1/7/2026

 Wednesday, January 7, 2026

1948 Harry Truman raised taxes for the Marshall Plan to assist in rebuilding Europe after WWII 

1953 Harry Truman announced the American development of the hydrogen bomb

1972 Lewis F. Powell Jr. became a US Supreme Court Justice

1980 Jimmy Carter signed legislation to bail out the Chrysler Corporation with a 1.5 billion dollar loan

1999 Bill Clinton's Senate impeachment trial began for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky

2021 Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, became the world's richest person, worth $186 billion, overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

2022 Three men were convicted of murdering black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia

2025  The body of former US President Jimmy Carter lay in state in the US Capitol

2025  President-elect Donald Trump refused to rule out using military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal

In bed at 9:45, up at 5:25.  34/40/33, cloudy/partly cloudy.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8 a.m.   

Thucydides, Machiavelli,  Stephen Miller and Donald Trump.

From this morning's New York Times: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake [Tapper], that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper of CNN on Monday, during a combative appearance in which he was pressed on Mr. Trump’s long-held desire to control Greenland.  “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time,” he said.  And he said that no one would fight back if the United States were to decide to use its military to annex Greenland.  “I just wanted to reset, Jake, by making clear that has been the formal position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration, frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration, that Greenland should be part of the United States,” Mr. Miller said on CNN on Monday evening. “The president has been very clear about that. That is the formal position of the U.S. government.”

“The president has been driving all policy and Stephen faithfully executes what the president wants,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “Whether it’s immigration, crime, trade, Greenland or Venezuela.”

Thucydides, in The Peloponesioan War: 

“For you know as well as we, that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power; while the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.  We know that the gods everywhere are supposed to favor the stronger side; and of men, we know that by a necessary law of their nature, they rule wherever they can.”

Nicolo Machiavelli, in The Prince:

Since it has been my intention to write something of use to the understanding reader, it has seemed wiser to me to follow the real truth of the matter rather than what we imagine it to be.  Imagination has created many principalities and republics that have never been seen or known to have any real existence; for how we live is so far different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will

learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.  ch. XV.   “In seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke… benefits ought to be conferred little by little.” (ch. VIII)  “It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one must choose.  (ch. XVII)  “There are two ways of fighting: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to men; the second to beasts. But because the first is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second.”

(ch. XVIII)

Are Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, Thucydides, and Machiavelli correct?  They weren't the only ones who shared the same or similar thoughts about the central role of force and power in life.  Thomas Hobbes wrote, "“Covenants, without the sword, are but words.”  (Leviathan, ch. XVII)  Baruch Spinoza ws no less blunt: "“Right is coextensive with power.”  Even the renowned Protestant theologian Reinhard Neibuhr, in his Moral Man and Immoral Society, recognized the dominance of strength, power, and force over morality when group behavior is involved:

“Individual men may be moral in the sense that they are able to consider interests other than their own in determining problems of conduct; but groups are more arrogant, hypocritical, self-centered and more ruthless in the pursuit of their ends.”

“The larger the group, the more difficult it is for reason to govern its collective impulses.” 

“Moral suasion is effective in dealing with the individual, but it is ineffective in dealing with social groups.”

“Relations between groups must therefore depend upon a measure of coercion.”

“Justice cannot be established by goodwill alone. It requires a balance of power.”

That last observation by Niebuhr copies Thucydides's statement the "right . . . is only in question between equals in power." 

Quaere whether our own domestic history illustrates Miller's and Thucydides's point.  Consider African slavery, the dispossession of Native Americans' lands, breaches of most of the treaties with Native tribes, Jim Crow, capitalist employers treatment of employees before unions and labor legislation,, the internment of Japanese Americans,  the invasion of Grenada, the CIA intervention in Guatemala, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Indonesia, Iran, etc.

Miller's statements should not be considered as referring only to foreign affairs; he and Donald Trump believe, and history confirms, that it applies in large measure to domestic affairs as well.  The strong do waht they will; the weak suffer what they must.   Sieg heil!