Collated by Maireid Sullivan 2012, updated 2024
Work in progress
Introduction Part 1
Founding Fathers Part 2
- Rights of Man
- Rights of Women
Part 3
- Electoral College Part 4
- Racism and Class Struggle
- "Slavery never did and never could aid improvement." Part 5 - Native American Resilience Part 6
- “Lady Liberty” Part 7
- Gilded Age Factions
- Reflection on the Progressive Era
- 1896 origin of Trickle-down economics
- The Great Tax Wars
- Why We Pay Taxes Part 8
- Life, Liberty, & Pursuit of Happiness...
- A New Deal
- The impact of turning points in military "enterprise initiatives"
- NATO: 5 Things You May Not Know About NATO
- The Deep State
Part 9
- A short history of the Counter Cultural movement
- From American Dream to nightmare
- How did America go wrong? Part 10
- What is the state of American culture?
- Who Rules America? Part 11
- "Christianity's Missed Opportunity"
- The Age of Orators!
- Reflecting on the failure of the late 1800s popular movement Part 12
- Filmmakers Guide to Wall St.
In Summary
- The 'Verb' in the downfall of the late 1800s movement
toward "equality and justice for all"
– When the 'Georgist proposition' alarmed the Vatican
– Reich's 4 American Narratives
Introduction
Equality and Justice for All
America - a Golden Age for the Human Spirit Sullivan, M. 2002. The Golden Age of the American spirit began as a unique experiment for humanity: the first truly multi-cultural country, populated by people of every nation and tribe. America represents the first society in human history founded upon diverse cultures living together as one people -- Americans. >>>more
“I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.” – Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason" (1794)
"More than 370 ratified treaties have helped the U.S. expand its territory and led to many broken promises made to American Indians." - Wang 2015
Recommended sources: 1. Broken Promises
On Display At Native American Treaties Exhibit
Hansi Lo Wang, NPR January 18, 2015
Excerpt:
A rare exhibit of such treaties at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., looks back at this history. It currently features one of the first compacts between the U.S. and Native American nations – the Treaty of Canandaigua.
Also known as the Pickering Treaty, the agreement was signed in 1794 between the federal government and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, or the Six Nations, based in New York. The deal secured an ally for the young U.S. government after the Revolutionary War and returned more than a million acres to the Haudenosaunee. But their territory has been cut down over the years. More than two centuries later, the U.S. has kept one promise.
"Article 6 says that they will provide goods in the amount of $4,500, 'which shall be expended yearly forever,' " explains museum director Kevin Gover, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. ...
The United States of America is the only country in the world where land title is not exclusively 'owned' by the government, harking back, for example, to the late-1600s establishment of the "Reformation Restoration colonies" following the English Revolution when British colonial plantation land was granted in direct compensation to those who supported the restoration of the English monarchy under Charles II in 1660. "The purpose of all the feudal land laws, derived from the fundamental principle of the feudal system, … was to prevent the population owning land. … In the USA, the final authority lies with ‘We the people’. As the occupants of a state, its citizens are the sole authors of a state’s being, the sole source of its authority, and the sole reason and purpose for the state’s existence." – Kevin Cahill, "Who Owns the World’ (UK 2006-US 2009) - reviewed HERE
Inside History: ... Without them, there would have been no United States of America. The Founding Fathers, a group of predominantly wealthy plantation owners and businessmen, united 13 disparate colonies, fought for independence from Britain and penned a series of influential governing documents that steer the country to this day.
All the Founding Fathers, including the first four U.S. presidents, at one point considered themselves British subjects. But they revolted against the restrictive rule of King George III —outlining their grievances in the Declaration of Independence, a powerful (albeit incomplete) call for freedom and equality —and won a stunning military victory over what was then the world’s preeminent superpower. >>>more
"a harbinger of Jeffersonian Democracy” English lawyer, Roger Williams (1603-1683) became a political and religious leader following his arrival in "The Colonies" in 1630, ten years after the 1620 landing of The Mayflower, in Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts: Renowned for his gift with languages, he was quick to establish communications with the local Native Americans, where upon he edited the first dictionary of Native American language. His dissaproval of native land confiscation earned him the wrath of church and state: Banished from Massachusetts in 1636 “for sedition and heresy” after refusing to cease preaching “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions,” Williams retreated to the wilderness and founded the town of Providence, Rhode Island, where he established “a haven for religious minorities" escaping English autocracy, based on principles of separation of church and state. A century later, Williams’ concept of a “wall of separation” between church and state was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. - The Roger Williams' biography, History.com
A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713(2009).
Northern Irish-born
Professor of History at Ohio's Wright State University, Noeleen McIlvenna brings a broad perspective to her insights on English colonialism:
"These ideas, ... and all those very mutinous people, eventually became accepted as the quintessential American values." (Extensive excerpts featured HERE)
Excerpts:
"The politics of the people from top to bottom had been formed in the crucible of 'Oliver’s Days' –overturning the egalitarian values of the English Revolution.
...
In 1663, three years after the Restoration, Charles II carved up his portion of the globe to thank his faithful supporters. He issued a charter for the area from the coast of the Carolinas to the Pacific Ocean to eight well-connected "lords proprietor": …
The plan was that the immense acreage would serve as a lucrative and potentially perpetual source of income for the lords of colonization. Quitrents from settlers, profit from commodities such as tobacco, and of course gains from the sale of humans and their labor would flow home to the coffers in London. Four of the proprietors belonged to the Royal Adventurers to Africa, and two others already owned or had investments in Caribbean plantations. ...
By 1700, both the English monarchy and the American gentry realized that to control their populations, to ensure their customs or rental revenues, and to secure great estates for themselves, they must shut down such havens. The history of the late seventeenth century in the British Atlantic world, largely writ, tells of the attempt to impose the hegemony of the monarchy and gentry using structures of church, courts, and military force—especially the Royal Navy. In London, the newly commissioned Board of Trade, charged with bringing order to colonial administration and curbing piracy, set to work in 1696. ..
– McIlvenna, N, 2009, A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713
History Matters:
By the time of President Andrew Jackson’s election in 1828, the only large concentrations of Indian tribes remaining on the east coast were located in the South. The Cherokee had adopted the settled way of life of the surrounding-and encroaching-white society... >>> more
Part 1 Founding Fathers of the United States of America Back to top
ConstitutionUS.com
Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe.
"This book changes our understanding of the fundamental character of the United States as a presence in world history.
By focusing on the processes by which Americans acquired, controlled, and were affected by territory, Daniel Immerwahr shows that the United States was not just another "empire," but was a highly distinctive one the dimensions of which have been largely ignored."
-
David A. Hollinger, Professor Emeritus of History, UC Berkeley
In Chapter 1, Dr. Immerwahr shares valuable insights on early stages ofreal estate investment strategies, especially revealing of George Washington's perspective. Look Inside Chapters 1 - 4.
Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Fall and Rise of Daniel Boone:
Jefferson and Washington assumed that whites could be guided to settle the land, as they put it, "compactly," meaning that their growing numbers wouldn't require too much room. It wasn't an unreasonable assumption, especially given how slowly European populations had grown in the past. Between AD. 1 and AD. 1000, Western Europe had increased by only 6 percent. Things picked up in the next seven centuries, when its population more than doubled. But that still wasn't exactly fast. By 1700, the best statistics suggested that England was on track to double only once every 360 years.
The North American colonies weren't much different, at least at first. Disease took so many lives in Britain's first permanent North American settlement at Jamestown, established in 1607, that it wasn't until the 1690 that births outpaced deaths there. In the first century and a half after Jamestown's settlement, the frontier of white settlement had crept west slowly, at one to two miles a year.
But by the mid-eighteenth century, something had changed. Ben Franklin was first to notice it. In 1749 he organized a census of Philadelphia and began to collect population numbers on Boston, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. What he saw was startling. Not only was the colonial population growing, it was doubling once every twenty-five years. If that continued, Franklin predicted (with more than a little giddiness), in a century colonial North American would contain more Englishmen that Britain itself.
This was a revelation
...
"In 1763 King George III of Great Britain, victorious in the Seven Years War with France, issued a proclamation to organize the governance of territory newly acquired by the Crown in North America and the Caribbean. The proclamation reserved land west of the Appalachian Mountains for Indians, and required the Crown to purchase Indian land through treaties, negotiated without coercion and in public, before issuing rights to newcomers to use and settle on the land..."
- Fenge & Aldridge, Ed. (2015). Keeping promises: the Royal Proclamation of 1763, aboriginal rights, and treaties in Canada, McGill–Queen's University Press.
"The Proclamation Line adversely impacted Virginia’s landed gentry through the mid-1760s."
Proclamation Line of 1763 by Jennifer Monroe McCutchen
Texas Christian University / George Washington’s MountVernon.org
Excerpt:
In addition, the British government viewed westward expansion as a threat to their mercantile economic system, expressing concern that opening up the west to farming families would provide the colonies with opportunities to gain economic independence through commercial agriculture. While Britain intended for the boundary line to alleviate tensions between Anglo settlers and indigenous peoples, eager colonists largely ignored the proclamation and settled beyond the boundary with few consequences from the government.
The Royal Proclamation was more successful in its ability to restrict the aims of private, Virginia-based land companies and their investors who sought to capitalize on the sale of lands in the Ohio Valley. As a member of the Virginia gentry, a patron of numerous land companies, and an established surveyor, the boundary line profoundly affected George Washington. Washington deemed the Royal Proclamation’s controls on trade and migration discriminatory against colonials seeking to alleviate personal debts through profitable landholdings, particularly veterans of the French and Indian War. As many of Washington’s counterparts shared these views, the Proclamation Line of 1763 was significant in that it marked the beginning of a clear ideological break with the mother country. …
The end of the French and Indian War brought great geographic and political changes to North America. The Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763, effectively removed France from the continent, forcing her to cede all territory east of the Mississippi River to the victor, Great Britain. …
Triggered by settler encroachment and angered over Britain’s suppressive diplomatic policies, a loose confederacy of Indians from the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions attacked a number of British forts and settlements in an effort to defend their lands and preserve their political autonomy and traditional ways of life. This uprising, known as Pontiac’s Rebellion, quickly spread, reaching the Illinois Country and Virginia by the summer of 1763. …
These men had been investing and speculating in land since the 1740s, preliminarily granting millions of acres of western territory to firms, such as the Ohio Company, for future sale. However, the French and Indian War and subsequent Indian treaties interrupted these land companies’ designs, during which time their preliminary grants lapsed. The restrictions accompanying the Royal Proclamation of 1763 prevented investors from gaining the necessary titles to secure their land claims. These constraints particularly affected George Washington, who had dedicated much of his life to land speculation in an effort to achieve economic independence and distinction among Virginia’s privileged class. Washington opposed Britain’s desire to restrict the growth of commercial agriculture, and viewed westward expansion as inevitable; in his view, the Proclamation Line was a temporary measure, put in place to calm Native Americans in the wake of French removal from the continent. This opinion prompted Washington to petition the Virginia government to release tracts of land that had been promised to French and Indian War veterans, while joining with other Virginia speculators in lobbying the Crown to push the border further west. Washington’s ventures proved successful with the 1768 Treaties of Fort Stanwix and Hard Labour, and again in 1770 with the Treaty of Lochaber.
Legacies of the proclamation were social, political and ideological.
. . . many Indigenous peoples, particularly in Canada, cite the document as Britain’s first formal acknowledgement of Indian land rights and self-determination. . . . >>> more
George Washington (1732-1799) Land speculator and a Founding Father of the United States, as the first president of the United States, from 1789 to 1797. Washington led the Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War, and presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which established the Constitution of the United States and a federal government for the United States. 7 Things You May Not now About the Constitutional Convention: A&E
HISTORY, 2012.
Excerpt: Ona’s parents were Betty, a woman born into slavery in Virginia, and Andrew Judge, a white indentured servant from England whose labor had been bought by George Washington for forty-five dollars. (An indenture agreement meant that in return for Andrew’s transport to America, as well as food, clothing, shelter, and a small cash allowance, Andrew’s labor was owned for the next four years of his life by whoever purchased his agreement. Still, Andrew had small freedoms as an indentured servant that the enslaved population did not share.) Betty and Andrew were not married. It was illegal for a black person to marry a white person. In fact, it was illegal for slaves to be married at all. … >>>more
5 things we should know about Ona Judge… in 3:27 minutes
Articles of Confederation Articles of Confederation and perpetual union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Providence plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. -
Signed at Williamsburg, Pennsylvania, on July 9, 1778:
"And that the articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the states we respectively represent and that the union shall be perpetual.
IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto set our hands in Congress. DONE at Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania the ninth Day of July in the Year of our Lord one Thousand seven Hundred and Seventy-eight, and in the third year of the independence of America."
Library of Congress: Digital Collections
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875 The Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States, on November 15, 1777. However, ratification of the Articles of Confederation by all thirteen states did not occur until March 1, 1781. The Articles created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments. The need for a stronger Federal government soon became apparent and eventually led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The present United States Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation on March 4, 1789.
1231.8 ARTICLE VII. When land-forces are raised by any state for the common defence, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each state respectively by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such state shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by the state which first made the appointment.
1231.9 ARTICLE VIII. All charges of war, and all other expences that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the united states in congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states, in proportion to the value of all land within each state, granted to or surveyed for any Person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the united states in congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.
The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several states within the time agreed upon by the united states in congress assembled. . .
The Founding Fathers were well aware of the methods applied in ending European Feudalism, as shown by the French Physiocrats, with "Tableau Oeconomique" published in 1758: "that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land agriculture or land development" advocating for genuinely free trade: "Physiocrats called for the abolition of all existing taxes, completely free trade and a single tax on land." – Fonseca, Gonçalo L., (2009), "The Physiocrats" (Archived)
National Archives: Excerpt:
To Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours
London, July 28. 1768
Sirs
I received your obliging Letter of the 10th. of May, with the most acceptable Present of your Physiocratie, which I have read with great Pleasure, and received from it a great deal of Instruction.5 There is such a Freedom from local and national Prejudices and Partialities, so much Benevolence to Mankind in general, so much Goodness mixt with the Wisdom, in the Principles of your new Philosophy, that I am perfectly charm’d with them, and wish I could have staid in France for some time, to have studied in your School, 6 that I might, by conversing with its Founders have made myself quite a Master of that Philosophy. ... National Archives
Franklin also shared his concerns over land monopilization amongst the Founding Fathers in a Letter to Alexander Small, September 28, 1787
“I have not lost any of the principles of public economy you once knew me possessed of; but to get the bad customs of a country changed, and new ones, though better, introduced, it is necessary first to remove the prejudices of the people, enlighten their ignorance, and convince them that their interest will be promoted by the proposed changes; and this is not the work of a day. Our legislators are all landholders; they are not yet persuaded that all taxes are finally paid by the Land.”
According to legend: On June 10, 1752, Benjamin Franklin, with his son's help, attached a key to a kite string and flew the kite during a storm to see if it would draw an electrical charge. "He wanted to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning, and to do so, he needed a thunderstorm. He had his materials at the ready: a simple kite made with a large silk handkerchief, a hemp string, and a silk string. He also had a house key, a Leyden jar (a device that could store an electrical charge for later use), and a sharp length of wire. His son William assisted him.... Here’s how the experiment worked ... " - The Franklin Institute
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), who had little formal education, was considered a leading intellectual in his time: He helped to draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and is the only founding father
to have signed all four of the key documents establishing the United States:
- Declaration of Independence (1776)
- Treaty of Alliance with France (1778)
- Treaty of Paris (1783)
- U.S. Constitution (1787).
Most important ...
Treaty of Paris (1783) This treaty, signed on September 3, 1783, between the American colonies and Great Britain, ended the American Revolution and formally recognized the United States as an independent nation.
The American War for Independence (1775-1783) was actually a world conflict, involving not only the United States and Great Britain, but also France, Spain, and the Netherlands. The peace process brought a nascent United States into the arena of international diplomacy, playing against the largest and most established powers on earth.
The three American negotiators – John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay – proved themselves ready for the world stage, achieving many of the objectives sought by the new United States. Two crucial provisions of the treaty were British recognition of U.S. independence and the delineation of boundaries that would allow for American western expansion. >>>more
On April 21, 1787, the Continental Congress of the United States authorized a design for the first official coin of the United States, the Fugio Cent, designed by Benjamin Franklin.
It did not say "In God we Trust". It said, "We Are One".
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) At first, Thomas Jefferson was against slavery, until he chose to live like a king. “Never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do.” - "In his lifetime Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves. At any one time about 100 slaves lived on the mountain; the highest slave population, in 1817, was 140."
- The 3rd President of the United States, serving two terms, 1801-1809, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was a lawyer, architect, musician, philosopher.
- Founding Father, as principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
- the first Secretary of State under George Washington, 1790-1793
- vice president under John Adams, 1797-1801
A Wall of Separation between Church and State
Thomas Jefferson's Jan. 1, 1802 Letter to the Danbury Baptists (pdf)
Excerpt
“…I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
The phrase and meaning of "a wall of separation" were used by the Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education (1947):
Excerpt: "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state” ... “No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.”
The First Ugly Election: America, 1800
The 1800 election saw America's first contested presidential campaigns: Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams: “Both candidates suffered personal attacks; Adams, for his perceived lack of masculine virtues, Jefferson for rumors that he had fathered children with one of his slaves.” – Peter Feuerherd, July 4, 2016
Excerpt:
With five simple words in the Declaration of Independence—“all men are created equal”—Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle’s ancient formula, which had governed human affairs until 1776: “From the hour of their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” In his original draft of the Declaration, in soaring, damning, fiery prose, Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an “execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors,” a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” As historian John Chester Miller put it, “The inclusion of Jefferson’s strictures on slavery and the slave trade would have committed the United States to the abolition of slavery.” >>>more
"It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." - Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333
"A right of property in moveable things is admitted before the establishment of government. A separate property in lands, not till after that establishment. The right to moveables is acknowledged by all the hordes of Indians surrounding us. Yet by no one of them has a separate property in lands been yielded to individuals. ... Government must be established and laws provided, before lands can be separately appropriated, and their owner protected in his possession. Till then, the property is in the body of the nation, and they, or their chief as trustee, must grant them to individuals, and determine the conditions of the grant." – Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812. ME 18:45
James Monroe (1758-1831)
"The Monroe Doctrine" Named after James Monroe,
the last of the Founding Fathers, asked that Europeans not increase their influence or recolonize any part of the Western Hemisphere.
“The American continents …are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”
- President James Monroe
The White House biographies: Excerpt:
James Monroe (1758-1831) served two terms as the 5th President of the United States (1817-1825). "Monroe was so honest that if you turned his soul inside out there would not be a spot on it." – Thomas Jefferson
... His ambition and energy, together with the backing of President Madison, made him the Republican choice for the Presidency in 1816. With little Federalist opposition, he easily won re-election in 1820.
Monroe made unusually strong Cabinet choices, naming a Southerner, John C. Calhoun, as Secretary of War, and a northerner, John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State. ...
... Secretary Adams advised, “It would be more candid … to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war.”
Monroe accepted Adams’s advice. Not only must Latin America be left alone, he warned, but also Russia must not encroach southward on the Pacific coast. “. . . the American continents,” he stated, “by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European Power.” Some 20 years after Monroe died in 1831, this became known as the Monroe Doctrine.
In his December 2, 1823, address to Congress, President James Monroe articulated United States’ policy on the new political order developing in the rest of the Americas and the role of Europe in the Western Hemisphere. The statement, known as the Monroe Doctrine, was little noted by the Great Powers of Europe, but eventually became a longstanding tenet of U.S. foreign policy. Monroe and his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams drew upon a foundation of American diplomatic ideals such as disentanglement from European affairs and defense of neutral rights as expressed in Washington’s Farewell Address and Madison’s stated rationale for waging the War of 1812.
The three main concepts of the doctrine —separate spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe, non-colonization, and non-intervention—
were designed to signify a clear break between the New World and the autocratic realm of Europe. Monroe’s administration forewarned the imperial European powers against interfering in the affairs of the newly independent Latin American states or potential United States territories. While Americans generally objected to European colonies in the New World, they also desired to increase United States influence and trading ties throughout the region to their south. European mercantilism posed the greatest obstacle to economic expansion. In particular, Americans feared that Spain and France might reassert colonialism over the Latin American peoples who had just overthrown European rule. Signs that Russia was expanding its presence southward from Alaska toward the Oregon Territory were also disconcerting. …
By the mid-1800s, Monroe’s declaration, combined with ideas of Manifest Destiny, provided precedent and support for U.S. expansion on the American continent. In the late 1800s, U.S. economic and military power enabled it to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine’s greatest extension came with Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary, which inverted the original meaning of the doctrine and came to justify unilateral U.S. intervention in Latin America. …
July 4, 1776
The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that all people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: "to insure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The declaration authors included Thomas Jefferson, (credited for writing the first draft), John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. The final draft was edited again by the whole Congress and signed on 4 July 1776. Arguments over authorship were settled by Robert M. S. McDonald, (1999), Who Wrote the Declaration of Independence?.
March 4, 1789 The U.S. Articles of Confederation were replaced with the U.S. Constitution in March 4, 1789: The Preamble to the United States Constitution states,
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution."
December 15, 1791 The U.S.Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution...Ten of the proposed 12 amendments were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures on December 15, 1791.
See The Bill of Rights: A Transcription
"There was no ancient political or legal precedent for the right to arms. The Ancient Constitution did not include it; it was neither in Magna Charta 1215 nor in the Petition of Right, 1628. No early English government would have considered giving the individual such a right." – Schwoerer, 2000, p. 34
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
“A long Habit of not thinking a Thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of Custom. But the Tumult soon subsides. Time makes more Converts than Reason.” - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Excerpt from preface:
FROM the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our acquaintance commenced on that ground, it would have been more agreeable to me to have had cause to continue in that opinion, than to change it.
At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the English Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I was in Paris, and had written him, but a short time before, to inform him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon after this, I saw his advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the attack was to be made in a language but little studied, and less understood, in France, and as every thing suffers by translation, I promised some of the friends of the Revolution in that country, that whenever Mr. Burke’s Pamphlet came forth, I would answer it.
This appeared to me the more necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant misrepresentations which Mr. Burke’s Pamphlet contains; and that while it is an outrageous abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an imposition on the rest of the world. ... Download all related documents HERE
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church." and "My country is the world and my religion is to do good."
- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794
Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice, (1797), is considered one of the earliest proposals for a social security system in the United States, it included, for the first time, the provision of an equal cash endowment to all young adults. Paine stated,
"Men did not make the earth… It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property…
Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds....
“Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.
In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwards till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of government. Let us then do honor to revolutions by justice, and give currency to their principles by blessings.
Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,
To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty- one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.”
"In an agrarian setting, Paine thought the obligation of the individual to the society for the use of land would off-set the cost of improvement… exclusion of the vast majority of citizens from property rights required the State to provide minimal assets to facilitate subsistence livelihood." – Pleaser & Lødemel, 2020, CUP
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865):
16th president of the United States, elected in November 1860.
"Abraham Lincoln signed into law the nation’s first-ever tax on personal income to help pay for the Union war effort." - Sarah Pruitt, 2018, Inside History
Popular Abraham Lincoln quotes:
- “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the facts.”
- “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
- “Whatever you are, be a good one.”
- “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"
- “America will never be destroyed from the outside."
- “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
- “I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”
- “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered remarks, which later became known as the Gettysburg Address, at the official dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War…
Excerpt:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
PBS Documentary:
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863: "all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves in the United States. Rather, it declared free only those slaves living in states not under Union control. ... As early as 1849, Abraham Lincoln believed that slaves should be emancipated, advocating a program in which they would be freed gradually. Early in his presidency, still convinced that gradual emacipation was the best course, he tried to win over legistators. To gain support, he proposed that slaveowners be compensated for giving up their "property." … It also tied the issue of slavery directly to the war.
Sandburg’s account of the life of Abraham Lincoln is one of the monumental works of the century. Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939) alone exceeds in length the collected writings of Shakespeare by some 150,000 words. Though Sandburg did deny the story that in preparation he read everything ever published on Lincoln, he did collect and classify Lincoln material for 30 years, moving himself into a garret, storing his extra material in a barn, and for nearly 15 years writing on a cracker-box typewriter. His intent was to separate Lincoln the man from Lincoln the myth, to avoid hero-worship, to relate with graphic detail and humanness the man both he and Whitman so admired. The historian Charles A. Beard called the finished product “a noble monument of American literature,” written with “indefatigable thoroughness.” Allan Nevins saw it as “homely but beautiful, learned but simple, exhaustively detailed but panoramic ... [occupying] a niche all its own, unlike any other biography or history in the language.” The Pulitzer Prize committee apparently agreed. Prohibited from awarding the biography prize for any work on Washington or Lincoln, it circumvented the rules by placing the book in the category of history. As a result of this work, Sandburg was the first private citizen to deliver an address before a joint session of Congress (on February 12, 1959, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth).
2013
New informaton has emerged re. Lincoln's links to railroad tycoons:
Lynn Parramore, Jan. 21, 2013 An Inconvenient Truth About Lincoln (That You Won't Hear from Hollywood)
Some of the most powerful corporations of Lincoln's time were wildly enriched by having a friend in one Abraham Lincoln.
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country....corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Beginning in the 1800s, women organized, petitioned, and picketed to win the right to vote, but it took them decades to accomplish their purpose." - National Archives
1848
Seneca Falls Convention The Seneca Falls Convention was the first American women’s rights convention: Held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848, the meeting launched the "women’s suffrage" movement and more than seven decades of efforts to earn the right to vote. The 19th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution was passed in Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920.
Excerpt:
Originally known as the Woman’s Rights Convention, the Seneca Falls Convention fought for the social, civil and religious rights of women. The meeting was held from July 19 to 20, 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York.
Despite scarce publicity, 300 people— mostly area residents— showed up. On the first day, only women were allowed to attend (the second day was open to men).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the meeting’s organizers, began with a speech on the convention’s goals and purpose:
“We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed—to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love.”
The convention proceeded to discuss the 11 resolutions on women’s rights. All passed unanimously except for the ninth resolution, which demanded the right to vote for women. Stanton and African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave impassioned speeches in its defense before it eventually (and barely) passed.
Who Organized the Seneca Falls Convention
The five women who organized the Seneca Falls Convention were also active in the abolitionist movement, which called for an end to slavery and racial discrimination. They included: ... >>>more
The history of established feminist movements in the United States roughly breaks down into four different time periods.
Excerpt
Since the mid-19th century, organized feminist movements in the United States have called for greater political, economic and cultural freedom and equality for women. Yet not all of these movements have pursued the same specific goals, taken the same approaches to activism or included the same groups of women in their rallying cry. Because of these generational differences, it’s common to hear feminism divided into four distinct waves, each roughly corresponding to a different time period.
This concept of the “waves of feminism” first surfaced in the late 1960s as a way of differentiating the emerging women’s movement at the time from the earlier movement for women’s rights that originated in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention. At the same time, the idea of a “second wave” also linked the movement to those earlier activists in a long, worthy struggle for women’s rights.
Critics of the “wave” concept argue that it oversimplifies a more complicated history by suggesting that only one distinct type of feminism exists at any one time in history. In reality, each movement includes smaller, overlapping sub-groups, which are often at odds with each other. While the wave concept is certainly imperfect, it remains a helpful tool in outlining and understanding the tumultuous history of feminism in the United States, from its origins at Seneca Falls into the social media-fueled activism of the #MeToo era. >>>more
Women and the Myth of the American West
January 11, 2015, TIME
Excerpt:
... we asked [7] historians: What opportunities did the American West offer women that they may not have had back East?
..... Let’s begin with one of those invisible, obvious facts of history: Women had been living in what became “the West” centuries before anyone arrived from “back East.” We have plenty of evidence of the ways they claimed homes and made communities, from the remnants of the Cahokia Mounds to the majestic ruins of Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon, where archaeologist Patricia Crown has found evidence of chocolate and macaws from the 12th century. With the advent of European contact, Spanish and Mexican and indigenous women lived in—and came from—all directions. >>>more
“The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate” – Thomas Jefferson
How did we get the Electoral College?
Archives The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. However, the term “electoral college” does not appear in the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment refer to “electors,” but not to the “electoral college.” >>>more
What is the Electoral College? "If you're a United States citizen, 18 years of age or older, you probably think you have the right to vote for presidential candidates in the national election. That's partially correct...." (Library of Congress)
History: Electoral College Fast Facts
Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College is the formal body which elects the President and Vice President of the United States. Each state has as many "electors" in the Electoral College as it has Representatives and Senators in the United States Congress, and the District of Columbia has three electors. When voters go to the polls in a Presidential election, they actually vote for the slate of electors who have vowed to cast their ballots for that ticket in the Electoral College. . . .
* Five times a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the election. Andrew Jackson in 1824 (to John Quincy Adams); Samuel Tilden in 1876 (to Rutherford B. Hayes); Grover Cleveland in 1888 (to Benjamin Harrison); Al Gore in 2000 (to George W. Bush); Hillary Clinton in 2016 (to Donald J. Trump). >>>more
Electoral College & Indecisive Elections In January 1877, Congress established the Federal Electoral Commission to investigate disputed Electoral College ballots. “…and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President…”
— U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 1, clause 3
Excerpts:
… it suddenly matters whether some electoral practice was common in 1982, when Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was written in its current form. Since 1982, almost every state in the country has liberalized voting. That means that the Court will give restrictions a pass as long as they don’t make it harder to vote than it was in 1982. With that bizarre 1982 benchmark in place, it’s going to be really difficult for plaintiffs to win, unless states invent new draconian restrictions that have never existed in the past. … the point of the Voting Rights statute is to eliminate racial disparities...
. . .
Voting rights, tragically, have become part of the entrenched left-right axis of the Court. In all of the big Roberts Court election law rulings of the last two decades, the conservatives have stuck together: Shelby County striking down the other half of the Voting Rights Act; Citizens United striking down regulations of money in politics; Crawford allowing Indiana to have a voter ID law. Basically, whenever it’s a voting issue, you have the conservatives marching in lockstep in opposition to voting rights and in favor of the state’s ability to do whatever it wants when it comes to regulating elections. Unless the state wants to curb the flow of campaign money, in which case the conservatives all unite to say it can’t do that. >>>more
A huge vulnerability for any republic.
Constitution Center: Common Interpretation
by Professor James W. Ceaser and U.S. Representative, Jamin Raskin
Excerpt:
… the Electoral College has produced recurring political controversy over the centuries and also experienced significant constitutional, legislative, and political upheaval and revision. Today few people would consider the Electoral College to be a “deliberative” body as it was once imagined because the Electors are appointed mechanistically to winners according to vote totals in the states. >>>more
A Growing Number Of Critics Raise Alarms About The Electoral College
NPR, 10 June, 2021
Excerpt: . . . Another way the Electoral College is unfair, says Harvard University political scientist Gautam Mukunda, is that each state gets electors based on its representation in the House and Senate, which means small states get extra votes.
"The fact that in presidential elections people in Wyoming have [nearly four] times the power of people in California is antithetical at the most basic level to what we say we stand for as a democracy," he said. . . . The problem is that twice since 2000, the person with the most votes didn't win. . . . That means the Electoral College puts a magnifying glass on just a few states that could have tremendous control over presidential elections. >>>more
"Class Struggle"
A 'minefield' of systemic racism followed the long history of colonialism, segregation, and slavery:
The political correctness of "People of Colour" – PoC in the US: White, Red, Black, Yellow includes African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islander Americans, multiracial Americans, and Latino Americans. – BAMEin the UK: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic. – BIPOC in AU: Black, Indigenous, PoC
Jim Crow Laws Wikipedia Etymology The earliest known use of the phrase "Jim Crow law" can be dated to 1884 in a newspaper article summarizing congressional debate.[14] The term appears in 1892 in the title of a New York Times article about Louisiana requiring segregated railroad cars.[15][16] The origin of the phrase "Jim Crow" has often been attributed to "Jump Jim Crow", a song-and-dance caricature of black people performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice in blackface, first performed in 1828. As a result of Rice's fame, Jim Crow had become by 1838 a pejorative expression meaning "Negro". When southern legislatures passed laws of racial segregation directed against African Americans at the end of the 19th century, these statutes became known as Jim Crow laws.[15] Origins In January 1865, an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States was proposed by Congress and ratified as the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865.[17]
... more
"The Bourgeois Blues" is a blues song by American folk and blues musician Lead Belly. It was written in June 1937 in response to the discrimination and segregation that he faced during a visit to Washington, D.C. to record for Alan Lomax. It rails against racism, the Jim Crow laws, and the conditions of contemporary African Americans in the southern United States. The song was recorded in December 1938 for the Library of Congress and re-recorded in 1939 for commercial release.
. . . Most music historians date the writing of "The Bourgeois Blues" to Lead Belly's June 1937 trip to Washington, D.C.,[1] when he was invited by the folklorist Alan Lomax to record for the Library of Congress's folk music collection. On the first night Lead Belly and his wife Martha spent in the city, they encountered racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws similar to those found in their native Louisiana: most hotels refused to rent rooms to African Americans and the few that would were either full or refused to serve him because he was with a white man (Lomax).[2] Lomax, in some versions of the story described as an unnamed "white friend", offered to let the couple stay for the night in his apartment near the Supreme Court Building. The next morning, Lead Belly awoke to Lomax arguing with his landlord about the presence of a black man, with the landlord threatening to call the police.[3] >>> more
"Emperor Jones" - 1933 film starring Paul Robeson
- restored by the Library of Congress in 2003.
Reviewed by the New York State Writers Institute
Excerpt:
The story goes that Paul Robeson was acting as a way to earn his way through law school, when playwright Eugene O'Neill saw him, and offered him a starring role in All God's Chillun' Got Wings, and, penultimately, the title role in the 1924 revival of The Emperor Jones that began the swift transformation of Paul Robeson into the century's most extraordinary combined artistic talent. (The distinguished Black actor Charles Gilpin had played the role during the play's first run.) At the age of 26, Robeson was already living a full life; he'd been a football All-American and one of the greatest gate attractions in all of college sports at Rutgers, where he'd also made Phi Beta Kappa; he had played pro football, and would shortly be admitted to the New York Bar -- but O'Neill's offer changed his course. As an actor, a singer, and eventually, an orator and political figure, Robeson was a colossus of American culture. And the part of Brutus Jones, Pullman porter, murderer, convict, and warlord, effectively began that transformation.
By the time the film version of The Emperor Jones was released in September of 1933, Robeson had embarked upon stardom of a magnitude that even the megalomaniacal Brutus Jones would have a hard time imagining it.
. . .
(Excerpt from last paragraph)
Paul Robeson had the very highest standards for the representation of race on screen, and he never made a film he was completely pleased with. He was right to question the film's final commitment to Black dignity, but The Emperor Jones remains a remarkable refraction of the many lives the race led in the years of the Great Migration northward, and the terrible forced exile of African Americans from the soul of America. Paul Robeson's performance as Brutus Jones, larger then life, boastful, passionate, wily, and madly impetuous, still shines from the screen. Brutus says haughtily in the film, "I betcha they knows a man when they sees one," >>>more
The Common Wind
American scholar of slavery and Caribbean and Atlantic history, Julius S. Scott (1955-2021) transformed our understanding of the Haitian Revolution and its emancipatory impact on freedom struggles throughout the Americas. Scott’s "The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of Revolution” (Verso, 2018): “is quite simply a masterful work. Originally written as a Duke doctoral dissertation in 1986, it has been circulated among scholars of comparative slavery, the Atlantic World, the Age of Revolution, and the African Diaspora for over three decades, animating the scholarship and electrifying the imaginations of students and scholars alike... One of Scott’s signature contributions is his concept of 'the masterless class,' the runaway slaves, free Blacks, lower-class Whites, deserters, sailors, smugglers, pirates, and others who eluded the grasp of slaveholders and colonial authorities, and often took refuge in port cities and on sailing vessels." – Finch 2020 “one of the most creative historical studies I have ever read”
– Scott’s close friend and colleague Marcus Rediker, whose Forward was republished, in Memoriam, Dec. 2021:
“Julius S. Scott Captured the Haitian Revolution’s Emancipatory Reach”
Excerpt:
“Scott’s greatest achievement was perhaps to reveal the full sweep of political creativity, collective intelligence, and international cooperation that lay behind eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave revolts. In the case of Haiti, Scott convincingly showed how that project led not only to the creation of Latin America’s first independent nation-state, but inflamed countless future struggles for the abolition of slavery all across the Americas and beyond.” >>>more
Summary
During the half century after 1650 that saw the gradual imposition of a slave society in England’s North American colonies, poor white settlers in the Chesapeake sought a republic of equals. Demanding a say in their own destinies, rebels moved around the region looking for a place to build a democratic political system. This book crosses colonial boundaries to show how Ingle's Rebellion, Fendall's Rebellion, Bacon's Rebellion, Culpeper's Rebellion, Parson Waugh's Tumult, and the colonial Glorious Revolution were episodes in a single struggle because they were organized by one connected group of people . >>>more
A Very Mutinous People:
The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713
(2009, UNC Press), by Dr. Noeleen McIlvenna
Excerpt from the AFTERWARD:
The southern slave society’s elites tried to disguise the grotesque brutality of the regime over which they presided. The gorgeous architecture of Charleston, homes filled with the best luxuries Europe had to offer, and sons educated at Eton together constituted a facade covering a system that allowed them to sell other people’s —and occasionally their own—children for money.
No system of social control could operate more effectively than the ever-present threat of destroying family bonds.
The planters lived in a world of self-delusion, comforting themselves with the patriarchal idea that the slaves happily served them: ‘‘My Negroes are in more comfortable circumstances than any equal number of Peasantry in Europe, there is not a Beggar among them nor one unprovided with food, raiment & good Lodging, they also enjoy property; the Lash is forbidden; they all understand this declaration as a Substitute — ‘If you deserve whipping I shall conclude you don’t love me & will sell you.’ . . . Yet I believe no man gets more work from his Negroes than I do, at the same time they are my Watchmen and my friends; never was an absolute Monarch more happy in his Subjects than at the present time I am.’’
>>>See more excerpts here.
Excerpt: "It was one of the most inhuman things I have ever seen,"
… Fuming over the civil rights movement, Southern segregationists had concocted a way to retaliate against Northern liberals. In 1962, they tricked about 200 African Americans from the South into moving north. The idea was simple: When large numbers of African Americans showed up on Northern doorsteps, Northerners would not be able to accommodate them. They would not want them, and their hypocrisy would be exposed.
...
The segregationists tapped into a network of local groups called Citizens' Councils. Despite the sanitized name, the councils were essentially "the Ku Klux Klan without the hoods and the masks," said historian Clive Webb.
Webb, a professor at the University of Sussex in England, specializes in studying racists. Fifteen years ago, he published the first—and still the only—major academic article on the Reverse Freedom Riders. …
The Citizens Councils' plan didn't quite work how they had wanted; they'd envisioned sending thousands north, but the reality amounted to a couple hundred. Those folks boarded buses to New York, New Hampshire, Indiana, Idaho, Minnesota, California and elsewhere.>>>more
Excerpt: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was landmark legislation that required decades of actions—and setbacks—to achieve.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. When it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, it was a major victory for the civil rights movement in its battle against unjust Jim Crow laws that marginalized Black Americans. It took years of activism, courage, and the leadership of Civil Rights icons from Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Little Rock Nine to bring the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to fruition. These are eight key steps that ultimately led to the Act’s adoption. >>>more
Excerpt: “included are taped interviews by Berry Shea, which formed the basis of MM's published memoir, Moving Mountains One Stone at a Time. The second section contains clippings, reports, and letters documenting MM's work with various Cape Cod organizations, such as CAC and FHC….and a videotape about the reverse freedom riders, which aired as part of the "Tales of Cape Cod" series on C3TV.” >>>more
The history
After 304 years of enslavement, then-former slaves gained equal protection under the law with passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868. The 15th Amendment, in 1870, guaranteed voting rights for men regardless of race or “previous condition of servitude.”
This early progress was subsequently diminished by state laws throughout the American South called “Black Codes,” which limited voting rights, property rights and compensation for work; made it illegal to be unemployed or not have documented proof of employment; and could subject prisoners to work without pay on behalf of the state. These legal rollbacks were worsened by the spread of “Jim Crow” laws throughout the country requiring segregation in almost all aspects of life.
Grassroots struggles for civil rights were constant in post-Civil War America. Some historians even refer to the period from the New Deal Era, which began in 1933, to the present as “The Long Civil Rights Movement.”
The period stretching from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which found school segregation to be unconstitutional, to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in housing, was especially productive.
The civil rights movement used practices such as civil disobedience, nonviolent protest, grassroots organizing and legal challenges to advance civil rights. The U.S.’s need to improve its image abroad during the Cold War importantly aided these advancements. The movement succeeded in banning explicit legal discrimination and segregation, promoted equal access to work and housing and extended federal protection of voting rights.
However, the movement that produced legal advances had no effect on the increasing racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites, while school and housing segregation persisted.
What critical race theory is
Critical race theory is a field of intellectual inquiry that demonstrates the legal codification of racism in America.
Through the study of law and U.S. history, it attempts to reveal how racial oppression shaped the legal fabric of the U.S. Critical race theory is traditionally less concerned with how racism manifests itself in interactions with individuals and more concerned with how racism has been, and is, codified into the law.
What critical race theory is not
... As a philosopher of race and racism, I can safely say that critical race theory does not assert the following:
(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
(2) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously;
(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex;
(4) An individual’s moral character is determined by the individual’s race or sex;
(5) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
(6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.
What most of these bills go on to do is limit the presentation of educational materials that suggest that Americans do not live in a meritocracy, that foundational elements of U.S. laws are racist, and that racism is a perpetual struggle from which America has not escaped.
Americans are used to viewing their history through a triumphalist lens, where we overcome hardships, defeat our British oppressors and create a country where all are free with equal access to opportunities.
Obviously, not all of that is true.
Critical race theory provides techniques to analyze U.S. history and legal institutions by acknowledging that racial problems do not go away when we leave them unaddressed. . >>>more
Excerpt: The author of “Race, Racism, and American Law” Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell (1930-2011) is credited as the father of critical race theory. He began conceptualizing the idea in the 1970s as a way to understand how race and American law interact, and developed a course on the subject. In 1980, Bell resigned his position at Harvard because of what he viewed as the institution’s discriminatory hiring practices, especially its failure to hire an Asian American woman he’d recommended.
…For some, the theory was a revelatory way to understand inequality. Take housing, for example. Researchers have now accumulated ample evidence that racial covenants in property deeds and redlining by the Federal Housing Authority—banned more than 60 years ago—remain a major contributor to the gulf in homeownership, and thus wealth, between Black and white people. Others, perhaps most prominently Randall Kennedy, who joined the Harvard Law faculty a few years after Bell left, questioned how widely the theory could be applied. In a paper titled “Racial Critiques of Legal Academia,” Kennedy argued that white racism was not the only reason so few “minority scholars” were members of law-school faculties. Conservative scholars argued that critical race theory is reductive—that it treats race as the only factor in social identity. >>>more
"Slavery never did and never could aid improvement." Henry George (1839-1897), "Progress and Poverty" 1879 (Free download) Excerpt from the last 3 paragraphs -
Book 10, Ch 3, "The Law of Human Progress"
As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have aided in establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym of equality, is, from the very rudest state in which man can he imagined, the stimulus and condition of progress. Auguste Comte’s idea that the institution of slavery destroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia’s humorous notion of the way mankind acquired a taste for roast pig. It assumes that a propensity that has never been found developed in man save as the result of the most unnatural conditions—the direst want or the most brutalizing superstitions∗ —is an original impulse, and that he, even in his lowest state the highest of all animals, has natural appetites which the nobler brutes do not show. And so of the idea that slavery began civilization by giving slave owners leisure for improvement.
Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. Whether the community consist of a single master and a single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions of slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of human power; for not only is slave labor less productive than free labor, but the power of masters is likewise wasted in holding and watching their slaves, and is called away from directions in which real improvement lies. From first to last, slavery, like every other denial of the natural equality of men, has hampered and prevented progress. Just in proportion as slavery plays an important part in the social organization does improvement cease. That in the classical world slavery was so universal, is undoubtedly the reason why the mental activity which so polished literature and refined art never hit on any of the great discoveries and inventions which distinguish modern civilization. No slave-holding people ever were an inventive people. In a slave-holding community the upper classes may become luxurious and polished; but never inventive. Whatever degrades the laborer and robs him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit of invention and forbids the utilization of inventions and discoveries even when made. To freedom alone is given the spell of power which summons the genii in whose keeping are the treasures of earth and the viewless forces of the air.
The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing civilization come to a halt and recede. Political economy and social science cannot teach any lessons that are not embraced in the simple truths that were taught to poor fishermen and Jewish peasants by One who eighteen hundred years ago was crucified—the simple truths which, beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions of superstition, seem to underlie every religion that has ever striven to formulate the spiritual yearnings of man.
Download Progress and Poverty (1879)
"Brebeuf's Instructions to the Missionaries": In 1637, Father Jean De Brebeuf drew up a list of instructions for Jesuit Missionaries destined to work among the Huron. These reflect his own experience and a genuine sensitivity toward our people:
You must love these Hurons, ransomed by the blood of the Son of God, as brothers. You must never keep the Indians waiting at the time of embarking. Carry a tinder-box or a piece of burning-glass, or both, to make fire for them during the day for smoking, and in the evening when it is necessary to camp; these little services win their hearts. Try to eat the little food they offer you, and eat all you can, for you may not eat again for hours. Eat as soon as day breaks, for Indians when on the road, eat only at the rising and the setting of the sun. Be prompt in embarking and disembarking and do not carry any water or sand into the canoe. Be the least troublesome to the Indians. Do not ask many questions; silence is golden. Bear with their imperfections, and you must try always to appear cheerful. Carry with you a half-gross of awls, two or three dozen little folding knives (jambettes), and some plain and fancy beads with which to buy fish or other commodities from the nations you meet, in order to feast you Indian companions, and be sure to tell them from the outset that here is something with which to buy fish. Always carry something during the portages. Do not be ceremonious with the Indians. Do not begin to paddle unless you intend always to paddle. The Indians will keep later that opinion of you which they have formed during the trip. Always show any other Indians you meet on the way a cheerful face and show that you readily accept the fatigues of the journey.
"Dancing till dawn"
The artist Marianne Millar depicts a "New Age" perspective (Limited Edition print) "By the 1880’s many Plains Indians were confined to reservations and dependent on a pitiful government welfare system. In desperation these Native Americans turned to an inter-tribal religious movement called the Ghost Dance. This circle dance promised a return to the old ways and better life that the First Nations enjoyed before the European invasion. Having originated among the Northern Paiute and promoted by the religious leader known as Wovoka, this hybrid of ancient native religion and Christianity swept the Plains in the 1890’s.
Swaying before a sun rising over the Great Plains, four female dancers, clothed in elaborately painted buckskin dresses, have chanted, prayed, and danced tirelessly in a circular motion. These Native Americans believed that proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead; bring the spirits of the dead to fight on their behalf; make the white colonists leave; and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Indian peoples throughout the region. Having danced all night, these adherents are greeted by the dawn, a sacred time of day for Native Americans, symbolizing the rebirth of the world. Celestial iconography of moons and stars decorate their buckskin dresses and the Maltese cross or Morning Star, being a symbol for the Messiah, also refers to the dawning of a new universe in which the problems of this present world vanish." - Marianne Millar >>>more
The 1991 film "Black Robe" - set mid-1600s-(1634).
"No other historical movie clearly demonstrates research like that."
- Noeleen McIlvenna, Northern Irish-born Professor of History at Ohio's Wright State University.
The screen play is an adaptation of Belfast-born novelist Brian Moore's 1985 novel of the same name, directed by Australian Bruce Beresford, detailing the first French Christian missionary expedition to convert native tribes across Quebec:
When the missionary writes what the Algonquin chief has said and takes it to their translator to read aloud, the astonished chief agrees to support the mission quest, demonstrating how literacy based on biblical 'stories' from a foreign culture upstaged traditional belief systems. "An intertitle states that fifteen years later, the Hurons, having accepted Christianity, were routed and killed by their enemies the Iroquois; the Jesuit mission to the Hurons was abandoned and the Jesuits returned to Quebec."
Wyandit Nation of Kansas: Keepers of the Council Fire wyandot.org:
Our Story: The Wyandots (also called the Huron by the French) originated in the Georgian Bay area of Ontario, Canada. They referred to themselves as Wendat, or People of the Islands.
They were almost wiped out by the Iroquois because of the Beaver Wars and disease. Fleeing their homelands they dispersed west- through the Straits and down to Michilmackinaw , then into the Detroit area. Settling in the Detroit area they developed a town called Wyandotte, Michigan.
Leaving those Wyandot who wished to remain in Michigan, our families went to Ohio and settled in the Sandusky area. Through all the broken treaties, and the Indian Remove Act of 1830, our people knew they would never be allowed to remain in Ohio and were talked into selling their land to the United States government for a promise of 148,000 acres in what is now known as the area of Westport in Kansas City, Missouri. Weeping as they left their homes and buried love ones they traveled . . . >>>more
Excerpt: Much has been said about the inspiration of the ancient Iroquois “Great League of Peace” in planting the seeds that led to the formation of the United States of America and its representative democracy.
The Iroquois Confederacy, founded by the Great Peacemaker in in 1142[1], is the oldest living participatory democracy on earth[2]. In 1988, the U.S. Senate paid tribute with a resolution[3] that said, "The confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was
influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the constitution itself."
The peoples of the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Six Nations, refer to themselves as the Haudenosaunee, (pronounced "hoo-dee-noh-SHAW-nee"). It means “peoples of the longhouse,” and refers to their lengthy bark-covered longhouses that housed many families. Theirs was a sophisticated and thriving society of well over 5,000 people when the first European explorers encountered them in the early seventeenth century.
“The Great Peacemaker[4] brought peace to the five nations,” ... They traveled to each of the five nations to share their ideas for peace.
A council meeting was called, and Hiawatha presented the Great Law of Peace. It united the five nations into a League of Nations, or the Iroquois Confederacy, and became the basis for the Iroquois Confederacy Constitution[5].
“Each nation maintained its own leadership, but they all agreed that common causes would be decided in the Grand Council of Chiefs,” Lyons said[6]. “The concept was based on peace and consensus rather than fighting." >>>more
On the treatment of Native Americans by Christians, deputy district attorney in Cortez, Colorado, Jeremiah Jones' 2014 University of Denver MA thesis provides a thoughtful overview: Puritanism and American Exceptionalism: A Genealogy of Their Impact on Native Americans 1620–1864: "From Puritans to the Founding Fathers, to expansion into the west, ... where Indians have been forced to assimilate, removed from their homelands or exterminated outright in massacres." >>>more
Harvard professor of international relations Stephen M. Waltexplains:
"What we need, in short, is a more realistic and critical assessment of America’s true character and contributions. In that spirit, I offer here the Top 5 Myths about American Exceptionalism.”..."So when Americans proclaim they are exceptional and indispensable, they are simply the latest nation to sing a familiar old song. Among great powers, thinking you’re special is the norm, not the exception" >>>more
DIGITAL Mapping of Native Lands:
Mission: maping Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages across the world in a way that goes beyond colonial ways of thinking in order to better represent how Indigenous people want to see themselves. Native-land.ca
The Civilization Fund Act, 1819 Passed by the United States Congress on March 3, 1819, to stimulate the "civilization process" with funding allocated for federal government collaboration with Christian missions and establishment of Native American boarding schools:
The U.S. history of Native American Boarding Schools By Melissa Mejia, The Indigenous Foundation
Native American Boarding Schools (also known as Indian Boarding Schools) were established by the U.S. government in the late 19th century as an effort to assimilate Indigenous youth into mainstream American culture through education. This era was part of the United States’ overall attempt to kill, annihilate, or assimilate Indigenous peoples and eradicate Indigenous culture.
The Native American assimilation era first began in 1819, when the U.S. Congress passed The Civilization Fund Act. The act encouraged American education to be provided to Indigenous societies and therefore enforced the “civilization process"...
The Curtis Act of 1898 Charles Curtis (1860-1936), a member of the Native American Kaw Nation, born in Kansas, who served as a Republican Senator and attorney, and became the 31st US Vice President, from 1929 to 1933, under President Herbert Hoover, he was responsible for the Curtis Act of 1898, an amendment to the Dawes Act of 1887 which weakened Native governments and helped break up Indigenous reservations.
The Allotment and Assimilation Era (1887-1934) began with the passing of the Indian Appropriation Act of 1871, which terminated the policy of treaties with the Indians and put an end to their status as sovereign nations. The assimilationist strategy was reinforced by the Dawes Act of 1887 which regulated land rights when Native Americans lost control of about 150 million acres of land.
Harvard Law Library ... The final attempt at assimilating Native Americans came in 1924 with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act. This act provided tribal members dual citizenship in their enrolled tribe and with the United States. The passage of the act was less of a recognition of Native Americans' contributions to and place in American, but a last-ditch effort to erase Native culture.
The Indian Citizenship Act. Library of Congress:
On June 2, 1924, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. The right to vote, however, was governed by state law; until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting.
Previously, the Dawes Severalty Act (1887) had shaped U.S. policy towards Native Americans. In accordance with its terms, and hoping to turn Indians into farmers, the federal government redistributed tribal lands to heads of families in 160-acre allotments. Unclaimed or “surplus” land was sold, and the proceeds used to establish Indian schools where Native-American children learned reading, writing, and the domestic and social systems of white America. By 1932, the sale of both unclaimed land and allotted acreage resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the 138 million acres that Native Americans had held prior to the Dawes Act.
Notable Court Cases: U.S. v. Clapox, 35 F. 575 (1888) - This case ratified the creation of the Courts of Indian Offenses in 1883 and their use as a means to assimilate Native Americans.... "The ruling of the district court in this case is an excellent example of the way in which laws were used to reinforce the notion that Indians were culturally inferior peoples."
Serving, trading or fighting to preserve culture. Reputed as a great orator, Chief Seattle (178?-1866) was born near the Puget Sound of Washington State. His legendary 1854 speech, before the Governor and Commissioner of Indian Affairs of Washington Territory, was an appeal to the heart of the white man for compassionate understanding of his people.
Henry Smith’s Account of Chief Seattle’s Speech Excerpt: Even The Rocks "That seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore in solemn grandeur thrill with memories of past events connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
"The sable braves, and fond mothers, and glad-hearted maidens, and the little children who lived and rejoiced here, and whose very names are now forgotten, still love these solitudes, and their deep fastnesses at eventide grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits. And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among white men shall have become a myth, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children shall think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway or in the silence of the woods they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night, when the streets of your cities and villages shall be silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless."
The Cherokee Woman and Her Changing Role – Maryleigh Hutcheson - Pathfinder: "The Cherokee culture from its onset allowed for an egalitarian equality between the men and women. Both sexes depended upon each other for survival and the Cherokee women enjoyed a high status in the society. The Cherokee culture was Matrilineal and Matrilocal which afforded the women great power, including voting rights on the Council. Cherokee Women were believed to have come from the earth and the Sun and were responsible for farming for the community. They enjoyed a healthy balance between Men and Women until the introduction of Europeans who eventually became Americans. This research project shows how the Cherokee Culture was forced to change and adopt more and more of the White man's ways in order to survive. This also disrupted and changed the gender balance for the Cherokee causing great turmoil and further division among the tribe. This paper analyzes the changes that occurred up until the Cherokee Removal which was the final Culmination of this gender role crisis.">>> more
“Whenever it may be necessary to refer to some of the unfortunate relations that have existed between the Indians and the white race, it will be done in that unbiased manner becoming the student of history.”
– Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian (1907-1930), 1:xv
Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952), born in Wisconsin,
(not related to Charles Curtis) took up photography at an early age. From the age of 17, he became an apprentice to a photography studio in St. Paul, MN. When his family moved west, to Seattle, Washington, he commenced a career of over 30 years documenting the end of the Native American culture. Funded by President Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan, his portraits of "beautiful people" - "these children of nature" - are now stored in the public domain of the Smithsonian Library for all to see:
“Alone with my campfire, I gaze about on the completely circling hill-top, crested with countless campfires, around which are gathered the people of a dying race. The gloom of the approaching night wraps itself about me. I feel that the life of these children of nature is like the dying day drawing to its end; only off in the West is the glorious light of the setting sun, telling me, perhaps, of light after darkness.”
– E. S. Curtis, 1905, "Portraits from North American Indian Life" (1907) p. VIII
Excerpt:
The photographs of Edward Curtis represent ideals and imagery designed to create a timeless vision of Native American culture at a time when modern amenities and American expansion had already irrevocably altered the Indian way of life. By the time Curtis had arrived in various tribal territories, the U.S. government had forced Indian children into boarding schools, banned them from speaking in their native tongues, and made them cut their hair. This was not what Curtis chose to document, and he went to great pains to create images of Native Americans posing in traditional clothing they had long since put away…>>>more
"Through the treatment accorded the Indians by those who lay claim to civilisation and Christianity has in many cases been worse than criminal, a rehearsal of these wrongs does not properly find a place here. Whenever it may be necessary to refer to some of the unfortunate relations that have existed between the Indians and the white race, it will be done in that unbiased manner becoming the student of history. As a body politic recognising no individual ownership of lands, each Indian tribe naturally resented encroachment by another race, and found it impossible to relinquish without a struggle that which belonged to their people from time immemorial. On the other hand, the white man whose very own may have been killed or captured by a party of hostiles forced to the warpath by the machinations of some unscrupulous Government employee, can see nothing that is good in the Indian. There are thus two sides to the story, and in these volumes such questions must be treated with impartiality." – Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian (1907-1930), 1:xv [Google book scan]
Chief Dan George (1899-1981)
Brotherhood and Understanding
Source: North Shore News, North Vancouver, Canada, Aug 26, 2019 From the archives: Chief Dan George teaches understanding Chief Dan George was a leader of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation as well as a beloved actor, musician, poet and author. He was born in North Vancouver in 1899 and died in 1981.
Excerpt: The following column, reprinted in its entirety, appeared in the North Shore Free Press – an early iteration of the North Shore News – on March 1, 1972. Though these words were written nearly 50 years ago, they still resonate today as Canada ventures into a new age of truth and reconciliation while also grappling with a global climate emergency.
Brotherhood and Understanding: Thoughts by Chief Dan George I am a native North American. In the course of my life I have lived in two distinct cultures.
…
Closing paragraph:
"The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must truly love us, be patient with us and share with us. And we must love you with a genuine love that forgives and forgets ... a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach … with a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes an answering look of trust and understanding." - Chief Dan George
Wikipedia Biography
Excerpt: As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"),[2] and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns.[3]By the mid-1930s, Rogers was hugely popular in the United States for his leading political wit and was the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.[4] …
His parents, Clement Vann Rogers (1839–1911) and Mary America Schrimsher (1838–1890), were both of mixed-race and Cherokee ancestry, and identified as Cherokee. [8] His mother was one quarter-Cherokee and born into the Paint Clan.[10] She died when Will was eleven…. His father, Clement, was a leader in the Cherokee Nation. An attorney and Cherokee judge, he was a Confederate veteran. He served as a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Rogers County, Oklahoma, is named in honor of him.[2]
“Say, this new home building idea of (President) Hoover’s sounds good. They are working out a lot of beneficial things. The only thing is it took ’em so long (2 years) to think of any of ’em. We ought to have plans in case of depression, just like we do in case of fire, ‘Walk, don’t run, to the nearest exit.'”
- Daily Telegram #1659, Nov. 16, 1931
“Wall Street is being investigated, but they are not asleep while it’s being done. You see where the Senate took that tax off the sales of stocks, didn’t you? Saved ’em $48,000,000. Now, why don’t somebody investigate the Senate and see who got to them to get that tax removed? That would be a real investigation.”
- Daily Telegram #1803, May 4, 1932
“Our whole Depression was brought on by gambling, not in the stock market alone but in expanding and borrowing and going in debt, all just to make some money quick.”
– Radio, May 5, 1935
“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”
– Mark Twain, (1835-1910) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889
"Mother of Exiles"
"A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles..." – Emma Lazarus
The Statue of Liberty - a symbol of freedom A gift from the people of France.
The French Connection, NPS.org
Cast, between 1875-1886, in gold, copper, steel and iron, 93 meters (305 feet) tall: "The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the French people commemorating the alliance of France and the United States during the American Revolution. Yet, it represented much more to those individuals who proposed the gift."
1865-1886: The Early Stages "In 1865, a French political intellectual and anti-slavery activist named Edouard de Laboulaye proposed that a statue representing liberty be built for the United States. After the Statue was presented to Levi P Morton, the U.S. minister to France, on July 4, 1884 in Paris, it was disassembled and shipped to the United States aboard the French Navy ship, Isère. The Statue arrived in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885, and was met with great fanfare." – The French Connection, NPS.org
The source of "Lady Liberty's cry" Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 - Nov. 19, 1887, National Women's History Museum) Professor Jack Schwartzman, 1998, "Henry George and Emma Lazarus: Comparative Views", on Emma Lazarus' rise to glory:
"In 1881, two years after the publication of Progress and Poverty, [Henry] George was living in New York City, and so was the budding poet, Emma Lazarus, a wealthy young lady, who was also determined to fight injustice throughout the world. She was a protégé and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and an ardent admirer of the writings of Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Emma Lazarus read Progress and Poverty and was very much “stirred by George’s vision.”(9) Evidently under the spell of George’s “ship” metaphor, and deeply moved by George’s startling revelation of the disparities between the very rich and the very poor, she wrote the following sonnet, which was published in the New York Times:
Emma Lazarus' poem "Progress and Poverty"
Published in the New York Times, Oct. 2, 1881 Oh splendid age when Science lifts her lamp
At the brief lightening’s momentary flame,
Fixing it steadfast as a star, man’s name
Upon the very brow of heaven to stamp!
Launched on a ship whose iron-cuirassed sides
Mock storm and wave, Humanity sails free,
Gayly upon a vast, untrodden sea.
O’er pathless wastes, to ports undreamed she rides, Richer than Cleopatra’s barge of gold,
This vessel, manned by demigods, with freight
Of priceless marvels. But where yawns the hold
In that deep, reeking hell, what slaves be they,
Who feed the ravenous monster, pant and sweat,
Nor know if overhead reign night or day?
The source of "Lady Liberty's cry" Emma Lazarus (1849 - 1887) In 1883, an appeal came to Emma Lazarus from a committee that was planning to set up on Bedloe Island in New York Harbor a colossal statue, called "Liberty Enlightening the World". Emma Lazarus was asked to write a poem that would appear on the pedestal of the statue. She wrote the 14 lines below, that have become immortal: The lines were to endure forever after as the voice of Liberty itself. The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, 1883 Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
In her biography, “The Voice of Liberty: The Story of Emma Lazarus” (1959), American poet, Eve Merriam described how the sonnet came to be written: “George’s book, Progress and Poverty, had made a deep impression on her… Emma wrote a poem about his ideas, in which she pictured Progress as a ship of state sailing across the sea. The ship contained riches, and the people above deck were free and happy. Yet the power for the ship came from those who laboured below, in the dark, damp hold, sweating as slaves. After The New York Times printed her poem, she sent George a copy.” According to one writer, George truly appreciated the sonnet. In fact, stated another author, George was “very moved by it, and they began corresponding about social problems. He urged Emma to write more about topics of the day. A person with her gifts was needed to express the longings and the aspirations of the great masses of working people all over the world.” In a letter to Lazarus, George expressed (somewhat awkwardly) “the gratification of feeling that one of your gifts hears that appeal that once heard can never be forgotten.”
Emma Lazarus' reply to Henry George's letter:
“I wish I could convey to you an idea of the feelings aroused in me by your book. No thinking man or woman these days can have remained altogether deaf to that mute ‘appeal which once heard can never be forgotten.’
But the same appeal when interpreted by your burning eloquence takes possession of one’s mind and heart to such a degree as overpowers all other voices. Your work is not so much a book as an event–the life and thought of no one capable of understanding it can be quite the same after reading it–and even in the small circle of my personal friends I have had abundant evidence of the manner in which it sets the minds of men on fire–‘all men capable of feeling the inspiration of a great principle.’ And how should it be otherwise? For once proved the indisputable truth of your ideas, and no person who prizes justice or common honesty can dine or sleep or read or work in peace until the monstrous wrong in which we are all accomplices be done away with. I congratulate you most heartily on the natural gifts with which you have been endowed for the noble cause you have espoused. Great as it the idea, it would certainly fail to kindle men’s minds as it does now, if pleaded with less passionate eloquence, by less authoritative knowledge.”
Ellis Island, New York -
A short distance from the Statue of Liberty, the port of Ellis Island once served as the main entryway to America. Over 32 years, from 1892 to 1924, nearly 12 million immigrants arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey were processed at Ellis Island. Before that, for most of the early 1800s, the island was the place where convicted pirates, criminals and mutinous sailors were hung, and it was used as a detention facility during WWI and WWII, where it became more famous for deportations than for immigration.
Insight on the atmosphere of the place where refugees were detained, starring Robert deNero: a short film by JR, written by Eric Roth.
De Niro narrates and stars as one of the migrants whose pursuit of a new life expired at the now-shuttered Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital.
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, satirises greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America: the period of U.S. history from the 1870s to 1900; "The Gilded Age" available on Gutenberg
The protectors of our industriesby Bernhard Gillam, (1856-1896)
- Capitalists & financiers--United States--1880-1890
- Social classes--United States--1880-1890 Cartoon showing Cyrus W. Field, (1819-1892); Jay Gould, (1836-1892); Cornelius Vanderbilt,(1821-1885); and Russell Sage, (1816-1906);
seated on bags of "millions", on large raft, and being carried by workers of various professions. Source: Library of Congress
"With the assassination of President William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the 26th and youngest President in the Nation’s history (1901-1909). He brought new excitement and power to the office, vigorously leading Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy." >>>Whitehouse.gov
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), was born into a wealthy New York family. Following the death of his wife and his mother, on the same day, Roosevelt spent two years on his ranch in the "Badlands of the Dakota Territory" -recovering by hiding horses, driving cattle, hunting big game. He married Edith Carow in 1886, and went on to serve as a lieutenant colonel of the Rough Rider Regement during the Spanish American War of 1898. Following the assassination of President William McKinley, on 14 September 1901, he became the 26th President, shortly before his 43 birthday, serving from 1901-1909.
“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”
Theodore Roosevelt thought it important for the U.S. to adopt the aggressive style of power European empires exercised in world affairs - that it was good policy to intervene, with a "Big Stick," in other countries’ affairs.
"On September 2, 1901, United States Vice President Theodore Roosevelt outlined his ideal foreign policy in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair in Falcon Heights, Minnesota:
“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”
Two weeks later, Roosevelt became president and “Big Stick diplomacy” defined his leadership. Big Stick diplomacy is the policy of carefully mediated negotiation ("speaking softly") supported by the unspoken threat of a powerful military ("big stick"). The Great White Fleet, a group of American warships that toured the world in a show of peaceful strength, is the leading example of Big Stick diplomacy during Roosevelt’s presidency." >>>National Geographic
and,
"The Roosevelt Corollary of December 1904 stated that the United States would intervene as a last resort to ensure that other nations in the Western Hemisphere fulfilled their obligations to international creditors, and did not violate the rights of the United States or invite “foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.” As the corollary worked out in practice, the United States increasingly used military force to restore internal stability to nations in the region. Roosevelt declared that the United States might “exercise international police power in ‘flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence.’” Over the long term the corollary had little to do with relations between the Western Hemisphere and Europe, but it did serve as justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic." >>>History.state.gov Via History.com
Excerpt: As the rich grew richer during the Gilded Age, the poor grew poorer, spurring the call for reforms.
Propelled by a Second Industrial Revolution, the United States arose from the ashes of the Civil War to become one of the world’s leading economic powers by the turn of the 20th century. Corporate titans such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan amassed spectacular fortunes and engaged in the most conspicuous of consumptions. Beneath this golden veneer, however, American society was tarnished by poverty and corruption, which caused this period of American history to be called the “Gilded Age,” derived from the title of a 1873 satirical novel co-authored by Mark Twain.
Protected from foreign competition by high tariffs, American industrialists colluded to drive competitors out of business by creating monopolies and trusts in which groups of companies were controlled by single corporate boards. Political corruption ran amokduring the Gilded Age as corporations bribed politicians to ensure government policies favored big businesses over workers. Graft fueled urban political machines, such as New York’s Tammany Hall, and the Whiskey Ring and Crédit Mobilier scandals revealed collusion by public officials and business leaders to defraud the federal government.
As the rich grew richer during the Gilded Age, the poor grew poorer. The great wealth accumulated by the “robber barons” came at the expense of the masses. By 1890, the wealthiest 1 percent of American families owned 51 percent of the country’s real and personal property, while the 44 percent at the bottom owned only 1.2 percent.
. . . Theodore Roosevelt Ushers in the Progressive Era
Some historians point to the 1890s as the start of the Progressive Era, but the ascent of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency after McKinley’s assassination marked its definitive arrival. Like the Populists, Progressives advocated democratic reforms and greater governmental regulation of the economy to temper the capitalistic excesses of the Gilded Age. Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote that the Progressive movement sought to “restore a type of economic individualism and political democracy that was widely believed to have existed earlier in America and to have been destroyed by the great corporation and the corrupt political machine.”
Unlike previous presidents, Roosevelt vigorously enforced the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up industrial behemoths. The “trust buster” was also the first president to threaten to use the army on behalf of labor in a 1902 coal miners’ strike. Roosevelt easily won re-election in 1904 campaigning on a “Square Deal” platform to control corporations, conserve natural resources and protect consumers. . . >>>more
Reflecting on The Dawning of the Progressive Era . . . Back to top
Late 1800s - The Bohemian Club:
The deeply troubled search for a "happy heart" across North America, during the Native American genocide for "Manifest Destiny"; the influx of 'transported' Irish "Great Famine" and Chinese "Great Humiliation" refugees; the Gold Rush; the Civil War; and the impact of the railroads is captured by Joan Didion's (1934- 2021) summing-up sentence in "The Golden Land" (1993): "This is a mood in which virtually any comment is perceived as adverse, and any perceived adversary made animate..."
Joan Didion compared the evolution from the inaugural 'artistic' integrity of the twenty Founding Members, all writers and artists, including Henry George, who came together in 1872 to launch The Bohemian Club in San Francisco, to the foundations of an entire economic sector's 'selfish impulse' without a truly "happy heart" in sight:
Excerpt:
Part 5: The Bohemian Club of San Francisco was founded in 1872 by members of the city’s working press who saw it both as a declaration of unconventional or “artistic” interests and as a place to get a beer and a sandwich after the bulldog closed. Frank Norris was a member as was Henry George who had not yet published ‘Progress and Poverty.’ There were poets: Joaquin Miller, George Sterling. There were writers: Samuel Clemens, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London who only a few months before his death managed to spend a week at Bohemian Grove, the clubs encampment in the redwoods north of San Francisco. John Muir belong to the Bohemian Club, and so did Joseph LeConte. For a few years the members appear to have remained resolute in their determination not to admit the merely rich (they had refused membership to William C. Ralston, the president of the Bank of California), but they're over ambitious spending both on the club in town and on its periodic encampments quite soon overwhelmed this intention. According to a memoir of the period written by Edward Bosqui, San Francisco's most prominent publisher during the late 19th century and a charter member of the Bohemian Club, it was at this point decided to “invite an element to join the club which the majority of the members held in contempt, namely men who had money as well as brains, but who were not, strictly speaking, bohemians.
...
This virtual personification of Eisenhower's military industrial complex notwithstanding, the spirit of Bohemia or California could still be seen in the traditional tableau performed at every Grove encampment to triumph over Mammon, God of Gold, and all his gnomes and promises and bags of treasure: Spirit:Nay, Mammon. For one thing you cannot buy. Mammon:What cannot it buy? Spirit: A happy heart!
... Finally, Bryan sprang from his seat and bounded to the platform. A wave of anticipation swept the hall as silver delegates eagerly waited for Bryan to put their emotions into words. He did not disappoint them.
As he developed his major points, Bryan later recalled, "the audience seemed to rise and sit down as one man. At the close of a sentence it would rise and shout, and when I began upon another sentence, the room was as still as church.” He defended the full range of reforms in the platform, giving special attention to the income tax. The silver issue, he insisted, was only the starting point for economic reform. He called upon his party to stand with the people rather than "the idle holders of idle capital,” and he presented a metaphor that Democrats have since repeated many times: ''There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them."
Bryan's conclusion was highly dramatic. "Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns.”
Bryan raked his fingers down his temples. "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” He stretched his arms straight out from his sides as if on a cross and stood silent for a moment, then dropped his arms and took a step back.
The delegates sat in stunned silence, then the demonstration came, shaking the hall for a half hour. Delegates carried Bryan around the hall on their shoulders, and others came to him to shout their support for the nomination. His "Cross of Gold" speech achieved instant immortality. Bryan later described the need of the moment as "to put into words the sentiments of a majority of the delegates,” and he proved ideal for the task. His voice, a carefully cultivated and powerful instrument, could reach into every part of the great convention hall, a crucial ability before electronic amplification. Many of his most striking phrases had been tested, revised, and retested in earlier speeches. The speech transformed Bryan from a presumptuous youngster into a top contender for the nomination.
…
Bryan’s sincere and unshakable confidence in the ability of the people to govern themselves gave him a popular following with few parallels in American politics. Between 1896 and his death in 1925, Bryan played a significant role in passing such reforms as the income tax, direct election of senators, the Federal Reserve System, prohibition, and woman suffrage. ''A private monopoly,” he never tired of repeating, "is indefensible and intolerable." As Bryan argued passionately for using federal authority to defend ordinary citizens from the powerful corporations of his day, he laid the basis for the activist, twentieth-century Democratic Party--the party of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson.
Though Thomas Edison patented the first phonograph in 1878, there was no recording of the “Cross of Gold” speech until 1921, when, at the age of 61, Bryan recorded the speech in a studio. While Bryan, in 1896, referred to the concerns of farmers, wage-earners, and small business owners, he also followed the expectations of the day when he included allusions to history (“the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit,” “Cicero . . . who saved Rome”), cited notable Democratic party leaders from the past (Jefferson, Jackson), and drew upon Biblical imagery (the crown of thorns, the cross). In listening to this speech, imagine it being spoken in a huge convention hall filled with hundreds of people, on a July day in Chicago, at a time before air conditioning or amplified sound, and imagine that the speaker is an energetic 36 year-old with a magnificent, baritone voice capable of being heard in every corner of that huge, hot, crowded room. >>>more
Abstract
A major work of history, The Great Tax Wars is the gripping, epic story of six decades of often violent conflict over wealth, power, and fairness that gave America the income tax. It's the story of a tumultuous period of radical change, from Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War through the progressive era under Theodore Roosevelt and ending with Woodrow Wilson and World War I. During these years of upheaval, America was transformed from an agrarian society into a mighty industrial nation, great fortunes were amassed, farmers and workers rebelled, class war was narrowly averted, and America emerged as a global power.
The Great Tax Wars features an extraordinary cast of characters, including the men who built the nation's industries and the politicians and reformers who battled them -- from J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie to Lincoln, T.R., Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, and Eugene Debs. From their ferocious battles emerged a more flexible definition of democracy, economic justice, and free enterprise largely framed by a more progressive tax system. In this groundbreaking book, Weisman shows how the ever controversial income tax transformed America and how today's debates about the tax echo those of the past. >>> more
Why We Pay Taxes by Sarah Pruitt, 2018, updated April 10, 2023, Inside History
Excerpt
Since 1950, individual income taxes have been the primary source of revenue for the U.S. federal government. Together with payroll taxes (used to fund social programs like Social Security and Medicare), income taxes amount to more than 80 percent of all federal revenue, and are the essential fuel on which our government runs.
The history of income taxes in the United States goes back to the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln signed into law the nation’s first-ever tax on personal income to help pay for the Union war effort. After it was repealed a decade later, Congress tried again in 1894, enacting a flat rate federal income tax. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the tax unconstitutional the following year, because it didn’t take into account the population of each state.
Then in 1909, Congress passed the 16th Amendment, which allowed the federal government to tax individual personal income regardless of state population. The required number of states ratified the amendment in 1913, and Americans have been required to pay federal income taxes ever since. >>>more
Part 8 Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness for all . . . Back to top
A New Deal
"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a meer appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob."
~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Address Announcing the Second New Deal, October 31, 1936
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945):
32nd President of the United States from 1932, serving four terms, until his death in 1945. The White House: History
Excerpt:
Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” …
He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first “hundred days,” he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt’s New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.
In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy. >>>more
Excerpt
In 1949, a group of nations signed a treaty to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, commonly known as NATO. In the four years since World War II had ended, western and eastern Europe had become divided by the Cold War. The treaty between the United States, Canada and 10 western European nations called on the signatories to offer military support to each other if any one of the member countries was attacked.
Since its inception, NATO’s membership has grown to
31 countries, and expanded into eastern European nations.
Here are some important episodes in the organization’s history.
1. NATO’s Military Buildup Began During the Korean War
...
2. West Germany Joining NATO Helped Trigger the Warsaw Pact
...
3. France Withdrew Military Support From NATO for Over 40 Years
...
4. NATO Invoked Its Article 5 Military Commitment for First Time After 9/11
...
5. After Cold War, Former Warsaw Pact States Joined NATO
... >>>more
For those concerned by 'innovations' in warfare post WWII, President Eisenhower set the tone when he famously warned against the expansion of the Military Industrial Complex and the Dulles brothers' agenda - Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed." – President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953).
Stephen Kinzer's "The Brothers—John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War" (Time Books, 2014) uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world? It's now clear that the foreign interventions they fomented were seriously misguided, and set in place decades of hostility between the US and countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Cuba. –
Listen/download the 14 Jan, 2014 ABC-RN LNL interview, HERE.
"Our arsenal of persuasion must be as ready as our nuclear arsenal and used as never before."
– Edward R. Murrow, Director, U.S. Information Agency, 1963
The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. – (Mike Lofgren 2014)
Part 9
A short history of the Counter Cultural movement
Back to top
One side effect of massive advertising expenditures was that it led to business control of the content of radio, TV, and to a slightly lesser extent in newspapers and magazines. These media became primarily vehicles for adveretiser messages. But ads worked.
As Robert Sarnoff, president of NBC, 1956.: "The reason we have such a high standard of living is because advertising has created an American frame of mind that makes people want more things, better things, and newer things."
To make certain that people could purchase the products that advertising convinced they they needed, credit was vastly extended in the fifties. Poverty, Henry Luce assured Americans in 1956, was merely the "habit of thinking poorly." There was no need to think poorly in the fifties. Even without the money you could have the goods. It was of course necessary to convince people that the old American habit of thrift was no longer a sacred virtue. ...
– Miller & Nowak, (1977). The Fifties: The Way We Really Were,
Doubleday, p. 118/119 Google Book scan
"Urban development patterns in the 20th century have been increasingly typified by urban sprawl, which exacerbates climate change, energy and material consumption, and public health challenges." – (Barrington-Leigh and Millard-Ball, 2015)
Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called “groupthink,” the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers.
“. . . The analysis finds a significant increase in the propensity to migrate to nonmetro counties as people reach their fifties and sixties and projects a shift in migration among boomers toward more isolated settings, especially those with high natural and urban amenities and lower housing costs. If baby boomers follow past migration patterns, the nonmetro population age 55-75 will increase by 30 percent between now and 2020.”
Summary The size and direction of migration patterns vary considerably by age group, and baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) have entered a stage in which their migration patterns will increase the population of rural and small-town settings. Many older boomers are ending child-rearing duties, changing housing preferences, and pondering early retirement options. Quality-of-life considerations are beginning to replace employment-related factors in decisions about when to move and where to live. Within clearly marked ranges, this report projects the level of net migration change for baby boomers through 2020 and measures its impact on the retirement-aged population in nonmetro areas. >>>more
The Dawning of The Age of Aquarius From the 1950s, leading Beatnik poets and philosophers succeeded in directing popular attention to issues around social and economic justice, including new awakenings on concepts of personal freedom, which defined the 'cutting edge' sensibilities of the first post-war generation of city-born and educated middle classes: Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, were followed closely by their younger siblings and children with the wave of popular 'enlightenment' that emerged with Flower Power– and "Flower Children" wearing "flowers in their hair" to promote non-violence and compassion – the ideals of Free Love.
Theodore Roszak, (1965). The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition, University of California Press,
(Download the PDF)captured a huge audience of Vietnam War protesters, dropouts, and rebels—and their baffled elders. Theodore Roszak found common ground between 1960s student radicals and hippie dropouts in their mutual rejection of what he calls the technocracy—the regime of corporate and technological expertise that dominates industrial society. He traces the intellectual underpinnings of the two groups in the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown, Allen Ginsberg and Paul Goodman.
Reviewed by Alan Watts in the San Francisco Chronicle:
If you want to know what is happening among your intelligent and mysteriously rebellious children, this is the book. The generation gap, the student uproar, the New Left, the beats and hippies, the psychedelic movement, rock music, the revival of occultism and mysticism, the protest against our involvement in Vietnam, and the seemingly odd reluctance of the young to buy the affluent technological society—all these matters are here discussed, with sympathy and constructive criticism, by a most articulate, wise, and humane historian.>>> more
Q:
When did the American Dream of "Government of, by, for the people" turn into a nightmare for the entire world? A: Two events sealed the deal: – Founding of the Federal Reserve in 1913.
– Elected officials bankrupted the country and gutted the US economy in the 1930s.
How did this happen? After previous attempts to push the Federal Reserve Act through Congress, a group of bankers funded and staffed Woodrow Wilson's campaign for President. He had committed to sign this act. In 1913, a Senator, Nelson Aldrich, maternal grandfather to the Rockefellers, pushed the Federal Reserve Act through Congress just before Christmas when much of Congress was on vacation (Reference 3, 4, 5). When elected, Wilson passed the FED. Later, Wilson remorsefully replied (referring to the FED):
'I have unwittingly ruined my country'
(Reference 17, P. 31: "Repeal the Federal Reserve Banks" (1983)
Father Casimir F. Gierut (1919-2007) (Author bio),
Chairman, National Committee Repeal Federal Reserve Act, from 1972.
According to American educational theorist Albert Jay Nock, (1870-1945), "natural law still exists and is still a respectable force. . .
The first of these is called the law of diminishing returns, the second is called Gresham's law ["bad money drives out good"], and the third one is so seldom cited. . . the law of least exertion …"
– Albert Jay Nock, 1934, “The God’s Lookout" How did America go wrong?
Excerpt: The U.S. must solve six problems if it is to have a lasting prosperity. In testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, Mr. Burns pointed to these persistent weaknesses as standing in the way of achieving a steady rate of economic growth once this recession is over.>>> more
2011
An Investment Manager Breaks Down the Economic Top 1%
Says 0.1% Controls Political and Legislative Process Global Research, July 24, 2011 Introduction by Professor G. William Domhoff, Sociology Dept. University of California, Santa Cruz, author of Who Rules America? (1967), (7th edition , McGraw-Hill, 2013), arguing against the concentration of power and wealth in the American upper class.
NOTE:
Visit Professor Domhoff's website for more indepth resources.
Selected Q&A:
Q: So, who does rule America?
A: The owners and managers of large income-producing properties;
i.e., corporations, banks, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. You can read the essential details of the argument in this summary of Who Rules America?, or look for the book itself at Amazon.com.
Q: Do the same people rule at the local level that rule at the federal level?
A: No, not quite. The local level is dominated by the land owners and businesses related to real estate that come together as growth coalitions, making cities into growth machines.
Q: Do they rule secretly from behind the scenes, as a conspiracy?
A: No,conspiracy theories are wrong, though it's true that some corporate leaders lie and steal, and that some government officials try to keep things secret (but usually fail).
Q: Then how do they rule?
A: That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government.
Q: Are you saying that elections don't matter?
A: No, but they usually matter a lot less than they could, and a lot less in America than they do in other industrialized democracies. That's because of the nature of the electoral rules and the unique history of the South.
Q: Does social science research have anything useful to say about making progressive social change more effective?
A: Yes, it does, but few if any people pay much attention to that research.
Part 10 What is the state of American culture? Back to top
Excerpt from Amazon "Look Inside"
Preface ix.
. . . Then, in the decade of the 1960s, something new began to happen. Young scholars in Europe and America were inspired by the French school of Annales to invent a new kind of history which differed from the old paradigm . . . This new history was not really about the past at all, but about change— with past and present in a mutual perspective. It was not a story-telling but a problem-solving discipline. Its problematiques were about the change and continuity in the acts and thoughts of ordinary people—people in the midst of others; people in society. The goal of this new social history was nothing less than an histoire total of the human experience. To that end, the new historians drew upon many types of evidence: documents, statistics, physical artefacts, iconographic materials and much more. They also presented their findings in a new way — not as testimony but as argument. An historian was required not only to make true statements but also to demonstrate their truthfulness by rigorous methods of logic and empiricism. This epistemic revolution was the most radical innovation of the new history. It was also the most difficult for older scholars to understand.
In its early years, the new social history claimed to be not merely a new sub discipline of history but the discipline itself in a new form. It promised to become a major synthesising discipline in the human sciences— even the synthesising discipline. Unhappily, these high goals were not reached. The new social history succeeded in building an institutional base, and also in exploring many new fields of knowledge. But in Fernand Braudel’s words, it was overwhelmed by its own success. Instead of becoming a synthesising discipline, it disintegrated into many special fields—women’s history, labor history, environmental history, the history of waging, the history of child abuse, and even gay history—in which the work became increasingly shrill and polemical. More over, too many important subjects were excluded from the new history—politics, events, individuals, even ideas— and too many problems were diminished by materialist explanations and “modernising models.” By the 1980s the new social history had lost much of its intellectual momentum, and most of its conceptual range. It had also lost touch with the larger purposes that had called it into being.
From this mixed record of success and failure, a question inevitably arises. What comes after the new history? How can we continue to move forward? How might we strengthen the weakened hand of synthesis in an analytic discipline? What larger intellectual and cultural purposes might an historian seek to serve?
. . . to keep alive the idea of histoire total by employing a concept of culture as a coherent and comprehensive whole. … where materialism became a cultural mania during the Reagan and Thatcher years.
. . . In terms of epistemology . . . The old history was idealist in its epistemic assumptions. Its major findings were offered as “interpretations” which tended to be discovered by intuition and supported by testimony. The new social history aspired to empiricism, but the epistemic revolution was incomplete—and something of the old interpretative sweep was lost in the process. . . . that every period of the past, when understood in its own terms, is immediate to the present. >>> more
Professor of psychology & sociology G. William Domhoff, University of California at Santa Cruz, author of best-selling sociology textbook, Who Rules America? (1967), now in its 7th edition, with a new subtitle, "Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich" (McGraw-Hill, 2013), documents the dangerous concentration of power and wealth in the American upper class: "reflects the success of the wealthy few in defeating all of their rivals (e.g., organized labor, liberals, environmentalists) over the course of the past 35 years. Published one month before the launch of the Occupy Wall St movement.
Note:
Professor Domhoff shared a recent report: Diversity in Presidential cabinets, FDR to Biden, March 2021,
by Prof of Psychology Richard L. Zweigenhaft, Guilford College, N.C.
Professor Domhoff's informant remains anonymous:
"This article was written by an investment manager who works with very wealthy clients. I knew him from decades ago, but he recently e-mailed me with some concerns he had about what was happening with the economy. What he had to say was informative enough that I asked if he might fashion what he had told me into a document for the Who Rules America Web site. He agreed to do so, but only on the condition that the document be anonymous, because he does not want to jeopardize his relationships with his clients or other investment professionals."
– Professor Domhoff, (2011)
Excerpt(shared with Professor Domhoff's permission)
I sit in an interesting chair in the financial services industry. Our clients largely fall into the top 1%, have a net worth of $5,000,000 or above, and if working make over $300,000 per year. My observations on the sources of their wealth and concerns come from my professional and social activities within this group.
Work by various economists and tax experts make it indisputable that the top 1% controls a widely disproportionate share of the income and wealth in the United States. When does one enter that top 1%? (I’ll use “k” for 1,000 and “M” for 1,000,000 as we usually do when communicating with clients or discussing money; thousands and millions take too much time to say.) Available data isn’t exact. but a family enters the top 1% or so today with somewhere around $300k to $400k in pre-tax income and over $1.2M in net worth. Compared to the average American family with a pre-tax income in the mid-$50k range and net worth around $120k, this probably seems like a lot of money. But, there are big differences within that top 1%, with the wealth distribution highly skewed towards the top 0.1%.
The Lower Half of the Top 1%
The 99th to 99.5th percentiles largely include physicians, attorneys, upper middle management, and small business people who have done well. Everyone’s tax situation is, of course, a little different. On earned income in this group, we can figure somewhere around 25% to 30% of total pre-tax income will go to Federal, State, and Social Security taxes, leaving them with around $250k to $300k post tax. This group makes extensive use of 401-k’s, SEP-IRA’s, Defined Benefit Plans, and other retirement vehicles, which defer taxes until distribution during retirement. Typical would be yearly contributions in the $50k to $100k range, leaving our elite working group with yearly cash flows of $175k to $250k after taxes, or about $15k to $20k per month.
Until recently, most studies just broke out the top 1% as a group. Data on net worth distributions within the top 1% indicate that one enters the top 0.5% with about $1.8M, the top 0.25% with $3.1M, the top 0.10% with $5.5M and the top 0.01% with $24.4M. Wealth distribution is highly skewed towards the top 0.01%, increasing the overall average for this group. The net worth for those in the lower half of the top 1% is usually achieved after decades of education, hard work, saving and investing as a professional or small business person. While an after-tax income of $175k to $250k and net worth in the $1.2M to $1.8M range may seem like a lot of money to most Americans, it doesn’t really buy freedom from financial worry or access to the true corridors of power and money. That doesn’t become frequent until we reach the top 0.1%.
I’ve had many discussions in the last few years with clients with “only” $5M or under in assets, those in the 99th to 99.9th percentiles, as to whether they have enough money to retire or stay retired. That may sound strange to the 99% not in this group but generally accepted “safe” retirement distribution rates for a 30 year period are in the 3-5% range with 4% as the current industry standard. Assuming that the lower end of the top 1% has, say, $1.2M in investment assets, their retirement income will be about $50k per year plus maybe $30k-$40k from Social Security, so let’s say $90k per year pre-tax and $75-$80k post-tax if they wish to plan for 30 years of withdrawals. For those with $1.8M in retirement assets, that rises to around $120-150k pretax per year and around $100k after tax. If someone retires with $5M today, roughly the beginning rung for entry into the top 0.1%, they can reasonably expect an income of $240k pretax and around $190k post tax, including Social Security.
While income and lifestyle are all relative, an after-tax income between $6.6k and $8.3k per month today will hardly buy the fantasy lifestyles that Americans see on TV and would consider “rich”. In many areas in California or the East Coast, this positions one squarely in the hard working upper-middle class, and strict budgeting will be essential. An income of $190k post tax or $15.8k per month will certainly buy a nice lifestyle but is far from rich. And, for those folks who made enough to accumulate this much wealth during their working years, the reduction in income and lifestyle during retirement can be stressful. Plus, watching retirement accounts deplete over time isn’t fun, not to mention the ever-fluctuating value of these accounts and the desire of many to leave a substantial inheritance. Our poor lower half of the top 1% lives well but has some financial worries.
Since the majority of those in this group actually earned their money from professions and smaller businesses, they generally don’t participate in the benefits big money enjoys. Those in the 99th to 99.5th percentile lack access to power. For example, most physicians today are having their incomes reduced by HMO’s, PPO’s and cost controls from Medicare and insurance companies; the legal profession is suffering from excess capacity, declining demand and global outsourcing; successful small businesses struggle with increasing regulation and taxation. I speak daily with these relative winners in the economic hierarchy and many express frustration.
Unlike those in the lower half of the top 1%, those in the top half and, particularly, top 0.1%, can often borrow for almost nothing, keep profits and production overseas, hold personal assets in tax havens, ride out down markets and economies, and influence legislation in the U.S. They have access to the very best in accounting firms, tax and other attorneys, numerous consultants, private wealth managers, a network of other wealthy and powerful friends, lucrative business opportunities, and many other benefits. Most of those in the bottom half of the top 1% lack power and global flexibility and are essentially well-compensated workhorses for the top 0.5%, just like the bottom 99%. In my view, the American dream of striking it rich is merely a well-marketed fantasy that keeps the bottom 99.5% hoping for better and prevents social and political instability. The odds of getting into that top 0.5% are very slim and the door is kept firmly shut by those within it.
Membership in this elite group is likely to come from being involved in some aspect of the financial services or banking industry, real estate development involved with those industries, or government contracting. Some hard working and clever physicians and attorneys can acquire as much as $15M-$20M before retirement but they are rare. Those in the top 0.5% have incomes over $500k if working and a net worth over $1.8M if retired. The higher we go up into the top 0.5% the more likely it is that their wealth is in some way tied to the investment industry and borrowed money than from personally selling goods or services or labor as do most in the bottom 99.5%. They are much more likely to have built their net worth from stock options and capital gains in stocks and real estate and private business sales, not from income which is taxed at a much higher rate. These opportunities are largely unavailable to the bottom 99.5%.
Recently, I spoke with a younger client who retired from a major investment bank in her early thirties, net worth around $8M. We can estimate that she had to earn somewhere around twice that, or $14M-$16M, in order to keep $8M after taxes and live well along the way, an impressive accomplishment by such an early age. Since I knew she held a critical view of investment banking, I asked if her colleagues talked about or understood how much damage was created in the broader economy from their activities. Her answer was that no one talks about it in public but almost all understood and were unbelievably cynical, hoping to exit the system when they became rich enough.
Folks in the top 0.1% come from many backgrounds but it’s infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn’t acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries. One of our clients, net worth in the $60M range, built a small company and was acquired with stock from a multi-national. Stock is often called a “paper” asset. Another client, CEO of a medium-cap tech company, retired with a net worth in the $70M range. The bulk of any CEO’s wealth comes from stock, not income, and incomes are also very high. Last year, the average S&P 500 CEO made $9M in all forms of compensation. One client runs a division of a major international investment bank, net worth in the $30M range and most of the profits from his division flow directly or indirectly from the public sector, the taxpayer. Another client with a net worth in the $10M range is the ex-wife of a managing director of a major investment bank, while another was able to amass $12M after taxes by her early thirties from stock options as a high level programmer in a successful IT company. The picture is clear; entry into the top 0.5% and, particularly, the top 0.1% is usually the result of some association with the financial industry and its creations. I find it questionable as to whether the majority in this group actually adds value or simply diverts value from the US economy and business into its pockets and the pockets of the uber-wealthy who hire them. They are, of course, doing nothing illegal.
I think it’s important to emphasize one of the dangers of wealth concentration: irresponsibility about the wider economic consequences of their actions by those at the top. Wall Street created the investment products that produced gross economic imbalances and the 2008 credit crisis. It wasn’t the hard-working 99.5%. Average people could only destroy themselves financially, not the economic system. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but the collapse was primarily due to the failure of complex mortgage derivatives, CDS credit swaps, cheap Fed money, lax regulation, compromised ratings agencies, government involvement in the mortgage market, the end of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, and insufficient bank capital. Only Wall Street could put the economy at risk and it had an excellent reason to do so: profit. It made huge profits in the build-up to the credit crisis and huge profits when it sold itself as “too big to fail” and received massive government and Federal Reserve bailouts. Most of the serious economic damage the U.S. is struggling with today was done by the top 0.1% and they benefited greatly from it.
Not surprisingly, Wall Street and the top of corporate America are doing extremely well as of June 2011. For example, in Q1 of 2011, America’s top corporations reported 31% profit growth and a 31% reduction in taxes, the latter due to profit outsourcing to low tax rate countries. Somewhere around 40% of the profits in the S&P 500 come from overseas and stay overseas, with about half of these 500 top corporations having their headquarters in tax havens. If the corporations don’t repatriate their profits, they pay no U.S. taxes. The year 2010 was a record year for compensation on Wall Street, while corporate CEO compensation rose by over 30%, most Americans struggled. In 2010 a dozen major companies, including GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Fed Ex paid US tax rates between -0.7% and -9.2%. Production, employment, profits, and taxes have all been outsourced. Major U.S. corporations are currently lobbying to have another “tax-repatriation” window like that in 2004 where they can bring back corporate profits at a 5.25% tax rate versus the usual 35% US corporate tax rate. Ordinary working citizens with the lowest incomes are taxed at 10%.
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes. They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%. Moreover, those at the very top have no incentive whatsoever for revealing or changing the rules. I am not optimistic.
Notes:
1. America's Oldest Billion-Dollar Family Fortunes: Forbes, July 1, 2015: America’s 200 Richest Families, with the date the fortune was launched.
2. Oswald Spengler (1880-1936, Germany):
Culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan.
3. David Hume (1711-1776, Scotland):
Knowledge derives from experience and learning through cause and effect, interpreted by emotional responses, reasoning or belief.
Part 11 "Christianity's Missed Opportunity"– Professor Mason Gaffney, 1997 Back to top
In short, the 1891 encyclical maintained feudalism
and the 1931 encyclical marketed feudalism, aka "socialism".
Henry George, Dr. Edward McGlynn, and Pope Leo XIII by Professor Mason Gaffney (1997) THE STORY OF HOW CLERICAL HIERARCHS PERCEIVED
A PROGRESSIVE ECONOMIST AND A POPULAR IRISH-AMERICAN PRIEST
AS DANGEROUS THREATS TO
THE CHURCH AND HOW THIS LED TO
THE WATERSHED PAPAL ENCYCLICAL
THAT SHAPED ROMAN CATHOLIC
SOCIAL DOCTRINE FROM
1891 TO THE
PRESENT DAY. (34 pages) Download PDF:
Professor Mason Gaffney's 1997 lecture, updated in 2000, provides a thoroughly referenced report, and is a must-read for those wishing to understand the central role of the Vatican in shaping economic history. Download PDF: Henry George, Dr. Edward McGlynn, and Pope Leo XIII
"It was a time when Dr. Edward McGlynn, the must popular Catholic priest in NYC and the nation, could dream of modernising the American Catholic Church, leading it to shake off medieval trappings and old-world control, and leading the U.S. to genuine unity." – Mason Gaffney
The Age of Orators!
IT WAS A DIFFERENT TIME, but often the same place (Cooper Union) in American life. No, it wasn’t radio, but the age of orators.
One of the most spellbinding was [Father] Dr. Edward McGlynn; another good one was Henry George, who also wrote great books. They came together in 1886 to roil the waters of American politics and ideology. Through the Irish and Vatican connections, they also roiled world politics and ideology...
On page 6, Professor Gaffney states:
"Rerum Novarum ... was a watershed document: It was a new venture into social theology. ...the first far-reaching formulation of Catholic teaching since the long Council of Trent in the middle of the 16th Century. ...refuting false modern doctrines advanced by [Henry] George and [Father] McGlynn. ...championing private property in land against various attacks, real and imagined, and specifically against Georgist land taxes. It was the Catholic counterpart of the attacks on George led by sanctimonious Protestant laymen and academicians like John B. Clark and Richard T. Ely.
ABSTRACT. The intellectual/reform movement founded by Henry George has not succeeded, but it has survived. George both accepted and challenged prevailing 19th-century expectations (within Western culture) of unlimited economic and social progress. The failure of later Georgists to adapt the substance and style of George's analysis in response to modern and post-modern issues may have been one factor contributing to the decline of Georgism during the 20th century. The effective end of the 19th century, symbolized by the sinking of the Titanic and realized by World War I, left unresolved to this day the socioeconomic problems of monopoly, privilege, and the commodification/exploitation of both labor and land—problems now associated with globalization. A revitalized Georgism could and would need to address these 21st-century realities.
*The author, Mark A. Sullivan was President, Council of Georgist Organisations at the time of preparing this paper for the Eastern Economics Association Convention, Boston, March 6, 2002: "To liberate production from taxation, the earth from monopoly, and humanity from poverty."
Part 12 Filmmakers Guide to Wall St. - A Short List Back to top
Following 'influencers' entrenched by George H. W. Bush Sr. (41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993), this film ‘illuminates’ the horrors unleashed by Dick Cheney’s culture of collusion and conspiracy, with only a glancing reference to Karl Rove, "Must run this past Rove first." - Bush Jr.
Executive Laws, promoting the authority of the Vice President, instituted by Cheney’s ‘rule’ are still 'on the books'.
In addition, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fairness doctrine introduced in 1949 requiring “broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest” was removed by Cheney’s team.
More culturally insightful films:
"The Post" (2017)
"Free Press serves the governed, not the governors."
The US Supreme Court decision on the right to publish "The Pentagon Papers" Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in the lead roles.
Meryl Streep, as Katherine Graham, the owner of The Washington Post, gave a surprisingly sensitive treatment on the 'expectations' of women in leadership roles at the time.
Jackson Browne's "Standing in the Breach" was the perfect soundtrack. Informed comment:
Let’s always be cautious about docudramas. Ben Bradley was an early recruit to the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, plus he found Mary Pinchot Meyer’s diary after, in all probability, she was murdered by the CIA on the walking path, after she talked about exposing personal aspects of JFK’s life, including, perhaps, their experiences with Tim Leary supplied LSD. He turned it over to the CIA, who subsequently claimed to have destroyed it. Important to stay clear about the true nature of a MSM publication like WaPo. NOTE: In 2013, Amazon .com founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million in cash.
Hell or High Water (2016);
Miss Sloane (2016); "In the high-stakes world of political power-brokers, Elizabeth Sloane is the most sought after and formidable lobbyist in D.C. But when taking on the most powerful opponent of her career, the NRA, she finds winning may come at too high a price." The Big Short (2015);
99 Homes (2014);
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013);
Margin Call (2011);
Too Big to Fail (2011);
Inside Job (2010);
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)
– sequel to Wall Street (1887);
Michael Clayton (2007) - "the truth can be adjusted"
Local hero (1983);
Trading Places (1983);
Silver Bears (1977)
Inside Job
(2010) - on the economic crisis of 2008: "When money is like cocaine" Official website
Excerpt - 38:31: These people are ‘risk takers’. ... It’s part of their behaviour - part of their personality. Neuroscientists have done experiments where they’ve taken individuals and put them into an MRI machine and they have to play a game where the ‘prize’ is money. And you notice that when the subjects earn money the part of the brain that gets stimulated is the same part that cocaine stimulates. A lot of people feel that they need to really participate in that behaviour to ‘make it’ to get promoted, to get recognised.
Summary
From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson ("No End In Sight"), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China. See more details on Wikipedia notes HERE
The 'Verb' in the 'course of action' that led to the downfall of the late 1800s movement toward "equality and justice for all"
"The earth belongs to the people. I believe in the gospel of the single tax." – Mark Twain, who is credited with writing the 1889 essay Archimedes, under the pseudonym Twark Main, a tract against monopoly in land ownership. See Twain scholar Jim Zwick's article on Mark Twain and the Single Tax movement HERE
Advocating for the "Single Tax" solution to social problems of his day, during the late 1800s, San Francisco-based journalist/newspaper editor Henry George (1839-1897) became the third most famous person in America, behind Thomas Edison and Mark Twain. As one of the most important voices of the Progressive Era, his supporters were many across the world, including Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, John Dewey, Michael Davitt and Alfred Deakin. "Ode to Liberty", July 4, 1877
Delivered in San Francisco by Henry George on July 4, 1877,
as “The American Republic” and later incorporated into chapter five
“The Central Truth” Book X in the author's Progress and Poverty, (1879). Read Progress and Poverty HERE
Excerpt:
Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on.
WE HONOR LIBERTY in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her demands. She will have no half service! Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the natural law — the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.
They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges and given men the ballot, who think of her as having no further relations to the everyday affairs of life, have not seen her real grandeur — to them the poets who have sung of her must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As the sun is the lord of life, as well as of light; as his beams not merely pierce the clouds, but support all growth, supply all motion, and call forth from what would otherwise be a cold and inert mass all the infinite diversities of being and beauty, so is Liberty to mankind. It is not for an abstraction that men have toiled and died; that in every age the witnesses of Liberty have stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty have suffered.
We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, knowledge, invention, national strength and national independence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary condition. She is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth what sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to sight. She is the genius of invention, the brawn of national strength, the spirit of national independence. Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbors as Saul amid his brethren -- taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is forgotten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer barbarians! >>>more
When the 'Georgist proposition' alarmed the Vatican:
1891
MAINTAINING "traditional feudalism": "Land" = Capital Pope Leo XIII, (1810-1903), head of the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903, the longest serving pope in history, produced eighty-six encyclicals, The Leonine Encyclicals: 1887-1902.
Breaching the "wall of separation” between church and state, which was incorporated into both the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights:
The Vatican misinterpretation of the late 1800s American grass-roots "Georgist" movement led Pope Leo XIII to constrain the growing number of American priests and laity supporting the efforts Late 1800s movement, in Ireland, with Michael Davitt and Rev. Dr. Thomas Nulty, Bishop of Co Meath, and the Americans, with Father McGlynn and Henry George, by issuing Rerum Novarum, 1891 – "On the Condition of Workers" – "of revolutionary change" or "Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor" - thus, equating "Land" with capital, when Classical Political Economists defined "land, labor, and capital"as the three basic classical factors of production - mutually exclusive, in that "Land" is distinct from capital: Columbia University's John Bates Clark (1847–1938), author of "Essentials of Economic Theory" (1907), was the academic originator of the Neo-Classical Economic theorem , that "Land" = capital:
"If nothing suppresses competition, progress will continue forever" and, "Though the process was savage, the outlook which it afforded was not wholly evil. The survival of crude strength was, in the long run, desirable." – J. B. Clark, 1907.
1931 The new feudalism:
Real Estate & Banking 18-year "Boom-Bust" cycle "GFCs"
MARKETING "traditional church authority":
Steering a course...
Rerum's sequel, the Vatican encyclical, issued by Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, "On the Reconstruction of the Social Order" was intended to steer a course between socialism and "free market capitalism" – seeking "social justice through social action"(p. 12).
"The 1931 encyclical put the Verb into the 1891 encyclical,"
an insight shared by the Hon. Professor Race Mathews, MP (Australia), quoted from an (as yet) unpublished 2016 filmed interview. In other words, the Vatican 'marketed' "traditional church authority" by maintaining focus on "higher wages" through Labor 'unionism' (Socialism/Communism), and promising "eternal salvation" as consolation for effort, while diverting attention from Stock Market and Landlord-based investment strategies.
Mater et magistra, 1961, the encyclical of Pope John XXIII (1881-1963), pope from 1958-1963, states: #2. Christianity is the meeting-point of earth and heaven. It lays claim to the whole man, body and soul, intellect and will, inducing him to raise his mind above the changing conditions of this earthly existence and reach upwards for the eternal life of heaven, where one day he will find his unfailing happiness and peace. . .
The Reasons for This New Encyclical #50. As We pass all this in review, We are aware of Our responsibility to take up this torch which Our great predecessors lighted, and hand it on with undiminished flame. It is a torch to lighten the pathways of all who would seek appropriate solutions to the many social problems of our times. Our purpose, therefore, is not merely to commemorate in a fitting manner the Leonine encyclical, but also to confirm and make more specific the teaching of Our predecessors, and to determine clearly the mind of the Church on the new and important problems of the day. >>>more
Reich's 4 American Narratives - explained HERE. Former US Secretary of Labor, 1993 to 1997, under President Bill Clinton, Robert Reich (b. 1946-) identified four common social narratives.His principle is that if politicians recognize these and speak to these hopes and fears, then they will resonate with their audience and hence gain trust and votes.
Adam Smith defined Land as “natural resources present before humans appeared” noting that “ground rent” is the optimum state revenue because it will not take the wealth produced by people’s labour or innovation.
"If you don't tax that value that attaches to land, arising from the general wealth of the economy, the banks get it." Professor Michael Hudson
"Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom…
In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country." – Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
