"Class War" and the Lessons of History
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- remanns
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[ One aspect of our re-ignited American Civil War is getting a lot of air-play. It is so-called “class war.”
That's the tag-line ordered up by Roger Ailes. The notion: that any talk of returning to 1990s tax rates - way back when the U.S. was healthy. wealthy, vibrantly entrepreneurial and world-competitive, generating millionaires at the fastest pace in human history - is somehow akin to Robespierre chopping heads in the French Revolution's reign of terror.
That parallel is actually rather thought-provoking! Indeed, can you hang with me for a few minutes? After setting the stage with some American history, I want to get back to the way things got out of hand during that earlier 1793 class war in France. There are some really interesting aspects I'll bet you never knew.
But in fact, "class war" has always been with us. If you ever actually sit down to read what people wrote in times past - for example Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, or even the Bible - then you know struggle and resentment between social castes was the normal state of human affairs for 6000 years, or much longer. Seriously, randomly choose (or "roll-up") a decade and locale from across the last few millenia! Tell me who oppressed freedom and competitive markets in that time and place. I'll wait.
In fact, today's American perspective that there is no-such-thing as class - so blithely exploited by Fox - seems rather quirky and charmingly innocent. ]
David Brin is a brilliant bad-ass,...and any 2 bits of his is worth 1000 words ; you get the picture.
If you don't know who David Brin is,.....well,.....you really need to read more science fiction !
this IS continued, at the
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http://open.salon.com/blog/david_brin/2011/09/23/class_war_and_the_lessons_of_hi...
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- remanns
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daveprimmer
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Great piece
- 8 months ago
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daveprimmer
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SIBob
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Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t the only one demonized in the “class wars”. The first “Red Scare”, in 1919, and the espionage Act in 1918, were aimed at ridding us of any “pesky” lefties who had the support of the masses. This same thing was brought about earlier by the hangings of the Molly Maguires, the Haymarket martyrs, the initial jailing of Eugene V. Debs after the Pullman Strike, the battle at Homestead, Pennsylvania, the hanging of Joe Hill, etc. This war, in this country, has been going on for a long time. In effect, The Civil war itself eventually became a struggle to free African-Americans form chattel slavery, (to be replaced with wage slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching later). It is all about the elites, in any society or system, exploiting the rest of us, using cultural, religious, or political doctrines to keep us in line. http://sibob.org/wordpress/
- 8 months ago
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SIBob
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remanns
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SIBob:
agreed. +^d
- 8 months ago
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remanns
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remanns
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this IS a FUN read,......I know we get beat to death with sort of post on ol' c u r r e n t ,.........but still...........
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[ = A burden of proof on FDR-bashers =The final pre-point I want to make here - before tooling off to France in 1789 - is more in the form of a question. How did we get into a situation where Franklin Delano Roosevelt is portrayed as Satan incarnate?
Yes, yes. I spend a lot of time around libertarians and I know that their current version is all about hating government. No other agenda or priority. See my earlier challenge (two postings back) daring libertarians and decent conservatives to consider taking on a positive goal instead of a purely negative one - fostering competitive enterprise and not just reflexively hating all civil servants, under all circumstances, all the time, while ignoring every other threat to freedom. That may by Ayn Rand, but it sure ain't Adam Smith.
If government is always and automatically evil, then yes, Franklin Roosevelt was the antichrist, because he sure expanded its reach. ]
READ IT ALL ! HUZZAH !
- 8 months ago
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remanns
