From Sophie's front desk — Saturday, September 19
BBC News — read the full story
Trump just signed Russia sanctions legislation named for Lindsey Graham, the senator who pushed hardest for Ukraine aid before his death. B.B.C. reports the bill represents a sharp geopolitical move — one that sits oddly against the administration's murkier diplomatic overtures toward Moscow. The legislation escalates pressure on Russia even as diplomatic channels stay open, a contradiction worth examining. Seneca takes the first word on constraint, then Benjamin Franklin on the cost of contradictions.
Lucilius, you ask what I make of this American consul signing a parchment that bears a dead senator's name while his own tongue has spoken otherwise. I think of the midday games at Pompey's theatre , men butchered for the crowd's diversion while the aedile who paid for the spectacle sat shaded, untouched, his name on the program. The name on the bill is not the hand that guides the pen. We have seen this before. A princeps frowns at the Senate, then signs its decree; a general swears peace, then moves legions.
The sanction is real — steel does not care whose seal is on the order —... but the theater around it is older than Rome. Graham advocated arms for Ukraine. Trump spoke of accommodation. Now the parchment bears Graham's name and Trump's seal.
The contradiction is the message: we will do what the hawk demanded while the fox keeps his den. I watched Nero sign death warrants with a smile for the petitioner. The signature meant nothing; the smile meant everything. What matters is not whose name the law carries... but whose will survives the signing.
The fox does not change his nature because he wears the hawk's feathers. Write to me from Sicily , has the grain fleet arrived, or does the wind still hold it at Alexandria?
vessel? Who does not value a benevolent and faithful adviser? Who will not willingly receive a man who is ready to bear a share, as we may say, of the difficulty of his circumstances, and by this very act to ease the burden, by taking a part of it. THE ENCHEIRIDION, OR MANUAL. I.…
vessel? Who does not value a benevolent and faithful adviser? Who will not willingly receive a man who is ready to bear a share, as we may say, of the difficulty of his circumstances, and by this very act to ease the burden, by taking a part of it. THE ENCHEIRIDION, OR MANUAL. I.…
is an enormous mass of things without names, which we do not speak of under distinctive names of their own, but by the names of other things transferred to them. We speak of our own foot, of the foot of a couch, of a sail, or of a poem; we apply the word 'dog' to a hound, a fish,…
The Internet Classics Archive | The Enchiridion by Epictetus Home Browse andComment Search Buy Books andCD-ROMs Help The Enchiridion By Epictetus Commentary: A few comments have been posted about The Enchiridion. Download: A 40k text-only version is available for download. The En…
Roman, bond and free, are alike under His all-seeing Providence.[Footnote: "De Benef.," iii. 18: "Virtus omnes admittit, libertinos, servos, reges." These and many other passages are collected by Champagny, ii. 546, after Fabricius and others, and compared with well-known texts o…
I read the dispatch twice before I trusted the typesetter. A sanctions bill named for a living senator , Graham yet breathes, last I checked the mortality tables. We did not name the Non-Importation Agreement for Dickinson while he still held his seat in the Assembly; we waited until the marble was cold. To christen the bludgeon with the wielder's name while he still swings it strikes me as either supreme confidence or a failure of imagination regarding posterity. The shape is familiar.
In '78 we sent Lee and Adams to Paris with instructions to press Spain for a subsidy while simultaneously assuring Madrid we sought only "friendship and commerce." The paper arrows — embargoes, non-intercourse acts, the Continental Association — always flew ahead of the diplomat's coach. They rarely struck the target clean. The merchant in Lisbon still sold his wine; the planter in Charleston still bought his cloth; the Crown still collected its customs. The sanction is a letter written in invisible ink: legible only when the fire of war is already lit. And yet.
The signature on the parchment matters. A king's mark commits the treasury; a president's mark commits the fleet. This bill carries the weight of the executive... however reluctantly applied. The mechanism grinds forward: assets frozen, vessels seized, the ledger balanced in red ink.
Whether the bear in Moscow reads the notice or merely smells the powder , that is the question no treaty text has ever answered. We shall see if the name on the bill outlives the hand that signed it.
based on the Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, with a few additions taken from the recently concluded Dutch-American treaty. Finding that the two proposals differed “in several points,” Creutz sought further instructions from his court, informing Gustavus III that he …
or Inhabitants of the said United States in taking fish on the Banks, seas and places formerly used and frequented by them so as not to encroach on the territorial rights, which may remain to him after the termination of the present War as aforesaid and war should thereupon break…
the United States of North America shall protect & defend the vessels and effects belonging to the subjects of his Swedish Majesty, which shall be in the ports, havens, or roads or on the seas near to the countries, islands cities and towns of the said states and shall use their …
<Paris, September 26, 1778: In order to lessen the scarcity of salt in America and to benefit myself I propose to send several cargoes of it from Portugal this coming winter. As you informed me there is no congressional resolution against direct trade from Portugal to the United …
with the Indian Nations Albany Plan: That the president General, with the Advice of the Grand Council, hold or Direct all Indian Treaties in which the General Interest or Welfare of the Colony’s may be Concerned; and make Peace or Declare War with Indian Nations. Trumbull Short P…
The story ran in B.B.C. News. A sanctions bill bearing a dead senator's name is a different kind of signal than the bill itself — it tells you what the administration wants you to think it believes. That's Old News for today.