Isaac Laquedem

Dinner with Robespierre, and others

You may have heard these two observations of America:

I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.

            And

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Those are not quotations of today.  They come from the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who traveled around the United States in the 1830s and compiled his observations into the famous book, “Democracy in America,” published in 1835, which we all were supposed to have read in high school. 

To understand de Tocqueville, consider where he came from.  He was born only 12 years after the Reign of Terror.  The French revolution was not the stuff of history but an event that still echoed.

The French revolutionaries of 1789 liked to think that they were inspired by the American revolution of 1776.  There’s an important difference in what happened after each Revolution.  After a short-lived weak confederation, the 13 states organized a new federal government, and our basic government structure has stayed the same since.

Not so the French.  They went from the revolution of 1789 to the republic and the reign of terror of 1792, had a civil war and a counterrevolution, were displaced by Napoleon in 1799, restored the monarchy in 1814, pushed out Napoleon, got him back, pushed him out again, and got the king back – all in less than 50 years.

One of the classic "what if" questions is "If you could invite anyone in history to a dinner party, who would you ask?"

For one of my historical dinner parties I would invite the people who set de Tocqueville on his way.  The first is the person who brought about the end of the French monarchy, Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794).

Robespierre was a young lawyer, barely 30 when he led the French Convention to abolish the monarchy and not yet 35 when he persuaded the Convention to execute Louis XVI in January 1793.  He had a vision of the ideal Republic.  He prepared the very liberal constitution of 1793, but never implemented it.  He led the French toward his goal – until they saw that he was ordering the deaths of anyone who stood in his way.  Seeing their own danger, the Convention organized against him.  In July 1794 he left France the same way that King Louis had departed, head first.

Imagine that you could hear de Tocqueville interview Robespierre.  If Robespierre could rewrite history, would he have pushed Louis XVI to the guillotine?  Would he have executed hundreds of his political enemies?   Or would he listen to de Tocqueville’s recounting of American success and understand that he could have brought about the same result for France?

Every case has two sides.  If we dine with Robespierre, we will invite Louis XVI.  You may know him for marrying Marie Antoinette and how they met their end.  There’s much more to his story.

Louis XVI succeeded his father in 1775.  Louis began his reign as a reformer.  He tried to abolish serfdom.  He tried to get rid of the land tax and the labor tax.  He tried to foster religious tolerance.  On the spectrum of French kings he was a liberal and a reformer.  He supported the American revolution, but the resulting national debt combined with bad grain harvests led to the lower and middle classes becoming as unhappy with him as the aristocracy had been.  He made all sides angry.

He could not stave off the French revolution in 1789, he was arrested and deposed in 1792, and he went to the guillotine in January 1793.

We can imagine De Tocqueville, after a glass or two of a fine Bordeaux, encouraging Louis and Robespierre to argue about whether Louis could have avoided the revolution and execution.  Would Louis have gone into exile to save the lives of himself and his family?  Or would he, like a sea captain, “go down with the ship”?

I’d invite a fourth person to join us, one you’ve likely never heard of other than as the namesake of a station on the Paris Metro.  His name is Chretien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721-1794).  Why him?

The French Convention included many lawyers.  Malesherbes was one of them.  Malesherbes offered to defend Louis XVI at his trial, knowing that by defending the unpopular king he was risking his own life as a very visible royalist.  He was right - fifteen months after Louis XVI went to the guillotine, Malesherbes died the same way, together with his daughter, his granddaughter, and their husbands.  Did Malesherbes regret dying for his belief in the principle that every accused person is entitled to a defense?

I wouldn't pose the question myself, but I'd encourage Alexis de Tocqueville to ask Malesherbes, as I expect he would; de Tocqueville was his great-grandson.

Sweet Sixteen

Sixteen years ago yesterday I wrote my first blog post, opining on the then-hot controversy about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wanting to cut a hole in the foundation of the Pioneer Courthouse for access to secure parking.  Since then the driveway onto the transit mall has become part of the background.  I surmise that most of the pedestrians who walk by each day have forgotten the fight, or think of it as "just a few years ago."  It really was sixteen years ago, as you can tell by the politicos whom I named:  Commissioner Francesconi and Congressman Wu.  

The blogging world has changed since 2004.  Many of the blogs I followed then have fallen silent, often to disappear from the web altogether.  Much of the sophisticated political discussion, and some of the mindless political invective, no longer appears on independent pages of opinion; now it's on Facebook.  (How can you trim your Christmas card mailing list instantly? Post something political on Facebook.)

I plan to continue blogging for some years to come, even though I've acknowledged the reality of Facebook (probably how you came across this post), and to stick to four principles:

• • • Attack problems with logic, and ensure that percentages add up to 100.
    • Meld unrelated ideas into solutions (something like recombinant DNA), particularly with the Laquedem Plans to Improve the Universe.
    • Tell the stories of the Portland and the Portlanders of yesteryear.
    • However much I may savage the policies of an elected official (and I sometimes do), I will be polite in referring to the official.  It takes a lot of courage - maybe foolhardiness - to run for elective office.  Here the incumbent president will be "the president," or "President Trump," or "Mr. Trump," or on repeated reference "Trump," and not a nickname.  Besides, it's more fun to make a point with a stiletto than with a bludgeon.

  (photo credit: Barbara A. Campagna, FAIA.  Used with permission.)

What is a liberal? Perhaps the liberals are the ones who support liberty

The recent use of the word "liberal" as a criticism and a comment from one of the Laquedemimonde called to my mind one of the works of A.P. Herbert, in which he imagined that thirteen political parties, each calling itself in some form the "Liberal Party," were battling in court over which one should receive a large bequest made simply to "the Liberal Party."  

The judge says that "it says much for the sincerity with which these colleagues detest each other that, rather than share a common bank-balance, they would cheerfully continue with thirteen independent overdrafts."  (There's not yet a parallel to the Democratic contest for the 2020 nomination, fortunately.)  Mr. Justice Tooth must decide which of the thirteen is the Liberal Party.  The rest is quoted from the story, with some light abridgment and editing:

One of the plaintiffs, a Mr. Haddock of Hammersmith, confesses frankly that the Liberal Party which he represents is a party of one, but insists nevertheless that it is the only Liberal Party.  It has struck me as odd that no one of the distinguished Liberals concerned in this case has used the word Liberty, and had it not been for the obscure Mr. Haddock the subject might never have entered my head.  But Mr. Haddock has argued with some force that there must at one time have been some shadowy connexion between the Liberal Party and the idea of Liberty.  Now in cross-examination, nearly all the plaintiffs have confessed that they have been guilty from time to time of legislation, or proposals for legislation, of which the main purpose was to make people do something which they did not wish to do, or prevent people from doing something which they did wish to do.  Few of them could point to an item in their legislative programmes which had any other purpose, and, with the single exception of Mr. Haddock, they have no legislation to suggest of which the purpose is to allow people to do something which they cannot do already.  On the contrary, it appears, they are as anxious as any other party in Parliament to make rules and regulations for the eating, drinking, sleeping, and breathing of the British citizen.  On these grounds, therefore, Mr. Haddock has argued that these plaintiffs have not the idea of liberty in the forefront of their political equipment, and do not therefore deserve the name of Liberal.  Mr. Haddock's own programme is simple: (a) to propose no legislation unless its purpose is to allow people to do what they like, and (b) to support no legislation whose purpose is to stop people from doing what they like.

Here and there, he admitted, good cause being shown, he is prepared to compromise; but that, prima facie, is his foundation and beginning.    For example, the first measures which he intends to introduce are beneficent measures whose purpose is neither to improve, uplift, enrich, nor reform the British subject, but to increase, by however little, his liberty and contentment.

Jakob Kryszek (1918-2019) and the American dream: He who dies with the most joys wins

The most religious of rabbis might have forgiven Jakob Kryszek if he had become an agnostic.  Born in the small Polish town of Poddębice in 1918, the fourth of six children in a devout Jewish family, he moved to Lodz in 1937 after his father died.  There he went to work for an uncle who knitted socks - until Nazi Germany invaded Poland and sent the Jews of Poland first to ghettos and then to the concentration camps that became death camps.  He never again saw his mother and his siblings.

That Jakob Kryszek was not among the six million Jews killed in the death camps or elsewhere in the war was a matter of improbable chance.  He was working in a Lodz factory when Germany began to bomb Lodz.  Later in the Lodz ghetto he volunteered to work on the crews building the Autobahn because he was told that his siblings who remained in the ghetto would get extra food rations.  When the ghetto residents were sent to the death camps he was at first sent to a work camp because of his experience on the highway crews.  As he later passed through death camps -- Birkenau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz among them - one  happenstance after another kept him alive.  Once when bombers attacked the camp he ran to the fields instead of going to the bomb shelters, which the planes destroyed.  Later when he and other prisoners were in rail cars, Allied airplanes strafed the cars and a bullet passed through his leg and broke his femur.  A friendly Polish doctor was able to pin the broken pieces together, creatively but without anesthesia.

Years later, as Mr. Kryszek recalled his years in the camps, he said that in the camps, "to remain alive was really absolutely circumstantial. We could not figure out [how to remain alive]; it was not a matter of figuring out how to do it to stay alive. It was fate."

Fate brought him through the war and gave him another three quarters of a century.  Mr. Kryszek died not in Poland in 1939 from German bombs nor in 1945 from Allied bullets and battlefield surgery but in Portland this Wednesday from the ills of age, having lived to celebrate his one hundredth birthday last year and then to greet his first great-grandchild two months ago.  Along the way he came to America and moved to Portland, where he went to work for an old-line knitting mill, Columbia Knit.  (It is unrelated to the younger and larger Columbia Sportswear.)  He later bought and expanded Columbia Knit, using knowledge that he had acquired from his uncle in that vanished European world of long ago, and achieved the American dream.  In civic life he became active in ensuring that the Holocaust is remembered, first by contributing to the Oregon Holocaust Memorial and later by speaking about his family and his own experience.

His time in the death camps made him fearless in the commercial world.  Once he had a disagreement with a business connection, who told him, "If you don't settle this dispute on my terms, I will sic my lawyers on you and they will tie you up in court for years. It will be the worst experience of your life!"  Mr. Kryszek smiled benignly as he replied, "I was in Auschwitz for a year. What can your lawyers do that's worse than that?"

His war experience also made him quirky with his time.  He would occasionally bring a small project to a lawyer and then sit placidly in the lawyer's office watching the lawyer type the document he wanted instead of going about his business.  Did he want to ensure that he wouldn't be overcharged?  He was thrifty in small things; one who didn't know Mr. Kryszek's life story might have taken his thrift as a sign of parsimony.  He was actually quite generous: the same fate that had taken his brothers and sisters from the world of his youth gave him nearly 75 years to preserve their memory, and he freely shared the richness of time with the world around him.  And every year, every month, every day, every minute that he enjoyed of his long and vibrant life after the war was both a joy in itself and his own private victory over the nation that, 75 years ago, had done its best to try to kill him.

יעקב בן אברהם

תהא נפשו צרורה בצרור החיים

One Hundred

If a young man in a German concentration camp 75 years ago were asked to define "surviving" he might have taken it to mean living to see the next day, or the next week, or the next month -- maybe, by a stretch, living to see the end of the Second World War.  He would not have imagined that "surviving" would some day mean what it meant this weekend: to have dinner and music in the company of his sons and grandsons and six decades of friends, gathered to celebrate his 100th birthday.

Happy birthday, Jake, and congratulations.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָה יהוה
אֶלוֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הַעוֹלָם
שֵהֵחְיָנוּ וְקִיְימָנוּ
וְהִגִעָנוּ לַזְמַן הַזֶה

A very special wish for a happy 99th birthday

In 2008, I wrote:

Some years ago, here in Portland, two businessmen had a disagreement.  One said to the other, "If you don't settle this dispute on my terms, I will sic my lawyers on you and they will tie you up in court for years.  It will be the worst experience that you've ever had!"  The other smiled benignly, and replied, "I was in Auschwitz for a year.  What can your lawyers do that's worse?"

They settled, mostly on the second man's terms.

Auschwitz was one of the three concentration camps in which the second man had been imprisoned.  He survived to come to Portland, raise a family, and enjoy a successful business career.  Today he celebrates something that in Nazi Germany in 1944 must have seemed impossible to him: his 90th birthday. 

It's now 2017, and the second man is celebrating something that in 1944 must have seemed not only impossible but inconceivable:  his 99th birthday.

Happy birthday, Jake, and best wishes for many more to come. 

בָּרוּךְ אַתָה יהוה
אֶלוֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הַעוֹלָם
שֵהֵחְיָנוּ וְקִיְימָנוּ
וְהִגִעָנוּ לַזְמַן הַזֶה

Happy birthday to a true survivor

To a survivor of Auschwitz, the rest of life's challenges must seem easy.  In September 2008 I wrote about one such survivor, a Portland resident who that day celebrated his 90th birthday, something that must have seemed impossible for him to imagine in September 1944.  Last week he moved even further into improbability as he turned 98.  I can do no better than to repeat my good wishes from 2008:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָה יהוה
אֶלוֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הַעוֹלָם
שֵהֵחְיָנוּ וְקִיְימָנוּ
וְהִגִעָנוּ לַזְמַן הַזֶה

Happy birthday, Jake.

O2 say can you see? Venerable Mom cuts the wrong budget

I spent some time with Venerable Mom this week, helping her navigate the vagaries of the health care system while she lay in a hospital bed awaiting some tests.  Somewhere in our discussions (which, in the parlance of diplomats, were "frank and open") she said that she didn't like what she was paying for her portable oxygen tank.

I've known for many years that Venerable Mom revels in thrift, but I couldn't let her statement pass without comment.  "Mom," I said, "first, you don't need to economize; and second, if you do want to reduce expenses, cutting back on your oxygen consumption isn't where to start."

Obama's health plan works -- just ask my aunt

Two years ago her doctor told the Aunt of the Left, who was bedridden and gravely ill, that she had only a few days to live.  Following her lifelong habit of questioning authority, the Aunt of the Left told her doctor that his schedule wouldn't work for her at all, as she needed to live long enough to see President Obama be re-elected.

At the time I didn't know how strongly the A. of the L. felt about President Obama, but I do now: she told me this story, quite cheerfully, a few weeks ago as we sat at her table sharing a pot of tea.  She's planning to be up and about on January 21 to watch the televised inauguration ceremonies.  I didn't think to ask her if she's changed doctors.

Happy Mother's Day to Venerable Mom Laquedem, assisted by Professor Lehrer

Venerable Mom Laquedem was instantly taken with "Momsms," by Anita Renfroe, to which I linked in my other post for this Mother's Day, when I played it for her for Passover.  (Our family has some unusual observances.)  My regular Mother's Day serenade to her is Tom Lehrer's song "Oedipus Rex," which I'll sing to her today, as is my custom.  Venerable Mom will reply as is her custom, with a couple of words that aren't in my day-to-day vocabulary followed by the suggestion that a card and a box of chocolates would have been adequate.