I got two email responses to the post yesterday re John Brown’s Jewish comrades. David Bloom pointed out that August Bondi, one of them, was not non-violent. Bloom left it at that, and I will too…
Now here is my friend Sidney O. Smith, a southerner who posts at Sic Semper Tyrannis:
As you well know, we are living in a time that
War Eagle Raimondo has brilliantly called “bizarro”. And if memory
serves me correctly, you aptly described our time as one of “ideological
disarray.”
In that vein, we owe it to ourselves to
cross-examine thoroughly all historical assumptions, primarily because the United States
in on the precipice of a type of national socialism coupled with an
extraordinarily aggressive foreign policy — one with an endgame of nuclear war
to spread “democracy”. It is Hayek’s nightmare realized, so one
should ask, “How did we get to this historical point?”
Keeping your description in mind, it almost as if
9-11 and the Iraqi invasion shattered the collective American psyche, much like
a brick thrown through a beautiful stain glass window. And in this
“disarray” one must pick up different shards and create another work.
(At least that is my metaphor for now and I am sticking to it!) And, apropos of the John Brown post, one issue to reexamine is
whether or not our founding fathers believed that a constitutional right of
secession should act as a check on the rise of an imperial state that would
eliminate the bill of rights.
I am not saying I know the answer to this question.
Are you familiar with Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s book titled, The Real Lincoln? You (and,
perhaps, your Philly wife who is reading Jung?) owe it to yourself to
read the book. I am yet to find any scholar who can refute his work, at least
without devolving into ad hominem attacks.
Dilorenzo’s work rests, in part, on the legal
analysis of the great abolitionist Lysander Spooner. Spooner wrote a treatise
that irrefutably established that slavery was unconstitutional, and its
publication even left Southerners speechless. However, he claimed that the same
rationale he used in his treatise also allowed the Southern states to secede.
According to Wiki, Spooner believed that:
“The North, by contrast, was trying to deny the
Southerners their inherent right to be governed by their consent. He believed
they were attempting to coerce the obedience of the southern states to a union
they did not wish to enter. He believed that Compensated
Emancipation was a preferable way to end
slavery, something many nations had done. He argued that the right for states
to secede derives from the same right of the slaves to be free.”
And as for Reconstruction, Spooner truly became part
of a school of realism and argued that Lincoln ‘s
war was one to promote a corporate welfare state:
“Spooner harshly condemned the Civil War and the Reconstruction period that
followed. Though he approved of the fact that black slavery was abolished, he
criticized the North for failing to make this the purpose of their cause.
Instead of fighting to abolish slavery, they fought to ‘preserve the
union’ and, according to Spooner, to bolster business interests behind
that union. Spooner believed a war of this type was hypocritical and dishonest,
especially on the part of Radical Republicans like Sumner who were by then
claiming to be abolitionist heroes for ending slavery. Spooner also argued that
the war came at a great cost to liberty and proved that the rights expressed in
the Declaration of Independence no longer held true – the people could not ‘dissolve the political
bands’ that tie them to a government that ‘becomes destructive’
of the consent of the governed because if they did so, as Spooner believed the
south had attempted to do, they would be met by the bayonet to enforce their
obedience to the former government.’”
Those above Wiki quotes aside, I would like to offer
something else for consideration. Neoconservatives are using — or perhaps
exploiting — the cult of Lincoln
to justify the suspension of constitutional rights as well as promote a foreign
policy that, ostensibly, is to emancipate others. How many times has FOX news
compared Bush to Lincoln ?
But such is a pretext. Bush and Kristol care about Arabs about as much as Lincoln cared about
African-Americans, meaning not at all.
And if you’ll note, Victor Davis Hanson and his
cohorts argue that the only proper military tactic in the Middle East is one
that replicates that of Sherman ‘s March through Georgia.
Sherman‘s March was the 19th century
equivalent of nuclear war. So Hanson might be said to be using code to promote
the use of weapons of mass destruction against Islamic populations, meaning it
is ”patriotic” to kill Muslim civilians in large numbers. (Lincoln was the first to
sanction the mass destruction of civilian populations such since the Middle
Ages, I believe).
Finally, I would like simply to offer one other
thought for consideration. It seems to me that the American Civil War has created a type of national ethos that permitted Americans to project racism
onto others instead of an opposite approach — one of looking within first,
transforming one’s self, then one’s family, then neighborhood, and then town
and so on.
One extreme and slightly outdated example is
offered for your consideration. In the 1970′s, a few (certainly not all) Boston
Brahmins would sit in their parlors in Beacon Hill and talk about all the
unenlightened people in Arkansas, when the fact is that desegregation did not
come to Boston until 20 years after Little Rock and the resistance was just as
fierce. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Boston Brahmin should
have look within first and then one’s family and then Boston. Perhaps such Brahmin should have volunteered
in a soup kitchen in Roxbury instead of talking about the racism of
others. In other words, transform within first and then work
outwards.
Just to try to provoke further, one can
apply the same idea to Philly WASPS. One could argue that,
today, Philly is a racial mess, much worse than Atlanta .
One last example. Much of the MSM has raised the
notion that to not vote for Obama suggests racism. Maybe. Maybe not. (I am
voting for him, with a very slight chance of writing in Ron Paul). But no
one has raised the fact that Colin Powell in 1996 was more popular in the Deep South than any other region. Why? Is it the MSM projecting one’s racism onto others? In 1996, was the rest of the nation
more racist than those of the South?
And if Ilan Pappe and Jimmy Carter are correct, then our
Democratic platform of 2008 is racist to the very core. People can
call themselves enlightened when voting Democrat in 2008, but MLK Jr. would
have never supported apartheid in the Middle East, much less ethnic cleansing.
So seen from that angle, to vote Democrat 2008 is to vote racist, to a degree
much worse than we ever saw from George Wallace. (The entire world would shout
“Hallelujah” if we could just reach the notion of separate-but-equal
resolution in the I-P conflict, again assuming Pappe and Carter are
correct and I don’t know the answer to that one).
So is Spooner right and did the American Civil War
actually lead to an arrested development in race relations in the United States ?
At a bare minimum, you may want to look at Brazil. Brazil had slaves until the 1880′s
but did not experience a horrific civil war that left a deep wound in their
national soul. And today, Brazilians seem much more racially progressive than
those of the United
States. Where are race relations better… Rio or Philly?
I am not saying I know
the answers. Just examining historical assumptions. Also, I am partial to the federal
judiciary, while DiLorenzo and company are not.
[Weiss adds: Since the Iraq war, I've been perplexed by the fact that nearly 700,000 Americans died in the Civil War, and have wondered whether I would have been an isolationist then. My wife says she would have been disappointed in me if I did not fight slavery then. But how would you feel if I went off to fight in a bloody war for the union? I said. "Well at least no one would be pulling the sheets over."]
MLK stated that "anti-Zionism is racism".
The NAACP was founded by Jews. All of its presidents for the first thirty years were Jews, as were all of it lawyers. MLK was just their loyal shabbesgoy.
Thankfully a lot of blacks realized that MLK was a puppet. That is in some measure why Islam has grown so popular among American blacks. They knew they were being duped and manipulated.
I don't really believe that the Confederate flag controversies that took place on the national level were really about a concern for the feelings of blacks in the South, either. Still, it is hard to believe that Confederate symbols are still so threatening to those in power.
" I am yet to find any scholar who can refute his work, at least without devolving into ad hominem attacks."
Most serious scholars haven't bothered with DiLorenzo's tracts. Those who have would have found them so bad that "ad hominem attacks" were natural and unavoidable. Sooner or later, someone's going to take a long hard look at DiLorenzo's books and the bubble will burst.
DiLorenzo projects a 20th century radical libertarian framework back on the 19th century. He treats all questions in light of economic conflicts between more and less government. For DiLorenzo Lincoln becomes the great proponent of more government, indeed of tyranny, and slaveowners and secessionists turn out to be proponents of liberty. Obviously, if you limit yourself to that point of view you miss a lot about 19th century America and the Civil War.
Spooner wasn't much in his own day. 20th Century Libertarians have retrospectively elevated him to the be the one who was right about everything. Spooner's radical anti-government perspective would have accepted an uprising of slaves against their masters but not a war for the preservation of the union that included an emancipationist program.
Wiki's account of Spooner is likewise twisted. There were other Northerners who supported compensated emancipation. Spooner wasn't the only one who had that idea. But compensated emancipation wasn't acceptable to slaveowners, most of whom believed that slavery still had a future.
Spooner's also wasn't unique in believing that the right of revolution against tyranny evoked in the Declaration of Independence still existed. That was a common idea. The question in 1860 was whether that right applied to the situation of the Southern states, and whether there was some right of secession under the Constitution in circumstances that fell short of the right of revolution against tyranny.
Spooner also took the idea of a right of revolution further and believed that the Constitution was only binding on those who had ratified it, and was therefore not binding in his own day. That's certainly an idea an anarchist can hold, but not one likely to find acceptance among the wider population.
What DiLorenzo's doing isn't actual history. He sets himself up as a judge based on his ideological beliefs. Then he rummages around for a figure like Spooner that he can pin his beliefs on. Spooner lets him be pro-secession and anti-slavery, but Spooner's options are more comforting fantasy than a real possibility.
Isn't obvious by now that the US would have been better off if we had just let the South secede. One reactionary, warlike southerner after anther another leading this country to ruin. The GOP has had an electoral lock on the South for the last 36 years. That is a terrible price to pay to insist on letting all of those southern crackers into our nation.
It would have been much cheaper to just let the South go their way, and to welcome all run-a-way slaves who made it to the north and give them their freedom. This, plus some northern sponsored underground railroad activities in the South, would have, after financial ruin of the South, ended slavery.
600,000 dead soldiers was too high a price, plus, to repeat, southern cracker contamination of our politics makes it even a higher price.
MLK stated that "anti-Zionism is racism".
Hahaha!
Richard fell for the old hasbara hoax.
(On the other hand, he's fallen for all the others, so why not this one?)
"That is a terrible price to pay to insist on letting all of those southern crackers into our nation." — syvanen
Quite agree, mah yankee friend. So, would you please let us leave? Where is the voluntary departure program? Oh wait, it's called "secession." LOL!
Hell, even some yankees want to leave:
http://www.vermontrepublic.org/
Face it, maybe y'all screwed the pooch your damned selves. The Bushes ain't Southern — they're New Englanders.
"The Bushes ain't Southern — they're New Englanders."
Of course they are. But without all of those southern votes they would never have achieved power. Prescot Bush was as much a fascist that this country has ever produced; without the southern cracker vote he and his evilspawn would have been an irrelevant political force in the north.
When Northerners complain about the South, I always think of the vent sections in the local Atlanta papers where northern transplants use all sorts of slurs to complain about southerners an the South, without realizing that the cracker, redneck, hillbilly or inbreeder that cut him off in traffic, designed a certain intersection or runs a certain institution is probably a fellow transplant.
Southerners are not running this country, and the South is not the seat of wealth and power. If Southerners tend to vote a certain way, it is because certain politicians try to appeal to them-just like all other groups.
What's the difference between a cracker and a Miami Jew?
Nothing.
Let my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews–make no mistake about it."
From M.L. King Jr., "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," Saturday Review_XLVII (Aug. 1967), p. 76.
Reprinted in M.L. King Jr., "This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
It's not there, Richard. Even CAMERA admits it. Go to your library and check. I have.
(And on your way home from the library, ponder what the lesson is. What we have is not a "mistake" or "intelligence failure" or difference of interpretation. It's an intentional lie. Why?)
BTW, no such book as "This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." has ever been published.
That advocates of Israel have relied on fabricated and out-of-context quotations from a leading moral figure of yesteryear only underscores the absurdity of the general point that all opposition to a Jewish state in a diverse land is anti-Semitic. There are obviously many legitimate ways to critique Zionism. One quite reasonable observation is that after more than a half-century of conflict, the Zionist project has failed to bring the Jews of Israel peace and security–its raison d'etre. One might counter that this is due to Arab intransigence; the Palestinians should accept their dispossession. However, Palestinian opposition to this fate is an indisputable fact, and security was and is Zionism's key goal. This necessarily was an analytical failure on the part of the Zionists who assumed the Palestinians would blend in to other Arab countries while the later generations forget their past. To dismiss this argument–one that evaluates Zionism by its own goals–and every other critique of Zionism as anti-Semitism is not only dishonest but a cowardly evasion of meaningful debate.