Re: Re: RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/13/00 05:32PM Michael Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/12/00 05:48PM btw: Michael Parenti has noted that policy of containing spread of slavery was promptly reversed following death of President Zachary Taylor (southern slaveowner opposed to extension of slavery and secession) death. Parenti's article "The Strange Death of President Zachary Taylor" (*New Political Science*, Vol. 20, #2: June 1998) raises questions about official cause of death (severe indigestion from eating too many iced cherries with milk after sitting too long in sun, or something like that), looks askance at mainstream historians' parroting of official line despite insufficient evidence, and critiques conclusion drawn from 1991 exhumation that Taylor was not poisoned. __ CB: Soon someone will denigrate Parenti as a conspiracy theorist. Coup d'etats may be more common in U.S. history than legends of American democracy have it. CB I'll denigrate Parenti for being unwilling to look at evidence--they did dig the guy up, after all, out of historical curiosity... CB: Ah , yes , evidence. Who were the witnesses ?
Re: RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
Michael Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/12/00 05:48PM btw: Michael Parenti has noted that policy of containing spread of slavery was promptly reversed following death of President Zachary Taylor (southern slaveowner opposed to extension of slavery and secession) death. Parenti's article "The Strange Death of President Zachary Taylor" (*New Political Science*, Vol. 20, #2: June 1998) raises questions about official cause of death (severe indigestion from eating too many iced cherries with milk after sitting too long in sun, or something like that), looks askance at mainstream historians' parroting of official line despite insufficient evidence, and critiques conclusion drawn from 1991 exhumation that Taylor was not poisoned. __ CB: Soon someone will denigrate Parenti as a conspiracy theorist. Coup d'etats may be more common in U.S. history than legends of American democracy have it. CB
Re: Re: RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
Michael Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/12/00 05:48PM btw: Michael Parenti has noted that policy of containing spread of slavery was promptly reversed following death of President Zachary Taylor (southern slaveowner opposed to extension of slavery and secession) death. Parenti's article "The Strange Death of President Zachary Taylor" (*New Political Science*, Vol. 20, #2: June 1998) raises questions about official cause of death (severe indigestion from eating too many iced cherries with milk after sitting too long in sun, or something like that), looks askance at mainstream historians' parroting of official line despite insufficient evidence, and critiques conclusion drawn from 1991 exhumation that Taylor was not poisoned. __ CB: Soon someone will denigrate Parenti as a conspiracy theorist. Coup d'etats may be more common in U.S. history than legends of American democracy have it. CB I'll denigrate Parenti for being unwilling to look at evidence--they did dig the guy up, after all, out of historical curiosity... Brad DeLong
Re: RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
G'day all, About this Civil War business (a topic the judicious foreigner should leave well alone, I know). Ain't it true that the War is remembered by only the northerners as a war about slavery? I'm not even sure most *at the time* had it down as a war about slavery. Anyway, why a blue-uniformed soldier should be any more or less a hero than one in grey rather bemuses me at this distance. The way I read it is that the south had different economic interests than the north, and that this manifested as incompatible political interests. So I'd've thought it musta felt more like a war between patriotic unionists and patriotic separatists than anything else. After all, given the enormous extent of the 'anti-racist' victory, the sheer endurance of biological racism (throughout the land, as Chris implies) would come as a surprise to anyone who thought that this was the big issue resolved at Gettysburg. I also think that it might, in the long term, have been no bad thing if the confederates had got their way. The Union of American States would've instantly and enduringly been a better country for it (with more vital and visionary electioneering speeches to this day, for one thing - ywn). In the South, a rural-based economy with so unpromising a domestic consumption base, and so very dependent on the northern economy for goods, investment and markets - well, I reckon slavery's days were well numbered anyway. All of which is disgustingly thoughtless as far as the slaves of the time would have been concerned, of course - but one wonders if their grand-kiddies (onwards) mightn't have been better off for such an outcome - mebbe to this day and beyond ... but, yeah, I speak as a religion-loathing abstractionist from another place and time. Cheers, Rob. Anyone interested in being disabused of the notion that only the Southern U.S. is filled with racist and misleading historical sites should read James Loewen's excellent new book: "Lies Across America: What Our Historical Sites Get Wrong" (New Press, 1999). The book takes the reader on a tour of the entire country, and shows how ruling class history (and simply bad history) is often "literally etched in stone" on the U.S. landscape. It's amusing illuminating. Chris - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 10:51 AM Subject: [PEN-L:18788] Re: RE: American looneyism Max B. Sawicky wrote: You don't get down here much, do you? We've got statues of Confederate war heroes (sic) honored by placement in public squares, state governments fly the stars and bars, so why not a Confederate History Month? (don't ask me what 'confederate history' is supposed to mean, as opposed to 'civil war history'.) They would call it "War Between The States" history. My Yankee mind was stunned by my first ride down Monument Ave in Richmond. The monuments are of Confederate generals, one after another, on horseback. They face one way if they died during the war, and the other if they didn't; can't remember which earned the northern exposure. Doug
Re: Re: RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
Rob writes: About this Civil War business (a topic the judicious foreigner should leave well alone, I know). Ain't it true that the War is remembered by only the northerners as a war about slavery? I'm not even sure most *at the time* had it down as a war about slavery. Anyway, why a blue-uniformed soldier should be any more or less a hero than one in grey rather bemuses me at this distance. The way I read it is that the south had different economic interests than the north, and that this manifested as incompatible political interests. So I'd've thought it musta felt more like a war between patriotic unionists and patriotic separatists than anything else. After all, given the enormous extent of the 'anti-racist' victory, the sheer endurance of biological racism (throughout the land, as Chris implies) would come as a surprise to anyone who thought that this was the big issue resolved at Gettysburg. I see the US Civil War as resulting from a combination of different conflicts that interacted, reinforced each other, and combined to make the US a tinder box ready to catch fire. These included free trade vs. protectionism (with the North favoring the latter, similar to the Liberal vs. Conservative civil wars that hit most countries in Latin America), industry vs. plantation agriculture, the lack of communication between quite distinct societies, the fight over electoral votes, the South's alliance with Britain, and the Northern effort to keep the union together. Anti-slavery sentiment played a role, but my impression is that the North wouldn't have fought a war just to end slavery. Among other things, most of the North was just as racist as the South. (There's a recent book that argues that Lincoln was a stone cold racist (by Gates?). It's been ignored by the official media and I haven't read it. My response is: of course he was, since almost all whites were at the time.) But the Civil War had the (unintended in 1860) _objective impact_ of ending slavery (replacing it for a long time with debt peonage). It also encouraged the success of the US infant-industry effort to build industry and the US rise to the top. I also think that it might, in the long term, have been no bad thing if the confederates had got their way. The Union of American States would've instantly and enduringly been a better country for it (with more vital and visionary electioneering speeches to this day, for one thing - ywn). In the South, a rural-based economy with so unpromising a domestic consumption base, and so very dependent on the northern economy for goods, investment and markets - well, I reckon slavery's days were well numbered anyway. The US would have had a British-allied plantation country on its southern border (and Britain was the hegemon of the day), which might have restrained its imperialist pretensions. I'm not sure about the inevitability of the end of the slave-plantation-cotton complex. Gavin Wright, in his POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE COTTON SOUTH, argues that the fall in the price of cotton after the Civil War would have thrown the complex for a loop. (He sees that fall as hard to avoid.) I guess what was likely to happen was a "freeing" of the slaves, in which the plantation-owners dropped the responsibility of taking care of their workers all year round but maintained gang-labor and the like. It would have been like the Latin American latifundia/minifundia system, perhaps, with the freedmen deep in hock to the plantation owner/merchant/money-lender/politician complex. In other words, it would have ended up being a lot like the actual "Jim Crow" South. But this kind of counter-factual is the topic for science fiction novels. Somewhere, there is a sci-fi book on this topic. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
The causes of the Slave Drivers' Rebellion are complicated, *but* it is doubtful that all the other reasons would have led to actual war were it not for the belief of the Southern Slaveocrats that slavery was in danger. The Articles of Confederation have several clauses aimed at guaranteeing the perpetuation of slavery. See also Barbara Jeanne Fields, *Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century* (Yale UP, 1985). She argues that the slaves knew before Lincoln did that the war would abolish slavery -- because they knew the southern planters better than Lincoln did. In any case, it is sheer hypocrisy to argue that *today* the Confederate Flag represents anything but the aggressive defense of white supremacy, whatever its lying defenders may pretend. Giving other reasons for "honoring" the Confederacy should be put in the same category as opposing affirmative action in the name of "equality" or claiming that *The Bell Curve* is simply scientific honesty. The oppression of Black people has been and continues to be *the* central political fact of the United States, and is the one issue on which there can be no fuzziness. Incidentally, "looneyism" is much too gentle a label for Confederate History Month. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
Carrol wrote: The causes of the Slave Drivers' Rebellion are complicated, *but* it is doubtful that all the other reasons would have led to actual war were it not for the belief of the Southern Slaveocrats that slavery was in danger. There's a whole lit on this that suggests that it wasn't the Northern will to end slavery as much as the Southern plantation-owners fear of its end that sparked the conflagration. The owners saw their slaves as assets and would suffer from severe capital losses even from a mere murmur about manumission. (It's as if the stock-market goons started hearing about a proposal to expropriate their shares.) So they over-reacted (in the sense of starting a war, since it made sense from their own view-points). BTW, there were a whole lot of civil wars in Latin America even where slavery was not an issue, over issues of free-trade vs. protection. So that suggests that "all the other reasons" _could have_ led to actual war. In any event, it's very hard to separate all of the other reasons from slavery. Southern slavery was more than mere slavery. It was part of a "plantation/cotton/slavery" complex that was (for example) necessarily oriented toward the world market (and thus against protectionism). (More than cotton was grown, but the other plantation crops were export-oriented, too.) BTW, on the topic of "looneyism" (which appears in the subject line). I think the real "looneyism" is societal. Can anyone think of anything more looney than the continued accumulation of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons? (I'm sure you can, but you get the point.) I think the solution to Doyle's problem is something that most people have done already: drop the use of the term "looney" (and lunatic) as applied to individual psychology. I know that even though my son has a neurological problem that leads to behavioral difficulties and sometimes emotional extremism, he's not a "lunatic." Nor are those with schizophrenia, clinical depression, etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine "From the east side of Chicago/ to the down side of L.A. There's no place that he gods/ We don't bow down to him and pray. Yeah we follow him to the slaughter / We go through the fire and ash. Cause he's the doll inside our dollars / Our Lord and Savior Jesus Cash (chorus): Ah we blow him up -- inflated / and we let him down -- depressed We play with him forever -- he's our doll / and we love him best." -- Terry Allen.
Re: RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
Carrol wrote: The causes of the Slave Drivers' Rebellion are complicated, *but* it is doubtful that all the other reasons would have led to actual war were it not for the belief of the Southern Slaveocrats that slavery was in danger. There's a whole lit on this that suggests that it wasn't the Northern will to end slavery as much as the Southern plantation-owners fear of its end that sparked the conflagration. The owners saw their slaves as assets and would suffer from severe capital losses even from a mere murmur about manumission. (It's as if the stock-market goons started hearing about a proposal to expropriate their shares.) So they over-reacted (in the sense of starting a war, since it made sense from their own view-points). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine Southern slavocracy had earlier played 'great refusal' card on anti- extension policy. Amidst calls for secession, Kentucky Sen. Henry Clay's so-called Compromise of 1850 gave slavers most of what they wanted: stronger fugitive slave law, no restrictions on slavery in territories, congressional cession of interstate commerce regulation of slave trade. The 'compromise' did mean that California was admitted as non-slave state, that slave trade, but not slavery, was abolished in District of Columbia and that Texas gave up claims to New Mexico in exchange for Feds assuming state's public debt (and as territory, there were no slavery restrictions in NM). Whigs did what their 'compromiser' brethren before them had always done: they made major concessions to slave interests. btw: Michael Parenti has noted that policy of containing spread of slavery was promptly reversed following death of President Zachary Taylor (southern slaveowner opposed to extension of slavery and secession) death. Parenti's article "The Strange Death of President Zachary Taylor" (*New Political Science*, Vol. 20, #2: June 1998) raises questions about official cause of death (severe indigestion from eating too many iced cherries with milk after sitting too long in sun, or something like that), looks askance at mainstream historians' parroting of official line despite insufficient evidence, and critiques conclusion drawn from 1991 exhumation that Taylor was not poisoned. Michael Hoover
RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
Anyone interested in being disabused of the notion that only the Southern U.S. is filled with racist and misleading historical sites should read James Loewen's excellent new book: "Lies Across America: What Our Historical Sites Get Wrong" (New Press, 1999). The book takes the reader on a tour of the entire country, and shows how ruling class history (and simply bad history) is often "literally etched in stone" on the U.S. landscape. It's amusing illuminating. Chris - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 10:51 AM Subject: [PEN-L:18788] Re: RE: American looneyism Max B. Sawicky wrote: You don't get down here much, do you? We've got statues of Confederate war heroes (sic) honored by placement in public squares, state governments fly the stars and bars, so why not a Confederate History Month? (don't ask me what 'confederate history' is supposed to mean, as opposed to 'civil war history'.) They would call it "War Between The States" history. My Yankee mind was stunned by my first ride down Monument Ave in Richmond. The monuments are of Confederate generals, one after another, on horseback. They face one way if they died during the war, and the other if they didn't; can't remember which earned the northern exposure. Doug
