Posted on 01/22/2009 12:12:29 PM PST by bs9021
Boston Tea Party Avenged
by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 22, 2009
More than two centuries ago, patriots reacted to levies from the British Crown by, literally, throwing the Boston Tea Party. Now, in the new millennium, at least one professor is trying to reverse the inevitable result of that insurrectionin the very state in which the original rebellion occurred.
In particular, we need to counteract the affirming, celebratory, and misleading message of nationalistic history, Peter Vickery, who teaches at Westfield State College, declares. For example, we can introduce students to the opinion that the founders of the United States, far from turning a blind eye to slavery, used it as a propaganda vehicle [that] encouraged, and even legitimized, white American prejudices toward black Americans and manipulated the issue in the American colonies to advance the separation of the colonies from Great Britain [Bradley, xix, 69].
We can point students toward the possibility that U. S. history has been one of warfare punctuated by brief outbreaks of peace, rather than vice versa. Three points about Mr. Vickery:
1. He is a Briton more in the mold of fellow countryman and Soviet apologist Charlie Chaplin than anti-communist national hero Winston Churchill; and 2. Beyond favorably quoting the conclusions of another author, he offers no evidence to support these charges.
Actually, slavery may have had a shorter life span in the U. S. than in any country on earth. Naturally, Vickery does not discuss the number and nature of the governments which still practice enslavement. As you might expect, Vickery takes exception to the very idea of American exceptionalism.
And we can challenge the egomaniacal notion that the history of the United States is the most important, most central and most special history of all, he writes in the latest issue of Radical Teacher....
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
Gee, no other coutry ever started a war with anyone before us. Want to see war, rampant expansionism, slavery, etc..., look to Islam. They've been doing it for over 700 years.
“...challenge the egomaniacal notion that the history of the United States is the most important, most central and most special history of all,
http://www.geocities.com/mark_willey/civlwar.html
Destruction of the Constitution
Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and 13,000 people were thrown into prison in Washington, DC, alone on charges never brought or made known. In his Proclamation of September 24, 1864, Lincoln by executive fiat ordered that all citizens who engaged in “disloyal practices” would be tried in military tribunals, with such practices decided at whim by Lincoln himself. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney informed Lincoln that he was engaged in practices that violated the Constitution he had sworn an oath to uphold. (Harold Hyman, A More Perfect Union, pp 85-86) Lincoln issued orders to arrest the octogenarian Taney but thought better of assaulting the most respected man in the country. The governor of New York reminded people that the founding fathers during the Revolution did not destroy mens’ rights - “THEY did not say liberty was suspended, that men might be deprived of the right to trial by jury, that they might be torn from their homes by midnight intruders.”
Lincoln let his generals suspend 300 newspapers. As Encyclopedia Britannica puts it “He justified this action on the ground that he had to allow some temporary sacrifice of the Constitution in order to maintain the Union...” In other words, he destroyed the Constitution in order to save it. It is little wonder that Booth considered Lincoln a tyrant and expected Lincoln to create a monarchy. Lincoln’s model of assuming war powers and concentrating power in Washington was the precedent used by Wilson and FDR as a tool to remake America into a socialist state. Their intense desire and eagerness to grab and use this tool lead them to mistaken and harmful war-mongering. When the Constitution fails them they have only to say “this is time of war - and war gives all needed power.”
LINCOLN - 19th CENTURY HITLER
War has always been terrible, of course, and mass extermination was a regular occurrence until the development of what may be called; without irony, the rules of “civilized warfare” late in the seventeenth century. At that time Europe’s rulers, exhausted by bloody combat, came to agree on certain conventions: combat should be confined to soldiers in uniform; civilians and their property should be left alone; prisoners should be treated humanely; and defeated powers should be spared total devastation and indignity. These rules held until Lincoln violated them in the War Between the States, replacing them with the logic of annihilation that governed primitive or “primary warfare” — the unrestricted slaughter common between warring societies with no civilized principles in common.
For more than two centuries after the age of Louis XIV, European civilians were so unmolested that they often barely realized that their rulers were at war, and ordinary travel and commerce between countries usually continued during hostilities. There was courtliness between rulers and officers of opposing armies, like the jovial fraternization between common soldiers as soon as peace was restored. A sort of golden rule prevailed; each victor realized that he might be tomorrow’s loser, so everyone tried to avoid leaving a legacy of bitterness by treating the vanquished reasonably and often generously. Peace treaties politely avoided any tone of blame or recrimination.
Lincoln’s policy of waging war on civilian areas shocked European observers. Lincoln justified this on grounds that he was dealing not with a traditional war, but with a rebellion, in which the entire enemy population might be treated as criminals and traitors. The idealizers of Lincoln have blamed his policy on the generals who merely carried it out, especially Sherman and Sheridan. Of course even Lincoln was unable to apply this view consistently; to do so would have meant executing nearly every Southerner, soldier or civilian.
>>>”...we need to counteract...”<<<
And so the long march through the institutions continues.
I suspect the professor here is using the royal “we,” as in “we are elite revolutionary Marxists who insist on reshaping society to our beliefs and ideology.”
We need to counteract the professor. Make the long march through his classes. Petition the university. Write letters. Create mocking YouTube videos. Draw cartoons showing this guy as a redcoat fighting the Americans. Invent funny little rap lyrics making him look stupid. Fill up websites asking about the quality and credentials of the professor. Above all, remember the phrase “we need to counteract.” That’s the phrase which causes the left and their believers to always go on the offensive, and we need to counteract them at every turn and every moment.
I’d recommend reading Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and using it to defeat the left. Alinsky might have been clever, but he wasn’t smart enough to realize that his strategies are just ways to doing things, not bound by ideology. The left is now the “establishment.” We need to counteract them at every turn.
When 40% of the American people are paying 100% of the taxes of the other 60% (and they will be, as is the Democrats' strategy), I suspect the kettle will be at a full, rolling boil.
The object of conservatism is personal freedom tempered by morality. The object of left-liberalism is personal control untempered by anything but emotional desire. The Left has engaged in a long march through the institutions because they believe in power and mean to wield it. Many conservatives, even many of those who see clearly the rot at the heart of modern liberalism, fail to understand this.
We want to be left alone to pursue our own dreams, and they will never, ever let us. Not as long as they are allowed to deny the plain meaning of our Constitution, which for over 230 years has been our bulwark against Statism. I don't mean to annoy or alarm you. It is great fun to mock liberals, but do not mistake their intentions: we accept dissent even if we think it foolish; they wish to crush it. Watch what happens to Talk Radio in the next two years if you doubt me.
Andy:
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Here’s my thoughts.
Of course the left wants unlimited power, and they are willing to use it to destroy individuals, cultures, societies, and nations who stand against them. The left isn’t the first ideology to think about the world in those kinds of stark terms, though. Kings, theocrats, pharoahs, czars, autocrats... in every era and in every age, free men and women have to face threats, harassment, arrest... and beyond that, torture and death. Our situation isn’t unique.
The lesson we can learn from the left is to never, ever stop moving forward. Our ideals about personal freedom tempered by morality are, I agree, a superior form of living, but without the effort to face those who stand against us, our freedom will wither and die.
I’ve been arrested already, and threatened who knows how many times. My grandfather said it this way: “You can tell a man’s character by his enemies.”
We need to defend our beliefs fearlessly. The power of the other side is less important than the rightness of our convictions. Let them arrest me, and I’ll tell the judge to go to hell. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
What provides our prospective governors with moral certitude is not a belief in genetic superiority or proximity to the truly Divine, except in this sense: the God they have chosen is that of Progress, whose altar has been constructed by the Able, the sacrifice of whom is demanded as a price for their efforts. To understand that is to understand everything about our adversaries.
England announced in 1833 that slaves would be totally freed by 1840. In the meantime, the British government told slaves they had to remain on their plantations and would have the status of "apprentices" for the next six years. Full emancipation was legally granted ahead of schedule on 1st August, 1838, making Trinidad the first British colony with slaves to completely abolish slavery. Under the terms of the Slavery Abolition Act the British government raised £20 million to pay out in compensation for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves.As a notable exception to the rest of the British Empire, the Act did not "extend to any of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, or to the Island of Ceylon, or to the Island of Saint Helena." [1]
bfl
well, we didnt have to fight a bloody civil war to bring about the end of slavery. And the US is in no position to talk about treatment of indigenous peoples...
The kind of thinking typified by this twit is very self-reflective, but it does not stand up to logical examination. All societies and nations could be said to be in a State of war punctuated by periods of peace rather than the other way round. After all, you are either at war or at peace! In fact the US is generally a very peaceful country - you have fought far fewer wars than most nations.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.