Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiUntold Truths About the American Revolution
There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately jump from, "This is a good cause" to "This deserves a war."
You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.
The American Revolution-independence from England-was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?
How many people died in the Revolutionary War?
Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it's likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let's take the lower figure-25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.
You might consider that worth it, or you might not.
Canada is independent of England, isn't it? I think so. Not a bad society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we don't have. They didn't fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of England?
In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.
Who actually gained from that victory over England? It's very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it's very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That's one thing were not accustomed to in this country because we don't think in class terms. We think, "Oh, we all have the same interests." For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.
Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line-in the Proclamation of 1763-that said you couldn't go westward into Indian territory. They didn't do it because they loved the Indians. They didn't want trouble. When Britain was defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent, which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.
So when you look at the American Revolution, there's a fact that you have to take into consideration. Indians-no, they didn't benefit.
Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?
Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it.
What about class divisions?
Did ordinary white farmers have the same interest in the revolution as a John Hancock or Morris or Madison or Jefferson or the slaveholders or the bondholders? Not really.
It was not all the common people getting together to fight against England. They had a very hard time assembling an army. They took poor guys and promised them land. They browbeat people and, oh yes, they inspired people with the Declaration of Independence. It's always good, if you want people to go to war, to give them a good document and have good words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when they wrote the Constitution, they were more concerned with property than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should take notice of these little things.
There were class divisions. When you assess and evaluate a war, when you assess and evaluate any policy, you have to ask: Who gets what?
We were a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to pretend in this country that we're all one happy family. We're not.
And so when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it in terms of class.
Do you know that there were mutinies in the American Revolutionary Army by the privates against the officers? The officers were getting fine clothes and good food and high pay and the privates had no shoes and bad clothes and they weren't getting paid. They mutinied. Thousands of them. So many in the Pennsylvania line that George Washington got worried, so he made compromises with them. But later when there was a smaller mutiny in the New Jersey line, not with thousands but with hundreds, Washington said execute the leaders, and they were executed by fellow mutineers on the order of their officers.
The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution.
We've got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.
Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.
We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
82 Comments so far
Show AllThe United States is now the most war prone nation in the world (with the possible exception of Israel). We have yet to outgrow the frontier mentality.
We _must_ stop teaching our children to be violent.
Interesting, a lot, especially about the indians, I knew but there is a lot that was just rewritten sanitation for the 'elite's' benefit that went into the history books we studied in school as I was growing up, mostly romantic, warriorized BS, as I realized later, which made me feel good about the United States of America.
Now, in the past few years when I had become very discouraged with what the MSM was passing out as 'fair and balanced' news, reliable information and interesting tidbits, I have taken on MY reading of certain authors based on credibility or that author or the subject of my readings and boy does it make a difference to see a reality that is not based on religious fanaticism or disney land.(I didn't even know a third building came down on 9/11 until about 3 years ago or less, much less by demolition)
And the class thing which I gave little thought to much to the 'elite's' delight I am sure, but now it is not hard to realize that class has always been around and when there are billions upon billions of people around, class will not go away or dimminish but now I realize also, this world cannot go on as it is with the 'unfettered' growth of the human population. (Herb Stein probably said it best: 'Things that can't keep going, don't.)
One issue that I have not seen mentioned here was the fact that many of the colonists owed large debts to British creditors. The rebels garnered support by promising to absolve these debts. There is an interesting if unorthodox view of the War of Independence here:
http://www.redcoat.me.uk/
Howard Zinn is a treasure. If I had any political clout I'd advocate ammending the No Child Left Behind Act to include Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" as mandatory reading.
Having served in the military as a reluctant draftee duing 1970-72, I can assure you the same ruling class was using the same basic tactics at that time to feed the "green machine" that were used during the Revolutionary War as Zinn wrote about. And from what I see, the "dumbing down" of America through the collapsing public school system and our "American Idol" / faux news sound-bite culture combined with the de-industrialization of America is insuring the ruling classes will have sufficient "volunteers" to continue pursuing whatever "wars" it intends to wage into the foreseeable future.
Thanks Howard, for reminding us that without us, the People who populate this land, and the citizen soldiers who shed their blood for the sake of whatever propaganda can be passed off as valid, "they" are nothing. It's also good to remind "they" that once the People have had enough, "they" need to be ready to acceed to the demands of the majority. Kind of brings to mind the battle for Single Payer Health Care that's being waged now in Washington D.C., and Madison, Wisconsin, and Pocatello, Idaho.
Prof. Zinn,
You are quite right about the plight of Native Americans who were caught in the midst of the struggle for independence. In the region I know best - upstate New York - the Iroquois had a long and close relartionship with British colonial rule. The local crown representative in the decades before the war, Sir William Johnson, had an Iroquois wife and children and participated in many tribal religious ceremonies. Europeans and the Iroquois had lived as neighbors without serious conflict for over a century.
When the American revolution turned violent, five of the six nations in the Iroquois confederacy sided with the crown, as did maybe a third to half of European settlers. The result was a war of massacre and counter-massacre that opened up the rich farmlands of western New York, Ohio and beyond to white settlers. Most of the surviving Iroquois ended up in Ontario or Quebec. And none of this had anything much to do with a tax on tea or the idealistic sentiments of Jefferson and Franklin.
However, would the fate of the ancient peoples have been so different if what is now the USA had evolved more slowly into something resembling Canada? Who can say?
But it is important to keep analyzing this nation's origins, as you have been doing for so many years.
Valatius,
It wasn't just Tea. An American boycott of most household items had been going on for some time to protest the monopoly of the British East India Co. Abigail Adams letters are testament to the hardships all colonist faced as everything from buttons to hatchets came from English middle men in rigged markets in London. (few things were manufactured in the Colonies in the 1750/60's and 70's.) As a result, huge amounts of smuggling were going on in the colonies to avoid the tyranny of the "intolerable acts."
The only reason King George III even recognized the Pope's treaty line to curb settlements into vast Indian lands West, is that he didn't want to pay for any more French and Indian Wars. King George was using the tribes to save himself money.
No hunter-gatherers survived on any continent throughout history. Nomadic (seasonal migratory) hunting takes up too much land. No species has ever been able to dominate an eco-system forever, and Homo sapiens is not going to be the first. Many of the posters in this thread do not realize just how prosperous American individuals became after the war. The American Revolution was a world-renowned runaway success for Americans. For civil liberties and weath opportunity. Anyone could have land for free. Anyone could homestead and embrace agriculture. And everyone was armed and not afraid of the government.
But witness the horrible tragedy of the small American farmer today. Monster monopolies Moninsaneto and Dow and Dupunt and banks have stolen the birthright of these producers of world food. The products are now 70% GMO and unsafe to eat. Organic labeling means nothing since FDA won't enforce mislabeling. What a sorry state the USSA is in now. It's a corporate hell-on-earth 1984 police state.
Give me 1789 (bill of rights) any day.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
There is a Revolutionary era copper mine in East Granby CT, which was run as a prison for British soldiers. At the time, Newgate Prison produced the best copper ore in the British colonies.
When the Brits won the war with France and "got" Canada, many in the British parliament wanted the french possessions in the caribe not that block of snow and ice. It was the british sugar interests who persuaded the parliament to accept Canada. It was only with the help of Le Canadiens that the British staved off that invasion by the Americans. If you want to know who really kept Canada in the British sphere it was done with a lot of help from Le Canadiens. Also the idea of "responsible government" was an agreement between two political leaders who were not too fond of each, Baldwin and La Fontaine, who worked out an agreement that in any government the majority, whether French Canadian or English could not run rough shod over the minority. The systems of government are vastly different in the two neighbors, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, all elected officials, is responsible for the administration side of guvmint and are answerable to parliment every day it sits not like the President who is answerable to no one it seems.
The documentary film entitled "The Money Masters", by people who have the website of www.themoneymasters.com for the film, which is roughly three and a half hours long; this film provides a different view on "untold truths" about the American Revolution, the Civil War, and a lot more. Those two wars and economic crises in the U.S. were very much, if not wholly, the work of these "money masters", rich and powerful people interested in financial domination, including worldwide. They very much included the Rothschilds from at least the last decade of the 18th century and wanted to privately own centralised banks, to control economies and governments. Any political leaders in the U.S. who "got in the way" of the plans by these rich and powerful financial "elites" had to be eliminated or their obstructiveness defeated. They also aimed to do the same with Russia, and already had their central bank schemes in England, France and Germany, if not also other European countries.
They were what the Civil War was primarily created for, according to this above film, which I've now viewed about half of and will say that it's very good and important. They evidently were behind the assassination of President Lincoln, who evidently was not against slavery in the U.S. They also saw to the assassination of another U.S. President; and, who knows, maybe also that of President JFK.
They were behind the American Revolution; more than any other reasons for that war, anyway.
One of their evil ways is to finance both sides that are at war against each other, which is something to carefully keep in mind with at least some recent wars. F.e., some people say that the U.S. "elites" worked on coaxing Iran to war with Iraq, and vice versa; while the coaxing of Iran was done covertly or secretly.
There are two copies of the film that I saw at Google, one clip that's the full film, and another clip that's around 143 minutes and posted by the above website for the film. There are also multi-part video clips at Youtube, like one set of 22 clips for what seems to be either the full film, or else most of it.
I'm not saying that what Howard Zinn says in this article of his is untrue; instead, believing that it's probably true. But that history doesn't mean that the American Revolution wasn't primarily due to the schemes of these above financial "elites".
"Not a word that he uttered will see print. You have forgotten the editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain. Their policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the established.The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it.” From IRON HEEL by Jack London.
Hoa binh
I love Zinn. THis is hard for me to play devil's advocate to Howard. But I think he's dead wrong here, although it's a rambling essay with two different argumetns to be made.
The first argument, that the Revolution was a mixed bag and often classist, is not that controversial. Okay, not controversial to people who actually read real books.
The second argument is the plea to end war in all forms and for all reasons. It's a great idea if and only if power would adopt it scrupulously. We must assume that since they never have that they never will. To remove the one last option to gain your liberation from oppression off the table on principle is to diminish another important and much older principle: the right to self-defense.
When a state routinely exercises its monopoly on "legitimate" violence against its own citizens it forfeits its right to be addressed civilly. It has shown the propensity and desire to use violence as one of its preferred methods of control. We have the right as people to defend ourselves from that agression. In the end, Malcom X was right: by any means necessary. I would agree with any ehticist that this is not a license and argument for going off and blowing crap up. But such a move might be legitimated after all other reasonable options have been exhausted. I, for one, will never surrender my inherent right to defend myself against injustice and to remove the threat to my person and basic well-being.
Zinn implies in this piece that the American Revolution (and apparently, by extension, the other peer revolution of that era in France), that there were other options for severing the bonds between masters and servants. There might have been, and I would agree we have a moral obligation to try to find those solutions first and foremost. We want justice, not an apocalypse. But there's no real historical argument to be made that either the French or English king would have withdrawn their claim to dominion simply based on protest. Zinn interestingly leaves out the one example of protest in the colonies that turned into a bloodbath in Boston.
In short, unlike Howard, I do not believe that power rations itself out rationally. It is more useful to think of it as an object to be taken or lost, the ultimate prize for the ambitious or desperate. We have to leave every option open, because if we don't, and the state knows where our lines are drawn and it refuses to draw its own lines where ours are, then the result will be a slaughter. Of us.
I also like Zinn in general, but like you I have doubts about this particular example. Could it not be that after losing one colony, the British decided to act a little better so as not to lose another colony the same way? Just as unions help raise wages for all workers, not just union workers. Could it be that by fighting and dying colonists here made things better for those in Canada?
>>>John F. Butterfield wrote: Could it not be that after losing one colony, the British decided to act a little better so as not to lose another colony the same way?
I have thought so, too. Not only that, after losing the U.S., the British went after new colonies with a vengeance - in India and Africa. In fact, the British General Cornwallis, who surrendered to Gen. Washington at Yorktown in 1781, exchanged for another prisoner in 1782, criticized back home for his role in the War, went on to be appointed the Governor General of India in 1786 - because he somehow still had the confidence of King George III.
It's not clear that the fighting and dying colonists made things better in the U.S., much less than in Canada. Wasn't that Zinn's point? At the end of the American Revolution, the country was run by a bunch of rich folk who gained power through the deaths of a lot of folk who weren't rich. Then then set things up so that they could continue to run the place for their profit and pleasure. So, how did that make things better either for Americans or Canadians? Replacing the British with the rich class of Americans leads to the following: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Teddy writes---
"next thing -- they'll PATENT as "private property" -- the air, water, the sunlight and moonlight..."
Actually corporations are now claiming to own some people's genes. I think the rationale is that because they mapped them and came up with a therapy for a genetic disease they own it, but I'm not sure.
Then there are those cases where companies like Monsanto trespass on farmers' properties to grab samples of their crops and test them to see if the company's GM crops (patented) are being "used" by the farmer "illegally" even when the company's GM crop CONTAMINATED that farmer's crop through genetic drift. Really scary if you think about it.
Meanwhile, bligh4 writes---
"Professor Zinn is an avowed Marxist with his own view of History-one that always devolves into a question of Class. Doesn't make it any more right or true than the other interpretations of history."
Around a century ago, Henry Adams, son and grandson of US presidents and at the time President of the American Historical Association, gave a speech in which he strongly suggested that if History could be shown to have a scientific, empirical quality (as in "hard science") the powers that be would deny it, esp. in the universities. (See: Henry & Brooks Adams, "The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma" if you can find it.)
God forbid that we should discuss Class as a subject for historical/economic/thermodynamic debate! It might offend those who ain't got any, to say nothing of those who think they do and have no compunction about killing to defend it.
-30-
The market/power paradigm takes life - every aspect of it - plays god by first establishing that the earth/nature is not 'alive' but a thing. Hence life is in the most fundamental way, first 'killed' to its true nature. Once that true nature is seen through thingification, all else follows suit. Because one is removed from the psychic condition of being an integral part of all life, the self must alwys be on the defense because the severed self is 'deaded' without realizing it. Fear cannot be figured out because its condition cannot be anything but fear- ubiquitous like air. Cycles of life become an abstract 'fringe' concept, again filtered throuh the mechanism. its a turning of attention.
well said, sir...you have captured the dilemma...I will attempt to lend support without distracting...
the very base upon which sanity would be found is removed...human laziness, both physical and mental, is played to, forcefed through the tube of profitable productization of the planet, leaving the laboring individual feeling rewarded for worthy efforts, supplied with the daily nutritional and operational necessities, and just comfortably insulated, and intellectually isolated, enough to ignore the devastating ramifications upon every aspect of the living world...
when this physical and mental insulation and isolation is infiltrated and intensified with intentional emotional manipulation via the bombardment of the senses with disinformation, the demonizing of natural conditions and impulses, and the enforced acceptance of unnatural ones as natural; when this entire, false and imposed social order is supported by extensive surveillance, weaponed professionals and illegitimate incarceration; when the only avenue for recourse offered the citizenry is found to be corrupted, entrenched, and utterly antagonistic; then confusion, anxiety, and, therefore, increasing susceptability and disunity among the populace is inevitably the result...
organizational intent, global infrastructure and ever-advancing weaponry are on the side of those in power...
self-awareness, and the self-motivation to increase such, however, still exist within the individual...
our society has done all it can to prevent the individual from even having the opportunity to begin considering what their 'self' might be, of course, which successfully stifles a great deal of self-growth, but the seed is still there, waiting to be germinated...
unplugging from the disinformation grid is so critical to beginning this journey, and they know that, which is another reason they work so hard to make sure they have electricity...gotta keep up the bombardment...
the answer, as you suggest, is a rejoining of the natural world...
how do we, together, mature spiritually, abandon our attempts to dominate nature and each other, and, once again, humbly rejoin the ranks of the myriad plants and animals...
again, sexuality, marijuana and music are god places to start, along with physical exercise and mental exploration...once one begins to question, the momentum gathers...
i'm rambling, but you inspired me to write...
I'll suggest a Global start date: September 22, 2012...let's get those gardens growing!
capt.jim if there was a god we would not be posting these
ideas to each other.
This is a MOST .important essay by Howard Zinn...for it touches on the very heart of "america" ...."land of the free" ...and all the mythologies about it.
more ordinary folks like myself can only say simple comments such as "USA from the very beginning".....already had the DNA of injustices, coercion, landgrabbing, etc...
but it takes someone like ZINN to pry open completely the HOW and WHAT of these things.
There exists today in our country a telltale feature of governance which demonstrates that Mr. Zinn is basically correct.
Consider all foreign Western democratic countries whose representations have a "lower" and a "higher" house. Not a single one of these "higher houses" has today as great a power as the U. S. Senate. Why? Because the so-called "Founding Fathers" distrusted the "common people" also known to them as rabble. (Benjamin Franklin was an exception. He did not want a Senate of any kind). The Senate was to be a gate-keeper for the rich and powerful.
Today our current "Ruling Fathers" are distrustful of you and me and that is why we still have the same powerful Senate. Perhaps even more powerful than in the days of John Adams because today's "rabble", the middle class is potentially also more powerful.
Trust me, nothing, absolutely nothing will ever change as long as our Senate can continue to play its "gate-keeping" role for our "Ruling Fathers".
During the depression of the 30's FDR realized that the capitalist system of production/distribution/consumption was significantly threatened. Fundamental changes (Social Security!)could therefore pass the gate-keeper Senate. President Obama knows that this is not the case today hence he spouts a lot of hot air and adjusts his programs to the wishes of the "Ruling Fathers" anchored in the U. S. Senate.
What would you use to support your claim, that President Obama knows that (the capitalist system of production/distribution/consumption) is not threatened today? Isn't the diminishing of the workforce an existential threat to the retail market?
"when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it in terms of class"
Of course, but not only that, you have to consider the full significance of class in the context of human nature. It's not that we all want to be rich and powerful. The universal desire is for well-being, and unfortunately the rich/powerful tend to exude more well-being than the rest of us but it doesn't have to be this way. The people can build solidarity by building the well-being of people, which gives the people a stake, something to defend. The elites are easily defeated, and they should be, because elites are generally psychopaths, and highly destructive. Exhibit A: the eight year rampage of the imperial chimp and continuing catastrophic fallout. Examples abound all over the planet testifying to both the elites' psychopathology and numerous achilles heels.
We might of thrown off colonization from Briton and France, but the invisible control of the banks we welcomed.
Economic Slavery!
Wilson finally in 1917 sold out!
The U.S. was a vast supply of resources and people more than willing to trade those for European Goods. ALL TAXED (I assume)
Europe probably took those profits and invested them back into the New World so they could sell it to us.
Lawyers, twisted it ALL.
New World, first people's were the only ones honest enough to see that the forked tongue was the way of the white man. We keep falling for it ALL.
Who really "OWNS" the earth anyway?!!!!
EXACTLY....
that is how the concept of "private property" became so institutionalized that it has become the "unquestioned NATURAL right" that supposedly spells "freedom and liberty"....to "OWN" property....just because some people invented the concept , institutionalized it that if one were to acquire the POWER , sanctioned by a state or government to place "private property" boundaries upon a piece of land - it is "MINE".
from this ALSO comes the ideas of Patent....
abused for example by multinational corporations, primarily by the USA - such as "patenting" PLANTS in some third world coutnry like the Philippines that - lo and behold - holds medicine to cure many cancers, diabetes, paralysis, etc...
next thing -- they'll PATENT as "private property" -- the air, water, the sunlight and moonlight...and somehow manage to erect institutions that give "freedom" to "choose" between
"better air in your weather-proofed house"
"freedom to buy an apartment where the SUN shines nicely at the right times of day". ....
and everyone else can live in dungeons or under the surface toiling to make "freedom ring". .l...for those that can afford "private ownership rights"......
it seems - just about anything the USA has "invented" in terms of human social organization is POISON....or are CORRUPTIONS of things that were ONCE pure and wonderful and free for everyone to partake without envy or jealousy or grasping at someone's expense.
the USA - clearly - was "born" to become "independent of tyranny"
IN ORDER to become the worlds' greatest Tyrant.
it probably should never have been put "together" to begin with.
if anything practically all the noble ideas that the USA claims to have "invented" such as in the constitution - notions of freedom and liberty , equality, justice
were ALWAYS already THERE among nations - the USA did not "discover" them by any means...
all it has done is to make A BOASTFUL CLAIM upon them. while at the same time hypocritically being unable to even sustain them or live BY them.
What ever happened to the 'Baby Boom' generation that dreamed of a better world? Am I the only living remnant of a generation that believed we could make a difference - not with war, but with knowledge and understanding and tolerance? Or was it only the sons and daughters of immigrants who dreamed of this better future, and once tried to make it a reality?
How is it that a country comprised entirely (for all practical purposes) of immigrants can be so alike in their love of war, of murder, of theft, of intolerance and abuse - when that is usually their stated reason for coming to the US in the first place: to escape tyranny?
the baby boomers, like others, have fallen prey to their own nostalgic consumption...the better world is a big flat screen with surround sound and hundreds of things to watch...you can even interact...also, the food is fattening, which makes it tiring to do much...the education is foul, which leaves one struggling with reflective concepts...advertising and religion are the icing, supported by credit, property ownership and monogamy...
Any country made up of settlers MUST be in love with theft. By definition. Because going to another place in hope of finding a better life means that you are willing and prepared to take something away from someone else.
The "better future" could only be created by causing others' "worse" future. There is no other option.
If one hated that thought, one would have stayed at home.
Logical, isn't it?
"How is it that a country comprised entirely (for all practical purposes) of immigrants can be so alike in their love of war, of murder, of theft, of intolerance and abuse - when that is usually their stated reason for coming to the US in the first place: to escape tyranny?"
Easy to answer. The vast majority of us are native born, not immigrants. Next, most Americans don't have a love of war, of murder, of theft, of intolerance and abuse. Most Americans are hard working, caring people that have a sense of justice.
Baby Boomers did make a difference....America of today is nothing like the America 1960. It is a much better country in many ways, not all....we have allowed our educational system to be practically destroyed and some of our important laws to be subverted....but on the whole, we are better off.
If our country were half what a lot of folks here say it is, they adnd you wouldn't be saying anything, here or elsewhere. So I'd argue that we are better and that the difference we can make is not finished.
bligh4
Professor Zinn asks a couple of pertinant questions. First, would the British have left voluntarily? Canada is his example. The answer seems to be yes, sort of, eventually...
Canada sort of became a proper colony in 1867, then received some independence in 1931, finally got most of it in 1982 or there-abouts. Even now though, the head of State is still the Queen, the Commander in Chief of the Canadian armed forces is the Govenor-General representing the Queen, and the Queen still has the right to dismiss ministers. So, still not quite there in my opinion.
As far as bloodless, aside from the efforts to of some revolutionary's to kick the British out in the 1830's and 40's (and put down with force by the British army)- The fact that Canadians were not consulted before being drug into the First World War by a British declaration should factor into the equasion. Over a hundred thousand war dead was a result.
Second, did the wealthy class benefit economically, or believe they would benefit from the revolution? I would say the fact that a majority of this class in many of the colonies sided with the Crown in the conflict, and the fact that many of the signers of the Declaration LOST their fortunes due to the war at least leaves this open to question. Also the fact that the signers knew they were commiting High Treason from their act and that it was punishable by death if they lost. Can't take it with you...
Professor Zinn is an avowed Marxist with his own view of History-one that always devolves into a question of Class. Doesn't make it any more right or true than the other interpretations of history.
>>>bligh4 wrote: As far as bloodless, aside from the efforts to of some revolutionary's to kick the British out in the 1830's and 40's (and put down with force by the British army)- The fact that Canadians were not consulted before being drug into the First World War by a British declaration should factor into the equasion. Over a hundred thousand war dead was a result.
Not only the Canadians were not consulted before being drawn into WW-I, but just when everyone thought that the War was over, soldiers and conscripts were forced to go and fight another War in Russia. This was the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force - sent basically to crush the Bolshevik Red Army. There was even mutiny in Canada which was put down brutally, and deserters were hunted down. I wonder if Prof. Zinn knows this part of the history and what he would have to say on that.
"Canada sort of became a proper colony in 1867, then received some independence in 1931, finally got most of it in 1982 or there-abouts. Even now though, the head of State is still the Queen, the Commander in Chief of the Canadian armed forces is the Govenor-General representing the Queen, and the Queen still has the right to dismiss ministers. So, still not quite there in my opinion."
People like you really need to get over your fear of the Queen.
Your argument implies that Britain still controls Canada, "So, still not quite there in my opinion." If the Canadians, or the Aussies, wanted to get rid of the Queen from her figurehead position. they can. Many of Britain's former colonies did. Canada hasn't chosen to do so.
Excellent post as usual bligh4,
All colonies were class structures already right? What did the Colonists have to lose by shoving the intolerable acts up King George's arse and going it alone? Slavery was already all over the world, so citing it as part of this struggle also is not quite right. These are silly arguments by Professor Zinn, who I generally like reading.
The revolutionary war was nothing at all to do with class struggle. The patriots who declared freedom for any white man, had little to gain by risking treason and fortune on a risky venture that might not pan out. The War was against MONOPOLY of trade by the MICROSOFT/EXXON giant of it's day: The British East India Company who was given EXCLUSIVE rights to trade to the colonies by the tyrant Chimp George (like Halliburton) and authority to set any price they wanted. No one, rich or poor could abide by this abuse for long.
And Zinn's Boston history is completely wrong. Those "farmers" were gun owning/toting Militia Men commanded by George Washington (the richest man in the country), and the only reason [no shot was fired] was because the guns of Ticonderoga showed up on the Dorchester Heights (via Col Henry Knox) above Brit Lord Gauge's/Howe's Redcoat Troops who were helplessly trapped in the town. The British fleet had to move off or be sunk (the ship's cannons could not aim that high to the cliffs.) The redcoats were cutt-off and starving. If this was not a military action, then I don't know what is.
But Marxism produces class struggles just as messy and unfair as capitalism does.
The answer, as most of the founders knew, was to kill off monopolies and kill the cancer called the central bank.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
100,000 Americans died in WWI also, in support of the lies and imperial aims of Wilson regime-era ruling elite. Is it better to die in an utterly pointless foreign war to "save democracy" or to "save the queen"? I don't know.
Colonial aristocrats who favored Revolution did lose money. Being aristocrats, however, it is very likely that their access to credit was easy compared to say, ordinary farmers who were forced to billet Continental or British troops at great expense and often got nothing for their troubles.
Class always matters. Our failure to see it makes it matter even more.
As has been explained before, these royal powers in British Commonwealth countries are purely symbolic and ceremonial. The moment they were exercised without the consent of the parliament, they could simply declare themselves to be a republic and kick the governor general out.
I would be very carful criticising Canada or other Commonwealth country. Their parliamentary systems are far more democratic, responsive, and in spite of being symbolically led by a Queen, far, far, less stifled by opressive decorum and oligharchic influence than the US Congress. Every US member of congress needs to go to Ottwa or Canberra and watch the vigorous debate - even angry shouting, that goes on there. Not a gavel in sight. It is what a democracy should look like.
And we haven't even mentioned all the probelms with this powerful, "unitary executive" who cannot be dismissed except for "high crimes and misdemeanors".
Thanks for bringing a bit of realism to this discussion. I don't know it for fact, but I would suggest that the US next door didn't hurt Canada's argument for leaving. Could easily be wrong, but it is worth considering.
How did a genuine discussion regarding the mythos of America's exceptionalism that pervades a hopelessly credulous populace devolve into inane existentialist query? (unless that is, the latter two comments were in jest, but I doubt it).
Charles Austin Beard [1874-1948] is widely regarded as one of the most influential American historians of the early 20th century. While Beard published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science, he is most widely known for his radical re-evaluation of the Founding Fathers of the United States, whom he believed were more motivated by economics than by philosophical principles.
“The concept of the Constitution as a piece of abstract legislation reflecting no group interests and recognizing no economic antagonisms is entirely false. It was an economic document drawn with superb skill by men whose property interests were immediately at stake.”
Howard Zinn: When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support. The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/3/24/3600602.html
Hence The Whiskey Rebellion.
♪... My daddy, he made whiskey
My granddaddy, he did too
We ain't paid no whiskey tax
Since 1792...♪
-- Copper Kettle (Albert Frank Beddoe)
· Yr Obd't Servant
Then there is the often forgotten policy of the British regarding American slaves. Slaves who escaped their slave-owners and fought for the British were promised freedom. I don't know how many made that choice, how many fought or how many actually recieved the promise of freedom once they were discharged from duty.
Just the idea however, ought to be enough to set off violent spasms in response to the glacier-sized irony. But America is an irony-free society. We don't "do" irony here in America. We're "free" not to trouble ourselves with our own history. Thanks Howard.
Yup, and if you read down the Declaration of independence a bit, after all that flowery language about "inalenable rights", doesn't it make a big deal (after all the fuss about having to pay taxes) about how the British parliament was keeping us from exterminating the savage red men?
Irony-free society indeed!
While it's necessary to look at the class components of the war and the subsequent creation of a national government, and always salutary to look more closely at the narrative fictions in history, Mr. Zinn's conclusion is wrong. What would England have become WITHOUT the loss of the North American colonies? What becomes of a French revolution absent the success of the American one? Even at that, it took more than 150 years to effectively end the idea of monarchical rule altogether.
Even at that, it took more than 150 years to effectively end the idea of monarchical rule altogether.
_________________________________________
Alas! like the unforgettable gruesome scene in "Alien", where the monstrous infant alien incubating inside a spaceship crewman suddenly bursts out through his chest, monstrous monarchical rule has burst through the Constitution and resumed its dominion as if it had never left.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Excellent stuff from Zinn once again. Remember again
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. "
Major General Smedley D. Butler - USMC Retired
Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
When I compare the difference between the US's fight for independence vs India's fight for independence, both from the UK, the fundamental difference I notice is the former was violent while the latter was nonviolent. What has violent revolutions taught us you say? Look closely. Sure, America started out with the Articles of Confederation and violence and rebellion continued. There was no unity but confederacy and individualism. In the meantime, loyalists to England such as Alexander Hamilton who had attached himself to being part of the Founding Fathers along with the rest of them quietly teamed up to peacefully write a Constitution that was somewhat balanced similar to our Indian Constitution. While violence, rebellion, and chaos were still ensuing, more states began to get tired of it and eventually enough of them caught on to the peaceful, even if flawed, idea of the Constitution. There were some things to like and some things not to like but there was always room for compromises. Yesterday, I discussed about using non-violence to counter our corrupt government and I was glad that some people understood Gandhi and one person even understood the Bhagavad Gita. I did meet some cranky people who still believe that violence is the answer to solving our problems. I don't mind peaceful protests but most of them turn violent either because someone gets too loose cannoned about it or security abuses its powers. I have not seen one success out of a bloody protest and even where there appeared to be a success from a protest, the real success came from the peaceful and diplomatic actions rarely discussed about in most history textbooks and classes. I cannot tell you how much insult and torment I had to put up with in high school and college when students would crack violent jokes about Gandhi. If this is the kind of behavior western education rewards, it is no wonder the West tolerates violence as the answer to society's ills. Cee Miracles brought up an excellent analysis of how violence was ingrained into the western culture and the toxic effects it has had ever since this country was founded on violence. No revolution that has been violent has ever been successful without the peaceful resolutions behind the scenes.
"When I compare the difference between the US's fight for independence vs. India's fight for independence, both from the UK, the fundamental difference I notice is the former was violent while the latter was nonviolent"
My understanding of the stream of events that created an independent India diverges from this understanding. I'm not sure one can compare the two "revolutions" successfully without running into some rather gaping and irreconcilable paradigm source and outcome differences. It's the old apples and oranges thing.
Can we talk about Indian independence without including the events that led up to and included the partition of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India? How nonviolent was that? How nonviolent does it continue to be? This is not to imply the failure of Gandhi’s efforts... much to the contrary, but I think such strong and eventually successful nonviolent action can, perhaps, at most hope for a reduction of violence and a renunciation of it as the best way to proceed, as opposed to denying it's historical inevitability and the nature of the changes that it has wrought. The difficulty with most violent change (and really, in the vast majority of human endeavor, has there been another kind?) is that the aftermath of such violence is the seedbed of the next violent upheaval. So we create our children's wars by waging our own.
This is the human habit that must be confronted and broken. Perhaps we are on that path, or at least those of us who understand the absolute need for the end of war as an acceptable human endeavor are. Even if we understand that inter-human violence is something of an inevitability, we believe there is much we can do to mute it and its devastating and suicidal effects if we make war taboo.
I am not sure Canada is a good example either, for as much as the Canadians never broke loose from the UK by waging war, Canada was never prevented from participating willingly as a partner with the UK in that country's wars, and most certainly Canadians were not prevented from waging and participating in the wars against the First Nations there... which in some ways continue unabated, if muted and more reasonably challenged from a culturally wider standpoint in Canadian society.
And to use the Native American genocidal wars, and intermittent Native alliance with the Brits, as a good example of an alternative approach to attaining cultural and national autonomy certainly does not take into consideration the widely inconsistent and contradictory manner in which the Natives of both the United States and Canada were used and employed by the British for their own geopolitical gain and resource advantage. The story of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh contains in itself a rather complete inventory of how the English mistreated, squandered and betrayed Native Americans at every step during their occupation and gradual withdrawal from Native American homelands. Actually the French have a better, but still pretty miserable, record as far as that is concerned.
To dream of a time when wars are taboo, and inter "tribal" massacre and bloodletting more and more a rarity, and less and less a routine and normalized method used by the powerful (and responded to in kind by the powerless or less powerful) to establish and maintain autonomy and adequate per capita resource allocation and/or great and inequitable advantage is good, but to allege or even imply that it has been done significantly in any other way in human history, I think, is a bit dishonest and relegates the huge task of managing and healing the great and long long lasting inter tribal rifts to a less essential part of the task of going forward without war than it actually must be.
"Can we talk about Indian independence without including the events that led up to and included the partition of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India? How nonviolent was that? How nonviolent does it continue to be?"
Sure. But, if you are going to talk about partition, you need to talk about the British role in stoking the fires of partition, in helping to provide the fuel for it.
of course!
"MANY HAVE shaken their heads as they have said, "But you can't teach nonviolence to the masses. It is only possible for individuals and that too in rare cases." That is, in my opinion, a gross self-deception. If mankind was not habitually nonviolent, it would have been self-destroyed ages ago. But in the duel between forces of violence and nonviolence, the latter have always come out victorious in the end.
The truth is that we have not had patience enough to wait and apply ourselves whole-heartedly to the spread of nonviolence among the people as a means for political ends.
I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law-to the strength of the spirit....
The rishis who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of violence were greater geniuses than Newton. They were themselves known the use of arms, they realized their uselessness, and taught a weary world that its salvation lay not through violence but through nonviolence."
-M.K. Gandhi
Thanks for this quote!
Are you familiar with the successful "violence" (really just corporate and government property damage, which I don't consider "violence") in obtaining the arrest of the killer of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California this last January?
Didn't India also have armed factions in it's fight for independence?
And you even seem to be opposing even nonviolent protest. What are you proposing in it's place? And the idea of "loose cannons" sound's like typical police propaganda. Have you ever actually been to a mass protest? Do you know what the word "solidarity" means?
There you go again misquoting, cherrypicking, and twisting words with revisionist propaganda. No wonder the country is poorly educated. Why have a protest at all when none have shown to work?
"Didn't India also have armed factions in it's fight for independence?"
Say what you want but if it weren't for Gandhi, no one would have been energized to speak out. You remind me of the NRA cultist gangs who always believe that guns and violence are the answer. The armed factions were the religious cultists anyway.
"And the idea of "loose cannons" sound's like typical police propaganda. "
Since when did the term loose cannon sound like police propaganda? You sound more like a gun toting average Joe blow who believes in violence.
"And you even seem to be opposing even nonviolent protest. What are you proposing in it's place? ... Have you ever actually been to a mass protest? Do you know what the word "solidarity" means?"
Protests rarely change outcomes. I've seen friends of mine go to protests and even in peaceful ones, they almost always turn violent. Solidarity has nothing to do with protests and violence. Solidarity is about unity, something that's lacking here. Protesters can vent their anger or even try to resort to violence but those people have no regards for the safety of not only their own lives but in fact those of their group members joining in the protests. I resort to silent and peaceful methods of countering tyranny and this has been discussed in yesterday's post on Obama going against liberal advocacy groups. I don't resort to protesting loudly when I know that they will rarely listen. Instead, I pass around flyers when I find interesting people to challenge those in power. Since I am not a rich criminal and since there's no public unity, I'd be surprised if my efforts actually won but I still try and don't mind asking others to do the same so that we all can feel proud. Perhaps there's a silent and peaceful protest that I like. It's called knowledge and voting. Even I don't admit to be all-knowing.
On Gandhi:
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=558&issue=123
Perhaps there exists idealist conception and the debate of violence and non-violence.
Thanks for the link.
So Gandhi, first and foremost, found a view of the world in terms of class to be repugnant. No doubt he was also an "anti-materialist", ready to denounce the materialist dialectic of socialism in a minute, but blind to the materialist basis of capitalist and British imperialist power.
So, by not recognizing that only common working class material interests could unite Hindu and Muslim, he condemned his county to schism and horrible bloodshed.
This explains a lot concerning the decline of my local "peace and justice center" which reached the peak of effectiveness and visibility in the peroid from 2001 to 2005 when largely run by leftists which united many disparate groups under one banner - respect for diversity of tactics. But it has since withered under attack from the bourgeois Catholic and Quaker spiritual-pacifists, who view their form of pacifism - which opposes any form of property actions or occupations and views pacifism as not a tactic, but as a religion and thereby a means in and of itself. And like most religions it isn't very tolerant.
Hopefully, the progressives would work towards creating alliances of Marxist/Anarchist left as well as religious left (Liberation Theology, Mohammad Taha, Ali Sharitai and many others). If I'm not wrong, the whole working class, the peasants and the indigenous people throughout the world are facing the worst times from the late 70s, and a movement against the onslaught of capitalism should be emancipatory for all (the oppressed that is also the majority) where a number of them are religious.
in solidarity,
Yes, because if only Gandhi had recognised that "that only common working class material interests could unite Hindu and Muslim," he could have prevented partition, schism and horrible bloodshed.
"I've seen friends of mine go to protests and even in peaceful ones, they almost always turn violent."
Are you referring to ones in the Unites States or in India?
I have been to many demonstrations in the US over the past 10 years - organized by ANSWER, United for Peace and Justice, and our local peace and justice center, and even our local anarchist organization. Additionally my wife attended protests in India in conjunction with the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai. With the exception of a few cases of police attacking protesters in a completely unprovoked manner (in the US), all protests were quite nonviolent - that is, assuming that you don't consider impeding traffic or blocking entrances to military recruiting stations or military robotics research centers to be violent.
Undeclaration
It was a good idea once
inalienable rights and the abolition
of tyranny but
we've mucked it up, this great
American Experiment
our own inbred aristocracy madder
that noon-baked Englishmen with
crimes and usurpations running amok,
torn bodies and new hatreds in every
casbah tentacles
in every pocket and a
knife at every throat
and we wage slave
descendants of the free, the
not so free
sinking in the refuse of yesterday's bargains
punch clocked and jackbooting our way
to the fossil record at the speed of credit
with no payments 'till January --
a toxic spoor of ruined
places, broken lives and gulags.
We had a bad run but it's time
to come clean,
to admit our failure to
examine the bloody Manifest
of our imagined Destiny.
Time to Repent
for mass graves and wars of false premise,
for all those dictators, our murky turkeys lurking
in every hot satrapy with trained goons keeping
bloody order and a quota of disappeared.
Time to admit
it was all a mistake
made in the bravado of our youth and
rejoin the Commonwealth
Stop seeing stars and turn in our
bloody stripes
be British again
take tea and healthcare claim
our place lordless
in the house of commons where
Empire is only a memory
best forgotten.
-- Al Markowitz
Wow JP! Where did you find this guy (Al Markowitz)? He's (horrifically)brilliant. Ringing more true with each new outrage. Obama forcing "missile defense" on the world and NATO expansion on Russia, Obama using Biden to signal "go!" on an Israeli Iran attack, Obama flipping on Guantanamo, torture, "openness", indefinite detention, rendition, domestic, warrantless wiretaps, the health care "public option", mountain top removal, NAFTA, cap and trade (they were supposed to auction the credits not give them away to polluters). Even the energy stimulus dollars are stuck in the pipeline, while millions take home pink slips.
That big, sad bell just keeps tolling and we keep tuning it out, even when it's so loud it makes our teeth hurt (there's always beer and vicodin for that...).
buena suerte JP
Time to revolt.
Time to remove them.
They won't go quietly.
Let me add a big SO WHAT about Canadian interdependence with England. Canadians seem to be good people. I have never met a canadian politician. But, I believe they are very similar to the ones we have in the US - not interested in the personal freedom of the citizenry. Our independence means sovereignty. We should be able to practice sovereignty over our own lives as citizens. Yet, national independence is not the same as personal freedom.
I celebrate the 4th of July as a symbol of hoped-for greater personal freedom. I agree with Zinn on one important point the sense of freedom we need is where we seek to promote a nonviolent approach to strife and chaos.
The things we were never taught in History (along with the truth about how the Shah came to power in Iran and so many other events I didn't learn until adulthood, and only then because I chose to read books I was never exposed to in high school or college). Thanks, Howard Zinn.
And what of the War Between the States? Was it necessary to, in effect, "stab slavery to death with bayonets" in order to destroy it? Was it necessary to lay waste to the South in order to bring it back into the Union? And how about the North effectively leaving the freedmen to Southern vengeance in the form of the Jim Crow laws after 1877?
As Mr. Zinn finishes his essay, "Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.
"We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities."
I don't think many historians would claim the Civil War was primarily fought to end slavery. Certainly not Zinn.
If you look at the history, the issue of Slavery in the new territories was splitting the Union.
Lincoln's reason at first was to keep the Slave States from leaving the Union but slavery was the big issue tangled up with States Rights in the beginning and grew as the main issue with the Emancipation Proclamation.
States Rights was also about the right of states to own slaves... Lincoln at first wanted to avoid the inevitable bloody confrontation.
Sure there were other issues but not as big and unavoidable as Slavery.
While Canada was still considered a colony, they passed laws that outlawed slavery. This some 20 years before it happened in the rest of the empire.
There was no war fought. They just got together and decided it the right thing to do.
All good points to remember... and also the violence of the American Revolutionary War could have been a motive for Canada's peaceful transition plus lots of Tories moved to Canada to escape the violence.
We might remember too that all the Rebels caught by the British and especially the signers of the Declaration of Independence would have been hung and their bodies cut to pieces as a warning to any Canadian ideas of independence.
The fact that we won the war gave notice to the old empire that a new empire with some new rules is growin... and now both empires are joined at the hip anyway.
The Revolutionary War was a great event in history in any case and to say with certainty that we would have been better off without it or that the British for sure would have kept the Indian lands for the Indians forever and abolished slavery is possible but I am not sure about that. The Brits favored the South in the Civil War so the slavery argument is weak to me.
I am sure that we create our own history and War is not the answer.
Now is everywhere
The one place in the Empire where slavery was never legal was England itself. In 1772 a slaveowner brought a slave to England, the slave escaped, the owner sued to have his "property" returned. Lord Mansfield ruled for the erstwhile slave, supposedly saying that "the very air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe."
A different point: I wonder how much of the peaceable character of Canadians was influenced by the large number of American Loyalists who moved to Canada after the success of the War of Independence.
Rainborowe
The Mansfield ruling is something that the people who want to trumpet the greatness of the American Revolution want to ignore.
Not only did the Mansfield ruling render slavery illegal in England, there were concerns among the slaveowning American colonialists that it would render slavery illegal in the American colonies. One reason why the revolution happened.
rfloh--
The Mansfield ruling did not "render slavery illegal in England." Mansfield found that slavery did not exist in England, had not existed and never could. I think in his original ruling he said something like, "There's nothing for it but to let the fellow go"--the flowery stuff about the air of England is probably apocryphal. Slavery continued to exist in the West Indies, however, until 1833 or so, although the slave trade ended in 1805 and the Royal Navy was charged with stopping all slavers of any nationality on the high seas and returning the slaves to Africa. This was one of the major grievances of Americans in the run-up to the War of 1812 although it's one rarely mentioned by history teachers in the US.
Rainborowe
>>A different point: I wonder how much of the peaceable character of Canadians was influenced by the large number of American Loyalists who moved to Canada after the success of the War of Independence
In John Ralston Sauls "A Fair Country" the case is made that the reason for this is because of Canadas ABORIGINAL Heritage.
Now for some reason I posted on this a few minutes back but the post seems to have vansihed so rather then go through it all again...
>>In this startlingly original vision of Canada, thinker John Ralston Saul unveils 3 founding myths. Saul argues that the famous "peace, order, and good government" that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country's true nature. Every single document before the BNA Act, he points out, used the phrase "peace, welfare, and good government," demonstrating that the well-being of its citizenry was paramount. He also argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by aboriginal ideas: egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. Another obstacle to progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink its future.
If one reads "Champlains Dream" which was written by an American Historian many of the same topics are touched on.
The fact is in very many ways our Aboriginal tribes were FAR more democratic then were the Governments of the powers that called themseleves such.
As example when the tribes called a meeting to decide to go to war with another tribe, there was no OBLIGATION to do so. They would meet for many days discussing whether or not to go. Each Individual of the tribe was allowed to speak. If a War Chief was listened to by enough members of the tribe they would join him in the raid. Others who did NOT agree simply did not go. Thewy were not "punished" for refusing. If they refused it was because the Person calling for war did not make his case.
That makes sense. I remember reading about Meskepetoon as a teenager (I'm sure I've mis-spelled his name). Also many of the British settlers in Canada were lone Scotsmen from the Highlands, hunters and trappers, and there was quite a lot of inter-action and inter-marriage between them and Aboriginal people.
Rainborowe
Zinn also addressed the Civil War and World War II as unquestioned "holy wars" or "just wars". See Howard Zinn's "Three Holy Wars" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUBYI97cUgU which is a 37 minute video of his speech.
People who advocate killing of people for whatever reasons are guilty of murder--people who believe in peace are indeed the children of God and shall enter into the Kingdom of God. Today or in the past, even beyound tomorrow it will be the same.
well, if Canada was free of England, why could the queen shut down their parliament?
Oh, for pete's sake! I doubt that it'll do much good, but here's the briefest possible explanation.
Unlike the U.S. with it's "unitary executive", Canada is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy with The Queen as Sovereign, a largely ceremonial and symbolic role. As a constitutional monarch who may be called upon from time to time to act on the advice of Parliament, the Queen acts as Queen of Canada, quite distinctive from her role in the United Kingdom or any of her other realms.
As usual, great words from a thoughtful and wise human being.
Concupiscent propagation of ignorance frames, ignites, and fuels war. The cognitive distortions of these purveyors of ignorance have definitions. Google "Thinking Errors" to learn more. In our world, ignorance is not bliss, it's malignant. Malignancy of any kind eventually affects the health of the host. Fight it by sharing the truth.
We have come a long way from the time that logic and democracy were born in the same part of the world and were tied at the hip. We need more rational argument these days.
"Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England?" Hmmm. That's a very interesting question about the legitimacy of imperial colonial governence raised on behalf of a colony whose occupancy and oppression might itself be questioned. Who was really the foreign presence? Who was really the "occupier" and who the "occupied"?
It's not my usual habit to repost my own prior comments, but I hope I may be forgiven for reposting this one regarding July 4th celebrations as it seems to belong here.
__
Happy Fourth of July and all that. But perhaps someone could clarify for me exactly what U.S. revolutionary precepts have been preserved and are currently being celebrated by its populace.
Let's see. There was, if I remember my history correctly, the "no taxation without representation" issue. So today you've got yourselves a so-called "representative" legislature. The only fly in that ointment is that it's actually a wholly owned subsidiary of USA Incorporated and no longer represents you and your interests at all, if it ever really did. And PLEASE don't tell me that its next red/blue facade switch will fix that.
Then there was that nasty old constitutional monarchy bound by "quaint" notions like Magna Carta and habeas corpus. Well, you've certainly "improved" on that with an unconstitutional presidency combining C-in-C/Head-of-State/Head-of-Government functions in a singular "unitary executive" office without any day-to-day parliamentary accountability and with assumed never-ending war powers (indefinite detention without trial, "death-by-drone" on command, etc., etc.) that George III could only dream of.
And speaking of poor ol' porphyric George, he really should have granted Washington his much sought after king's commission in the regular British army. Instead, the silly fool got Washington really PO'd by frustrating his westward land speculation with that 1763 proclamation honoring treaties and prohibiting colonial settlement west of the Appalachian mountains in an effort to ease tensions with the native population. Some monarchs just don't seem to understand that treaties and other constitutional "supreme laws" are mere pieces of paper to be dealt with via "signing statements" and "executive findings." Damnable imperial tyrants!
But I guess the straw that really broke the camel's back, so to speak, was the British demand for colonial financial support for their imperial protection -- not an unusual "protection" demand from imperial powers of any age it would appear. It must be granted that nominal ownership of the imperium and its protection rackets does appear to have shifted somewhat since then, but it's far from clear that ordinary U.S. citizens have derived much benefit from that titular change either.
So I ask again. Could someone please elucidate for me on the precise bases for the current celebrations apart from the ever-present "rocket's red glare" on every horizon and an imperial flag that now incites much more hatred than love and admiration around the world. If it's the old Roman "oderint dum metuant" thing (let them hate so long as they fear) it didn't seem to work out too well in the end for the originators of the concept. For that matter, how does it differ from the more recent imperial forces whose defeat you celebrate as a victory for "freedom and democracy" and all that other good stuff?
CV: as you know Nationalism: "la religion civile" is one of the most powerful tools for political indoctrination and mobilization. I am glad you refer to the "imperial flag" I call it that as well. The national myths and symbols on the 4th are so distorted and hypocritical, yet very powerful in indoctrinating the public with an imperial ideology.
Similar to Zinn, I am proud of ordinary Americans' struggles against injustices and crimes; I do not revere the 'founding fathers' as we are taught to; I do not revere the ruling wealthy elite, they are my enemy, not my friend. I honor ordinary Americans who have worked, suffered and died, and continue to suffer under hypocrisy, lies and injustice.
"What? the land of the Free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!"
We all die. Why do we live?
I live to chant HELL NO, DON'T GO!! Once in the morning, twice after noon and three times in the evening.
my favorite answer is: to compassionately relieve the suffering of others
my personal answer is: to passionately relieve the sexual suffering of others
regarding the american revolution, and truth...when the truth can be born broken, then quickly change so dramatically, even between yesterday and today, what tattered bits of truth, however thin to begin with, survive two hundreds, or two thousands of years? None, really...nothing firm enough to hang your hat on, anyway...
keep up the good work, nedlud...
You live so that you may marvel at what consciousness wrought.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days