Balkinization
an unanticipated consequence of
Jack M. Balkin
E-mail:
Jack Balkin: jackbalkin at yahoo.com
Ian Ayres: ian.ayres at yale.edu
Mary Dudziak: mdudziak at law.usc.edu
Heather Gerken heather.gerken at yale.edu
Mark Graber: mgraber at law.umaryland.edu
Stephen Griffin sgriffin at tulane.edu
Bernard Harcourt harcourt at uchicago.edu
Scott Horton shorto at law.columbia.edu
Andrew Koppelman akoppelman at law.northwestern.edu
Marty Lederman: marty.lederman at comcast.net
Sanford Levinson slevinson at law.utexas.edu
David Luban david.luban at gmail.com
Linda McClain lmcclain at bu.edu
Neil Netanel netanel at law.ucla.edu
Frank Pasquale pasquale.frank at gmail.com
Michael Stokes Paulsen michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at princeton.edu
Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
Brian Tamanaha: tamanahb at stjohns.edu
Mark Tushnet: mtushnet at law.harvard.edu
I am back in my home town, Kansas City, this weekend and I took my parents to see the Truman Library in nearby Independence, Missouri. We had not been to the library in many many years, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has not visited.
By the standards of more recent Presidential behemoths, the Truman Library is modest and unpretentious, much like the man himself. Perhaps equally important, the library doesn't present a whitewash of Truman's presidency either, offering both sides of the argument about what was one of the most fateful decisions of his presidency, which occurred sixty years ago this week, the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.
One of the most moving pieces in the library was also one of the smallest. It was a Purple Heart awarded to a serviceman who had been killed in Korea. The soldier's parents blamed Truman for their son's death; they sent him back the medal with a note, saying in effect: he can have no use for this medal because he is dead due to your policies, so we are sending it back to you. The medal, and the note, were discovered in Truman's desk at the library after he died. Apparently he had kept it close to him all those years as a reminder of the human cost of the decisions he had made.
It is an act that I would commend to all Presidents, past, present, and future.
A president unafraid to constantly confront himself with the consequences of his wartime decisions? Who might have entertained at least a smidgen of self-doubt?
Truman was great. I especially like the story about him going to Greece for dedication of a statue in his honor. He said it's not a good idea to build statues for people who are still alive, because you never know what they might do next!