Know your true History
"If you do not know history, it's as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything and you have no way of checking up on it," Howard Zinn.
I believe as strongly in the saying that, “those who do not know history are destined to repeat it” as I do in, “Love your enemies” or “turn the other cheek”. I believe in what Christ was trying to tell us and that His words can make this world a better place. The Christian Right ignores these words and lessons from Christ, so it should not surprise me that they also ignore the lessons of history. What surprises me most is that the Christian Right will not even listen to the true history. I pick on the Christian Right, because they are the ones that should recognize first when a nation is behaving immorally. The Christian Right refuses to see US immorality except in the area of sex. They pay very close attention to sexual matters, but: bigotry, service to mammon, human rights, poor education, the destruction of God’s creation, all these things and more pass by them without notice. They believe American Myths and defend them to the death.
I use to wonder how the citizens of Nazi Germany could be so blind to the evils of their leaders. Some German citizens had to be forcibly taken to the concentration camps to see first hand the death camps. I have heard that even with the evidence staring them in the face that they refused to believe anything bad about their leaders. I am simply amazed at some American’s and most of the Christian Right’s refusal to believe the truth about US history. They dismiss it as “not that bad” or spit an angry reply that they are sick of liberals re-writing history! When one tries to get them to see that the US government is still repeating the same crimes against humanity they come unglued. It is just as hopeless a cause to get some American’s to see the truth as it was for German citizens to see the evils of their Nazi leaders.
I think that the problem is that individual US citizens have shown such great altruism in times of trouble for, not just their own citizens, but for people around the world. Therefore, it is just too hard to imagine that such evil deeds could be emanating from a nation of people who are “so altruistic”. The other problem is that the people who cannot believe that atrocities are committed by the US tend to think in black and white absolutes. Therefore, the US is either all bad or all good and anyone stating that the US has a fairly terrible past and continues to repeat a lot of the mistakes today is calling all of the US “bad”. This mentality leads to flat out denial of the US being anything, except “good”.
There is also the problem of lame excuses to dismiss any charges of “evil” leveled at the US. One lame excuse is that in comparison to other countries we really are not that bad. That rationale, to my ears, is about the most appalling and offensive thing you can say to me as a US citizen. When it comes to trying to live in and achieve a perfect society, being better than some other country is missing the mark so badly it is as if an attempt to reach the goal wasn’t even attempted. I do not care what other countries have done; I only care about what we have done. I want us to be perfect, not better than France. As for the Christian Right: Christ commanded us to be perfect not better than a psychopathic killer.
Another lame excuse states that the problems are with just a few “bad apples”. My response to that is, if that is true, then why does the society around the “bad apple” fail to expel it before or during the time it is at its foulest? Why does it take so much “time” to figure out that someone or some institution, such as slavery, is “bad”? How long will we continue to vote for “the lesser of two evils” before we make an attempt to cast off our ridiculous “two” party system, which in reality is just one party for the corporatocracy?
I can understand a people wanting to believe that their nation is the best nation and the most altruistic, that’s natural and occurs all around the world. What is really frightening to me is the reason why the Christian Right holds firmest to the belief that the US has a near-perfect history. The Christian Right believes that what has made the US great throughout its history is that it is a nation founded on their God and that it has been the hand of their God that has allowed the US to be the greatest nation in the world since its inception. Having any doubt about this belief is tantamount to doubting the existence of God. Therefore, any notion of a “sinful” US history is blasphemy. I can just imagine Jesus Christ in a meeting with the Christian Right saying, “Interesting, you’re preaching that God had a hand in the making of your society? Funny, I would have gone with: ‘Look at our sinful past; if we do not turn to God we will perish!’”
The Christian Right has no idea what a contrary message they send to the public when they try to preach that we have always been “one nation under God” and that we have prospered because of our belief in God. When people look and see all the really bad, bad, sinful stuff in US history, giving God “credit” for that makes them think, “Wow, your God is pretty loose on moral issues. Ok, yes, let’s keep on doing these bad, sinful things because we have God’s blessing, the Christian’s said so!”
To try and avoid this “contrary” message the Christian Right sustains the myth of past-perfect USA. It makes the citizens feel good and want to join the Christian Right and keeps the money flowing into the Church. If they used the truth instead of the myth they might wind up poor and possible persecuted like Christ said they would be for preaching in His name. The Christian Rights uses the ends to justify the means. The “ends” in this case is keeping the church filled with a feel-good message about a mythological history.
The point of telling the following stories from US History is to help us all see that “there is nothing new under the sun”. The US has always struggled between having a government for the rich or a government for the people. This seems odd considering that the US claims to have a level playing field for all its citizens, that we are all “free” and “equal”. A strong argument can be made that the US government has only ever been for the rich, but there is evidence that some people have tried to balance the scales and help the “masses”; the “masses”.
Howard Zinn takes a “revisionist look” at US History. I call it a “refreshing look” because Zinn tells US history through the eyes of the common person and not from the glorified perspective of the conquering rich or the myth-builders of the Christian Right. The Christian Right and conservatives dismiss anything Zinn has to say because he is a “social activist”. This term means that he cares about the common person, he is a humanitarian. Somehow “actively” being a humanitarian does not sit well with the Christian Right even though Jesus Christ was an active humanitarian. The Christian Right believes that “inactive” humanitarians (those who talk but take no action) are better because they do not disturb the precious status quo. Therefore, “inactive” CEOs, conservative Presidents and other rich people who exploit the common person are more righteous than “active” humanitarians.
Trying to dig out a “few stories from US history” from Howard Zinn’s work is daunting, for unless one reads the entire chapter it is hard to get the full eye-opening impact of these excerpts. Therefore, I recommend that you go read his entire book and skip this section. But if you don’t have time for that, please read on. Here, Zinn explains the genius of the US’s Founding Fathers in his book A People’s History of the United States.
Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership.
When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command (Zinn 58).
England was taxing the colonies to death to pay for the “French and Indian War” and as the common people became poorer they were getting very angry at the rich as the gap between rich and poor grew wider. The town meetings were being taken over by the lower class who vented their frustrations and called for mob action to stop the taxes. The dilemma for the Founding Fathers then was how to separate from England’s tyranny and yet convince the common man that they, the rich, should remain in power with their riches intact. As Zinn puts it, “The leaders of the Independence movement wanted to use that mob energy against England, but also to contain it so that it would not demand too much from them” (Zinn 65).
When the “mob” at a Stamp Act riot in Boston went further than the rich organizers had intended and the personal property of the stamp master was destroyed by the mob, the rich leaders were aghast but they learned a lesson. They were “aghast” that the mob had no regard for the personal property of the rich stamp master and they realized that if they did not rein-in their mobs, the same mobs might some day come after their personal property. Thus, when the next set of taxes rolled out from England,
…the colonial leaders organized boycotts. But, they stressed, ‘No Mobs or Tumults, let the Properties of your most inveterate Enemies be safe.’ Samuel Adams advised: ‘No Mobs – No Confusions – No Tumult’.
…We have here a forecast of the long history of American politics, the mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians, for their own purpose (Zinn 66 and 61).
The use of boycotts reminds me of what the US through the United Nations did to Iraq. Saddam was left in power to do as he pleased while the citizens of Iraq were decimated by “sanctions”. It is so clever how the rich always make sure that they take care of their rich brethren at the expense of the poor. In the case of Iraq it is estimated that 90,000 children died per year as a result of the US sanctions while Saddam reigned as a “necessary evil” in the US government’s chess game.
According to UN estimates, a million children died during the trade embargo, due to malnutrition or lack of medical supplies. Among other things, chlorine, needed for disinfecting water supplies, was banned as having a “dual use” in potential weapons manufacture. A 1998 UNICEF report found that the sanctions had resulted in an additional 90,000 Iraqi children dying per year since 1991. On May 10, 1996, appearing on 60 Minutes, Madeleine Albright (then Clinton’s Ambassador to the United Nations) was presented with a figure of half a million children under five having died from the sanctions: Albright, not challenging this figure, infamously replied: “We think the price is worth it” (en.wikipedia.org).
You have to admire the “heart” of the corporatocracy. And we wonder why they hate us? 90,000 died per year! God bless the USA? Why would He?
Getting back to the “American Revolution”, the genius of the Founding Fathers was that they were able to exert their non-existent authority, through “paternalism,” over the mobs by reminding them that they needed to demonstrate against the taxations in a non-violent manner. John Adams and the other rich colonial elites were afraid that the mobs would lose sight of the tyrant. The mob or masses might start to view all rich people as tyrants and not just the British rich elite. John Adams said, “These tarrings and featherings, this breaking open Houses by rude and insolent Rabbles, in Resentment for private Wrongs or in pursuing of private Prejudices and Passions, must be discontinued” (Zinn 68). We see here the beginnings of the rich using militants to do their bidding, same as today when our soldiers sacrifice their lives for the conquest of resources that keep the Empire of the rich humming.
You might be thinking here that people like John Adams were against mob “tumults” because the tumults might “hurt the cause”. However, you must stop and consider that the likes of Adams just wanted to set-up themselves as the hand that is fed by taxation rather than England being the hand that is fed. The proof is in the fact that once people like Adams were in charge they began their own taxation of the very people that fought to put them in charge. “Actions speak louder than words.” People like Adams spoke that it was “God’s will” being served, but their actions served mammon.
There were always grumblings among the poor about fears that the colonial rich elite would “press them into service” to fight the British. As you can imagine, when you are poor, it doesn’t matter whether you are poor under the British or poor under a new government, you are still poor. The rich colonialists needed to do something “to persuade the lower orders to join the revolutionary cause [and] deflect their anger toward England”. Patrick Henry although “attached to the world of the rich” spoke in the common man’s words, helped to “deflect the anger toward England” (Zinn 68). He also chose words that at first sound like an argument for the rich to leave the poor people alone, but he reverses the logic to rally the poor to join the rich against England. Patrick Henry: “Are not the gentlemen made of the same materials as the lowest and poorest among you? …Listen to no doctrines which may tend to divide us, go hand in hand, as brothers…” (Zinn 68).
Tom Paine made great inroads toward the idea of independence with his pamphlet Common Sense because it
…appealed to a wide range of colonial opinion angered by England. But it caused some tremors in aristocrats like John Adams, who were with the patriot cause but wanted to make sure it didn’t go too far in the direction of democracy. Paine had denounced the so-called balanced government of Lords and Commons as a deception, and called for single-chamber representative bodies where the people could be represented. Adams denounced Paine’s plan as “so democratical, without any restraint or even an attempt at any equilibrium or counter-poise, that it must produce confusion and every evil work.” Popular assemblies needed to be checked, Adams thought, because they were “productive of hasty results and absurd judgements” (Zinn 70).
Thus we see that even back during the cobbling together of the ideas for the new form of government that conservatives were already worried about giving the common man (white males who owned property) too much “power”. My opinion is that it is supposed to be a democracy; therefore, we don’t have to vote away our “power” to the rich conservatives.
However, how it is today so it was back in 1776, the common man always has to shoulder the arms for the rich, white conservatives.
When the Declaration of Independence was read, with all its flaming radical language, from the town hall balcony in Boston, it was read by Thomas Crafts, a member of the Loyal Nine group, conservatives opposed to militant action against the British. Four days after the reading, the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered the townsmen to show up on the Common for a military draft. The rich, it turned out, could avoid the draft by paying for substitutes; the poor had to serve. This led to rioting, and shouting: “Tyranny is tyranny let it come from whom it may” (Zinn 74-75).
If you are thinking, “well what did you expect; a redistribution of the wealth once the war was over?” My answer is that a lot of the poor who fought in the revolutionary war did expect to receive something in return for fighting to help the rich form a new government. There were revolts, such as Shays’ rebellion, that tried to wrest back a share of the wealth. However, the “new tyranny” put down the rebellion. Then the people got more taxation. The first such tax was the Whiskey Tax to help repay war debt. This tax hurt small farmers. All those pre-war protests against the taxes from England were used as a cause to fight for “independence” but now the taxes were coming back, with a vengeance, as we all know.
Our Founding Fathers, “Men of God”
During the Revolution the colonies fought to escape England’s imperialism to make themselves “free” or at least the ones the white race deemed worthy of “freedom”.
What did the Revolution mean to the Native Americans, the Indians? They had been ignored by the fine words of the Declaration, had not been considered equal, certainly not in choosing those who would govern the American territories in which they lived, nor in being able to pursue happiness as they had pursued it for centuries before the white Europeans arrived. Now, with the British out of the way, the Americans could begin the inexorable process of pushing the Indians off their lands, killing them if they resisted. In short, as Francis Jennings puts it, the white Americans were fighting against British imperial control in the East, and for their own imperialism in the West (Zinn 86).
The taking of Indian land reminds me of a funny scene in Mel Gibson’s movie Maverick. Gibson, as Brett Maverick, defends Indians too much for the liking of Anna Belle Bransford (Jody Foster’s character). Anna Belle, fed up, snaps at Maverick, “What is it with you and Indians anyway?!” Maverick’s sarcastic reply sums up the conservative response to the Indian Problem, “Oh nothing; I try to shoot one a day, if possible before noon! I figure it’s their fault too, for being on our land before we got here.”
We all take it in stride that the Revolution was not for Native American’s, not for Black’s, not for Women and not for people too poor to own property. We take it in stride with the excuse that “it was just the way things were back then”. I could buy that if the Christian Right did not insist that the Founding Fathers were “men of God” and devote Christians. Christ’s words were the same then as they are now and stated unto them: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. There is no disclaimer there that says “unless the ‘others’ do not own property or if their skin color is not white”.
Actions speak louder than words and I am starring at the past and, other than their words, I don’t see any of these “men of God” living for Christ. The actions of these men, the laws they passed and the people they enslaved indicate loud and clear that they were serving mammon rather than God. It is inescapable. One cannot argue that the time wasn’t right for true equality and that these men of God did believe in equality it is just that they knew it would “not go over so well”. “Not go over so well” with whom? These supposed “men of God” are in charge and they are about to write the rules for the whole country. If these Founding Fathers are in the service of the Lord where is the equality? One cannot use the Southern States as an excuse because the South was far more religious than the North and they were using the Bible to justify the ownership of human beings! Why then doesn’t the present day Christian Right preach that we ought to be better than this? Why does the Christian Right canonize these Founding Fathers? We can do better than them.
Another indication (action) that the Founding Fathers were men of mammon and not of God is in the reason why they established a strong Federal government. Most American’s and all of the Christian Right believe the Constitution to be
…a legal framework for democracy and equality.
…Another view of the Constitution was put forward early in the twentieth century by the historian Charles Beard (arousing the anger and indignation, including a denunciatory editorial in the New York Times).
…In short, Beard said, the rich must, in their own interest, either control the government directly or control the laws by which government operates.
Beard applied this general idea to the Constitution, by studying the economic backgrounds and political ideas of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up the Constitution. He found that a majority of them were lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping, and that forty of the fifty-five held government bonds, according to the records of the Treasury Department
Thus, Beard found that most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slaveowners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.
Four groups, Beard noted, were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, men without property. And so the Constitution did not reflect the interests of those groups (Zinn 90-91).
God is not mentioned in the US Constitution, but the Christian Right claims He is woven into the fabric of the document. I question the motives of the Christian Right when I see them using God to help conceal the real motives of the corporatocracy and protecting the invested money interests of the rich elite of the United States. Our present day “free-market” system, being ballyhooed by conservatives, once again uses the Federal Government as a means to concentrate the wealth into the hands of few. At the forefront, to place God’s stamp of approval on the corporatocracy’s greed is none other than the Christian Right. It is mind-boggling backward. It is becoming very clear that the Christian Right is more interested in being thought of as conservative capitalists, than they are in being viewed as “liberal humanitarians” for daring to preach and follow the teachings of Christ.
Were the Founding Fathers wise and just men trying to achieve a good balance [of power in government]? In fact, they did not want a balance, except one which kept things as they were, a balancing among the dominant forces at the time. They certainly did not want an equal balance between slaves and masters, propertyless and property holders, Indians and whites (Zinn 101).
“Keep things as they are,” “stay the course”, “change is bad” we hear it over and over from the conservatives; and the Christian Right is right there with them to ensure that mammon will always rule the day. Amen.
I do believe that the Christian Right would support the political philosophy of Alexander Hamilton. Here is what Hamilton had to say:
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The few are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government…Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy... (Zinn 96).
The reason I believe that the Christian Right supports Hamilton’s beliefs is two-fold and is based upon their support of the conservative party and the call for “small” government. The first reason is that the Christian Right supports a conservative form of government that places no restrictions on business via a “free-market” system. The second reason is the Christian Right’s logic that since businesses employ “the mass of the people”, the businesses must know best how to manage our affairs.
Thus, the “imprudence of democracy” by “the mass of the people” will never again restrict businesses from making as much money as possible by any means necessary. Polluting, job-cuts, unsafe working conditions, jobs and factories sent to other countries can now happen at break-neck speed without “the mass of the people” and their “imprudent” voices getting in the way. Chop down the environmentalists, the unions and anyone else that stands in the way of businesses making money. After all, this country is about making money, (that’s why it is called capitalism dummy) it is not about people and their stupid antiquated “democracy”. “At the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton suggested a President and Senate chosen for life. The Convention did not take his suggestion” (Zinn 96). Lucky for us today we have the Conservatives and the Christian Right to follow through on Hamilton’s suggestion.
Source:
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
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