It's apparent that it doesn't matter to you. It matters a great deal
to me. It is my contention, and the foundation of my arguments and
beliefs, that what is worthwhile about this country was fought for and
won by the common people. The ruling class has been up to the same
business since day one. The more I learn of history, the more
apparent this becomes.
I think that the struggle for progress is better served by a
clear-eyed understanding of history, rather than the perpetuation of
founding father myths. If people knew about the Jeffersonian
exploitation of the mythical Islamic threat of the Barbery Pirates,
for example, it would have helped them to be skeptical when Colin
Powell stood up and lied before the UN. This is a darn good reason
for the decision making class to substitute myth for historical
accuracy. We do the same to ourselves to our disadvantage.
I'd like to specifically respond to some of your points. It's true
that slavery wasn't questioned by people who owned slaves, and most of
those who benefited from institution. However, it was challenged by
others - vigorously, from Greek times forward, as Michael Paretti
eloquently argues in his speech, "Slavery From Aristotle To George
Bush" (which can be located and downloaded on the Internet, with a
little diligence).
Since my first post on this subject, I've done a little research. It
seems to be commonly accepted that Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick
Henry PRIVATELY agonized over slavery, but did nothing in public life
to stop it. I found an interesting and wacky right wing website that
assures us that Patrick Henry was no hypocrite when he said the war of
secession from England was "a question of freedom or slavery." They
explained, "the slavery which concerned those, like Henry, who fought
the Revolution was tax slavery, as opposed to chattel slavery."
Yes, chattel slavery for blacks is just dandy, but tax slavery for
property owning white males stirs one to radical action. "Give tax
revenue to me and members of my class, or give me death!"
Not that they really took such a radical position. 40 years after the
fact, they said that Henry was saying things like "If this be treason,
make the most of it." According to biographer Richard Beeman, the
legend of this speech grew more dramatic over the years: "The only
account of the speech written down at the time by an eyewitness (which
came to light many years later) records that Henry actually apologized
after being accused of uttering treasonable words, assuring the House
that he was still loyal to the king.".
We are assured that all these traitors would have been put to death.
Just as if the South had won independence, they would have assuredly
told their descendants that they all would have been executed had
their noble cause failed. How many senior officers of the confederacy
were executed? I don't remember that from my public school education.
I do have vague memories of learning of Patrick Henry's bold
declaration from the scaffold just before he was put to death for his
brave statement "Give me liberty or give me death!" Of course,
nothing of the sort happened, he lived until 1793, he was governor of
Virginia 5 times, and never once proclaimed "Give slaves liberty or
give me death!"
We can't say with any certainty what Patrick Henry (or Chief Seattle,
for that matter) said in speeches that weren't written down until 40
years later, but when he actually committed pen to paper. In January
18 1773, Henry described his attitude toward slavery in a letter to
Robert Pleasants, a Quaker from Hanover County. Pleasants asked all
the prominent patriots to follow his own example of legally
emancipating his slaves and rehiring them as paid laborers (and thus
earned relative historical obscurity).
Henry wrote:
It is not a little surprising that Christianity, whose chief
excellence consists in softening the human heart, in cherishing &
improving its finer Feelings, should encourage a Practice so totally
repugnant to the first Impression of right & wrong. What adds to the
wonder is that this Abominable Practice has been introduced in the
most enlightened Ages, Times that seem to have pretensions to boast of
high Improvements in the Arts, Sciences, & refined Morality, have
brought into general use, & guarded by many Laws, a Species of
Violence & Tyranny, which our more rude & barbarous, but more honest
Ancestors detested. Is it not amazing, that at a time, when the Rights
of Humanity are defined & understood with precision, in a Country
above all others fond of Liberty, that in such an Age, & such a
Country we find Men, professing a Religion the most humane, mild,
meek, gentle & generous, adopting a Principle as repugnant to humanity
as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive to Liberty. . . .
I cannot but wish well to a people whose System imitates the Example
of him whose Life was perfect. And believe me, I shall honour the
Quakers for their noble Effort to abolish Slavery. It is equally
calculated to promote moral & political Good.
Would any one believe that I am Master of Slaves of my own purchase! I
am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. .
. .
I believe a time will come when the oppo. will be offered to abolish
this lamentable Evil. Every thing we can do is to improve it, if it
happens in our day, if not, let us transmit to our descendants
together with our Slaves, a pity for their unhappy Lot, & an
abhorrence for Slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished for
Reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with lenity,
& it is the furthest advance we can make toward Justice. Poor
Patrick! Victimized by the Christian religion, unable to cast of the
evil of slavery for the sheer INCONVENIENCE of it. Give me
convenience, or give me dath, and leave it to posterity to solve
problems that arise when morality conflicts with commerce.
To this day, we are solving problems the founding fathers left and/or
created for us - a profoundly anti-democratic governmental structure -
one that super-patriot Patrick Henry himself came to repudiate. At no
personal cost, of course - the ruling class takes care of it's own.
On 5/6/07, Larry Wilson <larry@larry-
>
> Patrick Henry's speech is certainly in doubt - but there is nothing for sure, one way or the other on who wrote it - or who wrote parts of it or whether Patrick ever really gave it. Matters not.
>
> George Washington put his ass on the line crossing the Delaware, and that one brilliant maneuver was one of the best of the war and saved countless lives.
>
> BTW, did you know that every person with him was a 'redneck'? Scot/Irish. Jim Webb (congressman) has a great book out on the Scot/Irish coming to this country. The Wilson's are from County Tyrone, 1799.
>
> It's true that most of the founders lacked for nothing, but none were cowards. Upon signing the Declaration, they were 'traitors' and had prices on their heads. All were marked for death. However, to intimate that they sat back and let others die is not true.
>
> Yes, some were slavers. That was just how it was done, and few questioned it. Slavery was endorsed by the Bible and even though most of the founders weren't Christians, they didn't fight the contemporary values.
>
> All of that matters not to me. What matters is that they stood against a dictatorship; that they did it for mostly economic reasons is immaterial - all wars are about money. They stood so that we could be free of Britian. For them, the straw that broke the camel's back was the Bill of Attainment. At least, back then, they still bothered to get a warrant - whereas Bush has done away with even that restriction.
>
> Our rights are being stripped, and if we need an imaginary speech to help motivate people and to express our outrage, then so be it. The fact that you want to argue whether or not the speech was Patrick's or not is just silly. What matters is that our country has been stolen, citizens arrested without probable cause and tortured.
>
> So, if you want to waste your time with, as I see it, irrelevant issues, then have at it.
>
>
>
>
> On 5/6/07, Matt Love < matt.mattlove1@
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Our founders indeed would have liked to have you around - they too
> > would be happy to sacrifice your life to preserve their way of life.
> > While soldiers marched barefoot, their blood staining the ice and
> > snow, the richest man in the colonies, General George Washington,
> > lacked for nothing. He and the other founders were extremely happy
> > their were people that would give their lives so that they could
> > continue their lofty musings on freedom and dignity, while their
> > slaves generated income.
> >
> > By the way, don't get too stirred up by Patrick Henry's lofty
> > rhetoric. I quote from a New Yorker review of Ralph Keyes' excellent
> > "Nice Guys Finish Seventh": " The Patrick Henry who lives in our
> > heads and hearts is the man who said "Give me liberty, or give me
> > death!" Apparently, the line was cooked up by his biographer William
> > Wirt, a notorious embellisher, who also invented Henry's other
> > familiar quotation, "If this be treason, make the most of it!" But a
> > Patrick Henry who never said "Give me liberty, or give me death!" or
> > "If this be treason, make the most of it!," a Patrick Henry without a
> > death wish, is just not someone we know or care about. "
> >
> > It's amusing that people that get so worked up over "Give me liberty,
> > or give me death!" never seem to notice the lines that came
> > immediately before it in Wirt's phonied up speech: "Is life so dear,
> > or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and
> > slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!"
> >
> > The success of the new nation they formed was built on the labor of
> > slaves, of course. I wonder if that vexed the real Patrick Henry in
> > the slightest? Or even the fictional one - I wonder, did Wirt have the
> > governor of the slave labor reliant state of Virginia by day, donning
> > cape and cowl at night, escorting runaway slaves across the Canadian
> > border? "Give me liberty, or give me death!" - sounds like something
> > Superman or Batman would say, doesn't it?
> >
> > There is an interesting reference to the real Patrick Henry in an
> > excellent article
> > (http://www.citizens
> > ) about the founding fathers use of a false Islamic threat in order
> > to frighten the population into allowing them to militarize the
> > country:
> >
> > [Jefferson's] defense of the Bill of Attainder was perhaps the
> > inspiration, two centuries later, for both the Clinton and the Bush
> > Administrations to recapture its spirit in the course of their own
> > Wars on Terror when they applied regulations written to permit the
> > freezing of assets of targeted states to "organizations" and to
> > individuals who "supported" those same groups. Interestingly, too,
> > Jefferson's Virginia was also the first place in the U.S. to pass an
> > act empowering the governor to expel "suspicious aliens" in the event
> > of war. When in 1785 Algeria declared war against the U.S., amid panic
> > over a pending invasion and reports of "an infinite number" of U.S.
> > ships captured (when not a single one had been), then-Governor Patrick
> > Henry invoked that law against sleeper cells. After the militia
> > rounded up two Algerian men and one woman, he decided (much like John
> > Ashcroft more than 200 years later) to give them neither liberty nor
> > death but just to deport them.
> >
> >
> >
> > On 5/5/07, Larry Wilson <larry@larry-
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I'm with the NRA on this one.
> > >
> > > How many people have been killed, in the US, by terrorists with guns?
> > >
> > > Since they can classify protesters as terrorists under Provision 802 of the Patriot Act, this is just a back-door to stripping guns from dissidents.
> > >
> > > A terrorist with a gun might kill, let's say, 50 people. Vs our rights? You have to decide for yourself, but if I was one of the 50 that knew that, by dying, I could preserve our rights, I'd gladly do it. Our founders felt the same.
> > >
> > >
> > > On 5/5/07, Kathleen Bushman <sassykathy46@
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Terrorists have rights, too http://www2. boomantribune.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > by Steven D
> > > > Sat May 5th, 2007 at 01:37:26 PM EST
> > > > Now, don't get me wrong. In America, terrorists don't have the right to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment from being inflicted upon them (i.e., torture) by the government. They don't have the right to a speedy trial, the right to a jury of their peers or the right to face their accusers if and when a trial is held. They sure don't have the right to apply for a writ of habeas corpus to protest their imprisonment. And by God, if we think someone even looks, sounds or has a name the least bit similar to that of a terrorist, they sure don't have the right to board an airplane.
> > > >
> > > > But one right they do have, the most precious right under our Constitution, is the right to go buy guns. You think that's crazy? Well, go tell it to the National Rifle Association, bucko!
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > WASHINGTON -- The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms. [...]
> > > >
> > > > In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Chris Cox, NRA executive director, said the bill, offered last week by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat , "would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere 'suspicions' of a terrorist threat."
> > > >
> > > > "As many of our friends in law enforcement have rightly pointed out, the word 'suspect' has no legal meaning, particularly when it comes to denying constitutional liberties," Cox wrote.
> > > >
> > > > And you thought conservatives were all authoritarians, manly men who love other, more manly men , telling them what to think and what to believe and when they can or cannot exercise their freedoms. Ha! You sure were wrong about that. Because there is no more fundamental, God-given right in America than the right to go buy the arms and ammunition of your choice free from any interference by Big Guvmint. And it doesn't matter what you intend to do with those weapons, either. That's none of the gaddammed FBI's, CIA's, DEA's or local police officers' business.
> > > >
> > > > Because guns don't kill people, people kill people. And if we stop selling guns to terror suspects we're on the slippery slope to a world dominated by secretive and sinister international organizations like -- the United Nations, for God's sake! Better a thousand terrorists buy an arsenal of weaponry to murder tens of thousands of peace loving Americans, than one innocent person be deprived of his right to obliterate a squirrel at 300 yards with his high powered hunting rifle, or be deprived of destroying junk automobiles with his .50 caliber machine gun. And drink beer while doing it (don't forget the beer).
> > > >
> > > > So here's to you, National Rifle Association, for preserving my one essential liberty, no matter who gets hurt because of it. You are true-hearted, red blooded Americans and Super-duper Patriots all! Whatever would our country do without you?
> > > >
> > > > (Bush) Plan could give loophole to terrorists (as refugees)
> > > > Ching (1000+ posts) Sat May-05-07 03:27 PM
> > > > Original message
> > > >
> > > > http://www. democraticundergrou nd.com/discuss/
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Source: AP
> > > >
> > > > WASHINGTON -
> > > >
> > > > Today's foreign terrorists could become tomorrow's U.S. refugees if the Bush administration gets its way.
> > > > The intent is to grant refugee status to rebels who have fought repressive governments or advanced U.S. foreign policy objectives, particularly in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > They would cover any foreigner who has engaged in terrorist activity, said Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman.
> > > >
> > > > "This amendment thus provides the executive branch with the authority to admit aliens who have engaged in armed action against oppressive regimes or in furtherance of U.S. foreign policy or both," he said
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Among those whom the changes are intended to help are members of Burmese rebel groups such as the Karen National Union and Chin National Front; hill tribes in Vietnam and Laos; the now-defunct, anti-Castro Cuban Alzado insurgency; Ethiopia's Oromo Liberation Front; and southern Sudan's ex-rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement.
> > > >
> > > > Without the broad language covering all terrorist groups, supporters of the changes fear that former child soldiers, who may have been forced to fight, never would become eligible for admission to the U.S. Nor would medics or nurses who treated terrorists. [ While I certainly would be in favor of certain exemptions, I certainly do not trust BushCo to decide which group should qualify for an exemption.)
> > > >
> > > > Read more: http://news.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
> > > > inevitable." - JFK
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Larry
> > >
> > > "Ashcroft supermoralistically draped the body of the department's statue of justice to hide her contours; Gonzales amoralistically tore off her blindfold." Ronald Goldfarb
> > >
> > > Impeachment - now, more than ever!
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Larry
>
> "Ashcroft supermoralistically draped the body of the department's statue of justice to hide her contours; Gonzales amoralistically tore off her blindfold." Ronald Goldfarb
>
> Impeachment - now, more than ever!
>
>
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