Salem-News.com Articles written by Daniel Johnson

The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers

John Bach McMaster (1852—1932) was an American historian, best known for his eight volume History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War (1883-1913).

(CALGARY, Alberta) - American Exceptionalism is a term that has been considerably bruited about on the Salem-News site over the last couple of weeks. Some readers have been critical of my viewpoint as an outsider who can never understand what it means to believe in AE.

Not having grown up with the mythology, this is true. What no one seems to have noticed, however, is that my viewpoint is an echo of what actual Americans themselves say. My arguments have been built up on the knowledge of American thinkers.

The Fall of America

[This is an unchanged article I originally published 25 years ago in the Winter 1984 edition of the now defunct Canadian magazine Goodwin’s. I reprint it now only because it is still relevant today.]

(CALGARY, Alberta) - American society in the mid-1980s is increasingly conservative, jingoistic and paranoid about its national defence capability. Many of its institutions have been infiltrated by the New Right and its economy is in decline. Some argue it is on the inevitable road to totalitarianism.

If we compare the United States of today with the Germany of the 1930s, the sounding of such an alarm might be justified, although arguments based on analogies are always inexact.

Italian Judge Convicts 23 Americans in CIA Renditions

What enemy has the US ever protected us from? If you're our guardian, don't bother.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - The title above is the same as that of an Associated Press story that appeared in the Globe and Mail on November 4, 2009. The presentation of the basic facts is straightforward. The first paragraph reads:

“An Italian judge on Wednesday convicted 23 Americans in absentia of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street, in a landmark case involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program in the war on terrorism.” All but one of them were identified as CIA agents.

The DST Caper

It was sometime in the 1950s that the American branch of the International Time Bank was established in a secret location somewhere in the continental United States. It’s there that the 300 million or so American hours are deposited every spring.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - November 1, 2009 So, you’ve got the hour back, the hour the government “borrowed” last spring. But, did you get any interest on that loan? Didn’t think so.

My Eleventh Finger

I hold up my left hand and count the fingers backward: ten-nine-eight-seven-six, then I hold up my right hand and say—and five makes eleven. Little kids always laugh at that but immediately deny it even though they don’t know the illogic involved.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - They say that as you age, memory is the first thing to go. I wish I could remember what the second thing is.

One thing that fascinates me is not so much that we remember things, but what we remember.

On Writing, Music and Creativity

In my teens, I knew I was going to be a writer.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - Most writers take years to become themselves; to transform their preconceived notions, idiosyncrasies, preoccupations, attitudes and mannerisms into a personal style. For Franz Kafka, who was an exception to so many rules of life and literature, it only took a single night.

On Sunday, Sept. 22, 1912, the day after Yom Kippur, the 29-year-old Kafka sat down at his desk and wrote “The Judgment,” his first masterpiece, in one all-night session.

The Immorality of the Job Hunt

The sooner more Americans come to understand that we’re all in this together the sooner the quality of life for everyone will improve.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - What’s the point of living together in a society if there are no benefits to the association? If it turns out that there’s little point, then lawlessness makes just as much sense.

Actually, America is close to that situation already in its belief that a free-market, every-man-for-himself ethic is best. It is only demonstrably best if you are one of the haves.

A Life-Shrinkers Roll-Call

The world is not what we see, but what we are taught to see and what we believe it to be.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - Despite the fact that about a third of Americans don’t believe in evolution, we and they still live in a world dominated by science. In 1962 Jawaharlal Nehru, then Prime Minister of India said:

“It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste or a rich country inhabited by starving people..."

The American Lucid Nightmare

The American dream is just that; it’s a dream and not real.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - A lucid dream is a dream where you wake up in it and you know you are dreaming.

One particular feature of the lucid dream is that you can control what happens in the dream.

Cat House

A lighthearted look at frolicking feline fun for your Friday.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - “Cats are a standing rebuke to behavioral scientists wanting to know how the minds of animals work. The mind of a cat is an inscrutable mystery, beyond human reach, the least human of all creatures and at the same time, as any cat owner will attest, the most intelligent.” (Lewis Thomas)

While I’ve lived with many cats in my life—when married, we had as many as three cats in the household—Max, the tabby in the picture, is the first cat with whom I’ve had ever had an individual bond. Max was given to me on March 31, 1997 by Colleen Way, a woman I was dating at the time.