Ah, America. The shining city on the hill; the world’s only remaining superpower; bastion of freedom, integrity, and sacrifice for the greater good; egalitarianism writ large and stuffing the power of the people in the face of oppressive monarchies the world over.
Except we’re really not. Today we’re going to take a look at some of our most cherished myths…and let’s not pull any punches, folks: myths are exactly what they are. As in, stories people made up with little to no basis in reality.
The entire reason we have a bicameral legislature is explicitly to avoid “majority rule,” in this case the rule of larger and more populous states over their smaller and less populous confederates. This is why the House of Representatives apportions representation by population…but in the Senate, every state is allowed two and only two representatives. (It’s also why under the US Constitution, as originally written, Senators were not directly elected but rather appointed by state legislatures.)
The idea here was not to form a writhing, confused mass of “common men” to whom would be entrusted the definition of regulations; rather, to allow for that “common” voice to be heard and tempered by the more sober and less reactionary analysis and debate by the Senate.
The bottom line: The US constitution was written, by and large, not from a basis of overwhelming admiration for the majority but rather from a principled commitment to equality under law. The founders recognized that human beings – themselves included – are fallible and prone to self-service when given the opportunity to engage in it; the entire structure of our government is an attempt to govern with respect for individual rights but not with carte blanche license for any sufficiently large group of people to oppress others. That this fear was valid is self-evident; while thousands of examples could be cited, one need only look as far as various state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage to validate concerns about the potential abuse of power inherent in pure majority rule.
Lincoln had a very serious objection to slavery in principle, but to suggest that principle was in any way rooted in an enlightened attempt to forge a post-racial society is ludicrous and entirely contrary to the historical record.
And Lincoln was far from the only one on the antebellum bigot train. Many if not most of the founding fathers owned slaves; the involvement – if fathering a half-dozen children can be accurately described by such a tepid euphemism – of Thomas Jefferson with his slave Sally Hemings has been well-recounted and there’s no need to repeat it here…but some of Jefferson’s own words may prove enlightening. “Comparing [blacks to whites] by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” (source)
Of course it’s not entirely fair to hold men of past centuries and eras to modern standards; much has been accomplished by science – without taking into account philosophy – to dissolve the once-common myths about racial disparities. (Among these, one mentioned by Jefferson that non-human primates held a strong sexual attraction for black women! “…their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan (i.e. orangutan -jh) for the black women over those of his own species…” (ibid.))
Make no mistake; while there are plenty of excellent reasons to admire and respect these men, there is also not a chance in the world that their opinions in matters of race would last more than five minutes in the modern world. Just imagine if a presidential candidate in 2013 came out claiming that orange apes love to schtupp black women – and let’s not forget the inference here that such amorous advances must have been assumed to be a regular and expected occurrence among African blacks, according to the conventional wisdom of the time; i.e. the inference that in at least some instances black women willfully allowed such bestiality to take place.
See how far you’d get running for public office on that platform!
(As a sidebar, one of the currently popular criticisms of Lincoln was that he “illegally/unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus.” Bullshit; he was precisely within constitutional limits. The relevant section reads in full: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” (source, Section 9) I can hardly think of a more patently clear “Case of Rebellion” than in the collective attempt of several states to detach from the union.)
Thomas Edison was a relentless patent troll who once attempted to place the entire film industry under his control…and in so doing, inadvertently created Hollywood. His overt screwing of Nikola Tesla, while somewhat overstated by the internet’s love affair with the latter, is still pretty legendary.
Einstein rejected both the “Big Bang” theory and the then-theoretical existence of black holes.
Washington owned slaves, and experienced several military situations in which only sheer luck saved him from defeat.
Longtime epitome of masculinity, Rock Hudson was a lifelong homosexual – not that this is a problem for me or any thinking person, but it certainly would have been one with his fanbase if they’d found out about it in the 50’s rather than after he died of AIDS in the 80’s, and more to the point of this entry it goes entirely against everything we thought we knew about the guy.
John Wayne – who excellently deconstructed his own mythos, with the help of similarly self-immolating director John Ford, in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence among other late-career films, was the swaggering embodiment of American Machismo…yet he never served in the US military.
Ironically, Jimmy Stewart – who plays the pacifist/reluctant gunslinger who ultimately fashions a political career out of taking credit for shooting a man actually shot by Wayne in Valence, and whose film career is studded with characters who are basically the diametric opposite of the Wayne archetype – did serve, as an ace pilot in WWII, presiding over at least one court-martial, and ultimately serving his last notable duty as an observer – as Brigadier General of the Air Force Reserve – of a bombing run…in 1966, over Vietnam.)
Henry Ford revolutionized mass production…and was a raging anti-Semite who published a 91-part series in his own paper (the Dearborn Independent) and a copy of the execrable and entirely fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and who was cited as both a major influence on, and a serious admirer of, Adolf Hitler.
Charles Lindberg was a staunch isolationist and outspoken admirer of the Nazi regime, even being awarded high military honors by the Hitler government. Ford and Lindbergh are only two of scores of well-respected and well-known Americans who broadly supported Nazism or, at the very least, strongly discouraged the US from entering World War II…an effort so effective that ultimately it required both Pearl Harbor and the preemptive declaration of war against the US by Germany in its aftermath – to rally the “freest nation on earth” to the defense of an entire population being snuffed out by hate.
Although we like to pretend our heroes are above reproach, the reality is they’re just as human, and just as fallible, as anyone else.
At a time in human history when nearly every developed nation has embraced socialized institutions including education, law enforcement, and health care, the US has roundly rejected all three and continues to move at breakneck speed into irreversible plutocracy. While ordinary citizens are told in no uncertain terms that they are not worthy to criticize elected officials, uber-wealthy industrialists such as the Koch Brothers, Jamie Dimon, and others continue to both author and lobby for legislation at the state and federal level and even gain appointments to the supposedly liberal, populist Obama administration.
If “freedom” is measured by the number of ice cream flavors or hamburger styles one might choose from, then perhaps we’re a contender for “freest nation on earth.” By any other measure, however, we’re a long way from actually realizing that persistent myth.
While the rise of the citizen journalist in the post-Internet age has provided some measure of resistance to oligarchy, in reality we are far from practically achieving the reality that our mythological self-image suggests. Getting informed – properly informed by reliable and trustworthy sources – is the only real weapon we the people have against the ongoing conversion of the United States from a democratic republic to a plutocratic fiefdom.
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Except we’re really not. Today we’re going to take a look at some of our most cherished myths…and let’s not pull any punches, folks: myths are exactly what they are. As in, stories people made up with little to no basis in reality.
4. The Founding Fathers Were Champions Of The Average Citizen
Patently untrue, and the very structure of our government is evidence of it. James Madison lays out an excellent, and eloquent, rationale for this in Federalist Papers (#10). Among many other things, Madison writes:“To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed…By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression.”Madison, however, wasn’t by far the only small-r republican founding father. Jefferson wrote, “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Oh, whoops, no he didn’t – that’s a popular but fake quote that never saw the light of day prior to 2004 as far as the best researchers can find. He did however say “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.” In asserting the principle of equality under law for minority rights, Jefferson presupposes that at least occasionally the perspective and interests of the minority must be ethically, morally, or technically superior to those of the majority.
The entire reason we have a bicameral legislature is explicitly to avoid “majority rule,” in this case the rule of larger and more populous states over their smaller and less populous confederates. This is why the House of Representatives apportions representation by population…but in the Senate, every state is allowed two and only two representatives. (It’s also why under the US Constitution, as originally written, Senators were not directly elected but rather appointed by state legislatures.)
The idea here was not to form a writhing, confused mass of “common men” to whom would be entrusted the definition of regulations; rather, to allow for that “common” voice to be heard and tempered by the more sober and less reactionary analysis and debate by the Senate.
The bottom line: The US constitution was written, by and large, not from a basis of overwhelming admiration for the majority but rather from a principled commitment to equality under law. The founders recognized that human beings – themselves included – are fallible and prone to self-service when given the opportunity to engage in it; the entire structure of our government is an attempt to govern with respect for individual rights but not with carte blanche license for any sufficiently large group of people to oppress others. That this fear was valid is self-evident; while thousands of examples could be cited, one need only look as far as various state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage to validate concerns about the potential abuse of power inherent in pure majority rule.
3. Abraham Lincoln Was A Champion of Racial Equality and Black People
This may be the biggest myth of them all, and ties in with a secondary myth. The founding fathers and many of our most prominent historical figures, were in fact blatant racists who held ideas about ethnicity that would have them laughed or mobbed off the national stage today. Again, there is an overabundance of evidence for this. For instance, in his fourth debate against Stephen Douglas, he said:I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. (source)This hardly strikes one as a resounding assertion of equality, but it doesn’t stop there. Indeed, this isn’t even the most objectionable passage from this speech. At the same event – in nearly the same breath – Lincoln also said things like:
- “I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
- “I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, [laughter] but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, [roars of laughter] I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.”
Lincoln had a very serious objection to slavery in principle, but to suggest that principle was in any way rooted in an enlightened attempt to forge a post-racial society is ludicrous and entirely contrary to the historical record.
And Lincoln was far from the only one on the antebellum bigot train. Many if not most of the founding fathers owned slaves; the involvement – if fathering a half-dozen children can be accurately described by such a tepid euphemism – of Thomas Jefferson with his slave Sally Hemings has been well-recounted and there’s no need to repeat it here…but some of Jefferson’s own words may prove enlightening. “Comparing [blacks to whites] by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” (source)
Of course it’s not entirely fair to hold men of past centuries and eras to modern standards; much has been accomplished by science – without taking into account philosophy – to dissolve the once-common myths about racial disparities. (Among these, one mentioned by Jefferson that non-human primates held a strong sexual attraction for black women! “…their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan (i.e. orangutan -jh) for the black women over those of his own species…” (ibid.))
Make no mistake; while there are plenty of excellent reasons to admire and respect these men, there is also not a chance in the world that their opinions in matters of race would last more than five minutes in the modern world. Just imagine if a presidential candidate in 2013 came out claiming that orange apes love to schtupp black women – and let’s not forget the inference here that such amorous advances must have been assumed to be a regular and expected occurrence among African blacks, according to the conventional wisdom of the time; i.e. the inference that in at least some instances black women willfully allowed such bestiality to take place.
See how far you’d get running for public office on that platform!
(As a sidebar, one of the currently popular criticisms of Lincoln was that he “illegally/unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus.” Bullshit; he was precisely within constitutional limits. The relevant section reads in full: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” (source, Section 9) I can hardly think of a more patently clear “Case of Rebellion” than in the collective attempt of several states to detach from the union.)
2. All Our Heroes Were Heroic
Sure, sometimes. But oftentimes, not so much. President Ulysses S. Grant was a drunk driver who once was ticketed, and his carriage impounded, by the DC police (actually Maryland at the time); and who also once ran over a young boy’s foot (it’s not known if he was under the influence during this incident).Thomas Edison was a relentless patent troll who once attempted to place the entire film industry under his control…and in so doing, inadvertently created Hollywood. His overt screwing of Nikola Tesla, while somewhat overstated by the internet’s love affair with the latter, is still pretty legendary.
Einstein rejected both the “Big Bang” theory and the then-theoretical existence of black holes.
Washington owned slaves, and experienced several military situations in which only sheer luck saved him from defeat.
Longtime epitome of masculinity, Rock Hudson was a lifelong homosexual – not that this is a problem for me or any thinking person, but it certainly would have been one with his fanbase if they’d found out about it in the 50’s rather than after he died of AIDS in the 80’s, and more to the point of this entry it goes entirely against everything we thought we knew about the guy.
John Wayne – who excellently deconstructed his own mythos, with the help of similarly self-immolating director John Ford, in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence among other late-career films, was the swaggering embodiment of American Machismo…yet he never served in the US military.
Ironically, Jimmy Stewart – who plays the pacifist/reluctant gunslinger who ultimately fashions a political career out of taking credit for shooting a man actually shot by Wayne in Valence, and whose film career is studded with characters who are basically the diametric opposite of the Wayne archetype – did serve, as an ace pilot in WWII, presiding over at least one court-martial, and ultimately serving his last notable duty as an observer – as Brigadier General of the Air Force Reserve – of a bombing run…in 1966, over Vietnam.)
Henry Ford revolutionized mass production…and was a raging anti-Semite who published a 91-part series in his own paper (the Dearborn Independent) and a copy of the execrable and entirely fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and who was cited as both a major influence on, and a serious admirer of, Adolf Hitler.
Charles Lindberg was a staunch isolationist and outspoken admirer of the Nazi regime, even being awarded high military honors by the Hitler government. Ford and Lindbergh are only two of scores of well-respected and well-known Americans who broadly supported Nazism or, at the very least, strongly discouraged the US from entering World War II…an effort so effective that ultimately it required both Pearl Harbor and the preemptive declaration of war against the US by Germany in its aftermath – to rally the “freest nation on earth” to the defense of an entire population being snuffed out by hate.
Although we like to pretend our heroes are above reproach, the reality is they’re just as human, and just as fallible, as anyone else.
1. The United States is “The Freest Nation On Earth.”
Utter nonsense. Setting aside entirely the question of how our relentless pursuit of material wealth relegates the vast majority of us to, at best, just-barely-above-poverty lifestyles, the stark truth of the matter is that the US imprisons a greater percentage of its population than any other nation on earth, including those to whom we routinely point as the most oppressive and least free. In fact, the US – in spite of having less than five percent of the world’s population, holds nearly a quarter of all imprisoned people in the world at 2.3 million – by way of contrast, China with about four times the population of the US, has 600,000 fewer prisoners.At a time in human history when nearly every developed nation has embraced socialized institutions including education, law enforcement, and health care, the US has roundly rejected all three and continues to move at breakneck speed into irreversible plutocracy. While ordinary citizens are told in no uncertain terms that they are not worthy to criticize elected officials, uber-wealthy industrialists such as the Koch Brothers, Jamie Dimon, and others continue to both author and lobby for legislation at the state and federal level and even gain appointments to the supposedly liberal, populist Obama administration.
If “freedom” is measured by the number of ice cream flavors or hamburger styles one might choose from, then perhaps we’re a contender for “freest nation on earth.” By any other measure, however, we’re a long way from actually realizing that persistent myth.
While the rise of the citizen journalist in the post-Internet age has provided some measure of resistance to oligarchy, in reality we are far from practically achieving the reality that our mythological self-image suggests. Getting informed – properly informed by reliable and trustworthy sources – is the only real weapon we the people have against the ongoing conversion of the United States from a democratic republic to a plutocratic fiefdom.
John Henry
John Henry is a social, media, and political analyst currently attaining a Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Media Production) at Western Michigan University. You can find more of his work at his site, lowgenius.net, or click here for his youtube channel.More Posts - Website
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