|
Posted on 05/18/2005 10:23:12 PM PDT by SAMWolf
|
|
 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
|
|
Three hundred thirty years ago, a great Indian chieftain known as King Philip led a strong native American confederation in a bloody war to obliterate the New England colonies, nearly succeeding in dramatically altering the course of American history.  Massasoit's treaty with the Pilgrams It is in the shadowy places like King Philip's Seat and other obscure landmarks that one may feel the ghostly presence of Philip, the Wampanoag warrior sachem who nearly succeeded in driving the English out of New England in a war that inflicted greater casualties in proportion to the population than any other war in American history. Down through the centuries, though, King Philip has not been well remembered. The Puritans scorned him in life and denigrated his memo- ry after his death. In the 18th century, Paul Revere, the famous Revolutionary and self-taught artist, engraved a portrait of Philip that made him look hideous, even comical. Historians of New England have written reams about King Philip's War, but in their descriptions of burning villages, booming muskets and brutal massacres, King Philip the man has been lost. Lost, too, is the meaning of Philip's unsuccessful attempt to win a lasting victory against his white enemies. What King Philip experienced in his defeat was a pattern that would repeat itself over and over, down through the subsequent centuries, as whites spread their settlements into Indian territory. The pattern itself was insidious. As a first step, whites would invade Indian lands and establish permanent settlements. Later, after a period of trade and friendly exchanges, the Indians came to realize that they were being swindled, usually out of their valuable lands, by the whites. When they resisted, the Indians almost always faced an enemy that outnumbered them and possessed superior weapons and technology. In the end, as the pattern repeated itself, the Indians ultimately faced two untenable choices: extermination or acculturation. In the case of King Philip, he chose to gamble on war--giving his life in the end--rather than acknowledge his white enemy as his master. Little in his background foretold Philip's later greatness. His life began around 1638 in the Indian village of Sowams, near modern Warren, R.I., and his fellow Wampanoags knew him as Metacom. He was the second son of Massasoit, the principal sachem of the Wampanoags and the same man who had befriended the Pilgrims when they settled at Plymouth in 1620. During the early years of English settlement, Massasoit had worked diligently to maintain the peace with both the Plymouth Separatists and the Massachusetts Bay Puritans.  Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians Keeping the peace between Indians and whites in 17th-century New England was no easy task. The white colonists were hungry for land, and their settlements began to spread quickly throughout the lands of the Wampanoags and other local tribes. Roger Williams, who founded the town of Providence in 1636 after being banished from Massachusetts for arguing, among other things, that Indians should be paid for their land, said that the English suffered from a disease called "God land"--something he likened to "God gold" among the Spanish. As the years went by, the Wampanoags felt more and more pressure to give up their tribal territory, and Massasoit, wanting to accommodate his white neighbors and reap the trade goods that the settlers often used to pay for lands, sold off increasing amounts of the Indian country. Undoubtedly he understood the awful consequences if he did not comply with English demands for Indian land. Philip's father, like so many other Indians of New England, took heed of the outcome of the war fought in 1636 by the Puritans against the Pequot Indians of Connecticut, a war that came close to exterminating the entire Pequot tribe. As a result, Massasoit placated the English by continuing to sell land. The Wampanoags, given their proximity to the largest white settlements, were particularly under pressure to accept English culture and laws. Despite the challenges facing his father and his tribe, Philip lived most of his life in peaceful obscurity. He took one of his cousins as his wife, a woman named Wootonekanuske. Together they lived not far from Sowams, in a village called Montaup (which the English settlers called Mount Hope). The historical records are vague about Philip's children; he and Wootonekanuske may have had several sons and daughters, but the extant sources mention only one son. Little is known about Philip's private and family life because the white colonists paid relatively little attention to him.  King Philip Until the 1660s, that is. In the winter of 1661, Massasoit died at the age of 81. Philip's older brother, Wamsutta, became the principal sachem of the tribe. In a gesture of friendship and fidelity, the two brothers appeared before the Plymouth Grand Court and took the English names of the two legendary princes of ancient Macedonia, Alexander and Philip--names appropriate to their high station among the Wampanoag people. Yet the friendly gestures soon melted away in the heat of suspicion and distrust. The English colonists quickly came to believe that Alexander and Philip were hatching plans for a war against the whites. In 1662, Plymouth authorities sent an armed guard to arrest Alexander and bring him to trial in an English court. When Alexander pledged his undying friendship to the white settlers, the court released him and allowed him to return home, but he had contracted a serious illness in the English settlement and died on the trail before reaching home. Many Wampanoags believed that Alexander had been poisoned by the settlers at Plymouth, and some of the Indians wanted to avenge his death by attacking the colonists. King Philip, probably in his mid-20s at the time, assumed the duties of principal sachem and managed to calm down the hotheads in the tribe. For the next nine years, he sustained peaceful relations with Plymouth and the other Puritan colonies, all of which had grouped together under a regional governmental body called the United Colonies of New England.  Col. Josiah Winslow, 1628-80, the first American-born governor of Massachusetts. As the Puritan colonies banded together for strength, the Indians of southern New England grew increasingly weak in numbers and influence. During these years of peace, Philip continued his father's practice of selling lands to the whites. But he soon found himself on a slippery slope. As he sold more and more land, the white settlers established towns closer to the Wampanoag villages, including the settlement of Swansea, not far from Montaup and Sowams. The colonial authorities also decided to regulate Philip's real estate transactions by requiring him to obtain permission from the Grand Court before selling any more land.
|
"Politik ist das Öffentliche: die zielgerichteten Handlungen und Ordnungen, die allgemein verbindliche Regeln sozialer Gemeinschaften oder eines oder mehrerer Staaten bestimmen. Der Begriff wird aus dem griechischen Begriff 'Polis' für 'Stadt' oder 'Gemeinschaft' abgeleitet." Wikipedia.
Google translates, "Politics are the public: the purposeful actions and orders, which determine generally obligatory rules of social communities or one or several states. The term is derived from the Greek term ' Polis ' for ' city ' or ' community '."
Sounds to me like they are talking about social organization. "Politics are the public" sounds like "Politics are people taken as a group." War can exist even with only small groups of people involved. We call 'em bandits, usually.
Certainly here we talk about the quest for power, since "generally obligatory rules of social communities" have to be set by someone and enforced by some faction.
I would include "myth" within politics, "a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain (more "embody", IMHO) the world view of a people." Or, more to my liking, "For some myth is seen as a device to cloak or conceal a knowable reality (ie facts evaporate into myth). For others, it is the way the unknowable can be understood. Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that a myth is a device to think with -- a way in which reality is classified and organized. Roland Barthes stated that a myth is a type of speech, so that everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse. For Barthes, this historically-produced, depoliticized speech gives meaning and form to reality. Thus, instead of cloaking reality, a myth is used to both control and explain it."
I like the second definition better. PoliSci site, natch.
Thanks for the MacArthur info, darned if I could find anything like that quote, and figured it was because I am not a Plato scholar.
Speaking of Clausewitz, when I first read Sun Tsu I was totally floored by "The Art of War"s explanatory power. The Viet Nam war unfolded like a book into lucidity. "Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State."
Sure, war is what the State is all about.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all get along?
IMHO, it's just not nature, human or any other, no matter how much the Libs would like it to be otherwise. Utopia will not exist in life.
Flatlander! ;-)
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.
