What Is History? Part 36
What are people for? —Wendell Berry
We shouldn’t care a bit who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Who musters a majority on Capitol Hill (it is, after all, merely a “hill”), nor who warms the benches of the Supreme Court. If we concern ourselves with what happens in Washington, we give credence to their fatuous claim that they are the center of the American polity. . . . —Michael Hill
It’s not to our credit to think that we began today and it’s not to our glory to think we end today. . . . You stick to your blood, son; there’s a fierceness in blood that can bind you up with a long community of life. —Stark Young
We are descended from a people whose government was founded on liberty; our glorious grandfathers of Great Britain made liberty the foundation of everything. . . . We draw that spirit of liberty from our British ancestors. —Patrick Henry
With what pretense of fairness, it is said, can you Americans object to the secession of the Southern States when your nation was founded on secession from the British Empire. —Cornhill Magazine, London, 1861
The last Western statesman died about a century ago, while our public men today are noteworthy solely for the unembarrassed corruption. . . . Intellectually and philosophically not one of them aspires to anything as lofty as mediocrity. —Franklin Sanders
New England! Where people get together to change the world! —New England Public Radio as heard by Prof. Don Livingston
The South has done more than any people on earth for the African race. —John Henry Hopkins, Episcopal Bishop of Vermont, 1863
. . . your parents inherited a dollar; they leave you a peso. —Bill Bonner
There's not a dime's worth of difference. —George C. Wallace
There are no great men, My Boy, only great committees. —older gowned academic to younger gowned academic (New Yorker cartoon)
Entries(RSS)
"With what pretense of fairness, it is said, can you Americans object to the secession of the Southern States when your nation was founded on secession from the British Empire"
American hypocrisy has a long history.
What are people for? —Wendell Berry
In our present zeitgeist, human beings seem to viewed as nothing more than cannon fodder for the abstract (which would even make the Jacobins cringe in horror), consumers (as opposed to Christians, citizens, or even fathers), and categorized into various demographics of braindead sheeple to make tv advertising more profitable.
@1 Doubly Virginian hypocrisy. Who objected to the secesson of West Virginia after first seceding from Britain, and next from the U.S.
The elites are really getting paranoid, a security guard is now called a "special policeman." The munchkins must fell non-threatened at all times. We have truly become an Evil Socialist Empire, and the Devil made Lincoln its founder.
With reference to the War of 1848, George Augustus Frederick Ruxton, an ex-British soldier just arriving in St. Louis from the Rocky Mountains, wrote in 1847: "Children in the art of war, [Americans] imagined that personal bravery and physical strength were the only requisites for a military people; and that, possessing these qualities in as great a degree as the Mexicans were deficient in them, the operations in Mexico would amount to nothing more arduous than a promenade through the table-lands of Anahuac..." Does that ring a bell?!!!
Re #3
Read Robert Louis Dabney's (a Virginian) Life and Campaigns of Lt. General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, in particular the chapter on secession. He explains the soveriegn will and rights of states and their relationship to counties, and groups of counties (e.g. West Virginia).
Re#3: There was far less support for the Union in those counties than we have been lead to believe. Those counties, like the states of Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky, had been invaded and were under Union army occupation, so can we really believe the will of the people was being openly expressed without hindrance when those counties 'chose' to secede from Virginia? If the union army had been in occupation of twice a much of Virginia, then West Virginia would today be twice as large as it is, ditto if only half as much territory had been occupied. The whole thing was a sham from beginning to end.
We shouldn’t care a bit who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Who musters a majority on Capitol Hill (it is, after all, merely a “hill”), nor who warms the benches of the Supreme Court. If we concern ourselves with what happens in Washington, we give credence to their fatuous claim that they are the center of the American polity.
With all due respect to Dr. Hill, this reminds me of my cat at the vets. When the vet comes in he buries his head in between my body and my arm, as if not seeing the vet means she's not there.
Another related notion I can only recall in paraphrase: Not being interested in politics does not mean politics is not interested in you.
The problem with this sort of government is that it will not leave you alone, and with monolithic rule and without the protective interposition of one's sovereign state, there is no place to hide. It's either surrender or fight the policies the best way one knows how.
The government will simply not leave us alone. My son recently heard a man say, "I'm in favor of socialism, but that's just me."
My son replied, "You're wrong. It's not just you. You cannot do socialism with just you––you have to force me to join in. So how does it feel to be in favor of a slave state whose primary MOs are coercion and bribery?
By the way, every legislator from the New England states voted for the tobacco bill last week. The southern states mostly voted against it. Things ain't changed a lot in the past 150 years have they?
There are no great men, My Boy, only great committees. —older gowned academic to younger gowned academic (New Yorker cartoon)
This reminds me of a quote from G.K. Chesterton I'll have to paraphrase here. He said something like "I"ve visited all the parks in England and never did I see a statue erected to a committee."
We are descended from a people whose government was founded on liberty; our glorious grandfathers of Great Britain made liberty the foundation of everything. . . . We draw that spirit of liberty from our British ancestors. —Patrick Henry
Having lost our confidence too many of us seek the perceived safety of the tribe. We have no courage to continue the adventure of liberty. I think most of us only want to be taken care of. Would to God we had a fraction of the Iranian people's caring and courage.
If I'm right about this events will unfold with a high degree of predictability. For example, I wonder when the White House will announce the up-coming historic ceremony where Pres. Obama renames the Lady in New York Harbour "The Statue of Equality"? Of course, she'll have to do more than change her name. She'll have to ditch that torch, since it's a bad influence on the young–-too much of a carbon foot print with a little energy waster like that. Maybe the torch could be replaced by a basketball, and the book replaced by a laptop. Any creative ideas for the official Government artists and artisans?
re #3;
"Doubly Virginian hypocrisy. Who objected to the secesson of West Virginia after first seceding from Britain, and next from the U.S."
West Virginia didn't secede from Virginia. West Virginia was created from the western counties of Virginia and made a state by Abraham Lincoln, in total disregard of the US Constitution, and without any involvement of the people who lived in that part of Virginia.
10 the western counties of Virginia and made a state by Abraham Lincoln, in total disregard of the US Constitution, and without any involvement of the people who lived in that part of Virginia.
Bingo! This was Lincoln's punishment, in as far as he could exact it at the time, of Virginia; the creation of West Virginia out of whole cloth, without due Constitutional process. It was just another arbitrary act by the (first) American Caesar. Sadly, more were to follow in his footsteps.
Patrick Henry spoke the party line but was quite incorrect. Liberty in Great Britain was for the few; the many suffered persecution and exploitation routinely. Penal laws mandated execution or exile for petty offenses and were used bu kangaroo courts to rid the country of undesirables (i.e., poor people or those who had made their presence inconvenient for the powerful). These were sent to man the plantations of America and the Caribbean - most of them died of abuse in servitude. Eventually African blacks replaced these unfortunates. Religious dissenters also received short shrift - anything from ostracism and fines to gruesome executions for Catholic priests or those laity who insisted on attending mass (even in private homes). We will not even detail the oppression of Ireland in which an entire country was turned into a penal colony.