O’BAMA SELLS WASHINGTON
Did we elect Barack O’Bama governor of Illinois?
This is disgraceful, to say the very least. Today I received an e-mail from the president-elect, another from his wife, and yet another from David Phlunkey, telling me that if I send them just $5 I will have a chance to win a ticket to O’Bama’s inauguration.
The governor of Illinois is no worse than he is, and I am disgusted. No wonder his cabinet is full of sleazes.
Bert Hornback
c
vrijdag 9 januari 2009
donderdag 8 januari 2009
UTILITARIAN BIOTECHNOLOGY AWARD
The Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought has made a significant grant to its Department of Utilitarian Biotechnology, for work on the cross-breeding of dogs and eyeglasses. One of the great wastes of human talent seems to be the misplacement of eyeglasses; this waste could be eliminated if eyeglasses could be taught to follow their humans around, the way dogs do. A team of researchers will be selected by Professor Susan di Nahm and her research associate, Doctor Norman D. Plumm. Applications may be submitted any time within the next six months to the Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought.
SAVING THESE UNITED STATES
So far the response to the financial melt-down in the United States has been a typically American one: greed. Greed feeds greed. The “bail-out” of America, as sponsored by both the Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration, is to let the future pay for it. For the next century, our children and grandchildren to the fifth or sixth generation will be paying for the greed and profligacy of our time.
George Bush financed his tax cuts for the rich with deficit spending, which is a polite word for increased debt. He paid and is paying for his bloody wars of aggression—and his absurd “Department of Homeland Security “—by increasing the national debt by three trillion dollars. And now the “bail-out” of long-failing but expensively-led corporations and greedy banks intending to make profits from the poor: we will pay for bailing them out by borrowing another few trillion dollars from the future. And it’s not the rich who will pay for all these loans: they and their wealth will be protected. It’s the poor who will be taxed.
The main problem with the supposedly United States that they aren’t united. They aren’t a culture, a society. These United States are made up of the rich—and everybody else. Our problem is not a lack of wealth, but the gross maldistribution of wealth. Our problem is greed.
The solution to the problem is relatively simple: redistribute the wealth. There is no civilised, social, moral reason for some people to have billions of dollars. So we must have a new law which says that every citizen of the United States has the right to own perhaps $100,000 a year of disposable wealth or property (excluding a single domicile) for every year of life left to him or her up to the age of seventy. All wealth in excess of that amount will become commonwealth.
If a family has but one bread-winner, and he or she has less that $50,000 in any year, the commonwealth fund will top that up so that the family will have $50,000 for the year. A citizen who is disabled or reaches the age of seventy will receive from the government $100,000 a year for the rest of his or her life.
If an individual fifty year-old citizen has more than $100,000 times twenty--$2,000,000—all money and property (excluding a single domicile) in excess of that $2,000,000 will be forfeit to the commonwealth. If a family of four—two thirty year-old parents, twins aged ten—has a combined wealth of more than $20,000,000, they will forfeit the excess.
A sixty-year old couple having a primary domicile fully paid for and worth $500,000, and another vacation home fully paid for and worth $300,000 may possess, jointly, $1,700,000. If the next year they own the same two homes, they may possess, jointly, $1,500,000. By the time they are sixty-eight, the can still have their two homes, but will be allowed only $100,000 jointly in addition. At age sixty-nine, they will have to sell the vacation home—and join the rest of the population who have but one domicile.
Rich institutions, like the Roman Catholic Church and Harvard University will likewise be required to disperse their gross wealth.
Why not? Why let Bill Gates sit on $50,000,000,000, and praise him for giving away $50,000,000? That’s but one-tenth of one percent of his wealth. That’s no more charity than my giving a dime a day to a homeless person.
Why let the Catholic Church pay no taxes on its wealth and property? The archbishop of Louisville complained at having to pay $26,000,000 for pedophile priests’s crimes; “I only have $52,000,000 in ready cash,” he said. Poor church!
Churches of all denominations are locked up most of the time; they are open to the public only six or seven hours a week. If they want tax exemptions, let them serve the public: let them be open for eight or ten hours a day, seven days a week, to provide comfort and shelter for the poor and the homeless. Let them feed the poor, every day. Otherwise, make them pay taxes. Require them to pay for their greed.
There is enough wealth in the United States to make a decent society for us all: to make a genuine commonwealth. It’s time for us to have a genuine revolution, and give ourselves the gift of freedom. In liberty, we each take care of ourselves, for ourselves; in freedom—which is friendly—we take care of each other, for the sake of us all.
I think I could pledge allegiance to such a country. And I suspect that the rest of the world would praise and admire us for being good citizens, and setting a good example for all of humankind. And then we wouldn’t have to be afraid of terrorist attacks or anything else bad.
9 January 2009
So far the response to the financial melt-down in the United States has been a typically American one: greed. Greed feeds greed. The “bail-out” of America, as sponsored by both the Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration, is to let the future pay for it. For the next century, our children and grandchildren to the fifth or sixth generation will be paying for the greed and profligacy of our time.
George Bush financed his tax cuts for the rich with deficit spending, which is a polite word for increased debt. He paid and is paying for his bloody wars of aggression—and his absurd “Department of Homeland Security “—by increasing the national debt by three trillion dollars. And now the “bail-out” of long-failing but expensively-led corporations and greedy banks intending to make profits from the poor: we will pay for bailing them out by borrowing another few trillion dollars from the future. And it’s not the rich who will pay for all these loans: they and their wealth will be protected. It’s the poor who will be taxed.
The main problem with the supposedly United States that they aren’t united. They aren’t a culture, a society. These United States are made up of the rich—and everybody else. Our problem is not a lack of wealth, but the gross maldistribution of wealth. Our problem is greed.
The solution to the problem is relatively simple: redistribute the wealth. There is no civilised, social, moral reason for some people to have billions of dollars. So we must have a new law which says that every citizen of the United States has the right to own perhaps $100,000 a year of disposable wealth or property (excluding a single domicile) for every year of life left to him or her up to the age of seventy. All wealth in excess of that amount will become commonwealth.
If a family has but one bread-winner, and he or she has less that $50,000 in any year, the commonwealth fund will top that up so that the family will have $50,000 for the year. A citizen who is disabled or reaches the age of seventy will receive from the government $100,000 a year for the rest of his or her life.
If an individual fifty year-old citizen has more than $100,000 times twenty--$2,000,000—all money and property (excluding a single domicile) in excess of that $2,000,000 will be forfeit to the commonwealth. If a family of four—two thirty year-old parents, twins aged ten—has a combined wealth of more than $20,000,000, they will forfeit the excess.
A sixty-year old couple having a primary domicile fully paid for and worth $500,000, and another vacation home fully paid for and worth $300,000 may possess, jointly, $1,700,000. If the next year they own the same two homes, they may possess, jointly, $1,500,000. By the time they are sixty-eight, the can still have their two homes, but will be allowed only $100,000 jointly in addition. At age sixty-nine, they will have to sell the vacation home—and join the rest of the population who have but one domicile.
Rich institutions, like the Roman Catholic Church and Harvard University will likewise be required to disperse their gross wealth.
Why not? Why let Bill Gates sit on $50,000,000,000, and praise him for giving away $50,000,000? That’s but one-tenth of one percent of his wealth. That’s no more charity than my giving a dime a day to a homeless person.
Why let the Catholic Church pay no taxes on its wealth and property? The archbishop of Louisville complained at having to pay $26,000,000 for pedophile priests’s crimes; “I only have $52,000,000 in ready cash,” he said. Poor church!
Churches of all denominations are locked up most of the time; they are open to the public only six or seven hours a week. If they want tax exemptions, let them serve the public: let them be open for eight or ten hours a day, seven days a week, to provide comfort and shelter for the poor and the homeless. Let them feed the poor, every day. Otherwise, make them pay taxes. Require them to pay for their greed.
There is enough wealth in the United States to make a decent society for us all: to make a genuine commonwealth. It’s time for us to have a genuine revolution, and give ourselves the gift of freedom. In liberty, we each take care of ourselves, for ourselves; in freedom—which is friendly—we take care of each other, for the sake of us all.
I think I could pledge allegiance to such a country. And I suspect that the rest of the world would praise and admire us for being good citizens, and setting a good example for all of humankind. And then we wouldn’t have to be afraid of terrorist attacks or anything else bad.
9 January 2009
woensdag 7 januari 2009
THE RATTLE OF BONES
The wise man stood beside the village well. It was dry. Women came to him to ask for help. There was no water for their cows, and no milk for their children. The goats, too, and the sheep, were dying of thirst. The wise man told the women to hold forth their hands, and he cried tears into them. “Let the animals drink my tears,” he said.
Men came to him. The fields were barren; the seed had failed, and they would all starve. “Take my seed,” he told them; “spread it in your fields.” And he spent his seed in their hands.
The mayor sent to him. He was having a wedding feast for his daughter, but the vineyards had withered and there was no fresh wine. The wise man took a sharp stone, and made a deep cut in his breast. He picked up a cup-shaped stone from beside the dry well, and filled it to the brim with his blood. “Let them drink this,” he said; “it is better than wine.”
The next day the well was spilling over. The river was full, and the cows were giving milk. New wheat and corn and grass began to grow in the fields. In the mayor’s orchards, the grapes hung heavy upon the vines.
The mayor opened the gates in front of his house, and threw gold into the streets. He invited the whole village to his daughter’s wedding feast.
When everyone had eaten and drunk his fill, the mayor and the villagers went to thank the wise man. Beside the well they found his bones, nothing more.
“This is a sign,” the women said.
“It is a warning,” said the men.
“We must take heed,” the mayor said. “Such profligacy as his is not right, or just, or good.”
The people began to store water in barrels, and to harvest and hoard the grain from the fields. The mayor closed the gates before his house, and posted guards in his orchards.
The bones rattled noisily, and got up. The well suddenly went dry again. The bones started to walk out of the village. In front of the mayor’s house they paused, and the vines in his orchards withered, the grapes shriveled and dried and fell to the ground. As the bones rattled across the river, it dried up in front of them and became a bed of sand. The crops in the fields turned brown as it passed.
The bones walked on. Soon the villagers could see them no more, and the rattle of bones was dead in their ears.
The wise man stood beside the village well. It was dry. Women came to him to ask for help. There was no water for their cows, and no milk for their children. The goats, too, and the sheep, were dying of thirst. The wise man told the women to hold forth their hands, and he cried tears into them. “Let the animals drink my tears,” he said.
Men came to him. The fields were barren; the seed had failed, and they would all starve. “Take my seed,” he told them; “spread it in your fields.” And he spent his seed in their hands.
The mayor sent to him. He was having a wedding feast for his daughter, but the vineyards had withered and there was no fresh wine. The wise man took a sharp stone, and made a deep cut in his breast. He picked up a cup-shaped stone from beside the dry well, and filled it to the brim with his blood. “Let them drink this,” he said; “it is better than wine.”
The next day the well was spilling over. The river was full, and the cows were giving milk. New wheat and corn and grass began to grow in the fields. In the mayor’s orchards, the grapes hung heavy upon the vines.
The mayor opened the gates in front of his house, and threw gold into the streets. He invited the whole village to his daughter’s wedding feast.
When everyone had eaten and drunk his fill, the mayor and the villagers went to thank the wise man. Beside the well they found his bones, nothing more.
“This is a sign,” the women said.
“It is a warning,” said the men.
“We must take heed,” the mayor said. “Such profligacy as his is not right, or just, or good.”
The people began to store water in barrels, and to harvest and hoard the grain from the fields. The mayor closed the gates before his house, and posted guards in his orchards.
The bones rattled noisily, and got up. The well suddenly went dry again. The bones started to walk out of the village. In front of the mayor’s house they paused, and the vines in his orchards withered, the grapes shriveled and dried and fell to the ground. As the bones rattled across the river, it dried up in front of them and became a bed of sand. The crops in the fields turned brown as it passed.
The bones walked on. Soon the villagers could see them no more, and the rattle of bones was dead in their ears.
zaterdag 6 september 2008
McCain's Wars
John McCain has two great wars, Vietnam and the second Iraq war. He is proud of having fought in the first, and proud of being a staunch supporter of the second.
Could we please remind him that the Vietnam war was started by the United States, against a sovereign nation--and we started it on the false pretext that we had been attacked. Lyndon Johnson claimed that two US Navy ships had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin; later his White House had to admit that this had been a lie.
And the second Iraq war was started by a war-mongering George W. Bush, lying to Congress, the American people, the United Nations, and the world about Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons and having connections with Al Qaida. We know, now, that he and his administration lied.
Why should John McCain be so proud of having fought in a war of American aggression? And why should he still be championing a second war of American aggression? Both wars were illegal, immoral, and criminal. They were and are antithetical to the principles upon which this country was founded.
Could we please remind him that the Vietnam war was started by the United States, against a sovereign nation--and we started it on the false pretext that we had been attacked. Lyndon Johnson claimed that two US Navy ships had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin; later his White House had to admit that this had been a lie.
And the second Iraq war was started by a war-mongering George W. Bush, lying to Congress, the American people, the United Nations, and the world about Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons and having connections with Al Qaida. We know, now, that he and his administration lied.
Why should John McCain be so proud of having fought in a war of American aggression? And why should he still be championing a second war of American aggression? Both wars were illegal, immoral, and criminal. They were and are antithetical to the principles upon which this country was founded.
vrijdag 22 augustus 2008
Politics
I am back in the United States, now, since the end of May. I was warned, when I gave up my residency in the Netherlands, that I would be unhappy: not just warned by friends--Dutch friends as well as ex-pat USers--but warned by a kindly commiserating government employee who officially took me off the roles of legal immigrants.
I am unhappy. Candidates for the presidency have spent half a billion dollars on a pair of primary campaigns, which could much better have been spent on food and housing for the poor and homeless in this country, or on improving our woefully inadequate primary and secondary schools, or providing health care for the uninsured--or maybe rebuilding New Orleans, where I live. Or try to live.
New Orleans is the country's murder capitol. A weekend with fewer than three murders is called a safe weekend. Our public officials are either on their way to prison or should be on their way. I hve been living in calm, quiet, safe, and civilised Amsterdam for seven years; it is a shock to be back here.
And the nation I have come back to? We have a seven year-old concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, where we torture prisoners--and nobody cares. Our nuclear weapons cow other nations into near silence, and neither our elected representatives nor our presidential candidates nor simple USers like you and me can manage to protest this violation of all civilised laws and conventions. We live in a land that has suspended the right to habeas corpus--but we don't care. We are ruled by a man who lies, takes us to war illegally and dishonestly in order to make more money for the rich, changes laws passed by Congress--and we say nothing. We are more concerned with the price of gasoline, John Edwards's adultery, Britney Spears, and the Olympics.
Surely nobody but Justice Scalia thinks adultery is a crime. (Scalia has also written, in a dissenting Supreme Court opinion, about laws against masturbation.) But then our Congress impeached Bill Clinton-an utterly irresponsible man, to be sure--for engaging in fellatio in the Oval Office, which is a serious crime compared to violating the Constitution, waging an illegal and immoral war, etc.
Europeans have been paying $7.00 a gallon for gas for years; they now pay $9.00 or even $10.00. But then they don't live in their cars, and for the most part they drive cars that get good mileage. Eat your wallets, USers in SUVS.
The Olympics have become--thanks to the US--a substitute for war. Of course, that's what football and various other American sports have long been. We fought the Soviet Union in the Olympics, and now we fight China. We used to count medals, weighing gold times three, silver times two, and bronze as one. But this year, in order to beat China, we have decided to count total number of medals. Never mind that China has won more than twice as many gold medals as the US has; our bronzes beat them. The Olympics should be abandoned if we can't reform them, to get rid of the nationalism.
We still have somewhere around 8,000 homeless people in New Orleans. (The US government statistic is a mere 782.) Just before Christmas we had a cold spell, with temperatures down below freezing at night. Poor people here don't own winter coats; homeless people don't have them or anything else to defend themselves from the cold.
I have long thought that, to keep their tax-free status, churches ought to be required to open their doors to the public for at least forty hours a week. When the cold spell hit New Orleans, I started calling churches, asking them toopen their doors to homeless people. I called seven big churches in Uptown New Orleans. None of them is open, ordinarily, more than ten hours a week. I telephoned six Roman Catholic churches and the Episcopal cathedral.
Roman Catholic churches all have a little red light burning in their sanctuaries, to indicate that Jesus is there, in the church: physically present, they believe. I wanted to suggest that he would be happy to receive the poor and homeless into his house. That's what the Christian gospels say he wanted.
At three of the Roman Catholoic churches I got recordings which told me to call back "during regular business hours." At a fourth the priest I was talking to hung up before I could even finish my request. The priest at the fifth told me to call "one of the charities who do things like this." At the sixth I was able to say what I needed to say to the priest. His answer was, he said, "sympathetic." But he couldn't open the church doors: "Those people would steal things." I asked him where in the Christian gospels Jesus ever told us to value things more than humans. He hung up.
At the Episcopal cathedral a young priest answered the phone. He listened to me, and agreed to my request. I told him I would start delivering homeless people to him by taxi. "Well, I can't open the doors on my own. I will have to ask the boss." I requested that he call me back after he had talked to his bishop. He didn't call.
That night, two people--one in her forties, one in his fifties--froze to death in New Orleans.
So . . . as you can see, I am happy to be back in my native land.
I am unhappy. Candidates for the presidency have spent half a billion dollars on a pair of primary campaigns, which could much better have been spent on food and housing for the poor and homeless in this country, or on improving our woefully inadequate primary and secondary schools, or providing health care for the uninsured--or maybe rebuilding New Orleans, where I live. Or try to live.
New Orleans is the country's murder capitol. A weekend with fewer than three murders is called a safe weekend. Our public officials are either on their way to prison or should be on their way. I hve been living in calm, quiet, safe, and civilised Amsterdam for seven years; it is a shock to be back here.
And the nation I have come back to? We have a seven year-old concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, where we torture prisoners--and nobody cares. Our nuclear weapons cow other nations into near silence, and neither our elected representatives nor our presidential candidates nor simple USers like you and me can manage to protest this violation of all civilised laws and conventions. We live in a land that has suspended the right to habeas corpus--but we don't care. We are ruled by a man who lies, takes us to war illegally and dishonestly in order to make more money for the rich, changes laws passed by Congress--and we say nothing. We are more concerned with the price of gasoline, John Edwards's adultery, Britney Spears, and the Olympics.
Surely nobody but Justice Scalia thinks adultery is a crime. (Scalia has also written, in a dissenting Supreme Court opinion, about laws against masturbation.) But then our Congress impeached Bill Clinton-an utterly irresponsible man, to be sure--for engaging in fellatio in the Oval Office, which is a serious crime compared to violating the Constitution, waging an illegal and immoral war, etc.
Europeans have been paying $7.00 a gallon for gas for years; they now pay $9.00 or even $10.00. But then they don't live in their cars, and for the most part they drive cars that get good mileage. Eat your wallets, USers in SUVS.
The Olympics have become--thanks to the US--a substitute for war. Of course, that's what football and various other American sports have long been. We fought the Soviet Union in the Olympics, and now we fight China. We used to count medals, weighing gold times three, silver times two, and bronze as one. But this year, in order to beat China, we have decided to count total number of medals. Never mind that China has won more than twice as many gold medals as the US has; our bronzes beat them. The Olympics should be abandoned if we can't reform them, to get rid of the nationalism.
We still have somewhere around 8,000 homeless people in New Orleans. (The US government statistic is a mere 782.) Just before Christmas we had a cold spell, with temperatures down below freezing at night. Poor people here don't own winter coats; homeless people don't have them or anything else to defend themselves from the cold.
I have long thought that, to keep their tax-free status, churches ought to be required to open their doors to the public for at least forty hours a week. When the cold spell hit New Orleans, I started calling churches, asking them toopen their doors to homeless people. I called seven big churches in Uptown New Orleans. None of them is open, ordinarily, more than ten hours a week. I telephoned six Roman Catholic churches and the Episcopal cathedral.
Roman Catholic churches all have a little red light burning in their sanctuaries, to indicate that Jesus is there, in the church: physically present, they believe. I wanted to suggest that he would be happy to receive the poor and homeless into his house. That's what the Christian gospels say he wanted.
At three of the Roman Catholoic churches I got recordings which told me to call back "during regular business hours." At a fourth the priest I was talking to hung up before I could even finish my request. The priest at the fifth told me to call "one of the charities who do things like this." At the sixth I was able to say what I needed to say to the priest. His answer was, he said, "sympathetic." But he couldn't open the church doors: "Those people would steal things." I asked him where in the Christian gospels Jesus ever told us to value things more than humans. He hung up.
At the Episcopal cathedral a young priest answered the phone. He listened to me, and agreed to my request. I told him I would start delivering homeless people to him by taxi. "Well, I can't open the doors on my own. I will have to ask the boss." I requested that he call me back after he had talked to his bishop. He didn't call.
That night, two people--one in her forties, one in his fifties--froze to death in New Orleans.
So . . . as you can see, I am happy to be back in my native land.
zondag 11 mei 2008
DEMOCRACY
How many countries in the world are currently involved in wars of one kind or another? Perhaps war is contagious, and the world is infected. But maybe not—or not with war, anyway.
Since the days of the ancient Greeks the Western world has been talking about and experimenting with democracy. In modern Western history, we have watched what should have been—or could have been, or claimed to be—democratic revolutions, short-circuited or perverted.
Since 1776 the United States has been the standard-bearer for democracy. And since 1776 the United States has been the standard-bearer for the new aristocracy of the capitalist, liberty-glorifying culture rich.
When I was in school—all through university—I was taught as all Americans were that democracy was the opposite of communism. Absurd. Democracy is the opposite of dictatorship or some other form of totalitarianism. Capitalism is the opposite of communism. Enlightened democracy would be communist—so socialist, if you prefer. Capitalism tends toward dictatorship, or the totalitarianism of the rich.
Perhaps the United States never did have any real ambitions toward democracy. Those states practiced genocide on Native Americans, and owned African slaves; Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams wrote letters expressing very un-democratic thoughts about the farmers on Virginia plantations.[i] It may be that the American Revolution was no more a revolution than England’s “Glorious Revolution” a century earlier; in both instances, the only thing that changed was the monarch.
Since World War II the United States has claimed the banner of the “free world,” meaning the capitalist world or the world-run-by-the-rich.
“Free” is a very important word, and “freedom” is very different from “liberty.” The immediate root of “liberty” is the Latin LIBER—which also gives us “libido” and “libation.” “Libido” has to do with desire; “libations” are outpourings, from the Greek.[ii] “Liberty” is a do-my-own-thing word; it has nothing to do with the idea of society.
“Free,” however, is a friendly word—literally, historically. “Friend” comes into English from the Germanic FREI, which means dear, or beloved. “Free,” remarkably enough, comes into English at about the same time—in perhaps the eighth century—from exactly the same root. The understanding in both “friend” and “free” is what we call love: the relation of self with what self holds dear. As “friend” becomes “free,” it makes the idea of freedom social. It says that you can’t be free by yourself.
In much of the world, the totalitarian world represented by the Soviet Union was the alternative to the version of democracy that the United States advertised. The corruption of Soviet communism also turned what was a people’s revolution—a democratic revolution—into a totalitarian state. So the United States “won,” even though what it peddled as democracy was corrupt.
But maybe something odd—and serious—has happened since then.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the developing world has erupted in people’s revolutions—almost all of which the United States and other capitalist states oppose. This cause for this eruption could be that third world leaders, particularly in Africa, understand communism, in spite of the perversion and corruption of the Soviet Union, and are trying to convert their world to a new communist experiment.
Alternatively, these people’s revolutions could be taking place because the people of many African and other third world countries have heard the propaganda about democracy from the United States—where “all men are created equal”—and believed it: believed that there was a place where there could be both “liberty and justice for all.”[iii]
These people may have learned from our propaganda the principle which was supposedly behind America’s democracy, but haven’t learned enough history to know that the United States betrayed the ideals of freedom in that democracy, even as they were supposedly enshrining them in their most sacred documents.
Maybe the third world nations will get their revolutions right.
[i] See Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, vol. 1.
[ii] The oldest root we have is the Sanskrit, which is the closest we can get to our Indo-European ancestors’ language ten thousand or more years ago. The Sanskrit is LUBH—which means to perplex, bewilder, confuse, desire greatly, lust for. We get our word “love” from LUBH, through German.
[iii] To have both liberty and justice is a society is to be free.
How many countries in the world are currently involved in wars of one kind or another? Perhaps war is contagious, and the world is infected. But maybe not—or not with war, anyway.
Since the days of the ancient Greeks the Western world has been talking about and experimenting with democracy. In modern Western history, we have watched what should have been—or could have been, or claimed to be—democratic revolutions, short-circuited or perverted.
Since 1776 the United States has been the standard-bearer for democracy. And since 1776 the United States has been the standard-bearer for the new aristocracy of the capitalist, liberty-glorifying culture rich.
When I was in school—all through university—I was taught as all Americans were that democracy was the opposite of communism. Absurd. Democracy is the opposite of dictatorship or some other form of totalitarianism. Capitalism is the opposite of communism. Enlightened democracy would be communist—so socialist, if you prefer. Capitalism tends toward dictatorship, or the totalitarianism of the rich.
Perhaps the United States never did have any real ambitions toward democracy. Those states practiced genocide on Native Americans, and owned African slaves; Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams wrote letters expressing very un-democratic thoughts about the farmers on Virginia plantations.[i] It may be that the American Revolution was no more a revolution than England’s “Glorious Revolution” a century earlier; in both instances, the only thing that changed was the monarch.
Since World War II the United States has claimed the banner of the “free world,” meaning the capitalist world or the world-run-by-the-rich.
“Free” is a very important word, and “freedom” is very different from “liberty.” The immediate root of “liberty” is the Latin LIBER—which also gives us “libido” and “libation.” “Libido” has to do with desire; “libations” are outpourings, from the Greek.[ii] “Liberty” is a do-my-own-thing word; it has nothing to do with the idea of society.
“Free,” however, is a friendly word—literally, historically. “Friend” comes into English from the Germanic FREI, which means dear, or beloved. “Free,” remarkably enough, comes into English at about the same time—in perhaps the eighth century—from exactly the same root. The understanding in both “friend” and “free” is what we call love: the relation of self with what self holds dear. As “friend” becomes “free,” it makes the idea of freedom social. It says that you can’t be free by yourself.
In much of the world, the totalitarian world represented by the Soviet Union was the alternative to the version of democracy that the United States advertised. The corruption of Soviet communism also turned what was a people’s revolution—a democratic revolution—into a totalitarian state. So the United States “won,” even though what it peddled as democracy was corrupt.
But maybe something odd—and serious—has happened since then.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the developing world has erupted in people’s revolutions—almost all of which the United States and other capitalist states oppose. This cause for this eruption could be that third world leaders, particularly in Africa, understand communism, in spite of the perversion and corruption of the Soviet Union, and are trying to convert their world to a new communist experiment.
Alternatively, these people’s revolutions could be taking place because the people of many African and other third world countries have heard the propaganda about democracy from the United States—where “all men are created equal”—and believed it: believed that there was a place where there could be both “liberty and justice for all.”[iii]
These people may have learned from our propaganda the principle which was supposedly behind America’s democracy, but haven’t learned enough history to know that the United States betrayed the ideals of freedom in that democracy, even as they were supposedly enshrining them in their most sacred documents.
Maybe the third world nations will get their revolutions right.
[i] See Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, vol. 1.
[ii] The oldest root we have is the Sanskrit, which is the closest we can get to our Indo-European ancestors’ language ten thousand or more years ago. The Sanskrit is LUBH—which means to perplex, bewilder, confuse, desire greatly, lust for. We get our word “love” from LUBH, through German.
[iii] To have both liberty and justice is a society is to be free.
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