Francisco Franco Is Still Dead

Francisco Franco is still dead. Except in the archives of National Review, that is, where he is the glorious hero with a righteous cause who saved the day--an integral part of Western civilization--the man to whom Spain looks for leadership.

Yes, National Review praises military coups, the overthrow of democratic governments, the imperative need to side with neither Churchill nor Hitler, and that integral part of Western civilization that was Francisco Franco. You can sense William F. Buckley more than half-wishing he could have played his part in Franco's righteous fight against the grotesque democratic regime of Republican Spain--perhaps by piloting a Ju-87 in the Condor Legion?

October 26, 1957: General Franco is an authentic national hero... [with the] talents, the perseverance, and the sense of the righteousness of his cause, that were required to wrest Spain from the hands of the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists, and nihilists that were imposing... a regime so grotesque as to do violence to the Spanish soul, to deny, even, Spain's historical destiny. He saved the day.... The need was imperative... for a national policy [to]... make this concession to Churchill this morning, that one to Hitler this afternoon.... Franco reigns... supreme. He is not an oppressive dictator.... only as oppressive as is necessary to maintain total power...

March 9, 1957: Franco is a part, and an integral part, of Western civilization... [the] convergence of the multifarious political philosophical, religious, and cultural tendencies that have shaped Spanish history... the man to whom the Spanish people look--as the Chinese have looked to Chiang [Kaishek], for all his faults--for leadership.

Comments

[Hektor Bim]

I see. To prevent damage to the "Spanish soul", whatever that is, it is necessary to do actual damage to lots and lots of Spaniards, again and again.

The thing about Churchill is interesting, since I thought most NR types had elevated Churchill to a minor diety who could do no wrong.

[yabonn]

And all together now :

Fascism is painless,
It bring on many changes...

I'd really like to see the asshole who wrote this try to pull it in Spain.

Those wingnuts really are from outer space. What if these same are really what's happening, politically? Maybe the slide to the right is simply the story of Wingnut Big Money progressively shaping the debate, via those wackos, assorted "think" tanks and various money dumps?

[tom f]

Jeffrey Dworkin, NPR ombudsman, produces data on the number of think-tank sources in NPR stories through early Dec. 2005:

American Enterprise -- 59

Brookings Institute [sic] -- 102

Cato Institute -- 29

Center for Strategic and Intl. Studies -- 39

Heritage Foundation -- 20

Hoover Institute -- 69

Lexington Institute -- 9

Manhattan Institute -- 53

[Samuel Knight]

Hate to do this, but Franco was a dictator with a difference. Your other examples of the nuttiness in the National Review are much more persuasive.

Franco is still respected in Spain, because he did keep Spain out of WW II, selected a great successor and a stable country.

And even as a lefty, I have to admit that the Republicans by 1937 had become taken over by the Stalinists. They in fact purged in the middle of fighting. There weren't great choices.

So he seems distant now, but Franco actually did a pretty good job. But is most crucial was knowing that his day was over and selecting Juan Carlos to lead the country to democracy.

[anne]

http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/gmain.html

Guernica: Testimony of War

It is modern art's most powerful antiwar statement... created by the twentieth century's most well-known and least understood artist. But the mural called Guernica is not at all what Pablo Picasso has in mind when he agrees to paint the centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World's Fair.

For three months, Picasso has been searching for inspiration for the mural, but the artist is in a sullen mood, frustrated by a decade of turmoil in his personal life and dissatisfaction with his work. The politics of his native homeland are also troubling him, as a brutal civil war ravages Spain. Republican forces, loyal to the newly elected government, are under attack from a fascist coup led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Franco promises prosperity and stability to the people of Spain. Yet he delivers only death and destruction.

Hoping for a bold visual protest to Franco's treachery from Spain's most eminent artist, colleagues and representatives of the democratic government have come to Picasso's home in Paris to ask him to paint the mural. Though his sympathies clearly lie with the new Republic, Picasso generally avoids politics - and disdains overtly political art.

The official theme of the Paris Exposition is a celebration of modern technology. Organizers hope this vision of a bright future will jolt the nations out of the economic depression and social unrest of the thirties.

As plans unfold, much excitement is generated by the Aeronautics Pavilion, featuring the latest advances in aircraft design and engineering. Who would suspect that this dramatic progress would bring about such dire consequences?

On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's burgeoning war machine, the hamlet is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded.

By May 1st, news of the massacre at Guernica reaches Paris, where more than a million protesters flood the streets to voice their outrage in the largest May Day demonstration the city has ever seen. Eyewitness reports fill the front pages of Paris papers. Picasso is stunned by the stark black and white photographs. Appalled and enraged, Picasso rushes through the crowded streets to his studio, where he quickly sketches the first images for the mural he will call Guernica. His search for inspiration is over.

From the beginning, Picasso chooses not to represent the horror of Guernica in realist or romantic terms. Key figures - a woman with outstretched arms, a bull, an agonized horse - are refined in sketch after sketch, then transferred to the capacious canvas, which he also reworks several times. "A painting is not thought out and settled in advance," said Picasso. "While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it."

Three months later, Guernica is delivered to the Spanish Pavilion, where the Paris Exposition is already in progress....

[anne]

http://www.terra.es/personal/asg00003/picasso/grguer2.jpg

Located out of the way, and grouped with the pavilions of smaller countries some distance from the Eiffel Tower, the Spanish Pavilion stood in the shadow of Albert Speer's monolith to Nazi Germany. The Spanish Pavilion's main attraction, Picasso's Guernica, is a sober reminder of the tragic events in Spain.

Initial reaction to the painting is overwhelmingly critical. The German fair guide calls Guernica "a hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted." It dismisses the mural as the dream of a madman. Even the Soviets, who had sided with the Spanish government against Franco, react coolly. They favor more overt imagery, believing that only more realistic art can have political or social consequence. Yet Picasso's tour de force would become one of this century's most unsettling indictments of war.

After the Fair, Guernica tours Europe and Northern America to raise consciousness about the threat of fascism. From the beginning of World War II until 1981, Guernica is housed in its temporary home at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, though it makes frequent trips abroad to such places as Munich, Cologne, Stockholm, and even Sao Palo in Brazil. The one place it does not go is Spain. Although Picasso had always intended for the mural to be owned by the Spanish people, he refuses to allow it to travel to Spain until the country enjoys "public liberties and democratic institutions." ...

[Ari]

Anne reminds us, Francisco Franco is as reviled in Spain as Picasso is revered.

[Roger Albin]

Samuel Knight, a short reading list. For the Spanish Civil War, the best concise introduction is Antony Beevor's book. For Franco's regime, the best book by far is Stanley Payne's The Franco Regime, and for a fine biography of Franco, try Paul Preston's book.
Your points are common misconceptions. Franco's admirers often point to his behavior during WWII as proof of his skill but the documentary record shows clearly that there were times, notably after the invasion of the Soviet Union, when he was panting to join the Axis. He was restrained by a series of factors including intelligent Allied economic pressure and considerable German reluctance to take on another ally like Italy that would require industrial support. In 1941, Franco was already offering the German Navy substantial clandestine support and the Germans had a monopoly on important Spanish minerals. The Germans had already gotten what they needed most from Franco without a formal alliance. Franco was a cautious person but he was also very, very lucky.
The issue of Communists during the Civil War is complicated. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Spanish Communist Pary was a trivial force in Spanish politics, completely eclipsed by the Socialists and Syndicalist movements. The Communists became a force only as a result of the fact that the Soviet Union was the only power to come to aid of the Republic. The insurrection against the second Republic didn't begin because of the power of the Communists, it began because the Spanish right hated liberal democracy, the socialist movements, and the syndicalists. Now, to be fair, there is some controversy about the second Republic. Payne, for example, assigns some of the blame for the outbreak of the Civil War to non-democratic actions by the government of the Republic. Preston and other scholars disagree on this point. Regardless, the military revolt against the Republic can't be justified by the 'Stalinism' of the Spanish Left because the communists were a minor force prior to the Civil War.
As for the selection of Juan Carlos, Franco wanted to bring back the monarchy because he thought it would be the only way to guarantee the continuation of his vision of a non-democratic, intolerantly Catholic, and deeply reactionary Spain. Franco's real designated successor was his long time aide Admiral Carrero Blanco, who was killed by ETA terrorists in the late 60s. The Franco plan was that Juan Carlos would be a figurehead with Carrero Blanco the power behind the throne. Carrero Blanco was a slavish devotee of Franco and would have done everything possible, including military repression, to prevent real democratization. Franco certainly had no inkling that Juan Carlos would become a crucial individual in Spain becoming almost everything he despised.

[andres]

Samuel Knight: Though most spaniards are willing to admit that Franco wasn't the catastrophe that Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini were, the vast majority of them still have scant respect for the man.

Franco could have led a civilized, moderated attempt to overthrow the Republic in the same way that Caesar was merciful even as he launched his war against the Roman Senate. But Franco did not do that. Not only did he permit the Condor Legion to commit atrocities such as the terror bombings in Madrid and Guernica, but he also encouraged his more butcher-prone subordinates such as Juan de Yague to commit mass murder of helpless civilians, e.g., in Badajoz. Republican soldiers who fell prisoners to Franco's army could expect decades of solitary inprisonment at best, summary execution at worst.

Lastly, Franco in power engaged in an obsessive and totally counterproductive attempt to crush Basque and Catalan political and cultural autonomy. The ETA owes its existence almost entirely to Franco, as does the grudging attitude of Catalonia to the central government in Madrid.

In short, Spain would have been immeasurably better off if the revolt against the Republic had been led by a civilian politician who knew the limitations of violence and repression, rather than by a tin-horn caudillo with ambitions to dictatorship, which is all that Franco ever was.

[Seth Gordon]

"He is not an oppressive dictator.... only as oppressive as is necessary to maintain total power..."

How generous of him!

[Dubblblind]

"He is not an oppressive dictator.... only as oppressive as is necessary to maintain total power..."

So will this then be the mold of our war president after he decides to invade Iran or Syria come 2008 and the presidential election is "delayed" for national security reasons involving the War-On-Terra?

[Oskar Shapley]

"He is not violating FISA law.... only violating law as is necessary to maintain total security..."

[ilsm]

Opus Dei and related radical right wing catholics revere Franco because they claim the communists were martyring priest and nuns.

Anyone in favor of Rome and against the left is to be revered.

Otherwise, I have no opinion on Franco other than he is the right wing dictator of choice this week.

Still a dictator and no better than the rest less concentration camps and mass murder.

[Roger Albin]

ilsm - Nuns and priests were martyred by the defenders of the Republic, though not necessarily by Communists. Much of the Spanish Left was very anti-clerical, not surprising considering that the Spanish Church was a bulwark of the Right. Immediately after the beginning of the Civil War, there was considerable spontaneous violence, much from the Left and much from the Right. In parts of Spain, churches were burned and clergy executed, particularly by Syndicalists. The Communists deplored this kind of thing because their ideal was a disciplined movement, not the kind of uncontrolled violence precipitated by the outbreak of the Civil War.
Following the work of some Spanish scholars, Stanley Payne estimates that deaths caused by the Francist forces (including postwar executions) and those caused by the Republican side (including the spontaneous violence at the beginning of the war) to be approximately equivalent. Nonetheless, its hard to argue for moral equivalence because it was the Spanish Army that started the Civil War by rebelling against a government that had legitimate, though flawed, democratic credentials.
Its unfortunately true that the Catholic Church and allied organizations like Opus Dei lent legitimacy to the Franco regime during the 40s and 50s. Franco was officially designated a Defender of the Faith by the Vatican. The strong support of the Catholic hierarchy into the 60s was certainly one of the reasons for the staying power of Franco's regime.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=4214&u=311%7C11%7C...

Cathedral at Night
Arcos de la Frontera, Spain.

Thanks, Roger Albin :)

[save_the_rustbelt]

Did the New York Times ever apologize for doing puff pieces on Stalin?

Ten million dead Ukrainians want to know.

PS: National Review Online has a "best of" page, if you like wack-job economics.

[jon livesey]

"And even as a lefty, I have to admit that the Republicans by 1937 had become taken over by the Stalinists."

Well certainly, Orwell paints a pretty depressing picture of the republicans in Homage to Catalonia.

I think that there are really two Francos, which is why the contrasting comments here are all correct, but in different time periods.

Spaniards around 1945 certainly did regard Franco as the man who saved them from communism and kept them out of WWII, and the allies were not too picky about dealing with him during that war.

After the war Franco became more and more of a classic fascist, and US support for his government was a serious irritant in European-US relations.

No-one has mentioned the way he engineered the restoration of the monarchy, and way that led to the return of democratic government - whether that's exactly what Franco himself intended.

[lise]

So, if it weren't for Anne's noticing I suppose Guernica would be of no account. Franco joins with Hitler to massacre innocent civilians in a small Basque town and we are supposed to not notice. There is a reason Guernica is among the most famous paintings of the century. The Spanish certainly remember Guernica.

[lise]

Thanks to Anne:

"On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's burgeoning war machine, the hamlet is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded."

[lise]

http://www.slate.com/id/2078242/

February 6, 2003

What's so controversial about Picasso's Guernica?
By David Cohen

Earlier this week, U.N. officials hung a blue curtain over a tapestry reproduction of Picasso's Guernica at the entrance of the Security Council. The spot is where diplomats and others make statements to the press, and ostensibly officials thought it would be inappropriate for Colin Powell to speak about war in Iraq with the 20th century's most iconic protest against the inhumanity of war as his backdrop. Why is Guernica such a powerfully controversial image after all these years, and how did it come to hang in tapestry form at the United Nations? ....

[anne]

Thank you :) We ought not to forget Guernica; in the forgetting we may be more likely to repeat such tragic episodes. Franco was a tyrant from the beginning.

[Roger Albin]

jon livesey - There is only 1 Franco but his rule is generally periodized into 3 phases. Franco was a very adroit politician who was good at balancing the different components of his regime and at different times, this resulted in a regime with somewhat different features. Throughout his life, however, Franco was attached to a vision of an essentially reactionary, anti-liberal, anti-democratic Spain. Again, Stanley Payne's work is essential for understanding the Franco regime. The first phase was from the victory in the Civil War through the late 40s. In this period, the regime was rather fascist in orientation. The following decade can be seen as the one closest to Franco's heart. The regime was very, very conservative, traditionally Catholic in orientation, rather repressive, and dedicated to economic autarky. Franco's economic policies were disastrous and by the end of the 50s, he had to permit economic liberalization and some degree of social liberalization. The Spanish business community wanted closer European integration and the Church turned against him. Franco was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the early 60s and by the end of the decade was probably demented and functioning as a figurehead for a group of mediocre courtiers. Any suggestion that he picked Juan Carlos to facilitate a transition to democracy is ridiculous. This was the last thing he wanted and he would have regarded Juan Carlos' subsequent behavior as treason.

[Bruce Moomaw]

Franco's originally picked successor was a hardline General whom the ETA blew to bits with a manhole-cover bomb under his car. Only then did he pick Juan Carlos -- and J.C. kept his own democratic leanings absolutely secret from Franco as long as the old bastard was alive; his immediate announcement afterwards that he was on the side of democracy came as a delightful surprise to everyone.

As for his vindictiveness: George Will has remarked on Franco's habit of having his political opponents very slowly strangled with a twistable garrote -- and then making sure that their families were officially informed of the execution technique. He's also noted that Franco's official Cabinet appointee in charge of social services was a wealthy polo player who was fond of delivering speeches on "the need for a typhoid epidemic to liquidate the poor riffraff". Of course, NR loved him anyway because NR was run by a couple of ultraright Catholics (one of whom ended up demanding that the US repeal the First Amendment and officially declare Roman Catholicism the state religion).

But then, NR said exactly the same sorts of things about Pinochet and Marcos throughout the 1970s and 1980s ("Chile Redeemed") -- although, as Mark Falcoff (who frequently writes for the American Spectator) pointed out in 1987, Pinochet was not just an anti-Communist but an explicit fascist, as he declared in his 1980 autobiography.

To repeat: NR has always been utter moral garbage -- and its one partial alibi is that in the 1950s both the Nation and the New Republic were saying comparably cretinous things about the Soviet Union.

[christofay]

NR releashes its Iberian Inner Chiang.

[Steady Eddie]

One last reply to Samuel Knight: the idea that the Spanish Republic was basically Stalinist by 1937 is self-rebutting nonsense. The Republican forces had become split, as Orwell so forcefully describes, precisely because the Spanish Communists were "rule or ruin" Stalinists who were unable to dominate the Republic. As Orwell and history show, Stalin was determined that he'd rather see Spain fall to Franco than allow it to be run by Socialists or Syndicalists who might expose the fraud that the Soviet Union was a genuinely socialist state. If the Stalinists had taken over the Republic, Stalin would have poured in resources and troops to keep Spain under his control, instead of making his principal fight there against the other left parties, as he did.

Moreover, the idea that Franco is widely respected in Spain today is also nonsense. Franco's true legacy is identified with the 1981 coup plotters, who are rejected politically by all but a fraction of the right-wing People's Party. It's mostly the Catholic clergy and some old "noble" families who still revere Franco.

[JR]

Samuel Knight has been contradicted but not nearly in strong enough terms.

"I have to admit that the Republicans by 1937 had become taken over by the Stalinists. They in fact purged in the middle of fighting."

The Spanish Civil War began when Franco invaded Spain from Morocco in July 1936. The Nazis and Italian fascists gave him massive amounts of arms and troops. The British and French were "neutral" and embargoed all arms shipments, and the League of Nations barred foreign troops. Only the democracies observed these embargoes - they were were ignored by the Germans and Italians. The outgunned Republicans had only one source of weapons- the Soviet Union, which had no interest in arming democrats and assured that the weaponry went into the hands of Communists. By May 1937, the relatively small but by now heavily armed Spanish Communists turned on their anarchist and democratic allies and murdered them. The notion that Spain was saved from Communism by Franco is obscene nonsense.

"But is most crucial was knowing that his day was over and selecting Juan Carlos to lead the country to democracy."

Franco's hand-picked successor was Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, a comrade-in-arms during the Civil War and a committed fascist. Franco made him Prime Minister and there was no doubt that Carrero Blanco would have become dictator after Franco's death. Franco wanted to restore the monarchy to provide a veneer of respectability, and was planning for a powerless monarch reigning over a military dictatorship. He selected Juan Carlos over his father to take the throne because he believed that the father, Juan de Borbon, would be too liberal and too assertive. He believed that Juan Carlos would be a weak monarch who could be controlled.

All was going according to plan until 1973, when the Basque separatist group ETA assassinated Carrero Blanco in a spectacular bomb attack. Franco, by this time decrepit, did not change the plan to put Juan Carlos on the throne, although without a strongman in line for Prime Minister it would mean that the monarch would have real power in appointing a government. Many in Spain thought that civil war would resume after Franco's death and that Juan Carlos would be swept away. But Juan Carlos amazed the Spanish and infuriated the Phalangists by moving the country quickly toward a constitutional monarchy. His extraordinary bravery when he condemned a coup attempt against the legitimate government in 1981 made him dearly loved.

So the notion that Franco appointed Juan Carlos to "lead the country to democracy" is utterly wrong-headed.

[Tim Worstall]

And the next task is to find, from 1957, pieces that tell us Stalin was a great leader, Kruschev the way forward, the Hungarian events of the previous year were necessarily and rightly crushed as counter-revolutionary etc etc etc.

I don’t know if The Nation was around then but we should be able to find plenty of such journalism around. No?

[KevinNYC]

Tim,

YOu don't know if The Nation was around in 1957?

[Tim Worstall]

Hey, I’m a foreigner! I don’t even live in hte US!

I know the New Stateman was around, The Spectator, etc, but US magazines?

[ilsm]

Hemingway wrote about Americans with the republicans.

Individual Americans went to Spain to fight. They were subsequent portrayed as commies.

Ford build plants in Soviet Union to spread Model A's.

[anne]

http://www.artfaq.it/desktop/guernica.jpg

'Republican forces, loyal to the newly elected government, are under attack from a fascist coup led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Franco promises prosperity and stability to the people of Spain. Yet he delivers only death and destruction.

'Hoping for a bold visual protest to Franco's treachery from Spain's most eminent artist, colleagues and representatives of the democratic government have come to Picasso's home in Paris to ask him to paint the mural. Though his sympathies clearly lie with the new Republic, Picasso generally avoids politics - and disdains overtly political art.

'The official theme of the Paris Exposition is a celebration of modern technology. Organizers hope this vision of a bright future will jolt the nations out of the economic depression and social unrest of the thirties.

'As plans unfold, much excitement is generated by the Aeronautics Pavilion, featuring the latest advances in aircraft design and engineering. Who would suspect that this dramatic progress would bring about such dire consequences?

'On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's burgeoning war machine, the hamlet is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded.

'By May 1st, news of the massacre at Guernica reaches Paris, where more than a million protesters flood the streets to voice their outrage in the largest May Day demonstration the city has ever seen. Eyewitness reports fill the front pages of Paris papers. Picasso is stunned by the stark black and white photographs. Appalled and enraged, Picasso rushes through the crowded streets to his studio, where he quickly sketches the first images for the mural he will call Guernica. His search for inspiration is over.

'From the beginning, Picasso chooses not to represent the horror of Guernica in realist or romantic terms. Key figures - a woman with outstretched arms, a bull, an agonized horse - are refined in sketch after sketch, then transferred to the capacious canvas, which he also reworks several times. "A painting is not thought out and settled in advance," said Picasso. "While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it."'

[anne]

http://www.artfaq.it/desktop/guernica.jpg

Here is Francisco Franco for Spaniards, then and to this day.

[RKKA]

"Did the New York Times ever apologize for doing puff pieces on Stalin?

Ten million dead Ukrainians want to know"

I know we can't allow Ukrainians dying now to distract attention from a very flexible number of Ukrainians who died 60 years ago, but should various free-market-supporting publications apologize for the millions of premature deaths in Ukraine since 1991?

[......]

Please,
stop saying stupid things! I´m Spaniard, I live in Spain and I´m old enough to share with all of you our impressions.
Franco killed a lot of people, and we suffered a dictatorship system during 40 years. It´s not enough?. There are no more approaches: he was a painful cancer for all of us!!

[anne]

http://www2.museopicassomalaga.org/i_02_1frameset.htm

Museo Picasso Málaga :)

[Mrs Tilton]

Bruce Moomaw has it right. If you don't understand that there has always been a hardcore neodeMaistrite palaeo (palaeo? Archaeo!) RC conservatism at the heart of NR, then you don't understand NR. Buckley is actually relatively enlightened and civilised compared to some of his fellow-travellers. (There's a book in it for the strong-stomached sociologist willing to delve into the world of Rao, Wilhelmsen, Bozell père etc.)

NR is and has always been a vile pusfilled sore. In the past, though, it had at least some better and more interesting writers than it does today. That's 'interesting' in the Chinese-curse sense, mind.

BTW, is that ever the Jon Livesey who used to post to scc?

[Randall]

Mrs. Tilton, I just cannot find the term "neo-de Maistrite" on Google. What might an alternate spelling be? I agree however that NR has long been terrible and have not looked at it for a couple of years.

[Randall]

Could it be "della maestrite?" But, how do I find out what this means?

[Mrs Tilton]

Hi Randall,

I'm afraid the term 'neodeMaistrite' is, SFAIK, my own. But you'll find a tuppeny intro to the lovely and talented de Maistre here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Maistre

[Randall]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Maistre

Thanks to Mrs. Tilton. A perfect reference.

Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre (April 1, 1753- February 26, 1821) was a French-speaking Savoyard lawyer, diplomat, writer, and philosopher. He was one of the most influential spokesmen for a counter-revolutionary and authoritarian conservatism in the period immediately following the French Revolution of 1789. Maistre argued for the restoration of hereditary monarchy, which he regarded as a divinely sanctioned institution, and for the supreme authority of the Pope in both religious and political matters.

According to Maistre, only governments founded on the Christian constitution, implicit in the customs and institutions of all European societies but especially in that of Catholic European monarchies, could avoid the disorder and bloodletting that followed the implementation of rationalist political programs, such as that of the then-recent French Revolution. An enthusiastic believer in the principle of established authority, which the Revolution sought to destroy, Maistre defended it everywhere: in the State by extolling the monarchy, in the Church by exalting the privileges of the papacy, and in the world by glorifying God's providence.

[Randall]

Mrs. Tilton, you have a sharp "pen" and I enjoy reading you and will ask again after your references because they are always interesting. Ha; there is surely a wish for monarchy.

[Randall]

Also, I am ashamed to say that I did not know of Picasso's "Guernica" but I will never forget the imagery. I do know from a vacation in Spain that Goya painted and drew terrifying anti-war scenes.

[Randall]

Think about having a tapestry of "Guernica" covered over when Colin Powell went to the United Nations to speak on the charges against Iraq.

[Ms. Pineiro]

I find it absolutely amazing that there are people out there that support what franco has done. As a spaniard who lost loved ones, family that was taken and never heard from again or to be put in concentration camps that he himself visited and controled, a man who held Hitler in high regard, is seen as a good leader because he kept Spain out of WWII is absolutely absurd and hurtful. It pains me to read some of these comments. He was and will always will remain a murderer. I do not need to see Picasso's Guernica to see the suffering that took place. I only need to look at my family and to see the emptiness that Franco has left behind. Nobody will ever know the true horror of what actually happened unless they themselves are Spaniards. Que viva espana.