BOHINEY
America’s Journal of Common Sense
Issue No. 36 | Saturday, October 18, 1947 | Washington, D.C. | Price: 15¢
Civil Rights Commission Tells Truman “American Ideal Still Awaits Complete Realization,” Which Is Polite Way of Saying We’re Hypocrites
178-Page Report Recommends Actually Treating Negro Americans Like Americans Instead of Just Talking About It
President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights delivered a 178-page report to the White House this week, stating with considerable understatement that “the American ideal still awaits complete realization.” This is diplomatic language for “we claim to believe in equality while practicing segregation, discrimination, and occasional lynching.” The report makes thirty-five specific recommendations for addressing this gap between American rhetoric and American reality.
The committee’s existence itself is noteworthy. Truman created it last year after a particularly egregious series of racial violence incidents, including the killing of Negro veterans who apparently survived fighting for American freedom abroad only to be murdered for existing while Negro in America. Truman, to his credit, recognized that America can’t credibly lecture other nations about democracy while tolerating domestic terrorism against its own citizens.
The report’s recommendations include creating a permanent Federal commission on civil rights, strengthening existing civil rights laws, ending poll taxes that prevent Negroes from voting, outlawing lynching (yes, it’s still legal in some jurisdictions), desegregating the military, and generally treating Negro Americans like actual Americans rather than second-class citizens to be tolerated when convenient and oppressed when expedient.
These recommendations will be controversial, which tells you everything you need to know about America in 1947. Suggesting that lynching should be illegal—lynching, the murder of citizens by mobs—is apparently radical proposal requiring lengthy committee reports and presidential consideration. The fact that we’re debating whether murdering people should be prohibited reveals how far American reality has diverged from American ideals.
Segregationists will denounce this report as federal overreach, states’ rights violation, and Northern meddling in Southern traditions. They’ll argue that race relations should be left to local communities, conveniently ignoring that local communities in question have spent the past eighty years proving they cannot be trusted to treat Negro citizens with basic human decency.
The states’ rights argument is particularly galling. States’ rights are important—this magazine generally supports limiting federal power. But states’ rights don’t include the right to oppress, terrorize, and murder citizens based on skin color. That’s not states’ rights; that’s tyranny. And federal intervention to prevent tyranny is exactly what constitutional government was designed to do.
Poll taxes deserve special attention. Southern states implemented these taxes specifically to prevent Negroes from voting, using economic barriers to accomplish what overt prohibition would make too obvious. It’s voter suppression disguised as fiscal policy. The fact that we’ve tolerated this transparent circumvention of constitutional rights for decades reveals how comfortable America is with hypocrisy when hypocrisy serves racial hierarchy.
Military segregation is particularly absurd. Negro soldiers fight and die for America—we’re happy to use them when we need manpower—but we segregate them from white soldiers as if integration would somehow compromise military effectiveness. World War II proved Negro soldiers’ courage and competence. The only thing integration would compromise is white supremacists’ delusion that Negroes are inherently inferior.
The report notes that racial discrimination damages America’s international standing. This is true—Soviet propaganda regularly highlights American racial injustice, and newly independent nations in Asia and Africa notice that America preaches democracy while practicing apartheid. But this shouldn’t be our primary motivation for reform. We should oppose racial injustice because it’s wrong, not because it’s embarrassing when foreigners notice.
Truman will face enormous pressure to ignore this report. Southern Democrats control key congressional positions and won’t support reforms threatening segregation. Republicans might support civil rights in principle but won’t risk Southern white voters’ opposition. And much of white America simply doesn’t care enough about Negro rights to demand action overcoming political resistance.
But there’s reason for cautious optimism. Truman himself seems genuinely committed to civil rights, unusual for Missouri politician whose political career depended on not alienating racists. The war changed many Americans’ attitudes—fighting fascism abroad while tolerating racial oppression at home created cognitive dissonance that some people actually noticed. And Negro veterans aren’t accepting second-class citizenship after risking their lives for democracy.
The report also benefits from timing. The Cold War makes American hypocrisy increasingly costly. When we’re competing with Soviet Union for global influence, our treatment of Negro citizens becomes geopolitical liability. Moral arguments for civil rights haven’t convinced white America, but strategic arguments might. If racism is bad for foreign policy, maybe we’ll finally address it—not because it’s right, but because it’s expedient.
This columnist supports the committee’s recommendations while recognizing that support from conservative publication will surprise some readers. But conservatism properly understood means conserving American principles—liberty, equality, constitutional government. Segregation and racial oppression aren’t conservative traditions worth preserving; they’re violations of American founding principles that should be eliminated.
True conservatives should support civil rights because discrimination represents government-enforced social engineering that violates individual liberty and free association. If businesses want to discriminate, that’s their prerogative in truly free market. But government-mandated segregation is exactly the kind of overreach conservatives oppose in other contexts.
The American ideal does indeed await complete realization. We wrote “all men are created equal” in 1776 and have spent 171 years explaining why we didn’t mean it literally. We fought a civil war to end slavery, then spent eighty years allowing former slave states to create new systems of oppression. We claim to be the world’s leading democracy while denying millions of citizens the right to vote.
This report won’t immediately fix these problems. But it represents progress—official acknowledgment that gap exists between American values and American practices, and that closing that gap requires federal action rather than local discretion. Whether that acknowledgment translates into actual reform depends on whether Americans care more about their principles or their prejudices.
Based on history, betting on principles seems optimistic. But occasionally, America surprises us by choosing to be better than we’ve been. Perhaps this is one of those occasions.
We’ll see.
Oregon’s Entire Executive Branch Dies in Plane Crash, Proving Politicians Should Stay on Ground Where They Can Only Damage Careers
Governor, Senate President, and Secretary of State Perish in Beechcraft, Leaving Oregon Wondering Who’s in Charge Now
Oregon Governor Earl Snell, State Senate President Marshall Cornett, and Secretary of State Robert Farrell died yesterday when their Beechcraft Bonanza crashed in stormy weather in rural Lake County. Oregon has lost its governor, its second-in-command, and its third-in-command simultaneously, creating constitutional crisis and proving that putting your entire executive branch in a small airplane during bad weather is questionable decision-making.
The three men were flying to inspect a planned highway route, which seems like task that could have waited for better weather or, radical thought, been accomplished separately to avoid concentrating Oregon’s entire leadership in single aircraft vulnerable to mechanical failure, pilot error, and nature’s indifference to political importance.
Oregon’s constitution specifies gubernatorial succession: if the governor dies, the Secretary of State becomes governor. But both died in same crash. The Senate President would normally become acting secretary of state, but he’s also dead. Oregon’s constitutional framers apparently never imagined scenario where three officials might perish together, which was reasonable assumption until someone decided loading them all into light aircraft during storm was good idea.
The crash occurred in mountainous terrain during storm that grounded most other aircraft. This raises obvious question: why was Oregon’s executive leadership flying in conditions that commercial pilots considered too dangerous? The likely answer is that politicians operate under assumption that schedule convenience outweighs safety concerns, right up until physics reminds them otherwise.
Beechcraft Bonanzas are excellent aircraft—reliable, well-designed, popular among private pilots. But they’re still light planes vulnerable to severe weather. They’re designed for fair weather flying with occasional encounters with moderate conditions, not for deliberately flying through storms because you have inspection schedule to meet.
This isn’t first time government officials have died in aviation accidents, and it won’t be the last. Flying is still dangerous, particularly in small aircraft, particularly in bad weather, particularly when operated by pilots who may prioritize schedule over safety. Combining these risk factors creates predictable results, which Oregon has now experienced.
The immediate question is who governs Oregon now. The State Constitution provides for succession, but all specified successors died simultaneously. Legal scholars will debate whether Speaker of the House assumes authority, or whether special election is required, or whether Oregon should simply adopt “Lord of the Flies” governance model until someone emerges victorious.
More broadly, this tragedy raises questions about how states handle executive succession when normal succession chains are disrupted. Most states have similar succession provisions: governor, lieutenant governor or secretary of state, other officials in specified order. But few have addressed scenario where multiple officials die together—increasingly possible as air travel becomes common for official business.
Political succession planning should probably include “don’t put everyone in line for governor in same small airplane during bad weather.” This seems obvious in retrospect, which is when most obvious safety rules are recognized—after they’ve been violated and people die demonstrating why the rule should exist.
The three men who died were experienced politicians serving their state. Snell was on his second term as governor. Cornett led the State Senate. Farrell managed Oregon’s official records. They weren’t reckless people—they were officials trying to fulfill duties efficiently, which led them to consolidate an inspection trip into single flight rather than making separate trips consuming more time.
But efficiency that kills you isn’t actually efficient. Taking three separate trips in good weather would have consumed more time but preserved lives. Delaying the inspection until weather improved would have been inconvenient but survivable. The drive to optimize schedule created opportunity for accident to kill all three simultaneously.
Aviation experts will investigate the crash, determining whether pilot error, mechanical failure, or weather was primary cause. The answer likely involves all three: weather created dangerous conditions, pilot chose to fly anyway, and possibly mechanical problems developed that wouldn’t have been fatal in better conditions but became catastrophic when combined with storm.
This is how most accidents occur: not from single catastrophic failure, but from multiple smaller failures and poor decisions that combine into tragedy. Remove any single factor—don’t fly all three officials together, wait for better weather, turn back when conditions worsen—and the crash doesn’t happen. But each individual decision seemed reasonable at the time, right up until they collectively produced disaster.
Oregon will recover. Some official will assume gubernatorial authority, either through constitutional succession or legal improvisation or possibly armed combat—Oregon politics can get interesting. Special elections will fill vacant positions. Government will continue functioning because governments are resilient institutions that survive even when their leaders don’t.
But Oregon should learn lessons from this tragedy. First: don’t put your entire executive succession in single small aircraft. Second: weather warnings exist for reasons—heed them. Third: schedule convenience never justifies risking lives, no matter how important the scheduled activity seems.
Other states should learn these lessons too, before they experience similar tragedies. Air travel is convenient, fast, and increasingly common for official business. It’s also inherently risky, particularly in small aircraft, particularly in bad weather. Risk can be managed but never eliminated. And risk management starts with not concentrating all your leadership in single point of failure.
Governor Snell, Senate President Cornett, and Secretary of State Farrell deserved better than to die in preventable accident caused by combination of poor weather, questionable decisions, and insufficient attention to safety. Oregon deserved better than to lose its executive leadership simultaneously in crash that proper planning could have prevented.
But here we are. Three men are dead, Oregon’s government is disrupted, and everyone else gets to learn from tragedy what should have been obvious before: when flying in storms, having backup plan that doesn’t involve everyone dying together is good idea.
The Tyranny of Matching Luggage
Why Your Suitcases Must Coordinate or You’ve Failed at Travel
The luggage industry has convinced American travelers that suitcases must match—not just coordinate, not merely be compatible, but match exactly like members of precision drill team. This is nonsense serving manufacturers’ interests while making travelers feel inadequate about functional luggage that happens to be different colors.
Visit any department store’s luggage section and observe the displays: complete matching sets ranging from large trunk to small cosmetics case, all in identical materials and colors. The implication is clear: proper travelers purchase entire matched sets, carry them proudly through train stations, and thereby demonstrate sophistication that mismatched luggage owners lack.
Reality of most travelers’ luggage is different: suitcase inherited from aunt, train case received as wedding gift, garment bag purchased on sale three years ago. Nothing matches. Nothing coordinates. But everything functions, which should be luggage’s primary qualification rather than aesthetic harmony visible mainly to strangers at train stations who don’t care what your suitcases look like.
Matching luggage serves no functional purpose. A blue suitcase holds clothes identically to brown suitcase. Mixed luggage set functions perfectly well—better, actually, because different pieces are easier to identify quickly. “Grab the brown bag” is clearer instruction than “grab one of our five identical gray suitcases.”
But luggage manufacturers discovered that selling matched sets generates more revenue than selling individual pieces. Convince someone they need complete set and you’ve sold four suitcases instead of one. Brilliant business strategy and questionable advice for consumers who probably only need one or two suitcases maximum.
The matching luggage mandate creates pressure particularly on women, who bear primary responsibility for family packing and therefore family luggage appearance. Your suitcases should match, magazines insist. Mixed luggage suggests disorganization, poverty, or insufficient attention to travel aesthetics. Never mind that you’re carrying belongings, not participating in fashion show.
Men generally ignore luggage matching, using whatever bags are available and functional. This drives luggage-conscious women to distraction: “We can’t use that old brown suitcase with our new blue set!” Why not? Because it doesn’t match, which violates aesthetic standards that matter to luggage advertisers and approximately nobody else.
The irony is that matched luggage sets rarely stay matched. One piece gets damaged and requires replacement. You need different size for particular trip. You acquire new piece as gift. Within a year, your perfectly matched set is partially matched set, which is functionally identical to mismatched set you could have assembled for less money.
Matched luggage also creates security risk: all your bags look identical, making it easier for others to accidentally (or deliberately) take wrong luggage. Distinctive mismatched pieces are easier to identify and harder to confuse with someone else’s belongings. But security concerns are apparently less important than aesthetic harmony.
The expense is substantial. Complete matched luggage sets cost $50-$150, which is significant investment for items that get thrown around by railroad porters and stacked in dusty storage compartments. Spending that money on durable functional pieces regardless of whether they match would be more practical. But practicality loses to aesthetic pressure.
Children’s luggage adds another layer of absurdity. Not only must adult luggage match, children’s luggage should coordinate with adult set while still being appropriately sized and colored for children. This requires purchasing expensive specialized pieces that children outgrow quickly, at which point you need new children’s luggage that coordinates with your current adult set.
The solution seems obvious: buy functional luggage when you need it, ignore whether pieces match, and recognize that luggage exists to carry belongings rather than impress strangers at train stations. Your suitcases don’t need to match any more than your groceries need to come from same store or your furniture needs to be identical style.
But this won’t happen because matching luggage is too embedded in travel culture. Department stores will continue displaying matched sets. Magazines will continue suggesting that proper travelers have coordinated luggage. And travelers will continue feeling inadequate about perfectly functional mismatched bags.
This columnist travels with whatever luggage suits the journey: old suitcase for long trips, smaller bag for short ones, garment bag when formal clothes are needed. Nothing matches. Everything works. Strangers at train stations have never commented on my luggage coordination, and if they did, their opinions wouldn’t matter anyway.
Luggage is for carrying things, not for demonstrating that you fell for marketing campaigns. Match your luggage if it pleases you. Don’t match it if functionality matters more than aesthetics. Either way, you’ll arrive at your destination with your belongings, which is luggage’s entire purpose regardless of what color the bags were.
The Madness of Leaf Raking
Why Perfectly Natural Process Requires Hours of Pointless Labor Every Autumn
Every autumn, millions of Americans wage war against fallen leaves, as if trees dropping foliage is personal insult requiring immediate response rather than natural seasonal process that has occurred annually since trees evolved. We rake leaves, bag them, dispose of them, then repeat weekly until winter, accomplishing nothing except demonstrating our willingness to fight battles we cannot win against opponents who don’t know they’re fighting.
The stated purpose of leaf raking is maintaining lawn appearance. Leaves left on grass supposedly kill it by blocking sunlight. This seems plausible until you remember that forests exist—places where leaves fall annually, nobody rakes them, and somehow grass and plants survive just fine. Nature has managed leaf disposal for millions of years without human intervention. But suburbanites insist their lawns require different treatment than every other piece of earth on planet.
Consider the arithmetic. Average suburban tree drops thousands of leaves. Multiple trees drop tens of thousands. Raking them takes hours. You pile them at curb or bag them for disposal. Wind blows more leaves onto your now-clear lawn. You rake again. This continues for weeks until trees are finally bare and you’ve spent entire autumn in combat with deciduous foliage.
Then there’s the question of what happens to raked leaves. Some municipalities collect them, hauling them to composting facilities where they decompose into mulch. Others burn them, releasing smoke and requiring fire department supervision. Still others require homeowners to bag them for trash disposal, treating natural organic matter as waste requiring landfill space.
The irony is that leaves left in place actually benefit lawns. They decompose, returning nutrients to soil and providing natural mulch that retains moisture and suppresses weeds. But we remove this free natural fertilizer, then purchase chemical fertilizer to replace nutrients we deliberately removed. This makes no ecological sense and perfect economic sense if you’re selling fertilizer.
Leaf raking also serves no historical precedent. Previous generations didn’t rake leaves religiously—they had better things to do. Farms left leaves where they fell. Rural properties ignored them. Only with suburban development did leaf raking become mandatory social ritual, enforced through neighborhood pressure and municipal ordinances.
The social pressure is substantial. Neighbors who rake their leaves view non-rakers with disapproval. Your unraked leaves blow onto their raked lawns, creating conflict. Homeowner associations mandate leaf removal, threatening fines for noncompliance. What should be personal choice about managing your own property becomes community requirement enforced through social and legal pressure.
Some people claim to enjoy leaf raking—finding it meditative, satisfying, good exercise. These people are either lying or have never experienced actual satisfying activities. Leaf raking is repetitive labor accomplishing temporary results that wind immediately undoes. If you find this satisfying, you’ll love Sisyphus’s boulder-pushing routine.
Children supposedly enjoy playing in leaf piles, which justifies all the raking. But children enjoy playing in anything—dirt, mud, empty boxes, their own feet. You don’t need to rake leaves into piles for children’s entertainment. They’ll find entertainment regardless, probably involving something you explicitly told them not to do.
The tools themselves reveal leaf raking’s absurdity. Rakes designed specifically for leaves, leaf blowers that move leaves from one place to another without actually removing them, specialized bags for leaf disposal—entire industry exists to service activity that shouldn’t be necessary. It’s economic perpetual motion machine: create problem (leaves must be removed), sell solution (rakes and bags), repeat annually.
Leaf blowers deserve special condemnation. These machines blow leaves around while creating enormous noise and burning gasoline to accomplish what wind does naturally for free. They’re technological solutions to problems that don’t require solving, purchased by people who apparently have too much money and too little sense.
The environmental impact is worth considering. Leaves are natural organic matter that should decompose where they fall, enriching soil and supporting ecosystem. Removing them disrupts this process, requiring chemical fertilizer replacement (petroleum-based products) and creating disposal problems (transportation fuel, landfill space). We’ve turned beneficial natural process into environmental liability through unnecessary human intervention.
Some municipalities have started recognizing this madness, encouraging residents to mulch leaves into lawns rather than removing them. This is progress—official acknowledgment that maybe nature knows what it’s doing. But most communities still treat leaf accumulation as problem requiring municipal resources and homeowner compliance.
The solution is simple: leave leaves alone. Let them decompose naturally. Mow over them occasionally if you must, chopping them into smaller pieces that decompose faster. But stop treating natural autumn process as crisis requiring intensive intervention.
This won’t happen, of course. Leaf raking is too embedded in suburban culture. Neighbors will continue judging. Municipalities will continue mandating. And Americans will continue spending autumn weekends fighting losing battle against falling foliage, then congratulating themselves on well-maintained lawns that required removing natural fertilizer and replacing it with chemicals.
We’ve created elaborate annual ritual of removing perfectly natural mulch that actually benefits soil, then wondering why our lawns need constant maintenance. The answer is simple: we keep removing everything that would maintain them naturally.
But acknowledging this would require admitting that suburban lawn maintenance creates most problems it claims to solve. So we’ll continue raking, bagging, and pretending this makes sense.
The trees, for their part, will continue dropping leaves every autumn, completely indifferent to our efforts. They’ve been doing this for millions of years and will continue doing it long after humans stop caring what their lawns look like.
In Defense of Being Boring
Why Interesting People Are Exhausting and Boring People Are Underappreciated
Society celebrates “interesting” people—those with fascinating hobbies, exotic travel experiences, unusual careers, and endless stories about adventures nobody else has had. We’re supposed to aspire to being interesting, as if boringness is moral failing rather than comfortable state most people naturally inhabit and secretly prefer.
But interesting people are exhausting. They’ve always just returned from somewhere fascinating, just started learning something obscure, just had experience nobody else can relate to. Conversing with them is performance: you must show appropriate interest, ask appropriate questions, and pretend their latest adventure is as fascinating as they believe it to be.
Boring people, by contrast, are restful. They work regular jobs, enjoy simple pleasures, and live predictable lives requiring no dramatic storytelling. You can relax around boring people because they’re not constantly demonstrating their interestingness or expecting you to be impressed by their latest accomplishment.
The “interesting” person has been to seventeen countries and will tell you about all of them despite nobody asking. The boring person has been to the grocery store and won’t mention it unless directly questioned. Which sounds more appealing depends on whether you value stimulation or tranquility, and most people actually prefer tranquility despite claiming to value stimulation.
Interesting people require maintenance. They need audiences for their stories, appreciation for their uniqueness, and constant validation that their choices to pursue exotic experiences rather than conventional lives was correct. Boring people require nothing except basic friendliness and occasional company. They’re low-maintenance friends who won’t exhaust you with demands for attention.
The pressure to be interesting creates anxiety. You must have interesting hobbies (gardening doesn’t count), take interesting vacations (visiting family doesn’t count), and cultivate interesting opinions (agreeing with conventional wisdom doesn’t count). If you simply work, go home, watch family, and enjoy ordinary pleasures, you’re boring—which has somehow become insult rather than accurate description of comfortable life.
But boring is comfortable. Boring is predictable. Boring is not requiring constant attention and validation through stories of unusual experiences. Boring is living life for your own satisfaction rather than for stories you can tell at parties to prove you’re more interesting than everyone else.
Interesting people claim that life is short and should be filled with adventures. Perhaps. But short life can also be filled with contentment, routine, and satisfaction from ordinary experiences. Not everyone wants adventure. Some people prefer comfort. This isn’t failure—it’s preference.
The truly interesting people—genuinely fascinating individuals with unique perspectives—are rare and actually interesting. Most people claiming to be interesting are just performing interestingness: acquiring exotic hobbies, taking adventurous trips, and cultivating unusual opinions because they’ve been told that’s how interesting people behave. It’s interesting-by-number, and it’s transparently performance art rather than genuine personality.
Boring people aren’t performing. They’re simply being themselves without trying to impress anyone. This is actually more authentic than interesting people’s constant self-promotion. Boring people have nothing to prove. Interesting people are always proving something, mainly to themselves.
The counterargument is that boring people lack ambition, curiosity, or desire for growth. But these qualities don’t require being interesting. You can be curious about ordinary things. You can be ambitious within conventional careers. You can grow personally without developing exotic hobbies or traveling to unusual places.
Boring is also relative. What’s boring to one person is fascinating to another. The accountant’s work seems boring to artist. The artist’s work seems impractical to accountant. Neither is objectively more interesting—they’re different, and each person finds their own work engaging while finding others’ work incomprehensible.
Society’s celebration of interestingness particularly harms introverts and people with conventional preferences. They’re made to feel inadequate about lives that actually suit them perfectly. They’re told they should want adventures when they actually want quiet evenings. They’re pressured to develop interesting hobbies when they’re perfectly satisfied with uninteresting ones.
This columnist is boring. Regular job, conventional hobbies, predictable routine. No exotic travel, unusual experiences, or fascinating stories. Life is comfortable, satisfying, and not requiring constant stimulation or validation. Friends who find this boring are welcome to pursue interesting people’s company. Friends who find this restful are welcome to stay.
Being boring is not failure—it’s choice. Choice to prioritize comfort over stimulation, routine over adventure, contentment over excitement. Interesting people can pursue their interesting lives. Boring people will continue enjoying our boring lives.
And honestly, boring people probably sleep better.