Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
August 21, 2017
Hello All – Ripples from the recent events at Charlottesville continue to rock the American political scene. CFOW did what it could to keep the cradle rocking with an excellent rally last Saturday, partnering with the Greenburgh Human Rights Advisory Council and Hastings RISE. About 100 people attended the rally. You can see an excellent set of rally pictures by Andrew Courtney here; an interview with Greenburgh's Stu Hackel and other rally-goers here; and an article from the Journal-News here. But ours was not the biggest rally in the USA! Check out this story about the rally in Boston, where 40,000 people showed up. And lest we forget what brought us to this point, reposted here is the powerful 30-minute documentary from Vice News about the white supremacist/Nazi groups that showed up in Charlottesville to kill a 32-year-old woman named Heather Heyer.
President Trump goes on TV tonight to announce that he will send several thousand more troops to Afghanistan. You can read The New York Times version of his decision here, and a powerful critique by former Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh, who resigned from his position in Afghanistan in protest against President Obama's 2009 "surge" here. In addition to the death and destruction that this will bring to the people of Afghanistan, Trump's announcement tonight may mark a further militarization of US policy, something that Trump campaigned against and, in the case of Afghanistan, seems insane. We may soon know more about the relationship between this militarization and the firing of White House adviser Steve Bannon, who – despite his many faults – spoke out repeatedly against continuing the war in Afghanistan and going to war with North Korea. The influence of former generals on Trump's inner circle of foreign policy advisers now seems complete. The antiwar movement very likely faces military escalation on several fronts, with the possible addition of wars against North Korea and Iran. Hard times coming.
Finally, two articles linked below speak to the massive civilian casualties suffered by the residents of the Iraqi city Mosul over the ten months of assault on their city by Iraqi and US forces. The base line for civilian casualties seems to be 40,000 – far beyond the several hundred claimed by the Pentagon; and it is likely that the real numbers will rise as the rubble is removed. There has been little outcry against this cold-blooded slaughter from our political, intellectual, and media elite. Yet the Pentagon's absurd efforts to deny the obvious indicates – at least to me – that "civilian casualties" is a sensitive area for them, not in terms of trying to minimize them in reality, but in covering them up. While antiwar activists can't do much to actually stop the wars now going on, we can express outrage and demand accountability for the military strategies and tactics that kill so many non-combatants. Here we might try to channel the great British pacifist Vera Brittain ("Testament of Youth"), who protested against the saturation bombing of Germany ("Massacre by Bombing" – 1944), even while Germany was bombing England. Civilian casualties are not "collateral damage," they are people: mothers, fathers, children, strangers, friends.
News Notes
More attention should be paid to the recent decision by the federal appeals court that reaffirmed New York State's decision to block a 124-mile natural gas pipeline project. The US Court of Appeals said that NY had the right to deny a Clean Water Act permit to four companies planning to construct the Constitution Pipeline, which would have carried fracked gas from Pennsylvania to eastern New York State. Read more about this important legal victory here.
Dick Gregory died last week. A very funny comedian, Gregory got involved in the civil rights movement in 1962, and henceforth became a strong force for social justice. You can read about his life and contributions to humanity here and here.
Donald Trump's recent off-the-cuff threat against the government of Venezuela simply surfaces the decade-long US attempt to destroy Venezuela's "Chavez Revolution." CFOW friend Eva Golinger discusses "the Why of Venezuela's Crisis" on a recent edition of Majority Report (beginning at minute 18); and here is a useful explanation of the work of Venezuela's new "Constituent Assembly."
Last Friday the Brian Lehrer Show aired a bevy of interviews with authors of recent books. I think you will find particularly interesting the interview with Indian novelist Arundhati Roy about her wonderful new book, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness; and also this interview with Naomi Klein that focuses on her new book, No Is Not Enough, and on "five steps to resist President Trump's "shock politics." (h/t BT).
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a vigil/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our vigils are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or the Hudson River barges are targeted from time to time, depending on current events. CFOW also holds a meeting on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. And of course we welcome contributions to support our work; please make your check out to "CFOW" and mail it to PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
Thanks for reading this newsletter; and here are some rewards for your effort. First up is Phil Och's great song "Power and Glory," with an extra verse in this version. And here you can hear nature writer Annie Dillard reading from an essay describing her experience witnessing a total eclipse (h/t KT). Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Is There Any Point to Protesting?
By Nathan Heller, The New Yorker [August 21, 2017]
---- For centuries, on the right and the left alike, it has been an article of faith that, in moments of sharp civic discontent, you and I and everyone we know can take to the streets, demanding change. The First Amendment enshrines such efforts, protecting "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." From the Stamp Act boycotts of the seventeen-sixties to the 1913 suffrage parade and the March on Washington, in 1963, protesters have pushed proudly through our history. Along the way, they have given us great—well, playable—songs. Abroad, activism drove the Arab Spring and labor movements in Macau. All this expressiveness, we think, is good. Still, what has protest done for us lately? [Read More]
The Lasting Pain from Vietnam Silence
By Ray McGovern, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) [August 21, 2017]
---- Ecclesiastes says there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. The fortieth anniversary of the ugly end of the US adventure in Vietnam is a time to speak and especially of the squandered opportunities that existed earlier in the war to blow the whistle and stop the killing. While my friend Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 eventually helped to end the war, Ellsberg is the first to admit that he waited too long to reveal the unconscionable deceit that brought death and injury to millions. I regret that, at first out of naiveté and then cowardice, I waited even longer until my own truth-telling no longer really mattered for the bloodshed in Vietnam. [Read More]
How (Not) to Challenge Racist Violence
By Aviva Chomsky, Common Dreams [August 20, 2017]
---- As white nationalism and the so-called "alt-Right" have gained prominence in the Trump era, a bipartisan reaction has coalesced to challenge these ideologies. … Protesters are eager to expend extraordinary energy denouncing these small-scale racist actors, or celebrating vigilante-style responses. But what about the large-scale racist actors? There has been no comparable mobilization, in fact little mobilization at all, against what Martin Luther King called "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today"—the United States government, which dropped 72 bombs per day in 2016, primarily in Iraq and Syria, but also in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, making every single day 9/11 in those countries. … Let us be very clear. The white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, hate-filled and repugnant as their goals may be, are not the ones responsible for the U.S. wars on Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. … If we truly want to challenge racism, oppression, and inequality, we should turn our attention away from the few hundred marchers in Charlottesville and towards the real sources and enforcers of our unjust global order. They are not hard to find. [Read More]
Playing Politics with the World's Future
By Alastair Crooke, Consortium News [August 6, 2017]
---- Finally … the U.S. Congress has produced a piece of legislation. And it passed with quasi-unanimous, bi-partisan support. Only its substance is not so much a deep reflection on the foreign policy interests of America, but rather, the desire to hurt, and incapacitate the U.S. President in any future dealings with Russia. (And never mind the worrying impulse towards conflict with Russia this entails, or its collateral damage on others). The aim has been to see President Trump hog-tied, and "tarred and feathered" for his "risky behavior" on Russia. This aim simply has overpowered any other considerations – such as likelihood that the outside world will conclude that America's ability to pursue or even to have a foreign policy is non-existent in the face of its internal civil war. It is a key juncture. For an overwhelming majority of Democratic and Republican Senators and Congressmen, bringing down "The Donald" is all – and the devil take the consequences for America, in the world. [Read More].
How Did Guam Become a Target of North Korean Missiles?
By Catherine Lutz, Common Dreams [August 18, 2017]
---- Guam doesn't feel like a target. When I have visited the island over the course of the past several decades, it has struck me as one of the most wildly beautiful places on earth, with an endless turquoise sea, dramatic limestone cliffs, and impossibly green hills, and one of the most welcoming. It residents' contemporary Chamorro cultural values emphasize family, generosity, non-confrontation, and respect for one's elders, neighbors, and guests. But a target it is and was. … It is not clear what would have happened in the late 1940s if the US had followed the UN Charter's requirement for decolonization, a process then beginning everywhere around the world. To follow that US-supported charter would have required a vote on whether Guam, like all colonies, was to become an independent nation. Instead the US, fearing loss of a military asset, unilaterally made the people of Guam US citizens, even if second class, unable to vote for President or have voting representation in Congress. … It is high time the US get into compliance with the UN Charter's basic promise of self-determination for each of the world's people and allow the people of Guam to decide whether they feel more secure as a nuclear target or a demilitarized island. [Read More]
Mainstream Media Tutorial
Two Sides to Every Issue: The Tedium Twins Debate the Crucifixion, Slavery, and Cannibalism
[FB – There are two – and only two – sides to every story. That's has been the mantra of mainstream journalism for several decades. For a decade, the MacNeil-Lehrer Report on PBS (now "The News Hour") raised this to the level of caricature – ("And now for another view of Hitler…"). – In his 2007 book End Times: Death of the Fourth Estate, the late Alexander Cockburn wrote an entertaining, but also illuminating, essay on the false binaries of modern journalism.]
Robert MacNeil (voice over): A Galilean preacher claims he is the Redeemer and says the poor are blessed. Should he be crucified? The Roman procurator in Jerusalem is trying to decide whether a man regarded by many as a saint should be put to death. Pontius Pilate is being urged by civil libertarians to intervene in what is seen here in Rome as being basically a local dispute. Tonight, the crucifixion debate. Jim?
Jim Lehrer: Robin, the provinces of Judaea and Galilee have always been trouble spots, and this year is no exception. The problem is part religious, part political, and in many ways a mixture of both. The Jews believe in one god. Discontent in the province has been growing, with many local businessmen complaining about the tax burden. Terrorism, particularly in Galilee, has been on the increase. In recent months, a carpenter's son from the town of Nazareth has been attracting a large following with novel doctrines and faith healing. He recently entered Jerusalem amid popular acclaim, but influential Jewish leaders fear his power. Here in Alexandria the situation is seen as dangerous. Robin? [Read much more].
WAR & PEACE
Americans Once Carpet-Bombed North Korea. It's Time to Remember That Past
---- It was 64 years ago that North Koreans emerged from this war into a living nightmare, after three years of "rain and ruin" by the US air force. Pyongyang had been razed to the ground, with the Air Force stating in official documents that the North's cities suffered greater damage than German and Japanese cities firebombed during World War II. Just as the Japan scholar Richard Minear termed Truman's atomic attacks "exterminationist", the great French writer and film-maker Chris Marker wrote after a visit to the North in 1957: "Extermination crossed this land." It was an indelible experience still drilled into the heads of every North Korean. On my first visit to Pyongyang in 1981, a guide quickly brought up the bombing and said it had killed several of his family members. Wall posters depicted a wizened old woman in the midst of the bombing, declaring "American imperialists – wolves". [Read More] Cumings also wrote an excellent, longer piece on US-Korean history last May: "A Murderous History of Korea," London Review of Books [May 18, 2017] [Link].
Also useful in understanding US-North Korea - Lawrence Wilkerson, "North Korea Crisis Paved by Clinton-Era Pols, GOP Naysayers," August 18, 2017]
[Link]; Jon Schwartz, "We Can Stop North Korea From Attacking Us. All We Have to Do Is Not Attack Them," The Intercept [[Link]; Andrew Cockburn, "Don't Believe the Alarmist Propaganda About North Korea," Truth Dig [August 16, 2017] [Link]; and Jason Ditz, "North Korea Sees Planned US-South Korea Wargames as 'Catastrophe,'" Antiwar.com [August 18, 2017] [Link].
Endtimes in Mosul
By Patrick Cockburn, London Review of Books [August 2017]
---- Nobody knows for sure how many civilians were killed in the city as a whole. For long periods, shells, rockets and bombs rained down on houses in which as many as a hundred people might be sheltering. 'Kurdish intelligence believes that over forty thousand civilians have been killed as a result of massive firepower used against them,' Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's former foreign minister, told me. People have disputed that figure, but bear in mind the sheer length of the siege – 267 days between 17 October 2016 and 10 July 2017 – and the amount of ordnance fired into a small area full of people. The Iraqi government ludicrously claims that more of its soldiers died than civilians, but refuses to disclose the number of military casualties and has banned the media from west Mosul. On his website Musings on Iraq, Joel Wing gives a figure of 13,106 civilian fatalities based on media and other reports, but adds that 'the real number of casualties from the fighting in Mosul is much higher.' [Read More]
Covering Up the Massacre of Mosul
By Nicolas J S Davies, Consortium News [August 21, 2017]
---- Iraqi Kurdish military intelligence reports have estimated that the nine-month-long U.S.-Iraqi siege and bombardment of Mosul to oust Islamic State forces killed 40,000 civilians. This is the most realistic estimate so far of the civilian death toll in Mosu The Kurdish intelligence reports raise serious questions about the U.S. military's own statements regarding civilian deaths in its bombing of Iraq and Syria since 2014. As recently as April 30, 2017, the U.S. military publicly estimated the total number of civilian deaths caused by all of the 79,992 bombs and missiles it had dropped on Iraq and Syria since 2014 only as "at least 352." On June 2, it only slightly revised its absurd estimate to "at least 484." … The "discrepancy" – multiply by almost 100 – in the civilian death toll between the Kurdish military intelligence reports and the U.S. military's public statements can hardly be a question of interpretation or good-faith disagreement among allies. The numbers confirm that, as independent analysts have suspected, the U.S. military has conducted a deliberate campaign to publicly underestimate the number of civilians it has killed in its bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. [Read More]
More Good/Useful Reading on War & Peace – Paul Rogers, "Arms Bazaar: Needs Wars, Eats lives," [weapons overproduction, profits of arms makers], Open Democracy [August 19, 2017] [Link]; James W. Carden, "Refusing to Learn Lessons from Libya," Consortium News [August 17, 2017] [Link]; Amy Schafer, "The Warrior Caste" [military leadership drawn from a small portion of US society] Slate [August 2017] [Link]; and Jesse Dillon Savage and Jonathan Caverley, "Training the Man on Horseback: The Connection Between U.S. Training and Military Coups," War on the Rocks [August 9, 2017] [Link].
CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING
Right of Way: Fighting Pipelines in Pennsylvania
By Charles Mostoller, The Intercept [August 20, 2017]
---- If you know where to look, you can spot them along the roadsides as you drive through the hilly farmland of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Short wooden stakes stand exactly 50 feet apart, topped with orange tape. The markers seem benign, but for many Lancaster residents, the threat they represent is anything but: These poles mark the proposed path of the Atlantic Sunrise natural gas pipeline. The Atlantic Sunrise project is a $3 billion expansion of natural gas giant Williams's Transco pipeline network. Building it will require burying a 42-inch pipe under miles of Amish country, below farms and rivers, in the face of opposition from many Lancaster residents. Many of the pipeline's opponents are already in open rebellion. A group of nuns who own land on the proposed pipeline's path refused to grant Williams an easement on their property. Williams threatened to use eminent domain, and now the nuns from the Adorers of the Blood of Christ have sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in U.S. District Court. [Read More]
Greenland: how rapid climate change on world's largest island will affect us all
---- The largest wildfire ever recorded in Greenland was recently spotted close to the west coast town of Sisimiut, not far from Disko Island where I research retreating glaciers. The fire has captured public and scientific interest not just because its size and location came as a surprise, but also because it is yet another signpost of deep environmental change in the Arctic. … Despite its size, the fire itself represents only a snapshot of Greenland's fire history. It alone cannot tell us about wider Arctic climate change. But when we superimpose these extraordinary events onto longer-term environmental records, we can see important trends emerging. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR'
Justice Department's Dreamhost Subpoena Ramps Up the Police State
---- If the U.S. Department of Justice prevails in a case against web-hosting provider Dreamhost, you can become the subject of a criminal investigation by visiting a website. You don't have to re-read that. The problem is not with your eyes; it's with your government. If the courts uphold this Justice Department action, the erosion of your privacy rights on the Internet, a process that began with the Patriot Act and picked up full-steam under the Obama administration, will have been completed under President Donald Trump. A major pillar of a police state will now be in place. The sorry saga starts last January when the Justice Department began investigating people who had been organizing protests at Trump's inauguration. [Read More]. And for more on the "DreamHost" developments, read Mark Rumold, "In J20 Investigation, DOJ Overreaches Again. And Gets Taken to Court Again," Electronic Frontier Foundation [August 14, 2017] [Link]; and this editorial from The New York Times, "The Justice Department Goes Fishing in DreamHost Case," [Link].
Trump's White House Is Turning a Blind Eye to White-Supremacist Terrorism
By David Neiwert, The Nation [August 18, 2017]
---- This contrast, between Trump's rhetoric and the reality of domestic terrorism, extends far beyond Pennsylvania. A database of nine years of domestic terrorism incidents compiled by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting has produced a very different picture of the threat than that advanced by the current White House. …. While a majority of the incidents were perpetrated by right-wing extremists (57 percent), the database indicates that federal law enforcement agencies focused their energies on preempting and prosecuting Islamist attacks, which constituted 31 percent of all incidents, a finding confirmed by counterterrorism experts. … In hundreds of the nearly 1,400 hate incidents around the nation that the Southern Poverty Law Center counted in the three months following the November 8 elections, the perpetrators directly referenced the election or Trump. In particular, his administration's decision to focus the Countering Violent Extremism program exclusively on Islamists has been interpreted by many white supremacists as a green light. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
It's Not Quite as Bad as You Thought: 200 Days Into the Trump Administration
By Sarah Jaffe, Bill Moyers [August 11, 2017]
---- I think things are in some ways better than we could have imagined, and that is in large part thanks to the amazing work of the resistance. So many people have stepped forward who had not been active before. Smart organizers have figured out how to harness that energy. Whether that is bringing hundreds of people to a mass arrest or giving people a really solid program for saying, "If you are going to your congressperson's office, here is how you create an alternative town hall" or "Here is how you bring a handwritten letter" so folks who are pretty new can be activated and do something that is really relevant. I think that is pretty inspiring. That could all change momentarily if there is a terrorist attack or we pre-emptively invade somewhere. I think war changes the footing of everything, and unfortunately changes what is possible in terms of overall repression. [Read More]
Strangling Puerto Rico in Order to Save It
---- The United States invaded Puerto Rico in 1898 and took it from Spain. Although the residents became United States citizens in 1917, the island's colonial status has been a locus of political debate and struggle for most of its subsequent history. … The Puerto Rican economy has already suffered a "lost decade" — no economic growth since 2005. The poverty rate is 46 percent, and 58 percent for children — about three times that of the 50 states. Unemployment is at 11.7 percent, more than two and a half times the level in the states. Employment has plummeted, and about 10 percent of the population has left the island since 2006. Worst of all, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. … For all of these reasons and more, the United States government has a responsibility to contribute to Puerto Rico's economic recovery. In doing so, it should ensure that the creditors who made foolish loans or bought Puerto Rico's bonds at a steep discount do not profit from those decisions. [Read More]
The Infrastructure of Fascism
By Gerald Epstein, Dollars & Sense [August 20, 2017]
---- Not only is the so-called "infrastructure" program mostly a thinly disguised privatization scam; it was also a sinister gambit to broaden the political support and therefore the power of Trump and Trumpism, a proto-fascist regime and movement, whose goal is to undermine democracy, enrich those wealthy capitalists willing to play along, and divide and conquer the domestic population by sowing racial, gender, religious and national hatred and intolerance. On August 15, this "infrastructure of fascism" came into clear focus in a bizarre and tragic way. … But this roll-out of a fake infrastructure plan was not the most interesting or surprising thing about this event. It was the press conference Trump held afterwards. Using his Jewish and Asian-American economic team as a photo-op backdrop and the creation of infrastructure and jobs as his bait, Trump took the occasion to assure his neo-fascist, white supremacist and nationalist base that, yes, he was still their man. [Read More]
---- Not only is the so-called "infrastructure" program mostly a thinly disguised privatization scam; it was also a sinister gambit to broaden the political support and therefore the power of Trump and Trumpism, a proto-fascist regime and movement, whose goal is to undermine democracy, enrich those wealthy capitalists willing to play along, and divide and conquer the domestic population by sowing racial, gender, religious and national hatred and intolerance. On August 15, this "infrastructure of fascism" came into clear focus in a bizarre and tragic way. … But this roll-out of a fake infrastructure plan was not the most interesting or surprising thing about this event. It was the press conference Trump held afterwards. Using his Jewish and Asian-American economic team as a photo-op backdrop and the creation of infrastructure and jobs as his bait, Trump took the occasion to assure his neo-fascist, white supremacist and nationalist base that, yes, he was still their man. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE and the BDS CONTROVERSY
The Israel Lobby vs the First Amendment
By Ramzy Baroud, Aljazeera [August 15, 2017]
---- Thus far, every attempt at demonising and silencing BDS has failed, simply because the movement's just demands speak for themselves: ending the Israeli military occupation, equal rights to Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel, right of return for Palestinian refugees. Every single demand is supported by international and humanitarian laws, and needless to say, basic human rights and morality. Aware of its failure, and the notable success of BDS, the Israeli government and its wealthy supporters across the US began deliberating the need for a well-financed, coherent strategy to combat the boycott movement. The pinnacle of the Israeli campaign is now to lobby the US Congress to officially ban BDS and punish its supporters. By doing so, Israel and the lobby entered new, uncharted waters as the war on Palestinians is now becoming a war on freedom of speech in the US as protected by the First Amendment. [Read More]
Criminalizing support for Palestinian human rights
By James J. Zogby, +972 Magazine [August 13, 2017]
---- It is fascinating to watch some U.S. senators tripping over themselves as they attempt to defend their support for or opposition to proposed legislation that would make it a federal crime to support the international campaign to Boycott, Divest, or Sanction (BDS) Israel for its continued occupation of Palestinian lands. What ties these officials up in knots are their efforts to square the circle of their "love of Israel," their opposition to BDS, their support for a "two-state solution," and their commitment to free speech. … After 50 years of occupation, Palestinians have taken it upon themselves to challenge the world community to act. They have had enough of seeing their homes demolished and lands confiscated to make way for Jewish-only roads and settlement colonies in their midst. They want an end to the daily humiliation of being a captive people denied basic freedoms and justice. Instead of submitting to the occupier, they have decided to boycott and have urged those who support their human rights to join them in their call for an end to the occupation. Their action is as legitimate as was the call of African Americans in the Deep South in the 50s, and that of Nelson Mandela in South Africa in the 80s. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History
By James M. McPherson, New York Review of Books [April 12, 2001]
---- When Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, at the end of four years of civil war, few people in either the North or the South would have dissented from his statement that slavery "was, somehow, the cause of the war." At the war's outset in 1861 Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, had justified secession as an act of self-defense against the incoming Lincoln administration, whose policy of excluding slavery from the territories would make "property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless,…thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars." The Confederate vice-president, Alexander H. Stephens, had said in a speech at Savannah on March 21, 1861, that slavery was "the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution" of Southern independence. … Unlike Lincoln, Davis and Stephens survived the war to write their memoirs. By then, slavery was gone with the wind. To salvage as much honor and respectability as they could from their lost cause, they set to work to purge it of any association with the now dead and discredited institution of human bondage. In their postwar views, both Davis and Stephens hewed to the same line: Southern states had seceded not to protect slavery, but to vindicate state sovereignty. This theme became the virgin birth theory of secession: the Confederacy was conceived not by any worldly cause, but by divine principle. [Read More] Also interesting/more contemporary – Annette Gordon-Reed, "Charlottesville: Why Jefferson Matters," New York Review of Books [August 19, 2017] [Link].
Confederate Statues and 'Our' History
---- Mr. Trump may not know it, but he has entered a debate that goes back to the founding of the republic. Should American nationality be based on shared values, regardless of race, ethnicity and national origin, or should it rest on "blood and soil," to quote the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., whom Trump has at least partly embraced? Neither Mr. Trump nor the Charlottesville marchers invented the idea that the United States is essentially a country for white persons. The very first naturalization law, enacted in 1790 to establish guidelines for how immigrants could become American citizens, limited the process to "white" persons. … Many Americans, of course, rejected this racial definition of American nationality. Foremost among them were abolitionists, male and female, black and white, who put forward an alternative definition, known today as birthright citizenship. Anybody born in the United States, they insisted, was a citizen, and all citizens should enjoy equality before the law. Abolitionists advocated not only the end of slavery, but also the incorporation of the freed people as equal members of American society. … The great waves of Confederate monument building took place in the 1890s, as the Confederacy was coming to be idealized as the so-called Lost Cause and the Jim Crow system was being fastened upon the South, and in the 1920s, the height of black disenfranchisement, segregation and lynching. The statues were part of the legitimation of this racist regime and of an exclusionary definition of America. [Read More]
