The S Word, Part III: Baggage Full Of Red Herrings

So as we discussed in the first two installments, there are plenty of reasons Americans aren’t enamoured with each other these days. There really are two Americas – one that believes that the road to all good things leads through government, and one that pays at least lip service to the idea that we’ve a free association of equals and that our government operates by consent of the governed.

We’ll come back to that.

We also have one key piece of cultural baggage – the Civil War we fought 150 years ago, at least in large part over the question of union.

That fact has bequeathed a cheap, unearned chanting point to those who respond to the question “do we still belong together as a nation?”; “What? Do you support slavery?”

Fruits Of Our Labored Denials: Of course the question “do we have the right to own other human beings?” was settled 149 years ago. The good guys won. Outside of Asian and Latino girls being kidnapped and imported to work as prostitutes – which is illegal in all 50 states – the part of “slavery” in the United States in 2013 that isn’t history and social pathology is metaphor.

But last year, Sarah Palin invoked that metaphor, saying that our national debt and deficit spending was going to enslave future generations.

Martin Bashir – who is MSNBC’s version of a Minnesota Progressive Project “writer” – responded that the proper response to the statement was for someone to shit down Palin’s throat and piss in her eyes [1].

The question of literal slavery is very, very settled. It’s bad. Everyone opposes it. We fought a war over it, and some of us still smell the gunpowder. Myself included.

But the question “what is government” – and, more proximately, “what control should govenment have over the fruit of your labor, your speech, your thought…your life?

That’s only settled in the minds of people whose primary take on the issue is “shut up or I’ll call you names”.

United We Stand-Off: Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, of course, led a temporarily divided nation to its bloodiest war over the question “could the union be divided”.
Bear in mind, this was a nation that was divided over one major issue – slavery. Oh, there were social differences; part of the country was entrepreneurial, intensely dynamic, driven by emerging industries; the other was dominated by pseudo-aristocratic elite that got their money and power from archaic industries…

…OK, so maybe some things haven’t changed all that much.

The point being, while the North and the South differed over slavery and the constitutional and policy contortions need to allow it in a society intended to be “free”, the two larger societies themselves, with all their differences, had a fundamentally similar view on what government was supposed to be; lean, out of the way, there mainly to run courts and a small standing military. With slavery out of the picture (and ignoring the whole “anger over a long, bloody war” thing), the North and the South’s idea of government wasn’t all that terribly different; both sides were “free associations of equals” (with crucial differences about the definition of “equals” until 1865) that not only believed the government that governed best governed least, but practiced it.

Compare that today. Part of the country believes – or at least pays emphatic lip service to the idea – that we are a free association of equals, and our government must govern by the consent (rather than bludgeoned acquiescence) of the governed. The other part believes that society is like a family, with government the doting but firm parents, there to keep the bumptious brats from doing the things they’re too dumb not to do – starving, freezing or pulling each others’ hair out.

And that is a crucial difference. Not, perhaps, as morally black-and-white (as it were) as slavery, but a crucial question to a country that was founded around a set of ideas that just aren’t manifested in the way our national government works today.

Indentured: So let’s assume for a moment that we’re talking honest differences of opinion on that last question, among people who aren’t evil (slavery is evil), but just…think differently.

So why do we stay together, again?

Bags Of Our Fathers: Of course, since the civil war, hundreds of millions of Americans have grown up pledging allegiance to “one nation, under God, indivisible” [3]. And the idea of the United States – a free association of equals built around the idea that we, the people, will govern ourselves by the consent of the governed and navigate the tension between the individual and the community successfully enough to have both all the liberty you can use and all the security you really need.

And it’s a great idea.

But is it making the transition from theory to practice anymore?

And – as we asked last Thursday – is it time to examine the political bands, ties and traditions that bind this nation of 300 million people into one big political glob?

More Thursday.

[1] Pardon the language. I normally bowdlerize that sort of thing. But I thought it was useful to convey the true ugliness of Bashir’s misogyny. [2]

[2] How much ya wanna bet someone chimes in and claims it’s not really misogynistic?

[3] Yeah, yeah, I know – the Pledge of Allegiance is more recent than that. But the idea that the union is indivisible, and that the idea must be drilled into kids’ heads from the earliest of ages, dates to back then. And our current education system, derived from the Prussian system before the turn of the twentieth century and long before our current “Pledge of Allegiance”, was designed in part to do just that. So step off.

Posted

April 22, 2014

The S Word

Mitch Berg

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16 responses to “The S Word, Part III: Baggage Full Of Red Herrings”

Emery

April 22, 2014

There is ample room for a party of reformers, a party of relatively low taxes and less government, a party of a new and better safety net. A party that ignores modern realities and suggests that the policies of a century ago is sufficient is doomed.
Mitch Berg

April 22, 2014

Policies? Perhaps.

Principles? Not so sure.
The Big Stink

April 22, 2014

“shut up or I’ll call you names”.

When they erect the granite monument (hopefully a headstone) to modern liberalism, this will be the epitath.
The Big Stink

April 22, 2014

According to Reuters, Gallup and my personal experience, the “shut up or I’ll call you names” wing of the democrat party now outnumbers the “you’re a racist bigot” wing of the party.
Adrian

April 22, 2014

B.S. There are quite possibly an equal number of individuals on either end of the political spectrum that would rather the other side simply “shut up or I’ll call you names” simply because they lack the facts, or maybe the intellectual capacity for rational debate, and silencing the opposition is an oft used tool of those described.

I, for one, chalk it up to just that when engaging these indivduals, and when I hear it from those that purport to stand for limited government, free markets and fiscal responsibility it makes me want to cringe first, then kindly ask THEM to “shut up”.

But today we have a certain party that actively advocates (on the part of supporters) or actively participates in (or the part of the elected) the use of government to silence opposition and dissent. And for what? Well, one reason is the same as outlined above, lack of facts and capacity to engage is rational debate. But another reason is the fear that the corrupt nature of their tyranny be brought to light.

Now I am certain their are those who consider themselves on “the right” would advocate and engage in the same behavior. But to ALL who would consider this regardless of political affinity I would offer caution….beware, for someday the other side may rule and it most certainly doesn’t make it any less tyrannical.

Off topic but…
swiftee

April 22, 2014

“There is ample room for a party of reformers, a party of relatively low taxes and less government, a party of a new and better safety net. A party that ignores modern realities and suggests that the safety net of a century ago is sufficient is doomed.”

http://comments.startribune.com/comments.php?d=content_comments&asset_id=237607861&sort=E&section=/opinion/commentaries&ipp=20

Unsurprisingly, the amphigory Asshat Emery chooses to plagiarize is no less inchoate in the original.
bikebubba

April 22, 2014

I’d agree that North and South had a lot in common, including the love of slavery. The South loved it for their “servants”, as they euphemistically called their slaves (“servus” is Latin for “slave”, by the way), and the North loved it for the South, who they wanted to tax to fund adventures in the North like a transcontinental railroad–and did for over half a century after the War Between the States ended.

And inasmuch as we favor taxing our neighbor to fund our initiatives, we all still do, sad to say, and I really don’t see a way that liberty-loving Americans can secede from the man-stealers. We’re just too darned mixed that way.
swiftee

April 22, 2014

“That’s a baby”

“No it’s not. That’s an inchoate clump of cells until it’s decanted”

“That’s a man”

“No it’s not. Gender is an illusion, meaningless in the 21st century”

Tell me Adrian, how do you propose to approach a reasoned, logical debate with today’s Democrat base? We’ve gone beyond ideological differences; way beyond.

There are several plans to re-partition states, some, like California have enough land mass and have attracted enough people with deep pockets to make putting the question before the voters a viable possibility. Others like Colorado and New York, would simply like to carve out the leftist urban breeding areas…not gonna happen.

I don’t see a partitioning of the US in my life time, but I certainly don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibilities for my kids.
Powhatan Mingo

April 22, 2014

They don’t call you names because they don’t understand rhetoric. They call you names because they hate you.
justplainangry

April 22, 2014

Compare and contrast: same day we hear news of a conference in Utah to wrestle state land from the feds, while there is a growing coaltion of states who want to abolish electoral college. Them are fighting words… On both sides…
Powhatan Mingo

April 22, 2014

How can you share governance with people who believe that Joe Biden added “gravitas” and “foreign policy expertise” to Obama’s ticket?
The American Left has become a self-parody.
mnbubba

April 22, 2014

“How can you share governance with people who believe that Joe Biden added “gravitas” and “foreign policy expertise” to Obama’s ticket?”

– You can’t. At some point it needs to be a semi-amicable divorce. Because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
PaulC

April 22, 2014

Glad the weather in MN has warmed up, eh!
The Civil War was not fought over slavery. Lincoln made many statements evincing his non-interest in slave-status-equalizing – it was the 1860’s, not the 1960’s. He wanted to keep the Union together, period. And his war against the South, with the eventual result, was the root of the modern Federal government’s dominance of the States. And it’s led to mayhem that has only increased since the end of the Civil War.
Mitch Berg

April 22, 2014

The Civil War was not fought over slavery.

It was fought over the preservation of the union, over the differing economies, and the process of admitting new states to the union, as well as slavery.

But the union was splitting over slavery, one of the economies relied on slavery, and the admissions process’ contention was over slavery.

So slavery was behind all the proximate causes.
Powhatan Mingo

April 22, 2014

Mr. Berg is correct. Northern farmers hated the South because where slavery was allowed, small family farms vanished. U.S. Grant hated Texans because he saw them as being adventurers and opportunists:

Texas was originally a state belonging to the republic of Mexico. It extended from the Sabine River on the east to the Rio Grande on the west, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south and east to the territory of the United States and New Mexico—another Mexican state at that time—on the north and west. An empire in territory, it had but a very sparse population, until settled by Americans who had received authority from Mexico to colonize. These colonists paid very little attention to the supreme government, and introduced slavery into the state almost from the start, though the constitution of Mexico did not, nor does it now, sanction that institution. Soon they set up an independent government of their own, and war existed, between Texas and Mexico, in name from that time until 1836, when active hostilities very nearly ceased upon the capture of Santa Anna, the Mexican President. Before long, however, the same people—who with permission of Mexico had colonized Texas, and afterwards set up slavery there, and then seceded as soon as they felt strong enough to do so—offered themselves and the State to the United States, and in 1845 their offer was accepted. The occupation, separation and annexation were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union.
Joe Doakes

April 23, 2014

Swiftee, I hope you’re right. I fear you’re wrong. We’ll know in a few years.

When the federal government runs out of Other People’s Money to borrow, it won’t be able to afford all the handouts that have bought votes to keep it afloat. Look what happens when EBT cards quit for a few hours. Imagine they quit for weeks, months, or indefinitely.

The Federal government will try to Order prosperous regions to subsidize the rest but it won’t work; instead, it will lead to massive passive protest as people decline to pay higher taxes but instead stock up on bullets and whiskey. The South will split away again and this time, it will be the economic powerhouse.

2016?