Jim heartfield wrote:
> In message <p04310108b52a1bd9ddb3@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood
> <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>
> >The
> >U.S. "Founding Fathers" created a system designed to limit popular
> >sovereignty and insulate a propertied ruling class against the
> >depredations of the mob - or, as Madison listed the dangers in
> >Federalist No. 10 <http://www.mcs.net/~knautzr/fed/fed10.htm>: "a
> >rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal
> >division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project."
>
> Wouldn't you distinguish between the Federalists like Madison and the
> others. I thought the war of independence had its conservatives and
> radicals - and that Jefferson's small-holders democracy was the latter.
>
> Incidentally, that too-radical proposition for Attorney General Lani
> Guinier bases her whole argument against the Tyranny of the Majority
> (she means the white majority) on Madison (he meant the propertyless
> majority).
>
> In message <20000424085556.A4813 at panix.com>, Gordon Fitch
> <gcf at panix.com> writes
> >Jim heartfield:
> >> ...
> >> Engels wrote (in the notebooks published as Dialectic of Nature) that
> >> slavery was itself once a progressive advance over the alternative -
> >> ...
> >
> >Progress to what?
> >
> >I have the same problem with this admiration for classical
> >slavery and its fans Plato and Aristotle, and for the Founding
> >Fathers, and so on, as I had with Hayek's efficiency. There
> >is this tremendous _thing_ in the background which is the
> >_unsaid_ -- the thing that gives all these people and the
> >crimes they committed value which transcends the poor flesh
> >they ride on and crush. One used to call it God, perhaps.
> >What is it?
> >
> >Nietzsche, at least, was direct about it: "Man is a bridge
> >over which something travels; he knows not what, but the
> >bridge trembles." Good old Nietzsche.
> >
>
>
> You protest that people in the past don't share your opinions. You
> should count yourself lucky that Washington, Jefferson and the rest
> fought a war to protect your right to hold opinions. Otherwise my
> disagreement with you would be easily resolved - I could just send in
> the British militia to silence you.
I'm no historian but think that Howard Zinns "Peoples History of the Us" kind of blows this assumption out of the water. Washington, Jefferson and the rest fought a war to promote their right to send the US militia in to silence dissident opinions. I believe Zinn sites several examples where these good men brutily suppressed dissent. Sheys rebellion is but one example. Maybe someone with a more thorough knowlege about this can help me out with the details.
>
>
> Without US independence, Britain would have kept America to a slave-
> owning policy - indeed, it is more than likely that abolition in Britain
> would have failed. Those men from the past do not conform to your ideal,
> but they made it possible for your ideals to develop.
Where I agree with this statement I would also add that it was not their intent. The disrispectful way some of them referred to the majority as the "bewildered heard" gives some indication that they cared little about the input of the common man.
Brad Hatch