The exquisite sense of performative shame as Lionel Shriver has called it is not to be underestimated.
One thing I think America can be justifiably proud of is helping to end the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1866. It can be easy to forget how long it continued even after Jefferson and others had signed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves back in 1804. It is finally after the end of the American Civil War that the American and British navies do join together and the traffic into Brazil ends. Yes, it should have happened a long time before, but at least it did happen.
Wonderful and fully argued essay. And by a classist no less. I live in a suburb of Austin and am shocked, regularly, by the casual and unquestioned views of white supremacy.
The "Founding Fathers" were actually a small intellectual elite and the majority of White Americans at the time were probably just distracted with the whole "tell the British to kiss off" thing.
"These inhuman savages are irrelevant, we got the guns."
Great piece and an excellent resource for anyone who wants to develop a broader and more nuanced understanding of the history of slavery, especially in the American context.
Jul 4, 2023·edited Jul 7, 2023Liked by Free Black Thought
To win the Pulitzer, you will need to rewrite this-- and history! Thank you for this beautifully written and scrupulously truthful essay on the meaning of the fourth of July.
Jul 4, 2023·edited Jul 4, 2023Liked by Free Black Thought
A day off from work.
Consumerism with planned obsolescence is just a high technology form of slavery. Most of the White people have not come to that conclusion.
How many automobiles have Americans trashed since Sputnik? How much did the depreciation, insurance and repairs amount to over 70 years? The Laws of Physics do not change style year after year. General Motors, Toyota and Mercedes Benz cannot do anything about that.
I just saw a YouTube video yesterday about a new engine designed to go on the B-52.
Change what gets better. Leave the rest alone. The American people have bought their way into economic servitude. My under engineered junk is newer and better than your under engineered junk!
OK, I have finally "read" the whole thing. Actually I downloaded it and did text to speech. That is easier for me when I think something is likely to piss me off. Actually this did not bother me at all. My problem with "History" is that more often than not it is propaganda to serve somebody's agenda and I have to spend my time searching for the missing information if I decide to give a damn.
Our problem today is that a new factor has become a major part of history and our social and economic philosophies must take it into account.
Without TECHNOLOGY slavery was probably inevitable for millenia. But technology changes the complexity of the issues. By 1800 nearly all of the habitable land had been located and the world population reached 1 billion. What do the rights to life and liberty mean without the right to a place to live?
My field manager at IBM could not pull out a whip and use it on me but without a job how would I pay to live on this stolen land where the cost of living seems to keep going up?
Technology and the vast economic superiority of industrialization coupled with free labor made the poverty of the slave economy ultimately untenable. But before that, yes, all power was raw manpower, and the more you could coerce, the better.
There is one serious misconception which needs to be corrected. The author states: "Equality and liberty, the core Revolutionary ideals that underlie these words, are intertwined."
Equality has nothing to do with the Declaration. Equality is not an inalienable right and it was not a constitutional right until Brown v Bd of Education in 1954. The sole reason the word "equal" appears in the Declaration was to make clear to British society that the entire peerage system was being rejected. If Jefferson had merely said "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," that phrase would have left wide open the belief that while everyone may have inalienable rights some have more rights by birth than others -- that was the basis of peerage. Certain persons would have more rights than others, but that did not mean others have no basic rights. The fact that I may have an inherited right to serve in the House of Lords does not transgress the notion of inalienable rights of everyone.
The purpose of the word "equal" was to bolster individual inalienable rights and it most certainty did not mean Equality or Equity. In fact, the Declaration was 100% opposed to the concept of Equality. The concept of Equality and idea of individual inalienable rights are opposites. Equality will kill off individual rights in favor of group rights.
Equality immediately leads to pitting one faction against another. Federalist Paper 10 explains how the Framers found any sort of group power and/or group rights to be destructive to the basis of the nation, i.e., individual inalienable rights.
We have gotten so far away from 1776 that the context of the Declaration and of the Us Constitution has been lost in the mist of of history -- which we never bother to teach. In fact, a good way to get booted from your college and never make tenure is to support the concept of individual rights and oppose Equality and Equity. The likelihood that the nation will ever gain a consensus about the value of individual inalienable rights is between slim and none. The battle was lost with Brown vs Bd of Education which launched the group rights Equity agenda because the court did not want to admit that Blacks had any inalienable rights. Brown was in fact based on the philosophy of Dred Scott 1857 that Blacks have no inherent inalienable rights. Instead, Brown said that Blacks must have equality of outcome. If segregation resulted in equality of outcome as measure by comparing Blacks and Whites as groups, then segregation of Blacks was constitutional. Until America deals with the racism integral to Brown v Bd of Education, group rights will plague us. There is no greater threat to liberty for all than Equality and Equity. (Where I wrote quality of outcome, I made typos. I meant "equality of outcome." I've corrected the typos. My apologies.)
I addressed this point about equality, not in the specific terms of peerage, as you do here, but in the general terms of "privilege," esp. inherited privilege. I certainly neither stated nor implied that "equality" in the Declaration means our recently reinvented notion of "equity," so you need have no fears on that score.
Excellent.
The exquisite sense of performative shame as Lionel Shriver has called it is not to be underestimated.
One thing I think America can be justifiably proud of is helping to end the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1866. It can be easy to forget how long it continued even after Jefferson and others had signed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves back in 1804. It is finally after the end of the American Civil War that the American and British navies do join together and the traffic into Brazil ends. Yes, it should have happened a long time before, but at least it did happen.
Wonderful and fully argued essay. And by a classist no less. I live in a suburb of Austin and am shocked, regularly, by the casual and unquestioned views of white supremacy.
The "Founding Fathers" were actually a small intellectual elite and the majority of White Americans at the time were probably just distracted with the whole "tell the British to kiss off" thing.
"These inhuman savages are irrelevant, we got the guns."
Great piece and an excellent resource for anyone who wants to develop a broader and more nuanced understanding of the history of slavery, especially in the American context.
Along with "Was American Slavery Unique?" (May 2003), this should be required reading in US history classes.
To win the Pulitzer, you will need to rewrite this-- and history! Thank you for this beautifully written and scrupulously truthful essay on the meaning of the fourth of July.
A day off from work.
Consumerism with planned obsolescence is just a high technology form of slavery. Most of the White people have not come to that conclusion.
How many automobiles have Americans trashed since Sputnik? How much did the depreciation, insurance and repairs amount to over 70 years? The Laws of Physics do not change style year after year. General Motors, Toyota and Mercedes Benz cannot do anything about that.
I just saw a YouTube video yesterday about a new engine designed to go on the B-52.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oXs0QJ41HvM
HOW OLD IS THE B-52?
Change what gets better. Leave the rest alone. The American people have bought their way into economic servitude. My under engineered junk is newer and better than your under engineered junk!
The Cotton Gin did not even exist in 1776.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-cotton-gin-a-game-changing-social-and-economic-invention
The word 'technology' is not mentioned in that entire essay. LOL
OK, I have finally "read" the whole thing. Actually I downloaded it and did text to speech. That is easier for me when I think something is likely to piss me off. Actually this did not bother me at all. My problem with "History" is that more often than not it is propaganda to serve somebody's agenda and I have to spend my time searching for the missing information if I decide to give a damn.
Our problem today is that a new factor has become a major part of history and our social and economic philosophies must take it into account.
Without TECHNOLOGY slavery was probably inevitable for millenia. But technology changes the complexity of the issues. By 1800 nearly all of the habitable land had been located and the world population reached 1 billion. What do the rights to life and liberty mean without the right to a place to live?
My field manager at IBM could not pull out a whip and use it on me but without a job how would I pay to live on this stolen land where the cost of living seems to keep going up?
Technology and the vast economic superiority of industrialization coupled with free labor made the poverty of the slave economy ultimately untenable. But before that, yes, all power was raw manpower, and the more you could coerce, the better.
There is one serious misconception which needs to be corrected. The author states: "Equality and liberty, the core Revolutionary ideals that underlie these words, are intertwined."
Equality has nothing to do with the Declaration. Equality is not an inalienable right and it was not a constitutional right until Brown v Bd of Education in 1954. The sole reason the word "equal" appears in the Declaration was to make clear to British society that the entire peerage system was being rejected. If Jefferson had merely said "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," that phrase would have left wide open the belief that while everyone may have inalienable rights some have more rights by birth than others -- that was the basis of peerage. Certain persons would have more rights than others, but that did not mean others have no basic rights. The fact that I may have an inherited right to serve in the House of Lords does not transgress the notion of inalienable rights of everyone.
The purpose of the word "equal" was to bolster individual inalienable rights and it most certainty did not mean Equality or Equity. In fact, the Declaration was 100% opposed to the concept of Equality. The concept of Equality and idea of individual inalienable rights are opposites. Equality will kill off individual rights in favor of group rights.
Equality immediately leads to pitting one faction against another. Federalist Paper 10 explains how the Framers found any sort of group power and/or group rights to be destructive to the basis of the nation, i.e., individual inalienable rights.
We have gotten so far away from 1776 that the context of the Declaration and of the Us Constitution has been lost in the mist of of history -- which we never bother to teach. In fact, a good way to get booted from your college and never make tenure is to support the concept of individual rights and oppose Equality and Equity. The likelihood that the nation will ever gain a consensus about the value of individual inalienable rights is between slim and none. The battle was lost with Brown vs Bd of Education which launched the group rights Equity agenda because the court did not want to admit that Blacks had any inalienable rights. Brown was in fact based on the philosophy of Dred Scott 1857 that Blacks have no inherent inalienable rights. Instead, Brown said that Blacks must have equality of outcome. If segregation resulted in equality of outcome as measure by comparing Blacks and Whites as groups, then segregation of Blacks was constitutional. Until America deals with the racism integral to Brown v Bd of Education, group rights will plague us. There is no greater threat to liberty for all than Equality and Equity. (Where I wrote quality of outcome, I made typos. I meant "equality of outcome." I've corrected the typos. My apologies.)
I addressed this point about equality, not in the specific terms of peerage, as you do here, but in the general terms of "privilege," esp. inherited privilege. I certainly neither stated nor implied that "equality" in the Declaration means our recently reinvented notion of "equity," so you need have no fears on that score.
Gordon Wood makes this point powerfully in The Radlicalism of the American Revolution and other books.
Great book by one of the greatest scholars of the American Revolution.
http://bit.ly/1QA6gLx June 14, 2015 Zwartz Talk, Liberty v Equality
Interesting:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ulBHk60Mw