On this day:
1607
Flight of the Earls from Lough Swilly, Donegal, Ireland
1812
Napoleonic Wars: French grenadiers enter Moscow. The Fire of Moscow begins as soon as Russian troops leave the city.
1847
Mexican-American War: Winfield Scott captures Mexico City.
1901
President of the United States William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, and is succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.
1917
Russia is officially proclaimed a republic.
954
In a top secret nuclear test, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber drops a 40 kiloton atomic weapon just north of Totskoye village, exposing some 45,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians to nuclear fallout.
1959
The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.
1960
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.
1994
The Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike.
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There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (9 Sep 1828-1910)
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The Kirk killer is "romantically tied to a transgender partner."
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Fascist:
Meaning, generally, a source of power and authority.
Origin: 1590s, from Latin fasces "bundle of rods containing an axe with the blade projecting" (plural of fascis "bundle" of wood, etc.), from Proto-Italic *faski- "bundle," perhaps from PIE *bhasko- "band, bundle" (source also of Middle Irish basc "neckband," Welsh baich "load, burden," perhaps also Old English bæst "inner bark of the linden tree"). Carried before a lictor, a superior Roman magistrate, as a symbol of power over life and limb: the sticks symbolized punishment by whipping, the axe-head execution by beheading. Hence in Latin it also meant, figuratively, "high office, supreme power."
From at least 1872 fascio was used in the names of labor and agrarian unions, and in October 1914 a political coalition was formed called the Fascio rivoluzionario d’ azione internazionalista (“revolutionary group for international action”), which advocated Italian participation in World War I on the side of the Allies. Members of this group were first called fascisti in January 1915. Although Mussolini was closely associated with this interventionist movement, it had no direct link with the post-war Fasci di combattimento, and in 1919 the word fascista was already in political circulation. It is, however, to the Fascisti in their 1919 incarnation—who seized power in Italy three years later—that we owe the current customary meanings of our words fascism and fascist.
Hitler and the National Socialists never absorbed their notion as "fascist" as it lacked the international aims of Nazism and its intense racism.
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Fascist:
Meaning, generally, a source of power and authority.
Origin: 1590s, from Latin fasces "bundle of rods containing an axe with the blade projecting" (plural of fascis "bundle" of wood, etc.), from Proto-Italic *faski- "bundle," perhaps from PIE *bhasko- "band, bundle" (source also of Middle Irish basc "neckband," Welsh baich "load, burden," perhaps also Old English bæst "inner bark of the linden tree"). Carried before a lictor, a superior Roman magistrate, as a symbol of power over life and limb: the sticks symbolized punishment by whipping, the axe-head execution by beheading. Hence in Latin it also meant, figuratively, "high office, supreme power."
From at least 1872 fascio was used in the names of labor and agrarian unions, and in October 1914 a political coalition was formed called the Fascio rivoluzionario d’ azione internazionalista (“revolutionary group for international action”), which advocated Italian participation in World War I on the side of the Allies. Members of this group were first called fascisti in January 1915. Although Mussolini was closely associated with this interventionist movement, it had no direct link with the post-war Fasci di combattimento, and in 1919 the word fascista was already in political circulation. It is, however, to the Fascisti in their 1919 incarnation—who seized power in Italy three years later—that we owe the current customary meanings of our words fascism and fascist.
Hitler and the National Socialists never absorbed their notion as "fascist" as it lacked the international aims of Nazism and its intense racism.
***
Assassination is a killing, but it is a distinct form of murder; it involves a high-profile victim and is almost always driven by political, ideological, or religious objectives. That is to say, the assassin's motives extend beyond the personal.
The Americans have a particular flaw. The nation was built with a unique respect for the individual. This revolutionary idea implied that citizens needed to take personal responsibility to manage the risk of disorder that individual freedom could bring. The only other major philosophy of individual worth, Christianity, came with a strict moral code; in American freedom, the individual carried his own. He must maintain the same sense of value for the individual that he demands from his government. How could a nation have easy access to weapons safely? This is taught.
Being willing to judge, then execute a fellow citizen for your vision of the society's betterment, takes Putin-levels of delusion of grandeur. And a unique personal viciousness that is usually ignored. Booth's murder of Lincoln occurred after the South's surrender at Appomattox.
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