Good post Jed. Yes the view of history depends on your race. Yes there are shenanigans down south putting people off voting.
Seen from their perspective they might cynically say that universal suffrage was just a bid to get poor, desperate voters - a guaranteed pool of votes. Some might even say by encouraging the message that capitalism stinks that this is a disincentive to self-improvement because the wealthy would then vote away. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance". I just want to stop this simplistic notion GOP/Tory = bad, Labour/Democrat = Good, more government = good. There are false prophets. In the UK we live in a surveillance state which is becoming a police state. On average 300 cameras will catch your image a day. Then there's RIPA giving anyone in government (even a nosy local council worker) to look at your bank balance, tap your phone, monitor your movements and go through your bin. Then there is the national DNA database which even if you are cleared after an arrest still contains your (and by familiar match your whole family's) DNA - suspects for life. A national identity card scheme is on the way with biometric data and it will become routine to challenge for it. Then there are all the speech codes, banning of demonstrations within 1km of parliament. Compulsory organ donation (on death still) is on the way. Many more things. I'm getting ready to leave in a few years. All this in the name of a stealthily increasing state; the manner being: PROBLEM, REACTION, SOLUTION. Create a problem, get the public in a frenzy about it, then draft new powers. Imagine the inter-corporation cooperation (business to business, government to business, elite to elite) that all these cross-linked databases and powers will do to personal freedom. Yeah, corporations could have a suicide gene in a GM crop that just happens to fail because you've been mouthing off. The order comes from up high down the chain. Was it Gene Hackman in a film I can't remember with this line "You're either police or little people." But then you've got your incorruptible representatives of the people. You send them up to the assembly and they get their noses in the trough PDQ. On this occasion, Jed, you may want the Democrats in office but keep it clean, a lie's a lie no matter how much lipstick you put on it. Just watch the bastards. -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 26 September 2008 19:41 To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC News of the bailout Edmund Storms wrote: >The power of government always grows. Except when it shrinks. That's a rather silly thing to say, Ed. If it always grew then we would be living in a "1984" dystopia by now. In fact, the power of government in the US is far smaller than it used to be, when you take into account both local and national governments. In the 1840s, local governments in New England compelled men to shave their beards, and jailed them and beat the crap out of them when they refused. Governments made all forms of contraceptives illegal, and of course in the South they made marriage between races illegal. (Not to mention learning to read, getting paid for work, or leaving on one's own accord.) From circa 1900 to 1970, Federal and local governments sterilized thousands of people without their consent. Savage Jim Crow laws were enforced from the late 19th century well into the 1960s. (Actually, they are alive today, albeit attenuated. On Saturday I spoke with a middle-aged black woman whose mother, in Florida, was turned away from the polls in a recent election because there was a hyphen in her mailing address not shown on her driver's license. I guarantee that would never happen to a white voter! The Obama campaign has a full-time lawyer in Georgia fighting this kind of thing, but there are thousands of cases.) During World War I the government persecuted people of German descent, and during WWII it imprisoned 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent, robbing them of their houses, businesses and all of their material goods, while -- in many case -- their sons were serving in the U.S. Army, in some of the most highly decorated battalions in U.S. history. After the war, during the McCarthy era, persecution of dissent was widespread. There are countless other examples. Up until the 1960s, many First Amendment rights were a dead letter. Governments routinely invaded privacy, tapped peoples phones, beat prisoners suspected of crimes, fired people for expressing opinions or writing letters to the editor, and on, and on. I have a Life magazine article poking fun at a government employee who was summarily fired because they found out he performed in amateur ballet and modern dance on weekends. Going back to the colonial era, some New England local governments would invade people's households and check to be sure that parents have taught their children their ABCs by age 6, and that they were attending church every week. Children who did not learn were taken from their parents by force and raised by other families. People should learn the history of civil rights in the United States. I recommend I. Glasser, "Visions of Liberty," Arcade, 1991. There is also far more economic freedom and genuine capitalism in the US than there used to be. The antitrust laws are called the Businessman's First Amendment for good reason. Before they were passed and later enforced, small businessmen did not have a chance against cartels and large businesses. Read about business practices before the 1920s and you will see that outrageous violations of business ethics were common, and the freedom to compete was largely an illusion. Compared to the past, we are now living in the golden era of individual rights and the freedom to do whatever you please. Right-wing commentators who claim otherwise know nothing about history, or -- in some cases -- they willfully ignore what happened to black people, Japanese-Americans, Native Americans, and other minorities. They pretend that only white people were part of history, and the others don't count. - Jed
