Resist
Dec 21, 2011 12:48:37 GMT -5
Post by Michael Downing on Dec 21, 2011 12:48:37 GMT -5
It is time to discuss not if we resist but how and when do we resist. It is past time to blow on that "ember of Jeffersonian democracy that now and then gives off an uncertain, feeble, and futile spark." Tis article was discussed today on the Mike Church Show. Worth the entire read...
A Little Rebellion
by Clyde N. Wilson • November 3, 2011
Scandalously, Thomas Jefferson once wrote to James Madison, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and is as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
In the same year, 1787, in regard to what is known as Shays’ Rebellion, he wrote another friend, “God forbid that we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.” A lack of rebelliousness among the people would demonstrate “a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. . . . And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?”
The “rebellion” in Massachusetts had alarmed many, especially the masters of that commonwealth, who were imbued with a Puritan longing for regulated behavior and saw the tax revolt of Capt. Daniel Shays and his farmers as a threat to their control. In Jefferson’s perspective, the “rebels” were merely adhering to good American practice. What, indeed, had the recent War of Independence amounted to but resistance to heavy-handed government? And such rebellions against unsatisfactory government officials and policies had been a regular occurrence during the long colonial history of the Americans, especially in the Southern colonies....
later...
"The Puritan conquest of the North was not as easy as has been thought, but was accomplished by about 1850. James Fenimore Cooper in his Littlepage trilogy describes and laments how the unique Anglo-Dutch society of old New York was transformed by the swarm of immigrants from east of the Hudson. Meanwhile, Emerson went to Europe and absorbed the Germanized version of the French Revolution, which was really just going back to his Puritan roots. He came home a Unitarian. The mission was changed, but the intensity of the need to correct the world to conform to the New England plan remained the same. It soon brought to heel the West and the unruly Catholic immigrants.
The South was a different matter. It had developed from a different base and in a different way. Southerners were proud and determined to do it their way, individually and as a people. The South could not be converted or subverted, so it had to be destroyed, the grapes of wrath had to be trampled out. A 30-year campaign of slander and hatred, combined with economic developments, finally brought on in 1861 the circumstances in which this could be accomplished. Americans like to think that their campaign for the abolition of slavery was all about benevolence and liberty. A bit of genuine historical research into what they actually said at the time paints a different picture. The Yankees hated slavery because the slaves were a non-Anglo-Saxon element who had, in their view, hopelessly corrupted white Southerners. In the slaveholding society, white men had far too much liberty and independent power. Such liberty offended puritan sensibilities and created an evil disposition to thwart New England economic and cultural hegemony. It was not that the black man had too little liberty; it was that the Southern white man had far too much.
That crusade pretty well finished off Jeffersonian democracy. As Gen. R.E. Lee wrote to Lord Acton the year after his surrender, “the consolidation of the States into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home,” was the precursor of American ruin. Lincoln rightly remains the truly representative American. He is the symbol of the highly successful synthesis of capitalist oligarchy, puritan conformity, and perpetual social revolution from the top down that is the mainstream of American life. There are many who find that synthesis beautiful, though most often they do not really understand what it is, identifying with one or another of the elements and not with the combination itself. Money rules and permits a politics that consists almost entirely of sham battles between the old puritans, the “conservatives,” and the secular ones, the “liberals.” From time to time they all join together in a messianic war to destroy the latest menace to Lincoln’s vision: the South, the kaiser, the Red Menace, drugs, terror, etc.
They share the sense that the meaning of “America” is a mission to bring the abstract ideals of the American standard to all mankind. The only difference is that the “conservatives” want to do it by force, and the “liberals” by welfare. A Jeffersonian, if any still existed, would insist that Americans are not here to be used for anybody’s mission, and the proper point of reference is what is good for them.
The Jeffersonian spirit survived for a while underground, and now and then a weak and confused revival occurred, as in the days of William Jennings Bryan and populism. The last significant appearance was perhaps the agrarian, non-Marxist critique of capitalism in the 1930’s. Nowhere to be seen now are the old Jeffersonians, once a major American type, rebellious men who dared defend the rights of themselves and their communities from outside impositions. But buried somewhere deep in the American soul is a tiny ember of Jeffersonian democracy that now and then gives off an uncertain, feeble, and futile spark."
www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2011/11/03/a-little-rebellion/
A Little Rebellion
by Clyde N. Wilson • November 3, 2011
Scandalously, Thomas Jefferson once wrote to James Madison, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and is as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
In the same year, 1787, in regard to what is known as Shays’ Rebellion, he wrote another friend, “God forbid that we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.” A lack of rebelliousness among the people would demonstrate “a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. . . . And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?”
The “rebellion” in Massachusetts had alarmed many, especially the masters of that commonwealth, who were imbued with a Puritan longing for regulated behavior and saw the tax revolt of Capt. Daniel Shays and his farmers as a threat to their control. In Jefferson’s perspective, the “rebels” were merely adhering to good American practice. What, indeed, had the recent War of Independence amounted to but resistance to heavy-handed government? And such rebellions against unsatisfactory government officials and policies had been a regular occurrence during the long colonial history of the Americans, especially in the Southern colonies....
later...
"The Puritan conquest of the North was not as easy as has been thought, but was accomplished by about 1850. James Fenimore Cooper in his Littlepage trilogy describes and laments how the unique Anglo-Dutch society of old New York was transformed by the swarm of immigrants from east of the Hudson. Meanwhile, Emerson went to Europe and absorbed the Germanized version of the French Revolution, which was really just going back to his Puritan roots. He came home a Unitarian. The mission was changed, but the intensity of the need to correct the world to conform to the New England plan remained the same. It soon brought to heel the West and the unruly Catholic immigrants.
The South was a different matter. It had developed from a different base and in a different way. Southerners were proud and determined to do it their way, individually and as a people. The South could not be converted or subverted, so it had to be destroyed, the grapes of wrath had to be trampled out. A 30-year campaign of slander and hatred, combined with economic developments, finally brought on in 1861 the circumstances in which this could be accomplished. Americans like to think that their campaign for the abolition of slavery was all about benevolence and liberty. A bit of genuine historical research into what they actually said at the time paints a different picture. The Yankees hated slavery because the slaves were a non-Anglo-Saxon element who had, in their view, hopelessly corrupted white Southerners. In the slaveholding society, white men had far too much liberty and independent power. Such liberty offended puritan sensibilities and created an evil disposition to thwart New England economic and cultural hegemony. It was not that the black man had too little liberty; it was that the Southern white man had far too much.
That crusade pretty well finished off Jeffersonian democracy. As Gen. R.E. Lee wrote to Lord Acton the year after his surrender, “the consolidation of the States into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home,” was the precursor of American ruin. Lincoln rightly remains the truly representative American. He is the symbol of the highly successful synthesis of capitalist oligarchy, puritan conformity, and perpetual social revolution from the top down that is the mainstream of American life. There are many who find that synthesis beautiful, though most often they do not really understand what it is, identifying with one or another of the elements and not with the combination itself. Money rules and permits a politics that consists almost entirely of sham battles between the old puritans, the “conservatives,” and the secular ones, the “liberals.” From time to time they all join together in a messianic war to destroy the latest menace to Lincoln’s vision: the South, the kaiser, the Red Menace, drugs, terror, etc.
They share the sense that the meaning of “America” is a mission to bring the abstract ideals of the American standard to all mankind. The only difference is that the “conservatives” want to do it by force, and the “liberals” by welfare. A Jeffersonian, if any still existed, would insist that Americans are not here to be used for anybody’s mission, and the proper point of reference is what is good for them.
The Jeffersonian spirit survived for a while underground, and now and then a weak and confused revival occurred, as in the days of William Jennings Bryan and populism. The last significant appearance was perhaps the agrarian, non-Marxist critique of capitalism in the 1930’s. Nowhere to be seen now are the old Jeffersonians, once a major American type, rebellious men who dared defend the rights of themselves and their communities from outside impositions. But buried somewhere deep in the American soul is a tiny ember of Jeffersonian democracy that now and then gives off an uncertain, feeble, and futile spark."
www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2011/11/03/a-little-rebellion/