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If true, then the non-violent resistance practiced by Gandhi and MLK would have been a dismal failure.

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It can be argued that support for civil rights and other anti-racist measures actually grew after World War II, largely as a counter-reaction to the brazen and unrestrained racist policies of Nazi Germany and other Axis powers during that war.

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No single individual is powerful enough to force everyone else into compliance, so the true essence of political power comes in the ability to persuade others to voluntarily put themselves under your leadership. Humans are very complicated organisms, and the societies we create and their mechanisms of power are equally complex. You've mentioned this yourself several times in previous discussions we've had.

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I think the West may have been secretly pleased that the Japanese kicked their butts in the Russo-Japanese War, as it stopped Russian expansionism in East Asia, but it also had the consequence of increasing concerns about Japan.

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It's interesting how history all fits together like a puzzle, with all these pieces connected to each other - events triggering other events and causing counter-reactions, which then lead to even more fun and excitement. It's really quite fascinating.

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I’m not denying in any way what the Soviet government did. I’m not denying what Lenin or Stalin did. But I think it’s a bit more complex than just characterizing them as pure evil hellbent on world rule. At least not in the sense of the Russian Empire or other empires of their time. More than likely, they saw it as a new religion, and some religious fanatics have been known to be rather hardcore and harsh towards “unbelievers,” which is how they tended to operate.

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The basic problem is that we consume more than we produce, so we have to borrow in order to maintain our current rate of consumption.

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But eventually, when most goods and services can be replicated using machine technology, making human labor more and more obsolete, whatever will be done with all those extra people? Kind of makes one wonder where we’re headed. Just give people replicators and holodecks, and we’ll probably have the closest thing to utopia as we’ll ever get.

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Perhaps I should have said READING AND OBEYING the Constitution, would that make some sense to you ? Or are you one to thinik it is a fluid document, which basically means you would do weith it what the political parties do with it., Wipe their ass and flush it down the fucking drain.,

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ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

"We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states"

Yeah, and old Honest Abe too. Alot of people don't know thagt, but Lincoln did not wanr to free the slaves, at least not in this country. He entertained the idea of sending them back. Of course he was not a dictator like Obama or the Bushes, so it never happened

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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If true, then the non-violent resistance practiced by Gandhi and MLK would have been a dismal failure.

The ability to summon massive resistence is power.

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It can be argued that support for civil rights and other anti-racist measures actually grew after World War II, largely as a counter-reaction to the brazen and unrestrained racist policies of Nazi Germany and other Axis powers during that war.

It could be so argued if we chose to conveniently forget the unrestrained racism of Jim Crow laws and lynchings in America. Unlikely that Americans were reacting to the racism of Nazi Germany when they were mired in so much anti-black and anti-jew bias south and north. A better thesis to my mind is that the civil rights movement arose because of the mass migration of blacks to war production industries in the north. Better jobs and income experienced in the north gave rise to demands for equality in the factories and ultimately in schools, and segregated facilities in the south. Still, desegregation had to be imposed by Federal power. Eisenhower sent troops into Arkansas. Kennedy had to confront Wallace with federal marshalls in Alabama. There was great resistence to busing for desegregation of the schools in Boston especially, I recall. When MLK Jr was assassinated a number of northern cities were torched. Tanks in formation up Springfield Avenue in Newark where the sniper fire was particularly fearsome. Reasoned discussion? Hardly.

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No single individual is powerful enough to force everyone else into compliance, so the true essence of political power comes in the ability to persuade others to voluntarily put themselves under your leadership. Humans are very complicated organisms, and the societies we create and their mechanisms of power are equally complex. You've mentioned this yourself several times in previous discussions we've had.

Exactly why reason and discussion are futile between opposing camps.

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It's interesting how history all fits together like a puzzle, with all these pieces connected to each other - events triggering other events and causing counter-reactions, which then lead to even more fun and excitement. It's really quite fascinating.

Truly. I think it should be mentioned that communism/socialism were factors in the revolutions of 1848 and engendered more activists and anarchists with the workers' movements that blossomed in response to industrialization during the following hundred years.

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The basic problem is that we consume more than we produce, so we have to borrow in order to maintain our current rate of consumption.

That seems to be true within America. But the Market is now global and continues to spread. A different perspective is required.

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But eventually, when most goods and services can be replicated using machine technology, making human labor more and more obsolete, whatever will be done with all those extra people? Kind of makes one wonder where we’re headed. Just give people replicators and holodecks, and we’ll probably have the closest thing to utopia as we’ll ever get.

Ahhhh . . . you are way more optimistic than me. I see a continuation of the current trend of wealth disparity in the world.

Thanks again, Zonie.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

For fairness I watched the first video in its entirity (I love George Carlin but have seen him many times so skipped the second video)

I buy that American history has been driven by a myth of white power and privilege, and anglo-saxon supremacy. I understand and can sympathize with much that is in this propaganda video. "Let your life be the friction that stops the machine" the machine being "rapacious, predatory capitalism."

I have two issues/rebuttals:

1. Every form of large, human endeavour has historically lead to predation upon others. Not only capitalism. And not just in the invasion of the New World continents. Soviet communism which is somehow a good thing in this video was also predatory and imperialistic. There are many other historical examples.

2. It seems true that the Founders were a privileged class of land holders who feared democracy. [because 51% stomp on the rights of 49%, once instituted there no place to escape it, every inch of this planet is claimed by someone or something.] (They also feared Thomas Paine) They saw in the French Revolution an exemplar of the failure of mob rule. The French rebelled in 1789 against the tyranny of church and king, and again in 1815 and again in 1848. Each time, democratic revolution lead to the establishment of a greater tyranny. The propagandist in the video you linked offers no real world alternative to our "so-called" democracy and corporate capitalism. Only the empty promise of kumbaya through the collectivism of the march on Wall Street crowd. I have seen your grievences. WTF are your alternative solutions?

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ORIGINAL: Zonie63

Well, it could be that way - or it could even more nasty. If such a future does come to pass, the poor and working classes would no longer of be any use whatsoever to the wealthy and privileged classes.

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

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ORIGINAL: Zonie63

Well, it could be that way - or it could even more nasty. If such a future does come to pass, the poor and working classes would no longer of be any use whatsoever to the wealthy and privileged classes.

ah yes.....automation.....one of my pleasures

yeh a little thought and it becomes readily obvious that most things in life can be automated, in fact companies today actually build shit to break after a certain life span and most things today are pretty much buy and toss.

A great deal of the population could be very easily be made obsolete.

CNN) -- For most of American history, the average farmer, shop owner or entrepreneur could live an entire life without getting anything from the federal government except mail service. But those days have gone the way of the Pony Express.

Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that 49% of the population lives in a household where at least one person gets some type of government benefit. The Heritage Foundation's annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks government spending and creates a weighted score adjusted for inflation of federal programs that contribute to dependency. It reports that in 2010, 67.3 million Americans received either Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Social Security, support for higher education or other assistance once considered to be the responsibility of individuals, families, neighborhoods, churches, and other civil society institutions -- an 8% increase from the year before.


we are the borg! LOL

that should be alarming.

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Ideologically, the legal and philosophical framework for civil rights was already in place at the end of the Civil War, but the laws were not enforced, the Jim Crow laws and lynchings were allowed to go on, and the problem continued to fester for generations before the country actually decided to do something about it. So, why didn't they do it before?

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What changed that the federal government decided to actually do something they should have done generations earlier? That's really what's under discussion here, not so much what they actually did or what kind of resistance they faced.

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On its face, it just seems to me that, democratically, more people in the country were demanding that their government do it. Maybe it was because of the natural changes that occur through generational change. Perhaps overall, the country was becoming more progressive in its thinking.

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One commonality that seems evident among the various competing ideologies of the time was that, in one form or another, all seemed to be centered around "The People." The three most prominent words in our own Constitution are "We The People." The word "people" always figures prominently in communist terminology as well, such as "people's republic" or "people's deputy." The nationalists were similar with their "Volk." None of these systems advocate having a king or that there's any divine right to rule and theoretically believe in freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.

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Well, it could be that way - or it could even more nasty. If such a future does come to pass, the poor and working classes would no longer of be any use whatsoever to the wealthy and privileged classes. If the wealthy have computer technology and robots to do all their work for them (as well as fight all their wars and everything else the peasants were used for), then what do they need the peasants for? Nothing. So, there wouldn't be much wealth disparity for very long, not under those circumstances.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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Ideologically, the legal and philosophical framework for civil rights was already in place at the end of the Civil War, but the laws were not enforced, the Jim Crow laws and lynchings were allowed to go on, and the problem continued to fester for generations before the country actually decided to do something about it. So, why didn't they do it before?

By 1876 Federal troops were still stationed in the South enforcing Reconstruction in opposition to renegade night riders. The presidential election of 1876 resulted in neither candidate getting enough electoral votes to claim the presidency. Sam Tilden, the Democratic candidate had won the popular vote. Electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina were contested and withheld. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives. In 1877 Republicans agreed to a deal that made their man, Rutherford Hayes, president. As part of the deal federal troops were withdrawn from the South and the Posse Comitatus Law was passed which since made it illegal to use the U.S. Military on American soil to enforce laws. The Southern states were free to pass discriminatory Jim Crow Laws, establish state prison plantations, and continue the oppression of blacks as sharecroppers.

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The Civil War is not ended imo.

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On its face, it just seems to me that, democratically, more people in the country were demanding that their government do it. Maybe it was because of the natural changes that occur through generational change. Perhaps overall, the country was becoming more progressive in its thinking.

More progressive? You are a dreamer, Zonie.

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One commonality that seems evident among the various competing ideologies of the time was that, in one form or another, all seemed to be centered around "The People." The three most prominent words in our own Constitution are "We The People." The word "people" always figures prominently in communist terminology as well, such as "people's republic" or "people's deputy." The nationalists were similar with their "Volk." None of these systems advocate having a king or that there's any divine right to rule and theoretically believe in freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.

Revolutionaries tend to be purists. I am skeptical that the word 'people' ever really reflected humanity outside of the revolutionary theoretical systems.

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Well, it could be that way - or it could even more nasty. If such a future does come to pass, the poor and working classes would no longer of be any use whatsoever to the wealthy and privileged classes. If the wealthy have computer technology and robots to do all their work for them (as well as fight all their wars and everything else the peasants were used for), then what do they need the peasants for? Nothing. So, there wouldn't be much wealth disparity for very long, not under those circumstances.

The peasants are not going away. They are gathering as armed bands in the underbellies of the globe. The barbarians are even now pressing against the gates.

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Well, yes, they made a deal. I was aware of how it happened, but what were the motivations behind it? They had just fought a Civil War, which still remains the bloodiest conflict in our history, yet there was this backroom deal... I can understand that they probably didn't want to fight another Civil War, and they were also more heavily involved in the West.

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Perhaps not, although I don't think that we've gotten anywhere close to a Civil War ever since the actual event. Even the tumultuous events of the 1950s and 60s wouldn't really constitute a civil war, in my opinion.

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the government at large has become a huge RICO operation. They use the law to create a fence between them and the rest of us that the judges viciously protect. (there is SO much money in this!)

Yeh so the constitutors who were british esquires and agents of the king none the less had a few good ideas.

Mandate grand jury indictments for ALL crimes meaning even traffic tickets.
Completely abrogate in-rem on dry land
Abrogate summary judgment
Enforce full jury with 11/12 guilty for ANY trial.
Enforce Law over Equity
Create a penalty box (in the official AND private capacities) for anyone in government.
Abolish administrative courts.
Remove the courts from government.
Establish a rotating jural coop of people to handle cases against government
citizens willing to sign up get free legal services in any case against government in this domain
Rights above policy
Abrogate injury-less, damage-less crime

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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Well, yes, they made a deal. I was aware of how it happened, but what were the motivations behind it? They had just fought a Civil War, which still remains the bloodiest conflict in our history, yet there was this backroom deal... I can understand that they probably didn't want to fight another Civil War, and they were also more heavily involved in the West.

We can only speculate on motivation. Likely some historian already has. I think for starters you would have to look back to what happened during Grant's eight years. Renegades in the south continued to exert murderous pressure against blacks and yankee carpetbaggers. I recall there was a commission report to Congress on the continuing atrocities. The Republican Party was divided since the late 1850s between those who wished to surround and contain the south and let slavery die by strangulation vs those who wished for a frontal assault. Maybe the deal for electors in 1877 was a realization of the futility of occupation and the failure of Reconstruction. Maybe it was a tacit admission that the south had won the war despite losing so many battles. Or maybe it was a realization that with the opening of the West the South was irrelevent, and former slaves were irrelevent. Just guessing.

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Perhaps not, although I don't think that we've gotten anywhere close to a Civil War ever since the actual event. Even the tumultuous events of the 1950s and 60s wouldn't really constitute a civil war, in my opinion.

It is not being fought with guns (at the moment) The conservative agrarian fundamentalist mindset never went away despite a world changed by new technology in communications. The current civil war is being fought in the state houses. It is a coordinated attack against minority voting rights, big cities, science, abortion choice, LBGT rights, and university education. That's how I perceive it.

What do you think?

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

I did not comment on the efficacy of your plan's particulars because I lack the expertise. Are there any real world examples? Or just theoreticals?

A constitutional amendment would require two things: a successful campaign of persuasion and the votes in Congress and in the States. Simple amendments like women's sufferage and prohibition required 60 years of activism, the banishment ofslavery required a war and at latest estimates 750,000K killed. The Constitution is not easily amended without some leverage of power.

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Yes, this seems a fair and reasonable assessment. It's hard to know exactly what they were thinking at the time, although if we assume that the wealthy banking and corporate interests were calling the shots back then, their actions tend to be explainable along those lines. As long as the former slaves were "free" on paper and the Union was preserved, then that seemed to end the matter, but the actual details were worked out later. It was kind of the same way with the numerous treaties we made with the Indians and later broke. As long as money is involved, somehow they find ways around the principles of law and human rights.

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If it's a civil war, then the battle lines are completely different than they were back in 1860, and in any case, having them fought out in the state houses is still the legal and constitutional way.

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Our own Civil War was, for all practical purposes, a conflict between two powerful and wealthy factions in America which clashed with each other. If the wealthy and powerful interests are the ones in charge and calling the shots, then does the current "civil war" we're facing now indicate a similar dissension and conflict between two powerful and wealthy factions? And if so, which are they? If the bankers and the corporations are running things, then does our current divide indicate a falling out at the very top? Or is it all a ruse to keep the masses against each other while the big shots stay on top?

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

It is debatable that the South was equally wealthy and powerful compared to the North. Some historians propose that the Slave Power was encircled and cut off from expansion, and that without an agrarian industry (cotton) supported by slavery their social structure would collapse. There was also pervasive fear of a slave rebellion ala John Brown and Haiti/Dominica earlier.

A somewhat parallel situation is afoot in the land today with job competition coming from blacks and browns, and outsourcing, while white working class folks are also excluded from jobs that require university credentials and skills. The white labor classes are feeling threatened. Justifiably so. The white working class, the flyover country poor, are cut off just like the South was. They have a few wealthy plantation owners (the Koch brothers for example) and Fundamentalist preachers who have their own agenda.

The battles in the state houses may be legal and constitutional but they do not rise to reasoned discourse between opponents. Examples abound. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and other states where both the legislature and governor's seat are in the hands of Republicans and where Tea Party branches can run successful primary candidates.

Good talking with you, Zonie. Thanks again.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML
I agree and so you are quite right in your assessment Another way to look at it is that the Southern states had the power/leverage by contesting and withholding 20 electoral votes. The South's motivation is of importance equal to the northern bankers and industrialists.

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The battles may be different but the underlying themes remain the same: presevation of a racist and misogynist patriarchy.

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Our own Civil War was, for all practical purposes, a conflict between two powerful and wealthy factions in America which clashed with each other. If the wealthy and powerful interests are the ones in charge and calling the shots, then does the current "civil war" we're facing now indicate a similar dissension and conflict between two powerful and wealthy factions? And if so, which are they? If the bankers and the corporations are running things, then does our current divide indicate a falling out at the very top? Or is it all a ruse to keep the masses against each other while the big shots stay on top?

You raise some interesting questions here, Zonie. [scratching my head to take a stab at answering]

It is debatable that the South was equally wealthy and powerful compared to the North. Some historians propose that the Slave Power was encircled and cut off from expansion, and that without an agrarian industry (cotton) supported by slavery their social structure would collapse. There was also pervasive fear of a slave rebellion ala John Brown and Haiti/Dominica earlier.

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A somewhat parallel situation is afoot in the land today with job competition coming from blacks and browns, and outsourcing, while white working class folks are also excluded from jobs that require university credentials and skills. The white labor classes are feeling threatened. Justifiably so. The white working class, the flyover country poor, are cut off just like the South was. They have a few wealthy plantation owners (the Koch brothers for example) and Fundamentalist preachers who have their own agenda.

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The battles in the state houses may be legal and constitutional but they do not rise to reasoned discourse between opponents. Examples abound. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and other states where both the legislature and governor's seat are in the hands of Republicans and where Tea Party branches can run successful primary candidates.

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Good talking with you, Zonie. Thanks again.

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The civil war was about gaining collateral to take out the next battery of bonds against the debt which had nearly doubled by that time rather than being paid off. Not that it was impossible to pay off they simply "didnt" paid it off and instead defaulted until everything in this nation including you was pledged against the debt. (slavery)