An Ode To Douglass, Not Doug

[Gregory Geboski]

Say, I've never heard Douglass and John Brown put in contrast like this 
before. I understood that Douglass always admired Brown (if not always 
agreeing with him), that he himself briefly considered going on the Harper's 
Ferry raid, and that he considered this act of "self-contented, suicidal 
righteousness" a feat of heroism that helped the great cause. Or am I 
missing something?

----Original Message Follows----
From: LeoCasey at aol.com
Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Subject: An Ode To Douglass, Not Doug
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 22:44:22 EST

Doug opines:

 > Maybe I missed it among all the cubic miles of hot air, but did you ever

 > answer CG Estabrook's question about squaring your (self-righteously) 
tepid

 >

Sorry, Doug, but preparing all these Bukharinite confessions is hard work. 
It
is not easy being so abjectly humble without a single role model on the
listserv to follow. Perhaps you could instruct me on the fine art of how to
caricature and avoid the inconvenient argument; I would be a very 
disciplined
student, and I promise I won't use these techniques against you. Then I
wouldn't have to apologize all the time.

You see, I had always thought, obviously as a function of my self-righteous
but tepid political delusions, that there was a difference between Frederick
Douglass and John Brown, and that, well, your politics were more in the vein
of the John Brown. Go out in a burst of self-contented, suicidal
righteousness, as the voice of true rebellion against any half-hearted
compromises with power. Be the great white father out to liberate the
ignorant, poor masses. Have your mark on history be a song made up about how
your body is a smouldering in the grave: now that's the Doug I know and 
love.

But to join with the northern cause before it was even committed to the end
of slavery, to recruit African-American soldiers into a Union army in which
the were second class citizens because they could be historical actors on
behalf of their own struggle for freedom -- all out of some reformist
illusion that change is a long, arduous continuous struggle. Now those
actions of Douglass are only something that I could believe. And to become a
US Ambassador to Haiti -- doesn't that show Douglass' true colors, as a tool
of American imperialism just like yours truly?

But now that you have spoken on this crucial issue, and at such length, I
will have to reconsider it all.

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --

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