History of American Radicalism Fall 2007

Here’s a question that has been eating at me. To what extent is the United States government obligated to squelch a rebellion that is brewing within its borders. For starters, our country was founded on a rebellion, making it part of the American tradition.
It seems that the government has a duel responsibility to both maintain the current system of order and protect the democratic rights of the revolutionaries. One could argue that the democratic system itself is revolutionary, each ballot measure or election being its own revolution. Democracy when achieved essentially is a form of government that allows for peaceful revolution. Think about it. A revolution is the process of the people changing the government. That is very akin to what happens in (ideal) democracy.
Now we have to think about violent revolution. Is that warranted when the peaceful democratic revolutions is not taking place as the people would like. That seems to be when the government gets scared and cracks down. This brings me back to the original question about where a government’s responsibility (and also motivation) lies. By squelching a revolution is the government acting selfishly in the interests of its own preservation, or is it acting in the best interest of the majority of people living under it.
I want to believe that when democracy is functioning correctly, it can be a means of revolution. Eugene Debbs had this same vision when he was running for president for the Socialist Party. He was much more of a visionary than The Weathermen Underground. His revolution was based on winning the people over to his side. The Weather Undergrounds revolution was based on destruction. Obviously neither were effective, but Debbs made a great deal more progress in his life.

Posted by Jeremiah W Adler at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The underground weathermen were advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government. They also smoked weed all the time and had orgies. I’m somehow glad they didn’t accomplish their goal.
Interesting question……How do you determine if your revolutionary movement is the best thing for the masses. If revolution was really necessary, and we were really at the tipping point, wouldn’t the underground weathermen have more than a few hundred members? They failed to see that they simply were not the revolutionary force that the country was going to get behind.
What gets me the most is the same thing that bothered me about the communists. They relied on the freedoms afforded to us by this country in order to try and overthrow it. For starters, they used the freedom of the press to their advantage. There weren’t too many other countries around during this time period that would let to broadcast a message for revolution. In fact, in most other countries, any one simply making public statements in support of the group would have received some sort of repercussions. Wow. The United States was such an oppressive system.
Second, these people had the audacity to complain about the conduct of the F.B.I. “Oh, they were so mean. Oh they held us out of a window. Oh they followed us around.” You were bombing the Capital building genius. What do you expect?
Finally, the only reason these people aren’t in jail is because of the F.B.I.’s misconduct. The very country you were trying to overthrow was ultimately so committed to civil liberties that it wouldn’t even allow itself to put most you in jail.
What perturbs me is not the fact that these people got off the hook, or that they were allowed to exploited the freedom of the press. On the contrary, it is the fact that they were able to do this that makes this country great and unique.

Posted by Jeremiah W Adler at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I find the way that the people responded to taxation unsettling. On the first read, it is inspiring how everyone got together to fight a system that was unjust. Seven rings of protection were formed to universally protect everyone from completely unreasonable taxation. It is completely and utterly ridiculous that in the immediate aftermath of a war fought over taxes, the imbeciles in power decided to instate a nearly identical taxation policy.
The frustration is clearly warranted. Action was warranted. But were the actions that they took the right ones. I have to take issue with the lawlessness of it. Clearly many times throughout history it has been necessary to break the law. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail that “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws". I agree with that. Civil disobedience has been an effective tool for change for hundreds of years. What I take issue with is the anarchistic characteristic of this disobedience.
When a group of protestors refuses to ride a bus, go to war, or pay taxes, they are standing up to the authorities. They are choosing to break the law, and are willing to accept any consequences that might befall them. Even though they are fighting the system, they are still relying on it. When the people that are in the position of enforcing the laws, that is when the system has the potential to collapse. We are a nation of laws. The prosecution of lawlessness is what gives our judicial system credibility. The same way that it is the citizen’s responsibility to break an unjust law, it is a lawmaker’s responsibility to either enforce it or change it. When the law is neither enforced nor changed, it merely breeds more lawlessness and a general lack of respect of the judicial system.
Perhaps in this situation, ignoring the law was a good thing, but the example and precedent that it sets could have unforeseen consequences. If the people charged with carrying out the laws see it as an acceptable option not to enforce a law that they do not agree with, we cease to live in a country governed by laws.
What if the southern state leaders refused to enforce “Brown verses board of education” because its populace was against it and they thought it was wrong? What if the National Guard and militia wouldn’t enforce it either? What if persecutors refused to prosecute men who raped black women because they didn’t see anything wrong with it? What if the sheriff allows the clan to burn down a blacks house because they don’t want them there wither.
Whereas there is the potential for good in institutionalized lawlessness, there is an equal opportunity for bad. We all have a vested interest in the workings of the judicial system, and even if a law is wrong, it is in all of our best interests that it is prosecuted until the law is actually changed. Otherwise our government does not serve its function and we fall into a form of anarchy.

Posted by Jeremiah W Adler at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In his piece "What is radical history?" (published in 1970, it is important to note) Howard Zinn makes an impassioned case for writing (and presumably teaching) history in a "value-laden" manner that eschews the objectivity that most historians have generally taken to be the essence of their discipline. Do you find his approach compelling, or would you regard the sort of radical history he espouses to be biased and hence less believable than traditional, "objective" historical accounts? According to Zinn, what is it about the study of history that makes it particularly well suited to the production of people who are skeptical of the status quo?

Needless to say, many people have criticized Zinn's approach to the study of American History. For one representative critique, see this piece by Daniel J. Flynn.

Posted by Seth Cotlar at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)