truthfront

Tag: philosophy

  • Paine’s prophecy #markup

    Some writers have so confounded confused society with government as to leave little or no distinction between them. They are not only different but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants interactions and government by our wickedness laws. The former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections innovation and collaboration, the latter negatively by restraining our vices inspires subservience or rebellion. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.1

    Government of our own is our natural right. And when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced that it is wiser and safer to form a constitution uphold American democracy of our own in a cool, deliberate manner rather than trust such an event a necessity to time and chance. If we don’t, some Massenello the populist fascists will arise, laying hold of popular disquietudes to collect together the desperate and discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge. Should the government of America return again into the hands of Britain the kleptocratic Republican regime, the tottering situation of things will be a temptation for some desperate adventurer billionaire to try his fortune.2

    **

    To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason forbids us to have faith […] is madness and folly. Every day wears out the little remains of kindred between us and them. […] You that tell us of harmony and reconciliation a new great America, can you restore us to the time past of our shared interests? […] Neither can you reconcile Britain right-wing fascist traitors and the un-treasonous majority. The last cord has been broken, the people of England criminals of the failed coup attempt of January 6 and the Republican regime sweeping it into the margins of history are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries that nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. Just as the lover can’t forgive the ravisher of his mistress can the continent we forgive the murders of Britain traitorous failures who stormed the capitol. 3

    I have never met a man either in England or America a blue or red state who did not confess his opinion that a separation between the countries us would take place one time or another was inevitable. And there is no instance in which we have shown less judgment than in endeavoring to describe the rightness or fitness of the continent for independence maintain the health and vigor of American democracy. As all men vary only in their opinion of the time, let us, in order to remove mistakes, take a general survey of things the American sociopolitical landscape, and try to find out the very time. We need not go far, the inquiry ceases at once, for the time has found us.4

    Taking up arms merely to enforce a pecuniary law seems unwarrantable by divine law the social contract, just as is the taking up arms to force obedience to that law. […] The lives of men are too valuable to be cast away on such trifles. It is the violence done and threatened to our persons, the destruction of our property by an armed force police, the invasion of our country communities by fire and sword federal officers, that qualifies necessitates the use of our own arms. The instance when such a defense becomes necessary, all subjection to Britain federal law will cease and the independence defense of America should have been will be considered upheld, as dating its era from and published by the first musket that was fired against her. This is a line of consistency neither drawn by caprice nor extended by ambition but produced by a chain of events of which the colonists un-treasonous USA majority were not the authors. 

    I shall conclude these remarks with the following timely and well-intended hints: We ought to reflect that there are three different ways by which independence the USA’s future may hereafter be effected, and that one of those three will one day or another be the fate of America.:

    • By the legal voice of the people in Congress via fair election processes
    • By a military power enemies from without
    • By a mob from within5

    Volumes have been written on the subject of the We are engaged in a struggle between England and America the traitorous few and the majority. Men Citizen defenders of Democracy of all ranks have embarked on the controversy, from different motives and varying designs must be aware and prepare. […]6

    1.  Paine, Thomas, Common Sense, Applewood Books, Massachusetts, 2002: 5. ↩︎
    2. Ibid, 41. ↩︎
    3. Ibid, 43. ↩︎
    4. Ibid, 43. ↩︎
    5. Ibid, 63. ↩︎
    6. Ibid, 23. ↩︎

  • Santayana on Emerson

    Those who knew Emerson, or who stood so near to his time and to his circle that they caught some echo of his personal influence, did not judge him merely as a poet or philosopher, nor identify his efficacy with that of his writings. His friends and neighbors, the congregations he preached to in his younger days, the audiences that afterward listened to his lectures, all agreed in a veneration for his person that had nothing to do with their understanding or acceptance of his opinions. They flocked to him and listened to his word, not so much for the sake of its absolute meaning as for the atmosphere of candor, purity, and serenity that hung about it, as about a sort of sacred music. They felt themselves in the presence of a rare and beautiful spirit who was in communion with a higher world. More than the truth his teachings might express, they valued the sense it gave them of a truth that was inexpressible. They became aware, if we may say so, of the ultraviolet rays of his spectrum, of the inaudible highest notes of his gamut, too pure and thin for common ears.

    The source of his power lay not in his doctrine, but in his temperament, and the rare quality of his wisdom was due less to his reason than to his imagination. Reality eluded him; he had neither diligence nor constancy enough to master and posses it; but his mind was open to all philosophical influences, from whatever quarter they might blow; the lessons of science and the hints of poetry worked themselves out in him to a free and personal religion. He differed from the plodding many, not in knowing things better, but in having more ways of knowing them. His grasp was not particularly firm, he was far from being like Plato or Aristotle, past master in the art and the science of life. But his mind was endowed with unusual plasticity, with unusual spontaneity and liberty of movement—It was a fairyland of thoughts and fancies. He was like a young god making experiences in creation: he blotched the work and always began again on a new and better plan. Every day he said , “Let there be light,” and every day the light was new. His sun, like that of Heraclitus, was different every morning. 

    Emerson: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Milton Konvitz and Stephen Whicher. Prentice-Hall, N.J., 1962: 31-32.

  • Schopenhauer on the American South

    Man is at bottom a dreadful wild animal. We know this wild animal only in the tamed state called civilization and we are therefore shocked by occasional outbreaks of its true nature. But if and when the bolts and bars of the legal order fall apart and anarchy supervenes it reveals itself for what it is. For enlightenment on this matter, though, you have no need to wait until that happens: there exist hundreds of reports, recent and less recent, which will suffice to convince you that man is in no way inferior to the tiger or the hyena in pitilessness and cruelty. A weighty contemporary example is provided by the reply received by the British Anti-Slavery Society from the American Anti-Slavery Society in answer to its inquiries about the treatment of slaves in the slave-owning states of the North American Union: Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States of North America. This book constitutes one of the heaviest of all indictments against mankind. No one can read it without horror, for whatever the reader of it may have heard or imagined or dreamed of the condition of slaves, indeed of human harshness and cruelty in general, will fade into insignificance when reading how these devils in human form, these bigoted, church-going, sabbath-keeping scoundrels, especially the anglican parsons among them, treat their innocent black brothers whom force and injustice have delivered into their devilish clutches. This book, which consists of dry but authentic and documented reports, rouses one’s human feelings to such a degree of indignation that one could preach a crusade for the subjugation and punishment of the slave-owning states North America. They are a blot on mankind.

    Schopenhauer, Arthur. Essays and Aphorisms. trans. by R.J Hollingdale. Penguin Books, London, 1970: 138. 

  • Schopenhauer’s research

    Man is at bottom a dreadful wild animal. We know this wild animal only in the tamed state called civilization and we are therefore shocked by occasional outbreaks of its true nature. But if and when the bolts and bars of the legal order fall apart and anarchy supervenes it reveals itself for what it is. For enlightenment on this matter, though, you have no need to wait until that happens: there exist hundreds of reports, recent and less recent, which will suffice to convince you that man is in no way inferior to the tiger or the hyena in pitilessness and cruelty. A weighty contemporary example is provided by the reply received by the British Anti-Slavery Society from the American Anti-Slavery Society in answer to its inquiries about the treatment of slaves in the slave-owning states of the North American Union: Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States of North America. This book constitutes one of the heaviest of all indictments against mankind. No one can read it without horror, for whatever the reader of it may have heard or imagined or dreamed of the condition of slaves, indeed of human harshness and cruelty in general, will fade into insignificance when reading how these devils in human form, these bigoted, church-going, sabbath-keeping scoundrels, especially the anglican parsons among them, treat their innocent black brothers whom force and injustice have delivered into their devilish clutches. This book, which consists of dry but authentic and documented reports, rouses one’s human feelings to such a degree of indignation that one could preach a crusade for the subjugation and punishment of the slave-owning states North America. They are a blot on mankind.

     Schopenhauer, Arthur, trans. by R.J Hollingdale, Essays and Aphorisms, Penguin Books, London, 1970: 138. 

  • The Great Wall, by Eliot Weinberger

    Richard Nixon, visiting the Great Wall of China in 1972, said: “I think you would have to conclude that this is a great wall.”

    Ronald Reagan, visiting the Wall in 1984, said: “What can you say, except it’s awe-inspiring? It is one of the great wonders of the world.” Asked if he would like to build his own Great Wall, Reagan drew a circle in the air and replied: “Around the White House.”

    Bill Clinton, visiting the Wall in 1998, said: “So if we had a couple of hours, we could walk ten kilometers, and we’d hit the steepest incline, and we’d all be in very good shape when we finished. Or we’d be finished. It was a great workout. It was great.”

    George W. Bush, visiting the Wall in 2002, signed the guest book and said: “Let’s go home.” He made no other comments. 

    Barack Obama, visiting the Wall in 2009, said: “It’s majestic. It’s magical. It reminds you of the sweep of history, and that our time here on Earth is not that long, so we better make the best of it.” During his visit, the Starbucks and KFC at the base of the Wall were closed.

    Weinberger, Eliot. The Ghosts of Birds, New Directions Books, New York, 2016: 91.

  • Angela Davis from Marin County Jail, May 1971

    In the heat of our pursuit for fundamental human rights, Black people have been continually cautioned to be patient. We are advised that as long as we remain faithful to the existing democratic order, the glorious moment will eventually arrive when we will come into our own as full-fledged human beings.

    But having been taught by bitter experience, we know that there is a glaring incongruity between democracy and the capitalist economy that is the source of our ills.

    *

    There is a distinct and qualitative difference between one breaking a law for one’s own individual self-interest and violating it in the interests of a class or a people whose oppression is expressed either directly or indirectly through that particular law. The former might be called a criminal, but the latter, as a reformist or revolutionary, is interested in universal social change. Captured, he or she is a political prisoner.

    The offense of the political prisoner is his/her boldness, persistent challenging—legally or extra-legally—of fundamental social wrongs fostered and reinforced by the state. He/she has opposed unjust laws and exploitative, racist social conditions in general, with the ultimate aim of transforming these laws and this society into an order harmonious with the material and spiritual needs and interests of the vast majority of its members.

    *

    In Black communities, wherever they are located, there exists an ever-present reminder that our universe must remain stable in its drabness, its poverty, its brutality. From Birmingham to Harlem to Watts, Black ghettoes are occupied, patrolled and often attacked by massive deployments of police. The police, domestic caretakers of violence, are the oppressor’s emissaries, charged with the task of containing us within the boundaries of our oppression.

    The announced function of the police, to protect and serve the people, becomes the grotesque caricature of protecting and preserving the interests of our oppressors and serving us nothing but injustice. They are there to intimidate and persuade Blacks with their violence that we are powerless to alter the conditions of our lives.

    They encircle the community with a shield of violence, too often forcing the natural aggression of the Black community inwards. The courts not only consistently abstain from prosecuting criminal behavior on the part of the police, but they convict, on the basis of biased police testimony, countless Black men and women.

    *

    The [current] movement is presently at a critical juncture. Fascist methods of repression threaten to physically decapitate and obliterate the movement. Dangerous ideological tendencies from within threaten to isolate the movement and diminish its revolutionary impact. Both menaces must be counteracted in order to ensure our survival. Revolutionary Blacks must spearhead and provide leadership for a broad anti-fascist movement.

     

    Davis, Angela. Political Prisoners, Prisons and Black Liberation, written from Marin County Jail, May 1971. From If They Come in the Morning…Voices of Resistance. Verso Books, London, 2016: 27-43. First published by The Third Press, 1971.

  • Mark Greif on Seeing Through Police

    A surprise of being around police is how much they touch you. The purpose of touching by police is to make persons touchable. Touch readies more touch. It is preparatory.

    The sudden violent arrest at a protest is almost never sudden if you have been watching the officer and the longer sequence.

    In recent decades, African Americans have made proverbial the facetious offenses that police seem to be pursuing: “driving while black,” “shopping while black,” and walking while black.” The history of racial terrorism by whites is old. Police have gradually taken up its responsibilities in a process that goes back more than a century. Police departments’ role in racial terror has survived even where racism has waned and their forces have integrated nonwhite officers. Racial terrorism is simply part of the job for local and metropolitan police forces in America – any policing at the level of the city, broadly construed.

    Racial terror creates enormous complications for any ordinary theory of what American police do, just as it carves a fundamental division between the experience and the expectations that non-African American citizens have of police and those held by African Americans.

    The more time you spend looking at police, the more you see that the law is not a true resource for them…Police lack law…This explains the police perception of, and anathema toward, any symbol of disorder or mess. In their daily practice, police pledge at every level to avoid mess or clean it up.

    Part of the reason police seem at present un-reformable is that they have no intelligible place in the philosophy of democracy. It’s possible they never have. When our theories of democracy took shape, police as we know them were a minor tertiary agency and an afterthought. If police don’t take stock of the Constitution, might it be because our Constitution can’t conceive of them?

    Liberal and social contract theories of democracy – from Hobbes and Locke to the American Republic constituted in 1789 – do have a central place for punishment, but not for police. Crime and punishment belong to judicial proceedings and courts, where the cause can be unfolded after the fact.

    Secrecy by police in a public place always identifies them as a suspect. Yet police departments hold tightly to their capacities for secrecy and claim them to be necessary for their heroic function of detection and investigation. Insofar as as detection of crime is what police wish their job was about, police are likely always to strain for greater secrecy in a democracy.

    Where sight disappears, abuse becomes possible.

    Police are negotiators, but without access to contract, law or eloquence. Their medium is not law. Police negotiate without any single, unitary reference or goal. Even a traffic stop becomes a negotiation.

    When police eye African Americans, harass African Americans, obstruct the movements of African Americans and wind up drawing their guns and murdering African Americans – which even in the twenty-first century they do with regularity and impunity, no matter the police department or region of the United States – it’s first because America still sees racially. Kidnapping an African labor force to build the country is still the country’s unrepented sin.

    Violence is given to police as a technique they alone can use, in the service of the overall nonviolence or pacification of society such that citizens need never use violence legitimately upon one another – they route it through police, so to speak. But this formal device winds up defining police by their application of violence. They wind up originating violence as a means of resolving any social deadlock. Police add violence to situations. This becomes a way of injecting testing violence or domination into the heart of society in a public way.

    Our neighbors may support [police] wickedness. We may have no idea how to fix it. Still, police violence differs from other forms of violence and domination that have no visible presence, or public check. The police measure out in public what the society will tolerate, even to our shame.

     

     

    Greif, Mark. Seeing Through Police, from Against Everything: On Dishonest Times. Verso Books, London, 2016: 270-285.

  • Galeano on Marx

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    14 March : CAPITAL — In 1883 a crowd gathered for Karl Marx’s funeral in a London cemetery — a crowd of eleven, counting the undertaker.

    The most famous of his sayings became his epitaph: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.’

    The prophet of global change spent his life fleeing the police and his creditors.

    Regarding his masterwork, he said: ‘No one ever wrote so much about money while having so little.’ Capital will not even pay for the cigars I smoked while writing it.’

     

    From Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History, trans. by Fried, Mark. Penguin Group, New York, 2013: 85.