the security detail accompanying George W. Bush for his visits to war zones in Iraq. That seemed a bit excessive, since there were more than 30,000 Egyptian security forces in, on and around Al Azhar University, where Obama delivered his version of Rodney King's "can't we all just get along" speech.

Perhaps someone recalled that on 6 October 1981, Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar Al Sadat was assassinated by his own Egyptian security forces acting on a fatwa issued by peace-loving Muslim cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman. Omar, a.k.a. "inmate 34892-054," is now serving a life sentence in a North Carolina federal prison after being convicted for planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was an associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the 2001 attack. (Hey, maybe the Tar Heel State, which gave its electoral votes to Obama, will take those Gitmo detainees off his hands.)

Obama offered these olive branches to the Islamic masses from his teleprompters in Cairo: "[I have] unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things ... confidence in the rule of law; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. ... Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism -- it is an important part of promoting peace. ... I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. As a boy, I heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. ... [Jerusalem should be] a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra [from the Koran], when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer. ... Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance."

While Israel was not on Obama's Middle Eastern itinerary, as some sort of atonement, his plans take him from Egypt to Germany for a visit to the Nazis' Buchenwald concentration camp and a token tribute to Holocaust victims.

Then Obama will proceed to Normandy for the 65th anniversary of the Allies' D-Day invasion of France, which ultimately brought the Third Reich to collapse.

In other words, BHO began his trip by appeasing fascists in the Middle East (at great peril to future generations of Americans), and will end his trip "honoring" tens of thousands of Americans who died as a direct result of the appeasement of fascists in Europe.

For the record, I don't mean to suggest that because Obama has a penchant for appeasing Islam, he is a Muslim. In one of his two autobiographies, "The Audacity of Hope," he noted that both of his parents were atheists and, "In our household, the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf." Just sat there...

Based on the rest of his book, I'm certain that he is not a Muslim, but a Socialist like William Ayers and the Marxist terrorists who launched his political career.

As the MSM talkingheads fawn over the Obama show abroad, the greatest peril to Americans remains the plethora of domestic Neo-Marxist economic programs now being implemented by the Obama regime.

Even the Russian newspaper Pravda, once the primary dezinfomatsia organ of the old Soviet Union, recently published an article by Stanislav Mishin entitled, "American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper," in which Mishin writes that Obama has pulled the plug on the American way of life.

Mishin observes: "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hopeless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. ... First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in D.C. that directly affects their lives. ... The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been record setting, not just in Americaâ??s short history, but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. ... Prime Minister Putin, less than two months ago, warned Obama not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster."

More to the point, Fidel Castro's understudy, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, in a lecture on Socialism this week, said, "Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right."

It is indeed a sad day for America when our president becomes the butt of Marxism jokes between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro in the same week that he is appeasing Islam.

Short of some audacious "change" on the home front to dislodge these Leftists, future generations of Americans will look back upon ours and say, "This was not their finest hour."

WRITTEN by Mark Alexander and distributed in his Patriot Post newsletter essay on June 4th, 2009

Unserious Rhetoric on National Security

One of the many signs of the degeneration of our times is how many serious, even life-and-death issues are approached as talking points in a game of verbal fencing. Nothing illustrates this more than the fatuous, and even childish, controversy about “torturing” captured terrorists.

People’s actions often make far more sense than their words. Most of the people who are talking lofty talk about how we mustn’t descend to the level of our enemies would themselves behave very differently if presented with a comparable situation, instead of being presented with an opportunity to be morally one up with rhetoric.

What if it were your mother or your child who was tied up somewhere beside a ticking bomb and you had captured a terrorist who knew where that was? Face it: What you would do to that terrorist to make him talk would make waterboarding look like a picnic.

You wouldn’t care what the New York Times would say or what “world opinion” in the U.N. would say. You would save your loved one’s life and tell those other people what they could do.

But if the United States behaves that way it is called “arrogance” — even by American citizens. Indeed, even by the American president.

There is a big difference between being ponderous and being serious. It is scary when the president of the United States is not being serious about matters of life and death, saying that there are “other ways” of getting information from terrorists.

Maybe this is a step up from the previous talking point that “torture” had not gotten any important information out of terrorists. Only after this had been shown to be a flat-out lie did Barack Obama shift his rhetoric to the lame assertion that unspecified “other ways” could have been used.

From a man whose whole life has been based on style rather than substance, on rhetoric rather than reality, perhaps nothing better could have been expected. But that the media and the public would have become so mesmerized by the Obama cult that they could not see through this to think of their own survival, or that of this nation, is truly a chilling thought.

When we look back at history, it is amazing what foolish and even childish things people said and did on the eve of a catastrophe about to consume them. In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women, and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler.

When historians of the future look back on our era, what will they think of our time? Our media too squeamish to call murderous and sadistic terrorists anything worse than “militants” or “insurgents”? Our president going abroad to denigrate the country that elected him, pandering to feckless allies and outright enemies, and literally bowing to a foreign tyrant ruling a country from which most of the 9/11 terrorists came?

It is easy to make talking points about how Churchill did not torture German prisoners, even while London was being bombed. There was a very good reason for that: They were ordinary prisoners of war who were covered by the Geneva Convention and who didn’t know anything that would keep London from being bombed.

Whatever the verbal fencing over the meaning of the word “torture,” there is a fundamental difference between simply inflicting pain on innocent people for the sheer pleasure of it — which is what our terrorist enemies do — and getting life-saving information out of the terrorists by whatever means are necessary.

The Left has long confused physical parallels with moral parallels. But when a criminal shoots at a policeman and the policeman shoots back, physical equivalence is not moral equivalence. And what American intelligence agents have done to captured terrorists is not even physical equivalence.

If we have reached the point where we cannot be bothered to think beyond rhetoric or to make moral distinctions, then we have reached the point where our survival in an increasingly dangerous world of nuclear proliferation can no longer be taken for granted.

WRITTEN by Thomas Sowell as 'Talking Points' at the National Review on May 12th, 2009. As always, the title of this posting is a link to the original article.