Politically Incorrect Guide to American History

part 1. I’ve largely refrained from overly quoting this book, which is awesome. In typical Sarah fashion, I found the first parts – Plymouth through Civil War – to be most interesting. Then it got kind of boring for a while. Then the modern part is more interesting again.

Anyway, I wanted to share a quote from the beginning part of the book, which is wonderful.

The Framers of the Constitution were well aware of the tendency for power to concentrate and expand. Jefferson spoke of the calamity that would result if all power were to be concentrated in the federal government. Checks and balances among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, a prominent feature of the Constitution, offer little guarantee of limited government, since these three branches could unite against the states and the people. That is precisely what Jefferson warned William Branch Giles about in 1825: ‘It is bt too evident, that the three ruling branches of [the national] government are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of all powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic’

Since the states were the constituent parts of the Union and had enjoyed an independent existence long before the COnsitution was established, early American statesmen wanted the states to have some protection against the Federal government. The federal government could not be permitted to have the exclusive authority to interpret te Constitution. It would consistently and down rulings in favor of itself, and over time, consolidate power.

Um, yeah! It goes on to discuss the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.

And, OK, this one, which is HL Mencken on the Gettysburg Address:

The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.

 

The story behind how we got the “all persons born… in the United States…are citizens” is interesting, too, and something I didn’t know. The Radical Republicans wanted to avoid having their Civil Rights Act of 1866 challenged legally (which it totally could have been) so they tried for this Constitutional amendment. Apparently, some controversy exists over the “original intent” and it’s too bad that the writers couldn’t have been a bit more forthcoming with what they actually meant. It’s the opinion of many historians that the amendment was meant to be modest in scope, “intended simply to empower the federal government to ensure that the states did not interfere with the basic rights of the freedmen.”

Many Southerners, as well as many Northerners, feared that this amendment would tend “over time to undermine America’s federal system.” (In other words, lead to more and more centralization and tending to take more and more power from the states.) Orville Browning, Johnson’s Secretary of the Interior, said “One of the greatest perils which threatens us now is the tendency to centralization, the absorption of the rights of the States, and the concentration of all power in the General Government. When that shall be accomplished, if ever, the days of the Republic are numbered.”

sigh.

Photos

11/11

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11/15 More on the Green Gifts fair at Natural Living Des Moines.

Taboo

I’ve been watching the show Taboo lately. It’s about different cultures and what they find “taboo,” though the show’s creators certainly are quite liberal in their application of the word “taboo.” (They seem to think it means “something that Americans might find strange.”)

While its American-centricity irks me, as well as the fact that many of the segments are repeats from other NatGeo channel shows, I do enjoy the show quite a bit. There’s lots of babywearing and breastfeeding.

One particularly favorite segment featured women in prison in India. These women were mothers. Their children were in prison with them. When they interviewed the Americans about this, they invariably said “why punish the children because the mothers committed a crime?” And when they interviewed the Indians about this, they invariably said “why punish the children because the mothers committed a crime?”

Yeah. Indian culture values motherhood. And breastfeeding. They believe that nobody else can care for the children as well as their mother can. I chuckle a bit every time I think of the American and the Indian uttering the same phrase, but with entirely opposite meanings. Culture.

(That’s not the only reason this is allowed – the country also has a huge problem with homeless children begging on the streets, which is where many of these children would end up without their mothers. Also, most of the women haven’t been convicted – they’re awaiting trial. Some for 5 plus years.)

Regretsy, People of Walmart, similar

I’ve been appalled lately at the popularity of sites like Regretsy and People of Walmart. Websites whose sole purpose seems to be to make fun of other people, in a very personal way, by singling them out for public ridicule. Like one might do in 7th grade or something.

I will admit, some things on Etsy are appalling. But some things that Regretsy makes fun of are just simply things that don’t appeal to the owner of Regretsy – that doesn’t make them horrible. I browsed today while pondering this post, and found the author making fun of a Faerie hoodie – and also of the spelling “faerie.” Now, I’m not in that community, but it is my understanding that Faerie is a perfectly acceptable spelling (spellcheck certainly has no problem with it). And so the jacket isn’t my personal style, but it appears well-made and might appeal to others. But the owner of Regretsy has apparently decided that he or she has the final say on what is and is not acceptable on Etsy.

People of Walmart is supposedly a collection of nonstaged, nonPhotoshopped pictures of people at Walmart. Most of them are fat and with fat rolls hanging out. I’m in favor of dressing appropriately… but I guess I think it crosses some sort of line to take a picture of someone and, without their knowledge or consent, post it online for the sole purpose of making fun of them.

Both websites just rub me the completely wrong way.

Then I think about my favorite blog of all time, the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” quotation marks. Is that any different? It is still making fun, but the making fun is removed from the person – it’s making fun of bad grammar, not of people. It’s not “these people are so tasteless, can you believe it,” it’s more “isn’t this sign funny when you take into consideration what those quote marks mean?” Also, there’s no way to trace it back to where it came from – and purposefully so. Any identifying marks are blurred out.  Maybe I’m just hiding behind high-brow excuses, I don’t know. I still think they’re different.

Photo a Day

11/2. Muslin Produce Bags now available at Wallypop.

11/3

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11/6 I drew a mama wearing her baby on the jellyfish tank at the zoo. (Wally loves to draw pictures in condensation, so he was drawing robots and such.)

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Hate

Steve Deace said something today while I was waiting for my segment. He said why, if I try to stop you from doing something that is self-destructive, should that be called hate? If I try to stop Tim and Jim from getting married, why must it be because I hate them? How have we gotten to a point in our society that people actually think that way?

It was so relevant to me today, because I came across just that very sentiment earlier in the day. “Doesn’t God love everyone? Don’t Christians know that? Then why wouldn’t they want gays to get married?” And I’ve also heard that semi-recently from someone in my life, too. “If you love me, you’ll want me to do whatever I need to do to be happy.”

It’s not about LOVE.

I love my kids. Today, they were both playing happily together. I went over and stopped them and it made both of them mad. I must hate them, right? Well, they were playing with these small glass beads that sometimes Wally uses for math, but that Genna absolutely will put in her mouth and swallow. They were happy, and they didn’t realize the danger. But I, as the parent, knew the danger that they didn’t see. And I had to stop them from doing something self-destructive because I LOVE them.

God loves us. I’m sure He likes to see us happy. But he also likes to see us not hurting ourselves. And He has a bigger perspective than we do (just like I have a bigger perspective than my kids d0). He can see dangers we cannot. And He has certain things He doesn’t want us to do because they are self-destructive. Not out of hate. Out of LOVE.

If I see a person in a burning building, but they are happily listening to their IPod and don’t realize the danger, should I just leave them alone? Because I can see that they’re happy, and because I love them and want them to be happy? Or should I make them UNhappy by busting in and dragging them outside? If I were to do so, would it be because I hate them? Or because I love them?

Free Mulch!

Today, we took our new Yard Chipper out of its box and put it to work. (And I broke it all in one day.)

Um, can you say LOVE?

Here at our little Urban Homestead, we have tons of trees. They are beautiful and also a pain in the butt. One of the reasons they’re a pain in the butt is that they regularly drop large branches. Usually during storms, but sometimes just for kicks. When I say large branches, I mean that I have friends who have trees that are smaller than these branches.

These branches accumulate in the yard. We haul them into a pile. And then, after a year, we have a huge pile. In the city, we can’t burn our pile. So, if we need to have tree service, we pay the tree service people to haul it away. This is expensive, but we’ve done it. Otherwise, we could chop the branches up into the 3 foot lengths required for city pickup, and pay the city to pick it up. Expensive and labor-intensive.

Add to this nonsense the fact that we have a high need for mulch around here. Mulch is also expensive.

Enter the Yard Chipper. Yeah, it was like $150. Yeah, that’s kind of a lot. But, um, hello? FREE MULCH! Just in today’s work, in which I nearly obliterated our backyard brush pile, it’s easily paid for itself in terms of money saved in haulaway charges, and money saved in purchasing mulch.

Even more, it’s another step towards being self-sufficient. We have the source for all the mulch we could possibly need or want right here in our yard. Why buy it from the store?

In case you’re wondering, our chipper is a Yard Machines electric model. Most of our yard equipment is electric. It will handle branches up to 1.25 inches in diameter, though it’s more realistic to say that it’ll handle straight branches 1.25 inches. Anything bigger, we cut up with our chainsaw (rechargeable cordless electric Ryobi) and add to the woodpile for use in our outdoor fireplace.

Urban Homesteading

As Randy and I turn our minds more and more towards homesteading here in the city, I thought I’d add a new category here on the blog called, gee, “Urban Homesteading” with the eye towards starting up a new blog if it seems appropriate.

An interesting thought about slavery and racism.

Considering that even antislavery whites were, by and large, still incredibly racist, and didn’t think that blacks could or should mingle with whites, and would never, ever, be equals with whites, I wonder if the cause of racial equality was actually helped by slavery.

No, now before you leap to your self-righteous exclamations, read what I’m thinking here.
I’m not saying slavery was a good thing. It was horrible. The idea that one person could own another person is abhorrent. I’m not even saying that the above thought is RIGHT. It was just one of the many bizarre “suppose that…” thoughts that kick around in my head on a daily basis.

But.

Without slavery, would blacks have lived in America? Not many, anyway. Thus leaving whites to continue in their strong opinions that blacks are an inferior race.

What’s the best way to not have your preconceptions challenged? To never be in a situation that challenges them. What’s the best way to have your prejudices changed? To see that they’re wrong through your own personal experience.

Without ever coming into regular contact with blacks, I doubt that American whites would have ever really thought about them, and when they did think about them, it would have been easier to keep their prejudicial thoughts. But being in contact with blacks allowed them to start to realize that they were just people, just like the rest of us.

Now of course, this argument falls completely apart when you look at race relations in countries that never had slavery…. but it was an interesting idea to kick around in my head yesterday.

Another thought, and one shared by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, is that slavery would have come to a swifter and less bloody end if the North had just allowed the South to secede. Northern states would have been under no obligation to return runaway slaves to another country, the slave system would have been destabilized, and would have fallen apart on its own.

(In the end, I’m not a fan of Lincoln. I think his decision to invade the south and force them to remain in the Union was the beginning of our mess now – he completely trampled on the rights of states and waged an Unconstitutional war.)

reading

you know, I love American History so much more now than when I was in school.
I’m reading the Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. I keep thinking I want to post excerpts of some of the best passages, but I’d be posting the entirely of pages 1-50, at least, and I’m pretty sure that is illegal, lol.

So just go get it and read it yourself.

But my favorite recent quote is “Guess What? States had the right to secede.” (I’m only as far as the Civil War, which wasn’t a civil war at all since there were not two factions fighting for control of the government, but might actually be more appropriately named the War for Southern Independence. I could even get behind the War of Northern Aggression, to be honest.)

I actually didn’t realize, based on what was taught in school, how brutal the North was. The resentment in the South makes more sense now.