Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 15:38:56 -0500
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: politics


Eric wrote:

> Hugh wrote:
>
> It was also about secession of States who thought that right was part of
> the
> Constitution the original colonies had signed.
>
> Hugh,
>
> The evidence suggests the civil war was all about slavery, after all.
> All that highly principled stuff about the right of secession was just
> a rationalization.

The Constitution was a contract to form a "more perfect union" after years
of problems.

Two centuries later we realize the Constitution says what Supreme Court
reads into it or reads out of it.

Lincoln said the Union  must be preserved, but probably had no idea the
contest would cost hundreds of thousands of  lives, both North and South.

Lincoln's wife was part of a slave-owning family.   Slaves were property and
vital to the South.  Their freedom was not the direct cause of the war.  If
the South had not been attacked, the Confederacy might have sold all its
cotton to Europe.  That would have deflated the value of property in the
North,
 property of those  industries who fabricated  cotton products for a
livelihood.

The slaves were freed in an attempt to improve the North's chance of
winning.  Like bringing democracy to Iraq,
it plucked the sentimental heartstrings.  Confiscating the land of the the
seceding States would have been a seizure of  property, but wouldn't have
had the same emotional effect.

The actual freeing of slaves in the South followed the end of the war,  and
in both North and South, they were without equal rights for another hundred
years.
>
> Are you familiar with Gore Vidal's essays, however?

No, but I've seen him on TV.  He seems to know his own mind.

> Even though he remains very critical of America, his argument is from
> the perspective of an unreconstructed Jeffersonian democrat who believes
> in a state without capital letters.  In his view, Lincoln set America on
> course to becoming an Empire and therefore Vidal is extremely critical
> of him.

I'm not critical of Lincoln.  I think the slaves should have been freed, but
I don't think Lincoln had
any idea he was creating the empire we have today.  It would be interesting
to know precisely "why" preservation of the Union was so important to
Lincoln.

> It's a view of a limited state and small communities that comes from the
> left rather than the usual rightist perspective.

Yes, its that old-fashioned idea of self-determination.  Let members of your
own
family lead their own lives - don't kill them.

The smallest community is mother and child.  The most common comunity is
family,  then
extended family,  then families who share a geographic location, as village,
small town.

If we put a community in Antartica or on the Moon, the welfare of the
community and all its members would
be the most important consideration, and that would dominate politics.

However, in the Age of Globalization, the welfare of the wealthy who own
transnational corporations transcends the welfare of communities, and poor
people die of neglect if their labor is not required by those who own
property.

regards,
Hugh