We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

Frederick Douglas, 1852:

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?: I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every-day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival....

Fellow-citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing and a byword to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement; the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice....

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.... While drawing encouragement from the "Declaration of Independence," the great principles it contains and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference.... A change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe.... Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.... No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.

Comments

[observer]

Some of the more brilliant words I have read in quite some time. Frederick Douglas makes me proud to be an American!

[Laertes]

Frederick Douglass is shrill.

[William Bennett]

Why do you hate America?

[jerry]

Thank you.

On how many blogs run by academics, would you be called a barking moonbat with BDS and a hatred for America for daring to suggest that America is not the be all and end all?

I am thinking of Bainbridge, Althouse, Reynolds, Hewitt, ...

[bad Jim]

Happy Fourth of July to you too, Professor DeLong.

It reminds me of my mother's father, a Swedish immigrant who voted for Norman Thomas in 1940, according to family lore, because he didn't think even FDR should serve more than two terms as president.

This Swede, an American by choice, was confident that his convictions about his adopted country were surer than those of his fellow citizens. (And about everything else, but never mind.)

Douglass is also expressing an outside view. He wasn't here by choice, but he still thought our ideals - at least the ones we had back then - were admirable, even optimal. But this is from 1852, 76 years after the edited version of Jefferson's draft passed Congress, and he was still waiting for the promise of democracy to be delivered.

[otto]

"Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference.... A change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe.... Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated."

Frederick Douglas as Kenichi Ohmae!

[dearieme]

Good stuff. The only incontrovertible exaggeration is perhaps "America reigns without a rival....": surely Brazil had also retained slavery?

[andres]

dearieme: It's true that Brazil had slavery at the time Douglass was speaking, and in fact did not fully abolish slavery until 1888. However, during this time Brazil was also a monarchy with no pretensions to being a democratic republic, so they weren't as guilty of hypocrisy as the US.

[andres]

One hundred and forty three years after the Emancipation, much of what Douglass says about the US is still true, and he was also too optimistic about the effects of globalization. After all, what use is instantaneous communication if all media outlets are controlled by a handful of corporations, and if the high relative real wages of unskilled US workers are bought at the price of slavery-like conditions in the developing world? Communism may be dead, but class struggle continues.

[dearieme]

Andres, good point. Otherwise, I thought that one of his throwaway remarks was good: "From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion." Next time someone boasts of the extraordinary courage and staggering initiative his ancestors showed by moving to the US in, say, the 1870s, I might quote that. The 1620s were quite a different matter.

[im1dc]

"Frederick Douglas, 1852..."

Shrill?

He was motivating those who would listen to do something about the injustice of slavery.

Good for him.

The Civil War happened and changed all that, including a rather famous visit by Douglass to the White House to meet and speak with President Lincoln.

Everyone here familiar with Liberia?

America has moved forward from the thinking of 1852 as have most American Blacks and so must those who dare today to imply much of what Douglass said then applies to America today.

No, it doesn't.

GET A GRIP on a HISTORY BOOK.

[DOR]

Among the many reasons for revolting against an oppressor are the following. Any of them ring a bell?

“He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.”

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent”

”For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury”

“He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.”

After this (and other bits) was written a long time ago, some people signed it.

Among them were John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Harrison.

[andres]

"America has moved forward from the thinking of 1852 as have most American Blacks and so must those who dare today to imply much of what Douglass said then applies to America today.

No, it doesn't."

Looks like I've offended im1dc's sensibilities. Never mind that many injustices described by Douglass were still occurring prior to and even somewhat after, the Civil Rights passed in 1964, which is not so long ago. All right then, without making parallels with the Independence Declaration, let's run through the black book of the Federal Government's Executive Branch, as well as its Congressional allies (and no, this isn't an anti-Republican screed; much of what follows applies to the Democrats in the Vietnam era and before).

Does a _government_ (notice I said government, not country) which claim to be a democratic republic, and which claims to value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness engage in the following behaviors?

(1) Repeatedly violating civil rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, e.g. right to legal counsel, right to speedy trial and trial by jury etc. against _anyone_ that it labels a terrorism suspect.

(2) Engaging in illegal searches such as monitoring phone calls and bank account transactions without warrants.

(3) Inciting violence against foreign civilian populations by labeling them as life- and freedom-hating terrorists, which of course is what they must be if they dare take shots at US troops.

(4) Engaging in an unprovoked war of aggression against a foreign country, and manufacturing a fake casus belli in order to do so.

(5) Inciting racial (eg Japan) or religious (Muslim countries) hatred against peoples who are engaged in violent conflict against us.

(6) Use of aircraft bombing against foreign civilians, both in a carpet-bombing pattern (Vietnam, Cambodia) or a more limited "shock and awe" pattern of more recent times.

(7) Use of both financing and manufactured propaganda against foreign political parties deemed detrimental to "US interests".

(8) Aiding and abetting the overthrow of foreign governments deemed detrimental to "US interests", even if such governments are democratically elected.

(9) Failure to make inexpensive generic drugs available to developing countries to treat pandemics such as AIDS if such availability is detrimental to the profits of pharmaceutical companies.

(10) Deliberately ignoring the oppression of industrial workers in developing countries and even encouraging it through the use of free-trade agreements.

Only an incomplete list. The pursuit of justice in human affairs, while necessary, is somewhat akin to pursuing the horizon. We've come a long way since the days of Frederic Douglass, but we have a _long_ way to go.

[FreeDem]

Andres- Carpet bombing has not gone away, they call it cluster bombs now, smaller, but just as effective (perhaps more so) over large areas.

When they don't go off immediately they look very similar to food packets we carpeted Afganistan with about that same time as well.

And Slavery, once nearly extinct, is on the rise again, even in the U.S., with talk among some Republicans of bringing it back.

It is also useful to remember that while Democrats were the party of slavery (that is what the elephants were supposed to be remembering), In the times from TR to FDR to Nixon, the parties switched sides, especially on Human Rights.

All the worst Democrats of the Viet Nam era, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond, et. al. are Republicans now.

And many Republicans who thought that to be a conservative was to have a gag reflex (Paul Hackett, Clint Curtis, many others) are now new minted Democrats.

[sm]

I've long thought that the 1850s and today had a certain similarity.

[PaulC]

im1dc: "so must those who dare today to imply much of what Douglass said then applies to America today"

No, of course not. London and Boston are much farther apart today. Walled cities and empires are coming back into style, and the US is impervious to any kind of outside influence. Our moral power abroad is unchallenged, and the idea that any of our politicians could be corrupt is unthinkable. We've achieved a perfect republic and only the delusional could claim to find any hypocrisy here.

But I'm not sure who you think was implying anything. Is it possible that Prof. DeLong simply posted this because it was a particularly eloquent statement by a great American at an important point in our history?

[im1dc]

'PaulC' said "But I'm not sure who you think was implying anything."

See what 'andres' said:

"Looks like I've offended im1dc's sensibilities. Never mind that many injustices described by Douglass were still occurring prior to and even somewhat after, the Civil Rights passed in 1964, which is not so long ago."

The KEY here is to note that the injustices 'andres' & Douglass refer to occurred prior to, take your pick 1852, 1865, 1964 or 200X, and still occur.

Why? Because these are HUMAN CONDITIONS not confined to the USA or the 1852 slavery issues of whites property rights versus blacks human rights so eloquently addressed by the outraged Douglass.

Had you been reading the news last week you could have noticed that a middle eastern foreign doctoral student at the U of Colorado was convicted for holding a women he brought with him from his country to use for house cleaning, cooking and sex while he studied linguistics in Boulder. Note he was charged, tried and convicted.

The POINT:

Slavery and extreme human exploitation are still with us.

BUT,

The institutional legalization of slavery is no longer tolerated in any Western nation and not officially 'tolerated' in Asian or middle eastern nations, though too many of them do little to enforce that intolerance, ususally turning a blind eye to it.

If you need to be outraged, do so at the nations and cultures that look the other way at slavery and the people who do it.

To say the USA and Americans are imperfect is axiomatic in this regard, but we don't institutionalize it, don't condone it and we take legal action when and where we can to stop it.

That's the Big Picture.

Look how Tom Delay's Pacific island fiasco of near slave labor garment factories turned out for him and the Republicans who endorsed it, for example.

[Sonia]

With Paul, I agree an elogquent statement. But also a statement that we all should ponder. Perhaps the statement ahould ask us to question and defend any presumption of idividual or collective moral superiority .

[Scroop Moth]

In view of all the recent discussion about Rumsfeld's vacation house in Maryland, this was a great 4th of July for Prof. DeLong to honor Frederick Douglas, who was in bondage on that property in 1833. The occupant of Rumsfeld's house at the time was a farmer named Covey, who was famous for his services to the neighborhood in "breaking" the spirit of rebellious slaves. Covey assaulted Frederick Douglas whereupon the 16-year-old escaped. I'd like for Rumsfeld to go crazy with fear of the ghosts, but he lacks the imagination for it.

[andres]

I might be mistaken, but im1dc seems to miss the point I was making. Yes, the crimes I described are human conditions that are present in the spirit by which most countries are governed, not just the US ("change the spirit!" was DeTocqueville's rallying cry, but Louis Philippe and the French government didn't listen, spelling the death knell of monarchy in France).

However, the one and only thing that can be said in favor of both dictators like Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, and of absolute monarchs like Louis XVI is that they never claimed to be governing a democratic republic, and they openly admitted their crimes under the rationale that you cannot maintain either a communist revolution or the Divine Right of Kings without breaking many eggs in the process.

The US government, however, has made a long practice of proclaiming itself a democratic republic while following policies designed to squash both democracy and republicanism at home and abroad, in order to maintain a corporate oligarchy in power. Mind you, there are many exceptions: both FDR and Clinton were lucky enough that conditions enabled them to follow a more pro-democracy foreign policy, and LBJ had the political ammunition (by way of King, Malcolm, and Brown vs. Ark Board of Ed.) to make enforcement of civil rights a reality.

Still, the _majority_ of the policy record of the US government in the 20th century does not paint the picture of a country trying to encourage democracy and republicanism, and this definitely lays a large number of office holders in all three branches open to the charge of hypocrisy. Foreign countries have belatedly started to copy this hypocrisy (eg Russia, Mexico)following the example laid down by the US.

The passage by Douglass, in short, is just one square inch of a much larger canvas that can be painted about the US and its history, which illustrate that democratic and egalitarian practices in law (including the banning of slavery) are not sufficient if there is no social equality and egalitarianism in spirit. Time to reread DeTocqueville

[im1dc]

'andres' says "The US government, however, has made a long practice of proclaiming itself a democratic republic while following policies designed to squash both democracy and republicanism at home and abroad"

First of all your post was eloquent. Bravo.

However, as you might expect I find it flawed, seriously flawed in the understanding of history.

Our Founding Fathers established this nation of ours pragmatically (they got the best deal they could get to bring the States into agreement).

They each had their own idea what was Ideal, but they had to settle for what they could get 13 colonies to agree upon.

It is upon that basis that I disagree with you.

The imperfections in America and American politics were built in from when we were Colonies before we were States. The people of the nation differed then as now as to what is 'Ideal', but they were then and still today willing to be practical and give a little to get a little.

We are a Democratic Republic which means in one sense that voters get to pick which faction they trust with power and gives them the ability to retain them or to toss them out if that faction does not handle that power in a mutually beneficial manner.

That means to me that "democracy and republicanism" can be squashed by the elected on an as needed but temporary basis to ensure our existence and safety, from threats within or from outside.

The threats from within or outside are to the beholder.

Any government has to decide how to approach threats in the name of the people. The people will decide if the government has been correct on voting day.

Voters are fickle. Threats change. So do US presidents.

The tendency of our government to be under the thumb of multinational corporations is a very disturbing trend of the last Century which sustains us today but may make way for the next wave of long tail solutions powered by the populace making individual choices and not corporations making choices for us to choose among.

And the USA is a lot less evil than many other governments, though since we are the world's sole SuperPower and we have over 700 overseas military bases, are involved in IRAQ and trade multinationally it does not appear that way to the casual observer.

[andres]

Hmmm. Sorry it took so long to reply--I needed to have some of the arguments ferment themselves in my thought processes.

Let's start back with the founding. It is quite true that the group of men who created the constitution (Founding Fathers, btw, is entirely too worshipful a term when trying to maintain objectivity) were aware of its imperfections and adopted many compromises for the sake of unity (the anti-democratic landed aristocracy, based mainly in the South but with a significant representation in the North, was against anything as radical as a truly democratic multi-racial republic) coming before their ideals.

However, once the founders had passed away, the generations that succeeded them retained the revolutionary, anti-monarchical, anti-nobility ideals as propaganda, while forgetting about the anti-democratic compromises that had made the constitution possible. And so, in spite of elections and federalism, US politics developed first as the struggle between oligarchies and then eventually as the struggle of one oligarchy to maintain its control over both political and economic decisions.

It is not just slavery and its effects, described so eloquently by Douglass, that stand in stark contrast to the democratic ideals of the country, though there the contrast was truly massive and led in short order to abolitionism, the founding of the Republican party, and civil war.

The initial decades of the labor movement in the US are also shot through with crimes and injustices in the name of profits. The use of violence as an anti-labor tool subsided not because corporations became more scrupulous but because they realized it was politically counterproductive even in the tilted playing field of US politics. US foreign policy, especially in Latin America, was simply a macrocosm of the business sector's anti-labor policies, in effect paying off LA's existing landed aristocracy to run the countries politically while ensuring a profitable (ie, anti-labor) environment for US multinationals to operate.

As for security, this has, in my mind, always been an overexaggerated issue. Terrorism is not new, and while Al Qaeda and their ilk are dangerous today because they could still kill thousands of people, overreaction such as launching unprovoked invasions of foreign countries just goes to show how cynically this threat is manipulated for the sake of those in power. The US government has always found it convenient to encourage one form of anti-democratic xenophobia or another (eg anti-Japanese racism in WWII, anti-communism, and now anti-brown skinned Latino) not just to fight wars but to pursue policies which suspend democratic rights.

Tactics such as this might have been justified in the WWII era, when the enemy was fascism, which had a real industrial base and a coherent ideology. It was less justified (though still understandable) in the cold war era, given that the USSR had been our ally and that both the Soviet ideological and military threats were significantly exaggerated. It is even less excusable today, where terrorist groups like Al Qaeda do not have an organized state, do not control any industrial base, and do not even have any decent ideology other than a perverted version of Islam that is too loathesome to be attractive to anyone but aggrieved young people whose only desire is revenge. To suggest that democratic liberties _have_ to be put aside for the purpose of fighting such an enemy, and even though those who are suppressing such liberties have an inherent interest in doing so, is to be naive in the extreme.

Ok too much writing. Bottom line: any society, not just the US, which is stratified by class and race will not be a democratic republic in practice even if those are its stated ideals, including of the people who founded it. On occasion the US has benefitted from being led by truly great men--Lincoln, FDR, MLK, LBJ (in domestic policy), as well as a few others such as Clinton who did not achieve anything earthshaking but were still good presidents--but what made them great was that they were willing to defy the interests of the politically dominant class in order to safeguard the long-term stability and unity of the country. Those are great leaders and achievements for any nation, but they don't make a democracy by themselves.