Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
WL: Very reactionary political current reminiscent of the ideological bent of the pro slavery forces during the lead up to the Civil War in America. The slave oligarchy and the Southern elite claimed to stand on the side of the Constitution, and they did. That the Constitution legalized and protected slavery meant its defense supported slavery. No real difference today. These people are very angry and believe they can recast bourgeois private property in their favor. They are horribly mistaken. Perhaps, Texas needs to be given back to Mexico. What does it mean to say one believes in the Constitution? That it creates a federal structure that controls a nation, and that structure can not be broken up or seceded from by any state? That the Constitution can not be amended (by amendment, by legal decisions)? The Constitution can and has been constitutionally amended, as allowed for by the constitution? Aren't the long-running issues: 1. What does the Constitution (having been amended quite a number of times since its first form) in its current state actually allow and provide for? 2. In what ways can the current Constitution be changed in order to improve the federal structure and its relationship with the states and with citizens? I grew up in 'Thaddeus Stevens country'. I even played near the forge he co-owend outside of Gettysburg (the Confederates destroyed it). He believed in the constitution enough to support the federal structure and then lead the movement to amend it. He was a federalist, a constitutionalist and a 'Congressionalist'--believing in the powers of Congress as provided for under the constitution. First, for TS, reconstruction was re-establishment of the USA in its sovereignty over all parts beyond martial law. So if teabaggers want to get back to the constitution, they might start with the beginning of the Civil War and work their way forward in time to the US of today. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/D/1851-1875/reconstruction/steven.htm Nobody, I believe, pretends that with their old constitutions and frames of government they can be permitted to claim their old rights under the Constitution. They have torn their constitutional States into atoms, and built on their foundations fabrics of a totally different character. Dead men cannot raise themselves. Dead States cannot restore their existence as it was. Whose especial duty is it to do it? In whom does the Constitution place the power? Not in the judicial branch of Government, for it only adjudicates and does not prescribe laws. Not in the Executive, for he only executes and cannot make laws. Not in the Commander-in-Chief of the armies, for he can only hold them under military rule until the sovereign legislative power of the conqueror shall give them law. Unless the law of nations is a dead letter, the late war between two acknowledged belligerents severed their original compacts and broke all the ties that bound them together. The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conqueror. They must come in as new states or remain as conquered provinces. Congress . . . is the only power that can act in the matter. Congress alone can do it. . . . Congress must create States and declare when they are entitled to be represented. Then each House must judge whether the members presenting themselves from a recognized State possess the requisite qualifications of age, residence, and citizenship; and whether the election and returns are according to law. ... They ought never to be recognized as capable of acting in the Union, or of being counted as valid States, until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to make it what its framers intended; and so as to secure perpetual ascendency to the party of the Union; and so as to render our republican Government firm and stable forever. The first of those amendments is to change the basis of representation among the States from Federal numbers to actual voters. . . . With the basis unchanged the 83 South ern members, with the Democrats that will in the best times be elected from the North, will always give a majority in Congress and in the Electoral college. . . . I need not depict the ruin that would follow. . . But this is not all that we ought to do before inveterate rebels are invited to participate in our legislation. We have turned, or are about to turn, loose four million slaves without a hut to shelter them or a cent in their pockets. The infernal laws of slavery have prevented them from acquiring an education, understanding the common laws of contract, or of managing the ordinary business of life. This Congress is bound to provide for them until they can take care of themselves. If we do not furnish them with homesteads, and hedge them around with protective laws; if we leave them to the legislation of their late masters, we had better have left them in bondage. If we fail in this great duty now, when we have the power, we shall
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
Most people have forgotten who Thaddeus Stevens was (one of the greatest legislators in US history) while they remember James 'the Mercersburg Flash' Buchanan as the 'worst president' (thankfully George W. Bush will give him some competition in that category). It's ironic that Stevens was the Pennsylvanian (his adopted home state) who gave Lincoln backbone but was based in the same area as Buchanan (very close to the Mason-Dixon line). A further irony is that Lincoln was preceded by the worst president in US history (James Buchanan) and then succeeded by the worst president in US history (Andrew Johnson). http://www.fergusbordewich.com/PAGESjournalism/FBsteve.shtml Thaddeus Stevens and James Buchanan: How their Historic Rivalry Shaped America By Fergus M. Bordewich. This article originally appeared as “Was James Buchanan Our Worst President? Digging into a Historic Rivalry” in Smithsonian Magazine, February 2004. WHEN JIM DELLE’S crew of student archaeologists broke through the roof of an old cistern in Lancaster, Pennsylvania last December, they discovered something totally unexpected: a secret hiding place for fugitive slaves in the backyard of one of nineteenth century America’s most powerful, most passionate, and most hated political figures, the radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens. Although the story of the Underground Railroad is replete with legends of exotic hiding places, they are actually quite rare. “I’ve looked at many tunnels that were alleged to have been used by the Underground Railroad,” says the dark-haired, bespectacled Delle, a man of ordinarily skeptical disposition. “Usually, I’m debunking these sites. But in this case, I can think of no other possible explanation.” The site sheds a dramatic new light on the life of Stevens, a brilliant lawyer with a rapier wit, a withering Yankee gaze, and a commitment to racial equality that was far in advance of his time. Stevens was the father of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which guaranteed African-Americans civil liberties and the right to vote, and the architect of post-Civil War Reconstruction. A lightening rod for the political passions that electrified the United States during and after the Civil War, he was almost forgotten for more than a century after his death in 1868. “If you stopped a hundred people on the street today, right here in Lancaster, and asked them who Stevens was,” says Lancaster’s gregarious mayor, Charlie Smithgall, “I bet only fifty would know, and most of them would think you were talking about the junior college that has his name on it.” IRONICALLY, STEVENS’S REPUTATION in Lancaster is dwarfed by that of his neighbor and bitter ideological rival, James Buchanan, the nation’s fifteenth president and possibly its worst, whose palatial home has been lovingly restored as a memorial. Stevens’s far more modest home lay utterly neglected, until now. (Unfortunately, much of it, including the recently excavated archaeological site, is slated to be demolished to make way for a massive new convention center.) The two men could not have been more different: one the foremost radical of his generation, the other a pro-slavery Northerner, or “dough face,” who committed his career to the preservation of the South’s “peculiar institution.” Stevens was a man driven by deep-running moral convictions, Buchanan diplomatic, legalistic, and so priggish that Andrew Jackson once impatiently dismissed him as “a Miss Nancy”—a sissy. Yet their lives ran in curiously parallel courses. Both men had humble origins. Buchanan was born in a log cabin on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1791, Stevens a year later in poverty, in rural Vermont. Both were lifelong bachelors, workaholics, and fueled by intense political ambition. Both lawyers, they built their careers in Lancaster, and lived less than two miles apart. And both would die in 1868, two months apart, amid the postwar trauma of Reconstruction. For decades, their politics were inextricably intertwined, the twin counterpoints of the age when slavery was the six-hundred pound gorilla in the parlor of American democracy. One of them would lead the United States to the brink of Civil War. The other would, more than any other American, shape its aftermath. Lancaster was a prosperous little rose-red city of some ten thousand souls when Buchanan arrived there in 1812. Its handsome two- and three-story brick or cut-stone homes were laid out in pleasing, dignified lines as befit a city which had served as the state’s capital since 1799. Furniture makers, gunsmiths, shoe factories, and markets for the thousands of German and Quaker farmers who lived in the surrounding county lent its unpaved streets an atmosphere of bustle and importance. Fresh out of Dickinson College, Buchanan was a young man on the make, determined to please his demanding Scots-Presbyterian father, who never tired of telling him how much he had sacrificed to send him to school. Had he lived in
[Marxism-Thaxis] A comrade sent me this
A comrade sent me this: Officials: Pilot leaves note on anti-IRS site A Must Read ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
On 2/19/10, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: Most people have forgotten who Thaddeus Stevens was (one of the greatest legislators in US history) ^ CB: Wasn't he a Radical Republican and abolitionist ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...
From Pen-l CB Speaking of the disaffected... To: pe...@lists.csuchico.edu Message-ID: 19325.46896.2076.361...@blake.zopyra.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 A man crashed a plane into an IRS office, in a building next to one I worked in a few years ago. Below my sig is his sign-off rant. Bill If you.re reading this, you.re no doubt asking yourself, .Why did this have to happen?. The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn.t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless. especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I.m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was .no taxation without representation.. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a .crackpot., traitor and worse. While very few working people would say they haven.t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say. Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it.s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country.s leaders don.t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political .representatives. (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the .terrible health care problem.. It.s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don.t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in. And justice? You.ve got to be kidding! How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly .holds accountable. its victims, claiming that they.re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law .requires. a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that.s not .duress. than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is. How did I get here? My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early .80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having .tax code. readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful .exemptions. that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the .best., high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the .big boys. were doing (except that we weren.t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done. The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party U.S.A.: It’ s Still the Economy, Stupid!
February 18, 2010 Tea Party U.S.A.: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid! Posted by John Cassidy In the wake of yesterday’s fascinating report in the Times about sixty-something Tea Party activists bracing for a violent counter-revolution, several people have asked me why Americans are so angry. I am tempted to say that that is what age and a steady diet of Fox News does to people, but that can’t be the full story. (Roger Ailes and his gang have been on air since 1996.) One factor that the Times article tiptoed around, but which undoubtedly plays some role, is racism. For some white Americans of a certain age and background, the sight of a black man in the Oval Office, even one who went to Harvard Law School and conducts himself in the manner of an aloof WASP aristocrat, is an affront. While President Obama’s approval rating has fallen in almost all groups, the biggest slippage has taken place among whites, especially middle- and working-class whites. A Gallup poll identified this trend last November, and it surely played a role in Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts. Another factor, which rarely gets mentioned, but which appears obvious to people who didn’t grow up here, such as myself, is that many Americans reach adulthood with a set of values and sense of self-identity that is historically inaccurate and potentially dangerous. If you have it banged into your head from the cradle to adolescence that America is the chosen nation—a country built by a rugged and God-fearing band of Anglo-Saxon individualists armed with pikes and long guns—you are less likely to embrace other essential features of the American heritage, such as the church-state divide, mass immigration, and the essential role of the federal government in the country’s economic and political development. When things are going well, and Team USA is squashing its rivals, this cognitive dissonance is kept in check. But when “the Homeland” encounters a rough patch and its manifest destiny is called into question, the underlying tensions and contradictions in the American psyche come to the fore, and people rail against the government. Not all Americans are subject to this unfortunate mental condition, of course. Many, perhaps most, of our citizens are pragmatic, open-minded, and justifiably proud of the nation’s cultural and ethnic diversity. But at any period of time, there is a certain segment of the population—a quarter, perhaps—that provides fertile ground for what Richard Hofstadter, back in 1964, called the “paranoid style” of American politics, which trades in “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” All countries have some disaffected folk, of course. But the real danger to any democracy comes when military conflict or economic dislocation swells the ranks of the permanently alienated with legions of people who are temporarily disadvantaged or angry. And that, I think, is what is happening now. My thanks to the indefatigable Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias—do these guys ever sleep?—for bringing to my attention these two charts that John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, posted on the blog The Monkey Cage: The first chart confirms that suspicion of the federal government isn’t anything new. For decades, pollsters from the American National Election Studies have been asking people this question: “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right, just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?” The chart shows that Americans started to lose faith in Washington during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, with the percentage of the population expressing trust in the government falling from the high seventies to the low thirties. Since then, the figures have moved up and down broadly in line with economic conditions, falling during the recession of the early nineties, rising in the subsequent period of prosperity, and falling sharply in the past few years. The second chart, which plots the level of trust in government against annual changes in per capita disposable income, provides more evidence to support the idea that economic developments are key. Most of the data points are arrayed in a north-easterly direction. This strongly suggests that when people’s incomes are rising they are more likely to have trust in the government; when their incomes are stalled, they lose faith in Washington. And the fact that most of the individual date points are close to the straight line—the regression line—demonstrates that this relationship is statistically robust. (For all you wonks out there, the R-squared is 0.75 and the t-statistic is 5.44.) Now, this analysis doesn’t imply that Americans aren’t furious about the political paralysis in Washington—they are—or that Obama doesn’t bear some blame for allowing his Administration to be portrayed as a tool of Wall Street and failing to articulate a coherent policy agenda that could overcome
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...
I read this guys suicide letter and here is what he wrote in part. Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn't need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas SL fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to shore up their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement. Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed. Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I've never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages... and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn't give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies. Comment I asked myself, why would a human being work a 100 hour week voluntarily? Seven days 12 hours a day is only 72 hours. Add another 28 hours and one has no family life and ultimately no wife or children one can maintain a relationship with. Here is a man that earnestly believed that capitalism could work for him and it did work pretty good in the post WW II period. Things stated going to hell a very long time ago for the proletariat majority. New layers of American society is being ruined. The real proletariat in America thinks out things very different, and their spontaneous drift to the right barely leads to terrorist acts on this level. Massive economic ruin does generate an initial response of increased family abuse, bouts of rage and individual suicide. Then depending on the ability of communist to impact the movement with a sense of purpose, the implosive subsides and becomes an outer explosion of activity. I feel no sympathy for this man who drives an airplane into a building because he is angry with the system. Did he own the plane? This angry man thought thinks out as a little capitalist, rather than proletarians still clinging to bourgeois views. No human in their right mind, voluntarily works 100 hours a week, unless they earnestly believe that at some point they they can make it and retired in peace and wealth. This pursuit of wealth and making it was once called the American dream. Our bomber terrorist woke up to the American nightmare, millions having been living for a couple of decades. Real time America on February 19, 2010 is in a profound crisis. 150 million Americans feel stress over layoffs and paying their bills on a consistent basis. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits last year, causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to go broke. When you factor in all these uncounted workers -- involuntary part-time and discouraged workers -- the unemployment rate rises from 9.7 percent to over 20 percent. In total, we now have over 30 million U.S. citizens who are unemployed or underemployed. With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world -- the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled Incarceration Nation revealed that a new prison opens every week somewhere in America. Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S. families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25 percent of current mortgages underwater. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60 percent of them, and over 75 percent of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health care insurance. Over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50 percent of U.S. children will
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore! This guy reminds me of the Unabomber, also what it means that Americans are totally lacking in political and social consciousness. While other people are just as fucked up in their own ways, white people of this type have a peculiarly apolitical view of their own victimization. They can't see their situation as anything more than an individual problem, as lone individuals being abused by the system, as individuals who can only act alone, and who are victimized by bad people running a system that is supposed to work but who have betrayed something they thought they were part of and was supposed to be functioning properly. This kind of recklessless is also very middle class. It's what was wrong with Thelma and Louise, which didn't have a thing to do with feminism: it was all about class, class, and nothing but class, and serves as a very bad example of the recklessness and irresponsibility that ensues when middle class people become rebellious. At 04:43 PM 2/19/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote: .. Comment I asked myself, why would a human being work a 100 hour week voluntarily? Seven days 12 hours a day is only 72 hours. Add another 28 hours and one has no family life and ultimately no wife or children one can maintain a relationship with. Here is a man that earnestly believed that capitalism could work for him and it did work pretty good in the post WW II period. Things stated going to hell a very long time ago for the proletariat majority. New layers of American society is being ruined. The real proletariat in America thinks out things very different, and their spontaneous drift to the right barely leads to terrorist acts on this level. Massive economic ruin does generate an initial response of increased family abuse, bouts of rage and individual suicide. Then depending on the ability of communist to impact the movement with a sense of purpose, the implosive subsides and becomes an outer explosion of activity. I feel no sympathy for this man who drives an airplane into a building because he is angry with the system. Did he own the plane? This angry man thought thinks out as a little capitalist, rather than proletarians still clinging to bourgeois views. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...
In a message dated 2/19/2010 1:57:51 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, rdum...@autodidactproject.org writes: While other people are just as fucked up in their own ways, white people of this type have a peculiarly apolitical view of their own victimization. They can't see their situation as anything more than an individual problem, as lone individuals being abused by the system, as individuals who can only act alone, and who are victimized by bad people running a system that is supposed to work but who have betrayed something they thought they were part of and was supposed to be functioning properly. Comment I think you hit the nail on the head with a carpenter's skill. The unionized workers, white in particular, facing impending ruin have a somewhat different instinct and orientation. These workers who I interact with are very angry and gave Obama his edge in the election. They are also universally scared of the system but distrustful and harbor very different illusions. They generally have not lived under generations of reactionary bourgeois democracy with its extreme police violence and in areas like the deep South have been on the non-receiving end of generations of historic fascist terror. In places where the black areas of town merge into the white proletarian neighborhoods their is a profound impulse for unity. The specific problem is that these workers have a way of thinking things out. We - meaning the generation of communists who are basically seniors, need a way to speak with these workers on the basis of how they think things out in real time as the velocity of crisis increase and as they awareness is in flux. These workers who constituted the margin of victory for Obama can swing either way in the actual social struggle. I am not seriously concerned about the so-called Tea bagger and fanatics, who are divorced from the masses of proletarians without regard to color. I am concerned about establishing a polarity that serves as a gravity well for the so-called political middle, as it exists in flux. The crisis has kicked the economic legs from up under the political middle as this section of the working class is hurled forcefully into the lowest section of the proletariat. The fragments of the remaining left are incapable of any dialogue with the proletarian masses. We are making headway, really, but the resistance and fear is incredible. Ralph, we have arrived in the undiscovered country. Strategy and ideology of the past is useless. We need to make perhaps 10,000 new mistakes. The pace and consolidation of Fascism in America is going to depend upon our ability to really influence and win people over to thinking different. The edifice of race has been cracked forever. Even the bourgeoisie is caught flatfooted. We might get really lucky. Hopefully we will not have to experience what the former Soviet proletariat had to endure.Our analysis is that there will be no recovery only restoration of profitability on the governments dime. Things are getting interesting. WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
