*continued

Many constitutional law scholars express dismay that the decision in Korematsu upheld racial discrimination against Japanese Americans using a strict scrutiny standard of judicial review because strict scrutiny usually protects minorities. They feel this shock partially because constitutional law textbooks tend (with few exceptions) to be organized by topic instead of in chronological order. Whereas organizing by topic perpetuates the myth of the rule of law by emphasizing mangled legal arguments, a chronological and institutional focus much better explains terrible Supreme Court decisions.

Focusing on the Justices’ identities instead of their legal arguments, the only remaining Justice on the Supreme Court appointed before Roosevelt’s presidency, the above-mentioned Justice Owens, v**ed against Korematsu as a lasting hindrance to the concentration of federal power by one party.

Of the eight Supreme Court Justices Roosevelt appointed and his party confirmed, Justices that Roosevelt intentionally nominated to rule in favor of the Democrats’ federal agenda, six of the eight—or 75% of them—sided with Roosevelt. Korematsu and the internment of Japanese Americans is the culmination of a dozen consecutive years of one-party rule.

Many people today fear that Donald Trump will do terrible things as President, as do I. Fortunately, though, the twenty-second amendment now limits the President to two terms, a particularly useful institutional restraint on the concentration of political power. Due to it, despite his desire to mimic Roosevelt, Trump likely does not have enough time to do anything as “great” as President Roosevelt’s mass internment of Japanese (and Italian and German) Americans.


Even if Trump retains a Republican Presidency, House, and Senate for eight years despite the relative ease of changing the House’s party control, the eight-year limit likely prevents him from also controlling the Supreme Court with its more staggered appointment process. With this limitation, America will hopefully never have to experience again the unusual, dangerous degree of political power exercised by President Roosevelt—no matter how much Trump may seek to make America great again.

Within this narrative, the e*******l college safeguards against the concentration of political power by one party because of its accidental operation within a two-party system.

At first glance, the e*******l college seems like an arbitrary way of electing somebody to be President based on a close correlation to the national popular v**e. Yet, with Trump winning the e*******l college but losing the popular v**e, the e*******l college and popular v**e diverged in this e******n for the fifth time in American history. Thus, many people wonder why we have the e*******l college.

As originally envisioned, the Constitution includes an e*******l college to insulate v****g from the majority and enable wiser e*****rs to choose the President. By doing so, according to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 68, the e*******l college would avoid “tumult and disorder” by ensuring that the small number of people who “possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations” would decide the President.

In practice, e*****rs almost always v**e based on state popular v**es. Trump will win the e*******l college regardless of calls for e*****rs to defect against Hamilton’s nightmarish “man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications” for President.

Despite occasional defections, such as Roger MacBride casting his e*******l v**e for Libertarian candidates John Hospers and Tonie Nathan in 1972 and thus giving a woman her first e*******l v**e, the rare e*******l college defections do not affect p**********l e******ns. Much like the belief that factions would restrain federal power, the belief that the e*******l college would enable wiser e*****rs to decide the President has proven illusory.

Regardless of the original intention, within a two-party system in a large nation, the e*******l college has an important function: it t***sforms e******ns from one national e******n into 51 local e******ns. With the e******ns managed locally, the federal government has little control over the v****g process and cannot systemically tilt the e******n in favor of a party in power, preventing any party from systematically expanding its power through the v****g system. Thus, the e*******l college protects the v****g system from potentially systemic federal corruption by dispersing it across the states.

Moreover, by having 51 local e******ns for e*******l v**es instead of 51 local e******ns that sum into a national popular v**e, local politicians do not have a powerful institutional incentive to tamper with the v****g system and commit v***r f***d to concentrate power in their political party, making the e*******l college within a two-party system a means of restraining v***r f***d and the potential resulting concentration of political power.

Consider by example. In Texas, Republicans control the Governorship and 2/3 or so of the state House and state Senate. Similarly, in California, Democrats control the Governorship and about 2/3 of both the California State Assembly and the California State Senate. In P**********l e******ns, Texas casts its e*******l v**es to the Republican, and California casts its e*******l v**es to the Democrat.

If p**********l e******ns were based on the popular v**e instead of e*******l v**es, though, then Republican Texas politicians would have a powerful incentive to manipulate the v****g system in favor of the Republican p**********l candidate because the additional v**es could matter nationally, and politically powerless Texas Democrats would lack political recourse. Democrats in California would have a similar incentive.

Political tampering with the v****g system could happen in various more and less seemingly legitimate ways. Since young people tend to v**e Democrat, blue states would likely see their v****g age fall to 17, 16, or lower, and red states would see it stay at 18. Similarly, since felons tend to v**e Democrat, blue states would probably expand v****g rights for felons, and red states would further restrict their v****g rights. Since v**er identification laws tend to reduce minority turnout and hurt Democrats, red states would probably expand v**er identification laws and blue states would probably reduce them.

I am surely overlooking other creative ways that partisan politicians could justify expanding or contracting v**er suffrage. Wh**ever dispassionate reasons exist for such v****g laws and restrictions, the interaction of a nationwide popular v**e and states with one party rule would create powerful institutional incentives for partisan rather than impartial reasoning to determine the v****g rules, facilitating the concentration of political power among whichever party more successfully manipulates the v****g process.

In addition to the above tampering with the v****g system, politicians in red and blue states could have both the political power and the incentive to engage in outright fraud to empower their party. Considering how creative and manipulative these politicians have been in gerrymandering, such as in Texas and California, politicians governing a one party state within a two party nation would likely manufacture many legal and illegal ways to enhance their party’s national popular v**e.

Thus, by creating 51 contests instead of a national popular v**e, the e*******l college deters red and blue states from tampering with the v****g system and concentrating federal political power within their party.

Unlike Texas and California, “swing states” with close v**es in p**********l e******ns also more frequently either currently have or recently have had divided governments. In these states, both parties likely have enough political power to restrain the other party’s abuses. For example, my home swing state of Pennsylvania has a Republican legislature and a Democrat Governor.

Additionally, since states like Pennsylvania are known to be swing states, people can monitor them more closely for systemic corruption, a much easier proposition than monitoring all v****g booths in the country. With political power divided between the two parties and more careful nationwide monitoring, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can likely systemically concentrate their party’s political power through legal or illegal manipulation of the v****g process in swing states. The e*******l college protects against politically corrupt v****g systems by shifting e******ns to places with divided governments and more reliable v****g.

Interestingly, the above e*******l college defense reverses the historical case for it. Rather than having Hamilton’s politically astute elites choose the President, the e*******l college disperses power by protecting P**********l e******ns from partisan political elites.

Arguing against the e*******l college, constitutional law scholar Akhil Reed Amar has recently challenged its proponents to explain why a popular v**e is “good enough for the governorship of Texas or California” but not “the presidency of the United States”. Given his well-respected stature as a constitutional law scholar and his thoughtful analysis that acknowledges “the possibility of unintended consequences of even well-intentioned reform”, I would like to explicitly answer his question.

In governor races, winning a state by a 5% or 10% or 30% margin has the same result—whether by an inch or a mile, the governor wins. In P**********l races with a national popular v**e, the margin of victory within a state would matter because the entire margin affects the national popular v**e.


States can reliably manage governor races, but one-party states within a two-party nation would have corrupting incentives to expand margins of victory in p**********l races—and also have the political power to do so. Therefore, the repeal of the e*******l college would likely have harmful unintended consequences because one-party states would have a powerful incentive to manipulate the v****g system to expand their p**********l party’s margin of victory, an incentive they do not have in the case of governor races.

To conclude, let me clarify the scope of the above e*******l college defense by rejecting a common argument for it. According to some e*******l college proponents, the e*******l college beneficially forces candidates to focus on the nation as a whole instead of particular regions, leading to more moderate candidates with greater national appeal. Under this reasoning, without the e*******l college, Republicans may focus on Texas and Democrats on California, ignoring most of the rest of the country in a way that could delegitimize the presidency.

This counter-negative may or may not be true. When v**es matter equally nationwide, politicians may find it similarly efficient to earn another v**e in Pennsylvania as in Texas because the relevant “swing” would switch from swing states to swing v**ers. If the swing v**er is the median v**er in Pennsylvania and the 67th percentile v**er in Texas/California, politicians may or may not find it noticeably easier to sway the Texas/California swing v**er than the Pennsylvania swing v**er or to expand v**er turnout in Texas/California than in Pennsylvania. E*******l campaigns, and not imaginative predictions, would determine how best to increase a candidate’s v**es.


For argument’s sake, assume the empirical claim. Here is a map of the 2016 p**********l e******n by county. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/e******n/2016/

Republicans overwhelming won America’s counties and carried rural America. In contrast, Democrats won substantially fewer counties and compensate by winning populous, urban cities.

If the outrageously strong bubble that separate rural red tribes and urban blue tribes under the present system is tolerable, then, by comparison, any successful regional p**********l candidates must also be tolerable because Democrats already win e******ns with a trivial fraction of America’s regions.

The above e*******l college defense focuses on dispersing political power within a two-party system. With this realization, the e*******l college can correlate better with the popular v**e without removing the above described beneficial features. A simple e*******l college reform would be to change the number of e*****rs per state from the present total, the House plus the Senate, to instead just be the number of House members—thus subtracting two e*******l v**es from each state (and the District of Columbia). This change would make each v**er’s v**e power within the e*******l college roughly the same without threatening the systemic concentration of political power within any party.

Note that I have not checked which, if any, e******ns would have had different outcomes with this alternative e*******l v**e calculation because such an effect is immaterial to this essay’s argument. Moreover, as a practical matter, small states with Senate power would likely prevent this change just as fervently as they prevent changing the e*******l v**e to a national popular v**e because this change would somewhat reduce their political influence. Yet, whereas I support the e*******l college over a national popular v**e, I would negligibly support a constitutional amendment that altered the e*******l count in the above-described way.

More significantly, institutions matter more than specific e*******l outcomes. The institutions that determine how the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and President are decided accidentally restrain the federal government within a two-party system by dispersing political power between both parties. The e*******l college contributes by deterring any one party from systemically controlling the presidency through its tampering with the v****g system.

- Sean J. Rosenthal



Sean J. Rosenthal is an attorney in New York.

Through the e*******l college, Donald T***p w*n the presidency even though Hillary Clinton won the popular v**e. In response, many people have called to abolish the e*******l college and have the presidency decided by a popular v**e, including several hundred thousand MoveOn.org petitioners.

In contrast, I support the e*******l college. Though I would find unobjectionable changes in the way the e*******l college is calculated, I generally approve of the e*******l college because it is one of the Constitution’s accidentally great procedural features for deterring the concentration of political power and the resulting abuses of such concentration.

As described below, in addition to the e*******l college, the Constitution's v****g system does an unexpectedly good job of deterring the concentration of political power.

Let's start with the what makes the Constitution’s v****g rules accidently great.

At the time of the Constitution's ratification in the late 1700s, its proponents expected federal power to be restrained by having a wide swath of different Americans in a large republic form many factions. These diverse factions would restrain federal action by hindering consensus. In James Madison's words in Federalist #10:

"The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other."

Thus, according to Madison, having a lot of people with diverse interests restrains federal power and protects liberty by deterring the formation of oppressive majorities.

Since America has consistently had two major political parties instead of dozens of factions, Madison was, in a word, wrong. He overlooked the significance of v****g rules.

When designing the Constitution, its drafters spent considerable time considering who v**ed when. The Constitution makes the House popularly elected by the people, the Senate appointed by the states, the President indirectly elected through the e*******l college, and the judiciary nominated by the President and appointed by the Senate. Due to a skepticism of majorities, the Constitution empowers different people to choose different components of the federal government to protect against majoritarian dangers. The question of who should decide predominates.

Yet, the drafters largely overlooked how those people should be measured. In his significant (but dull) book Social Choice and Individual Values, Kenneth Arrow earned himself a Nobel Prize in economics by showing that individuals with rational preferences among multiple choices (i.e., for three choices A, B, and C, individuals who can rationally form a preference of A > B > C) will when aggregated, such as through v****g, almost necessarily create collectively irrational social preferences (i.e. an outcome in which, collectively, society decides that choice A > B > C > A > B > C . . .).

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem shows that how collective decisions are measured matters as much or more than who should be included in the group deciding.

In other words, the “will of the people” does not exist independently of the v****g rules. V****g rules matter because the measure of "the will of the people" determines collective decisions.

To have a Madisonian system with many factions that deter majorities, states would need to use a system of proportional representation in v****g. Under such a rule, a party with about 10% support would receive around 10% of the seats in Congress, and Congress would need to form coalitions with many factions to pass legislation—just as Madison wanted.


Currently, due to proportional representation, Spain has not had a government for almost a year because of the inability to form a coalition. Setting a world record, Belgium with its proportional representation v****g system did not have an elected government for 589 days. Thus, European countries with proportional representation v****g systems show how such v****g rules can cause Madisonian inhibitions of government. As Madison suggests, a larger, more diverse country with a proportional representation v****g system would likely have such restrains more frequently.

Throughout America, with the recent exception of Maine which just adopted ranked-choice v****g, v**ers elect the Congressperson with the most v**es—a first-past-the-post v****g system.

According to Duverger's law, basically political science’s only "law", first-past-the-post v****g rules create two party systems because v**ers who diverge from established parties to v**e for more ideologically favorable third parties can cause the e******n of the established party that they least prefer. So, even if a v**er v**es for Ralph Nader, George Bush may win the e******n—even though the v**er prefers Al Gore to Bush. Third party candidates can be “spoiler” candidates because of states’ first-past-the-post v****g rules, leading this v****g system to create and reinforce two-party systems.

Having underappreciated the significance of v****g rules, Madison expected many factions and did not intentionally design the Constitution to restrain the unanticipated two-party system.

A two-party system poses the danger of one party taking exclusive control and exerting its unrestrained will on the population. Though not preventing this common 19th century occurrence, the Constitution's v****g procedures accidentally mitigate this danger through staggered e******ns.

Under the Constitution, the President is elected every four years, the House every two years, and one-third of the Senate every two years. So, to control the federal government, one of the two parties probably has to be popular without interruption for at least four years—at least two e******n cycles—across both the population and individual states.

Even in a p**********l year, a popular party that seized the House and Presidency would likely not secure the Senate because only one-third of it gets elected at a time. With the schizophrenia of American v**ers, the federal government now tends to be split between two parties and, when controlled by one party, not remain in its control too long. Since new legislation requires the approval of the House, Senate, and Presidency, a different party only has to hold one of these entities to create gridlock and restrain federal power.

Let me reemphasize the accident. Why is the House elected every two years? Among the rationales, during the Constitution’s ratification, its drafters feared a standing army. Thus, in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress received the qualified power "To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years". By setting a two-year term limit to match the House’s term, the Constitution empowers the American people to defund and end dangerous uses of the army or ongoing wars. V**ers only have to elect anti-war politicians in one branch of the government to restrain the army through the House’s power of the purse.

In American history, this neat idea has never been used to restrict the army in such a way. In part, this constitutional protection has been overlooked because a standing army is mostly a post-1945 phenomenon and, since 1945, Congress has largely ceded its authority over the army to the President. Though the House could defund the army without the President or Senate through its control over the army's purse, this intentional attempt to restrain federal power has, at least so far, not notably done so.

Though not fulfilling this intentional role, having House e******ns every two years has unintentionally restrained the federal government within a two-party system through gridlock. Every two years, v**ers can deprive any political party with concentrated power of its power by switching the House to a different party. This disperses political power because divided government empowers one party to block another party’s agenda, making the House’s two year terms a tool for dispersing political power.

Most recently, this happened in 2010 with Republicans, jettisoned by Tea Party candidates, snatching the House but neither the Senate, in which only 1/3 was elected, nor the President, which had no e******n. Thus, House e******ns deprived Democrats of their federal power without concentrating power among Republicans, largely disabling both Democrats and Republicans for the next six years. Some commentators named the resulting gridlocked Congresses the “ Worst Congress Ever” due to the inaction–-apparently forgetting that Congress has passed many, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad laws in American history, including in recent memory, when the political system has not restrained the federal government in such a way.

Similarly, with Republicans now poised to hold the House, Senate, and Presidency, the House’s two year terms give Democrats a quick opportunity to disperse Republican power in 2018.


Overall, the staggering of e******ns in a two-party system both deters the concentration of political power and facilitates the dispersion of concentrated political power, accidentally restraining federal power in a two-party system in a similar way to Madisonian factions.

In addition to e******n v****g rules, the process for judicial appointments also partially defends against the two-party system.

The Constitution sought to disperse political power by having the President nominate and the Senate confirm federal judges for lifetime appointments. When different parties control the Presidency and Senate, this division of power somewhat disperses concentrated political power by promoting the nomination and confirmation of more moderate, generally acceptable nominees who, wh**ever their other merits or demerits, do not seek to concentrate one party’s political power.

More significantly, the lifetime appointments designed to insulate the judiciary from the political process inadvertently function like staggered e******ns, deterring one party from concentrating its control over all three branches. A typical two-term President will appoint three or so Supreme Court Justices, preventing a single President from appointing a full majority of the Supreme Court.

When one party in power appoints Supreme Court Justices and then loses its power, those Justices remain in place to restrain future administrations with different ideological predilections. For a party to appoint anew a majority of the Supreme Court's Justices, the political party would likely need to retain both the Presidency and the Senate uninterrupted for at least ten or so years - making the concentration of political power in one party difficult and restraining potential abuses within a two-party system.


An intentional rule for dispersing political power in a two-party system might have taken the form of nine Supreme Court Justices with 18 year terms—or 11 with 22 year terms or something similar. Such a system would intentionally disperse the concentration of political power by capping the number of Supreme Court Justices a single, two-term President could appoint at less than a majority. A lifetime appointment unintentionally functions similarly. The Constitution creates a federal government that disperses political power through staggered e******ns and judicial appointments that hinder one party from controlling the House, Senate, Presidency, and Supreme Court.

In the 1930s and 1940s, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Constitutional procedures that accidentally restrain the two-party system failed badly, showing by contrast the significance of these restraints.

Beginning in 1933 in the depths of the great depression, Roosevelt became President with a Democratic House and Senate. The Democratic party retained control of the House, Senate, and Presidency from 1933 through his death in 1945, irrespective of large losses in 1938. Over this time, one party controlled the federal government and one man controlled the presidency for twelve consecutive years.

As historians recount, his one party rule initially faced a single institutional obstacle—a Supreme Court willing to declare his legislation unconstitutional. In 1937, he threatened to pack the Supreme Court, but Congress rejected his plan. Though many people at the time believed that Justice Owen Roberts changed his v**e due to Roosevelt’s court-packing plan, the so-called “switch in time that saved nine”, Justice Roberts changed his v**e before the announcement of the court-packing plan, and the Supreme Court just publicly announced his switch after Roosevelt’s affront to separation of powers.

Regardless, historians fixating on Roosevelt’s intentional court-packing plan overlook the gradual and dangerous concentration of political power that empowered Roosevelt all the same. By his fourth term’s end, Roosevelt had appointed eight of the nine Supreme Court Justices—completing the Democratic party’s concentration of political power. By retaining power for a dozen years, Roosevelt’s uninterrupted control outlasted the staggered e******n process and gave Democrats control of the House, Senate, Presidency, and Supreme Court.

With his uncontested power, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and interned over 110,000 Japanese Americans. He signed Public Law 503 to enforce his executive order after his Democratic party discussed it for an hour in the Senate and a half hour in the House. And the Democratically-appointed Supreme Court affirmed the internment camps’ constitutionality by a 6-3 margin in Korematsu v. United States.

*continued

Thank you, Noraa.

I was just critiquing your use of the word, right. We do not have a right regarding wait times. At best, we have a reasonable expectation. Because things happen. If you are not happy with the function or allocation of resources in your state, petition the chief e******n officer, in most states it is the secretary.

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Improving-The-V**er-Experience-Reducing-Polling-Place-Wait-Times-by-Measuring-Lines-and-Managing-Polling-Place-Resources.pdf

That caught my eye too, PR. Guess the potential for forgery is fine, for some.

The other part was... “the RIGHT to the shortest possible lines” - can’t seem to find where that’s written.

In his 1986 best-selling book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things, Robert Fulghum mused,

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air — explode softly — and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth — boxes of Crayolas.

And we wouldn’t go cheap either — not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination instead of death. A child who touched one wouldn’t have his hand blown off.

Something akin to what Fulghum imagined actually happened almost 40 years earlier. The man responsible for it is, at this publication in January 2016, a vigorous 95 years old. His name is Gail Halvorsen, and he’s known in history as “the Candy Bomber.”

I first learned of Mr. Halvorsen in late 2013. I was watching a DVD of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s annual Christmas concert from the year before. NBC’s Tom Brokaw narrated a spectacular segment about a US Air Force officer who dropped candy from C-47s and C-54s during the 1948-49 Soviet blockade of Berlin. Then across the stage strolled a smiling Captain Halvorsen himself, more than six decades after his remarkable venture tugged at heartstrings the world over.

In the wake of the N**i surrender in May 1945, Germany was divided and occupied by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Berlin itself, deep inside Soviet-occupied East Germany, was similarly carved up into zones, with Stalin hoping the Western Allies would eventually depart and leave the entire city under Soviet control. Tension over the future of Berlin produced the first major confrontation of the Cold War. Interestingly, the proximate cause of the crisis that led to the Soviet blockade was the introduction of a new currency.

For the three years from the end of the war until the spring of 1948, the Soviets handled the printing of Reichsmarks for all of occupied Germany and promptly over-printed. Stalin knew full well that currency debasement would thwart economic recovery, and that fit right into his plans to keep all of Germany weak and vulnerable to Soviet domination. By 1948, Germans were increasingly using cigarettes as money, instead of the depreciating paper Reichsmark.

When West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard suddenly ended rationing and price controls and introduced a new, sounder currency — the Deutsche Mark — on a Sunday in June, the Soviets reacted by cutting all land connections (including electricity) between Berlin and the other sectors of Germany occupied by the Western Allies. A hundred miles inside the Soviet sector, West Berlin was instantly inaccessible by road, river, canal or railway.

Stalin offered to lift the blockade if the Deutsche Mark were abandoned, introducing his own new currency, the “Ostmark,” in the Soviet zone. But Germans en masse began using the Deutsche Mark and rejecting the Ostmark, even in East Berlin.

To their credit, Erhard and the Western Allies held firm. They immediately organized a campaign of airlifts to ferry food, water, fuel, and other supplies to the besieged city. It was called “Operation Vittles.” Pilots and crews from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa flew more than 200,000 flights over the next year, bringing West Berliners upwards of 9,000 tons of vital provisions every day.

Stalin undoubtedly feared the ramifications of shooting down unarmed aircraft on humanitarian missions, but the airlift didn’t go unchallenged. Soviet harassment took the form of shining searchlights at the pilots as they attempted landings and takeoffs; “buzzing” Allied aircraft; firing rockets and staging explosions. C*******t propaganda, especially by radio, subjected Berliners to a constant barrage of threats and boasts that collapse was imminent.

Stalin calculated that the West’s resolve would weaken, but within weeks, it was clear the airlift was working. Mass protests by Berliners against Soviet actions only strengthened the world’s moral and material support for the Western relief effort. Finally, at one minute after midnight on May 12, 1949, the Soviets threw in the towel and ended the blockade.

Gail Halvorsen of Salt Lake City, Utah, was one of the thousands of airlift pilots who saved West Berlin in the eleven months of the airlift. While on the ground at Berlin's Templehof airport, he noticed some local children observing the planes from behind a fence. He approached them and offered his only two sticks of gum. Grateful, the children broke the gum into pieces to share with each other; those who didn’t get any sniffed the empty wrappers.

Halvorsen promised he’d come back with more and told the children that they would know his plane from the others by watching him “wiggle” his wings. A day later, he did just that as he dropped chocolate bars attached to parachutes made from handkerchiefs. “Uncle Wiggly Wings,” as the children came to call him, had delivered!

Those few chocolate bars were just the beginning. Halvorsen made additional drops of candy that he gathered up from fellow airmen. The crowds of anxious children grew. Mail began to pile up as children sent letters to the airbase addressed to “Uncle Wiggly Wings.” In his book, Candy Bomber: The Story of the Berlin Airlift’s “Chocolate Pilot”, Michael O. Tunnell recounts an especially poignant episode:

By October of 1948 Peter Zimmerman must have decided he’d never score a candy parachute unless he took matters into his own hands. So he sent a letter — in English — to the man he hoped would soon be his Chocolate Uncle. He also tucked a map and a crude homemade parachute into the envelope.

“As you can see,” he wrote, “after takeoff, fly along the big canal to the second highway bridge, turn right one block. I live in the bombed-out house on the corner. I’ll be in the backyard every day at 2 pm. Drop the chocolate there.”

Poor Peter Zimmerman kept missing out on the candy drops. He wrote again to Halvorsen, complaining, “Didn’t get any gum or candy, a bigger kid beat me to it.” After several more drops that failed to reach him, Peter sent an impatient letter to Halvorsen: “You are a pilot?” he wrote. “I gave you a map. How did you guys win the war?” He offered to build a fire so Halvorsen would know exactly where he was. But this time, to make sure Peter wasn’t disappointed again, Halvorsen personally boxed up some gum and chocolate and mailed the package to Peter himself.

When news of the unauthorized candy drops first broke in the international media, Halvorsen feared he would be disciplined by his superiors. But instead, they approved, and the effort took off on wings of its own. Christened “Operation Little Vittles,” Halvorsen’s two sticks of gum blossomed into a full-blown campaign involving donations and volunteers from all over the globe.

Candy makers from the National Confectioners Association in America contributed massive amounts of candy. Children and their parents donated candy and provided homemade parachutes by the tens of thousands. By the time the Soviets finally relented and ended the blockade, Operation Little Vittles had dropped at least 23 tons of sweets on Berlin. It was a huge factor in kindling the goodwill and close ties that still exist today between the German people and those of America and its allies.

In the decades since the airlift, Col. Gail Halvorsen has been honored many times in many countries for his initiative and humanity. In 2010, he wrote a moving account of his experiences in those critical months of 1948-49, titled The Berlin Candy Bomber. Full of photos and copies of some of the children’s letters, it’s a gem of a read.

Thank you, Gail Halvorsen, for your inspiration. People like him — helping others from the goodness of their hearts — is truly a beautiful thing. Halvorsen and the other heroes of the Berlin airlift saved a city of more than two million.

- Lawrence W. Reed

(Thanks to all Veterans everywhere)


For further information, see:

Michael O. Tunnell’s Candy Bomber: The Story of the Berlin Airlift’s “Chocolate Pilot”

Gail S. Halvorsen’s The Berlin Candy Bomber

Tom Brokaw’s Christmas from Heaven: The True Story of the Berlin Candy Bomber

Andrei Cherney’s The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour

Ha! Ha!... indeed it does. But thanks for the suggestion.

I understand, Lonewolf, no need to apologize. I appreciate your getting back to me whenever you are able.

You have offered quite a few subjects to discuss. I would like to address them individually by separating them without having to retype your words and putting them in quotes then adding my response, that seems a bit too time consuming. I have seen other people do it in their responses, it has something to do with tags feature, I just haven’t figured it out yet, but I’ll get there.

Above, you mentioned the firearms possession, and basically, immigration procedures of other countries. Both would require some research on my part to properly address. Without getting too deep into the first, I would have to say there are few countries that enshrine a right to bear arms in their constitution, if they even have one. And this subject can get even trickier when focusing on just the U.S. alone, when taking into consideration that each individual state has different laws regarding possession of a firearm, some states being more regulated, meaning less free, than another.

With respect to the immigration aspect above, this too would need further research on my part as to different procedures by country. However, it seems for the most part that the U.S. takes in more immigrants than any other country, also one must take into consideration the threat level of terrorism this country faces compared with another when discussing the freedom to come and go as we please, and that’s just at the federal level. We also have to observe individual state constitutions, and their position on immigration, which could get rather convoluted.

Again, I apparently mistook your intention behind the original post, I think, for the most part, we are pretty close to having the same view about freedom, more specifically, threats to that freedom.

I’m willing, if you wish to continue, to address the subjects you introduced, one at a time. At least until I figure out how to isolate the various subjects in your comments.

I must have been mistaken, Lonewolf. I thought your topic was about freedom, more specifically, threats to our freedom, and who is threatening that freedom. Your rant appears to be speaking in general, taking aim at any Congress and any administration in the White House, at any given time. Since they’re both responsible for passing legislation, and any new law passed is, in some way, shape, or form, a reduction in freedom, I can get on board with that.

I’m going to take the liberty of bypassing your questions, in the same manner in which you chose to bypass mine. I suspect you already know the answers anyway.

Okay... but your topic title reads (our) freedom, not (my) freedom. Then you make the statement; “The biggest threat of our freedom and terrorism we face walk and work in the halls of Congress sit in the WH!” - an accusatory statement, blaming the Congress (I assume you mean both houses) and the Trump administration (assuming you include Trump himself), as the biggest threat to freedom. Staying with your reply above; in what way is the Congress, the Trump administration, or Trump himself, the biggest threat to the freedom given to you by your God? What are those freedoms? Would you even have those same freedoms given to you by your God if you lived in another country?

Your position against, the wall, could also be interpreted as being against, freedom. But we’ll only get into that if you’re interested. I would like to get to the meat of your introductory post first though.

What does freedom mean to you?

You’re welcome, Seth, thank you for reading. By the way, I very much enjoy your comments.

Ah yes, The New Collousus... amazing how so few words can change the meaning of something as large as “Liberty Enlightening the World”.

I don’t aim to be offensive, Ferrous, but you couldn’t give me that house.

Thanks for your post.

You are welcome for the compliment, in my humble opinion, it was/is well earned and deserved. To your last sentence, unfortunately, I know exactly what you’re saying. Nevertheless, I hope you keep doing what you’re doing.