Jefferson's Nails, Morsi's Mishap, and Democracy Dilemmas

Thomas Jefferson famously penned the Declaration of Independence and went on to become Governor of Virginia, U.S. Ambassador to France, and eventually the third President of the United States. The Declaration had some very fine words borrowed from republican, Enlightenment thinking and writings of Britain. The guys who supervised Jefferson and approved it were politicians interested in increasing their own economic and political power, which was being cramped by the elite of the British Empire.

Thomas Jefferson may have been brilliant compared to his peers, but he had many faults and weaknesses. A lot of trouble came from his spendthrift ways. He was born to a fairly prosperous slave plantation owner and can be fairly said to be the founder of the shop-till-you-drop American tradition. He constantly bought expensive horses and wines, scientific gadgets and uber expensive clothing. Later there would be the never-ending construction and reconstruction of MacMansion Monticello.

To pay for all this Jefferson owned roughly 200 slaves (they multiplied over time, but he occasionally sold some off to make ends meet). The British tried to free all American slaves during the Revolution, not just as a war measure but because that was the law of Britain (no slavery can exist on British soil, as had been recently confirmed in the Somerset case). The success of the Revolution confirmed Jefferson and other slaveholders in their human property. While Vice-president (under John Adams), Jefferson attempted to wring more profit from his slaves by setting up a nail factory. Adult slaves were needed to grow tobacco, so the children were employed cutting iron rod and shaping it into nails.

We tend to idealize Democracy, but sometimes a more cynical view gets us closer to the truth. Democracy could just be the best way for certain people to get what they want. Democracies may not be quite so different from dictatorships (or monarchies) as we Americans like to think.

Consider the very recent military/judicial coup against the elected leader of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi. President Morsi does not represent my views. I would like to see a secular, modern Egypt, relatively free of religious nonsense. Morsi is a leader of the Islamic Brotherhood, a puritanical reform group. It is fair to say that Morsi only did what many American Presidents have done: he interpreted winning an election as meaning he could implement his party's agenda and ignore other parties. He was wrong. He should have imitated George Washington. He should have been more moderate and inclusive. His job (from a Democracy theory viewpoint) was to make democracy work, to insure it would work in the future.

But Morsi had a lot of pressure from below, from his own followers. They had never held power, and their views had been dissed by others for decades. He chose to satisfy his base.

The real problem was not with Morsi, but with my fellow secular democrats. They lacked patience. They should have let Morsi rule until the next election, and griped the whole time. They would likely have won the next election. Then they could have tried to fix an overpopulated, undercapitalized nation themselves.

People often want democracy until it does not get them what they want. American foreign policy history is littered with examples. American Presidents have almost always favored only pro-American democracies. Anti-American democracies got the cold shoulder, or financing for opposition (but pro-American) parties, or a CIA-managed coup.

Now it is likely that if the Islamic Brotherhood makes a comeback, they will abandon democracy. Why shouldn't they? At this point bloody revolution looks like a better option, if they can pull it off. Even if they re-establish a democracy in the sense of allowing for elections, at the very least they would be idiots if they did not try to execute the coup leaders.

Back in Jefferson's United States, democracy is under control. All men and women may be created with equal rights, but they start life with such vastly different amounts of wealth that we might as well be governed by an aristocracy. Social mobility has sunk to the lowest level since the founding of this Republic. There are plenty of bright ideas around for improving the situation, but the Aristocracy makes sure such ideas never get off the ground.

Imperialism made most Americans comfortable for several decades after World War II. The Great Recession and our astonishing current national debt (which will balloon further as interest rates rise) should have inspired reforms, but almost the only thing that got patched up was the banking system. We aren't broke yet. We'll think about fixing things if we ever reach that point.

At which point worrying about who would make America's best puppet in Egypt won't seem very important.

Agree? Disagree? You can comment on this post at Natural Liberation Blog at blogger.com

Good Friday with Five Broken Cameras and Broken Commandments

The Jewish festival of Passover may celebrate a myth, or more likely the Passover story is part mythology, with a germ of truth. The basic tale is in the second book of the Bible, Exodus, Chapters 11 and 12. The key point is that when the Jews were getting ready to leave Egypt, all the first born Egyptian children and cattle died on an appointed night.

If the whole story is not a myth, and if you don't believe in supernatural crimes against humanity, then there is only one conclusion. Gangs organized by Moses went around and killed a bunch of innocent children, and cattle, in the night.

And so the Jews celebrate passover. They make it a celebration of freedom from slavery in Egypt, and I am all for freedom, and for celebrating freedom.

But given at least 3000 years have passed, would it not be a good idea to stop reminding the world every year that instead of killing the Pharaoh that night, which would have been justifiable tyranicide, they killed an untold number of Egyptian children?

Imagine if Germans annually celebrated the Holocaust like it was a good thing, or if Americans celebrated Wounded Knee or some other massacre of native American Indians.

Good Friday is pretty weird too. If there is anything that whips up Christians to kill Jews, besides high interest rates, it is Good Friday. The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God or at least the Messiah or a Prophet or some sort of rabble rouser who was against the quaint Jewish custom of stoning people to death for sex outside of one man to one woman marriages.

Good Friday follows Holy Thursday, at which Jesus had his last meal with the Apostles. This was on or near the Passover, according to Mark Chapter 14. Mark is the Gospel with the best pedigree. There is reasonably good evidence that it was dictated by the Apostle Peter in Jerusalem, and in it Peter confesses to having denied Jesus three times. It contains no childhood account of Jesus, the account of the resurrection is short and sounds appended, and Peter is not marked out as the head of the church. According to most Bible academics, the other three Gospels make up stuff to add to Mark's version.

I doubt the crucifixion is merely symbolic. Taking everything into account, it was probably a historic event. Psychologists have documented how it is common for bereaved people to imagine a visit (while asleep or even while awake) from someone who recently died. If even one Apostle (or Mary Magdalene, the first person to see him in Mark) had such a vision, it is easy to understand that a decade later every survivor in the inner circle would at least refrain from contradicting the story that Jesus rose from the dead. It is notable that in Mark there is no "doubting Thomas" story to counteract the cynicism of the less gullible.

In time the false Apostle Paul made the Jesus cult into a story about Jesus's triumph over death. This was not a new story: Osiris, Hercules, and Cybele all had cults promising some sort of life after death. Passover became part of the tradition of non-Jewish Christians. Paul also began wrangling for control against Peter and James, Jesus's brother, who led the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. This led to the hatred of Jews that became such a strong component of Christianity and led directly to the Holocaust of the 20th century, not to mention 19 centuries of Jew killing in between.

But perhaps the best (as in most uplifting) interpretation of Good Friday is that, since Jesus was the first born Son of God, that God is an Egyptian. The Jews murdered Jesus like they murdered the Son of the Pharaoh back in Egypt. Tie that into the story of the Good Samaritan and a few choice other sayings from the Gospels, and you can argue that it is bad to kill people just because they don't belong to your religious or ethnic group.

What a concept.

Many of the parables of Jesus clearly speak to peasants, who were in the majority for most of the world's post-hunter-gatherer history but are now becoming a rare breed.

5 Broken Cameras was nominated for an Academy Award this year as Best Documentary Feature. In it we see arrogant expatriate European Ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers stealing land from and beating up lovable Palestinian peasants just east of Jerusalem. Some (but not all) Zionists believe that God hands out title deeds, that they are not subject to the commandments in Exodus: "Thou Shall Not Steal," and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house ... nor anything that is thy neighbors."

Think of how many people get recruited into Islamic Jihadist groups after watching such obvious injustice. They won't think "Just a few bad Jews are doing this." They won't even think "All Jews are doing this." They will think "Jews are doing this with American help."

We (Americans) should not be helping anyone steal anyone's land. In fact, American's might want to consider all the land (and other stuff, including labor) we've stolen (including by fraud) over the past 300 or so years. In the name of Justice, or Jesus, or Osiris, or Nature, we should make restitution. Or at least stop killing and stealing.

1882 and 2012, Egypt and America

Famous events of American history will likely be invoked in tonight's debates between President Barack Obama and would be President Mitt Romney. I will take any odds that neither of them will invoke the U.S. Marine Corps excursion into Egypt of 1882. They should, it is a good topic for comparing and contrasting past United States foreign policy to present day practice and rhetoric.

In 1882 Egypt was not yet exactly a colony of Great Britain, which is a bit surprising. The British Empire of the time was the largest and most brutal the world had ever seen, and was still expanding. Being crushed under British boots was a way of life for about one-quarter of the world's population. Egypt was a great prize in the global competition between European powers, and the result had been a strange system called Dual Control. On paper Egypt was an autonomous part of the Ottoman Empire ruled by a local dictator, Ismail the Magnificent. But the real bosses were British and French: Major Baring and Monsieur de Blignieres.

The Egyptian government owed a lot of money, especially to French and British investors. It was as if, in return for its current holdings of U.S. bonds, China demanded the right to appoint one of its citizens to be Secretary of the Treasury or Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Egyptian nationalists rebelled against foreign rule starting in September of 1881, and by June 1882 the nationalists had seized control of most of the nation. The British did what they did best back then: they attacked, starting at Alexandria and the Suez Canal, which had been opened in 1869 by the French, who constructed it with Egyptian slave labor.

The U.S. Navy was ordered to Alexandria in June 1882 to protect American citizens and their Consulate. Where the Navy goes, so go the Marines. On July 11 the British fleet started pouring 16,000 artillery shells into the city (bombing cities where civilians had not been evacuated would later by declared a war crime). Three days later 124 Marines and armed sailors from the Nipsic, led by Tony Waller, walked over the corpses to the American Consulate.

The Marines were congratulated for their help by the British army and press. They returned in September "in time for Waller to witness the victorious conclusion of the British offensive ... When Arab forces decapitated captured British Bengali cavalrymen and displayed their heads on lances, the British began summarily executing enemy captives. Years later, Waller would cite the British actions at Alexandria as justification for his own harsh treatment of enemy prisoners." [Honor in the Dust by Greg Jones, pages 34-35]

No wonder the typical Egyptian nationalist does not trust the British, French, Turks, or Americans. They probably know their own history a bit better than we do. For all the American propaganda about democracy and national self-determination, the United States did nothing while Egypt remained part of the British Empire from 1882 until 1953.

A lot of water has flown down the Nile since 1882. The U.S. government now arms the Egyptians and until recently supported the dictator Hosni Mubarak and his pro-Israel policies. The U.S. did not openly oppose (or support) the democracy movement that led to Mubarak's overthrow and the establishment of a (so-far) democratic government.

The Marines have not stormed in Egypt recently, but they did storm into nearby Yemen [See Obama Grabs Yemen].

Embassies and consulates are supposed to be inviolate under international law. The U.S. Marine Corps has traditionally guarded U.S. embassies abroad; there is nothing wrong with that. But the Marine Corps has a long history of being the brutal enforcers of American policy.

The best way to protect American embassies is to establish a foreign policy that is peaceful and non-interfering. People get mad at U.S. officials for because they are mistaken, but more often they get mad because they, or their country, has been mistreated.

Treat all people right and there is little need for battalions of Marines to protect American embassies. Getting all U.S. troops back to the United States and closing all our extraterritorial military basis would be a good start.

Jacksonian Democracy and the Egyption Rebellion

One could argue that Egypt already is a democracy. After all, they do have elections from time to time; the last was in 2005. Certainly it is a republic, the Arab Republic of Egypt; let the advocates of making America a pure, non-democratic republic take note. [See democracy v. republic]

Some people say that in reality it is a one-party and personal dictatorship of Mohamed Hosni Mubarak and his National Democratic Party. Other parties are either suppressed or only allowed as window dressing for the leading party.

The United States of America was not intended to have political parties as such as all. They are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Also not mentioned in the Constitution, but discussed at length in the Federalist Papers, were factions. Basically, the founders were afraid that government would be used by a poor majority to confiscate, through taxation or inflationary money schemes, the property of the wealthy. They did their best to prevent that.

Fast forward to what historians (apologists, really) call the age of Jacksonian Democracy. This is an era when masses of Americans were mobilized against the establishment. That establishment was represented in the Presidential elections of 1824 by four candidates all of the same Democratic-Republican Party. John Quincy Adams became President, but Andrew Jackson received both the most electoral and popular votes.

Andrew Jackson was basically a thug; it is only a coincidence that he came to embody the new Democracy. What was new about it was that, in most states, by 1824 any white male of age 21 or older could vote. This had been a gradual trend. Pennsylvania had adopted universal manhood suffrage (what it was called, if you excluded non-whites from the ranks of men) just before the Constitution was written. Rich men, mostly plantation owners but increasingly a class of capitalists, preferred the old system where only men with property were allowed to vote. Often the democratic process involved lowering the property requirement, which brought in enough lower-class voters to create majorities that could abolish that requirement.

The Democratic Party was organized around Andrew Jackson because he was the "hero of New Orleans." [See battle of New Orleans]. Andrew Jackson, in addition to being a cold blooded killer, was a slave owner, and was rich by the standards of the times. The new party was being organized by men who wanted to control the government in order to enrich themselves. They had been unable to break into the ranks of the Eastern establishment.

Andrew Jackson did not lead the fight for universal (white) manhood suffrage He was the beneficiary of it. The Democratic Party was based on four principles: slavery, Indian removal, federal public works, and desire for federal jobs. It was strong in the western states (the most western state was Missouri) and weak in the eastern establishment states, particularly in New England.

What were the aspirations of the masses of white male voters who put Jackson in office in 1828? Of course they varied, but they can be summed up in a Democratic campaign slogan (pardon the language): "niggers for the niggerless." In other words, the 90% of white farmers who did not own slaves could hope to become slave owners and expand their land holdings as Indians were slaughtered. It was the tried and true method for social advancement in the U.S.; it was how the Jefferson Family advanced itself until Thomas Jefferson became President. But Jackson's personal appeal was as a military leader.

The Democratic Party is still highly tied to the public service sector. Indians ceased to be an issue in the late 1800s. The Party gave up its love of slavery only when it suffered military defeat in 1865, but then became the party of racism until 1965.

What kind of revolution will Egypt have? It depends on what the people will settle for. The ability of elites to manipulate masses of voters is very sophisticated. Already we see the elites trying to pacify the people of Egypt by re-arranging deck chairs. The Egyptians seem to want freedom, but they also want more money. Pleasing everyone will not be easy.

Jacksonian Democracy, despite its flaws, was important in the development of the United States. It moved the nation from being a nearly pure Republic to being a somewhat democratic Republic. With all white men allowed to vote, factory workers would eventually gain clout. Women would demand the right to vote, and of course the Civil War resulted in non-whites gaining voting rights, at least in theory. After the civil rights acts of the 1960's essentially every adult gained the right to vote.

Twice in recent memory, in Algeria and non-occupied Palestine, elections were held that resulted in Islamic parties coming to power. The United States then backed anti-Islamic factions that established dictatorships. It seems that radical Islamic influence in Egypt is not all that strong, so this may not be an issue in Egypt. The situation may be more like Turkey, where a moderate Islamic party has done an excellent job of governing democratically.

Magic Obama

He gives great speeches. I will grant President of the United States Barack Obama that. I like a good speech as much as anyone. But I am an analyst by profession, and the old analytic cynicism runs in the background thread of my brain even during an Obama speech.

Today's speech on Islam at Cairo University in Egypt is a great example. It flatters Islamic culture. At the same time it reminds those few Americans who have a slight grasp of history that after the fall of Rome it was Islam, not Christianity, that maintained and developed civilization for almost a millennium.

But there are iron knuckles under the glove. "We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children." Unless it helps us. We are the nation of Wounded Knee, the Republican Party's genocidal campaign in the Philippines, of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and napalm-soaked Vietnam. We destroyed civilization in Iraq even though its leaders, including Saddam Hussein, were enemies of al Qaeda.

President Obama wants us to remember some nice history, and forget the blood on American hands. At a time when our nation's economy is in trouble, he is wasting more money on the U.S. military than any previous President of the United States.

That part about Thomas Jefferson owning a Koran is cute. I bought a Koran (in English) and read it in college as part of trying to understand the world (I was also interested in Sufism, Zen and the like for a while). Note Barack does not say he has a Koran in his library - that would not go over well with American voters. Has he ever read the Koran? He did not say.

"America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire." That is a three-pointer. We are a complex empire, filled with do-gooders who are frustrated by the Pentagon's bewitching every President we elect.

"And despite the costs involved, America's commitment will not weaken." There, you see, is the policy statement. We like you, we really do. But our policy is to kill you if you disobey us, no matter how much it costs American tax payers who voted for the Democrats hoping they would bring the troops home.

If Islam is not bad, if it is violence that is bad, why is only American violence good? And included here is violence by our allies and puppets. Tell me oh great Obama, why is it okay for you to be the most violent leader on earth? "The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind." Thank the Lord Jesus Christ he has an exception for innocents killed by aerial bombardment.

"And that is why we are providing more than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people depend upon." Heck, didn't we give even more than that to the CEO's of a few U.S. banks known for causing the global economy to implode? Think of it as the Widow's Mite.

As to Palestine, occupied and unoccupied, "Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed." It succeeded for the Israelis, and it worked like magic for them while Barack was patiently waiting to become President. But it is wrong for the Palestinians. They don't give anywhere near enough in donations to the Democratic Party to make it right. "It is time for these settlements to stop." Wow, what a verbal tongue-lashing of Israel for the Cairo University audience.

As to Iran, "we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect. But it is clear to all concerned that when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point." In other words, we will talk nicer, but our policy is the same as the Bush administrations. Only our allies like India, Pakistan, and Israel can have atomic bombs. If Iran wants atomic bombs, it must first become an American ally.

At the end of the speech there is a flurry of talk about Peace, with quotes from the Koran, New Testament, and Torah. Nothing like a little gift-wrapping of the same old American policy package for the Moslem world.

For years I have heard Barack Obama cast a magic spell with his speeches to the American people. And yes, there have been some minor policy changes since Barack has taken office, and it is early in his administration. Maybe, having cast a spell over the people of the world, he will start working to make it a better place.

But the world does not work by magic. You cannot resurrect the civilians killed by orders from Barack Obama in Afghanistan with a speech.

Still, I liked the part of the speech reminding us of Islam's contributions to civilization.

A History of Egypt by James Breasted, commentary

title: A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest
author: James Henry Breasted
year of publication: 1905
Amazon.com: A History of Egypt

Anyone interested in the human species and its civilization will want to know how things got started. Egypt, specifically the Nile river valley, plays a central role in the development of civilization. Breasted's history of ancient Egypt was once the accepted standard of scholarship on the subject. Today's serious student will find that more recent archeologists and historians find many of Breasted's details to be incorrect, or interpret them differently. On the other hand in another century more corrections, or differences of opinion, are certain to come in. Breasted makes a good, detailed, readable introduction to the ancient Egyptian civilization.

I was struck by how little social organization has changed from 4000 years ago. The Egyptians could undertake massive projects, for good or ill or for silly religious reasons, despite having a population that was a fraction of most modern nations. At times ethics was raised to a high level. Almost all the religious ideas that would be woven into the various religions that survive - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and even Atheism - can be found in ancient writings that somehow survived the ravages of millennia.

One realizes that Israel, in ancient times, was never more than a petty state, often comprising little more than Jerusalem and the countryside for a few miles around. Christianity appears to be the old cult of Osiris grafted onto the more ancient cult of sun worship with Hebrew and then Greek-Roman name changes. The ancient Egyptian religions appear enlightening only in the sense that they show that Christianity is just another layer of folly glossing over more ancient folly. People did not like the idea of dying, so they went into massive denial. The Osiris cult was a resurrection cult, just like the Jesus cult, except healthier in that at least a female, Isis, was part of the Trinity.

The best of Egyptian philosophy I already covered in An Ancient Egyptian Song with Commentary [February 22, 2008]. Breasted also follows the development of the idea of a supreme, rational god, Ptah, cumulating in "The Egyptian thus gained the idea of a single controlling intelligence, behind and above all sentient beings, including the gods. The efficient force by which this intelligence put his designs into execution was his spoken word and this primitive logos is undoubtedly the incipient germ of the later logos doctrine." [my italic]

When I was young I bought into some pop theories about how impossible it was to build the pyramids and other ancient monuments made of large stones. Breasted does not even go there. Apparently kings of Egypt thought nothing of mounting expeditions to far off quaries and bringing back large stones. It was a well-worked out system that lasted thousands of years and required no magic. It was simply a matter of organizing enough people to use the tools and skills available at the time.

The scope of this history is vast. The standard view numbered 27 dynasties in ancient Egypt; any one king's reign might have deserved a full book. Picking and choosing what to write about when so much history is available is the main task of the historian. Time, of course, destroyed most of the records and even many of the monuments from those ancient days. So some kings are barely mentioned, while others get a great deal of space in the book. One thing I like is how Breasted takes time to show that some kings had an awareness of what we call a good life, or civic virtue, consisted of. Prosperity then, as now, depended on to what extent the government looked after the welfare of the common people. When greed and corruption ruled, civilization declined. You can follow many cycles of prosperity and depression and their relation to civic policy in Egypt.

Recommended, but when I have a chance I'll read a more modern work covering this period for comparison.

An Ancient Egyptian Song and Commentary

Consider this song from the 12th Dynasty, written around 1900 B.C., when the religion based on the resurrection of Osiris was all the rage:

This goodly destiny is fulfilled
The body perishes, passing away,
While others abide, since the time of the ancestors
The gods who were aforetime rest in their pyramids.
Likewise the noble and wise, entombed in their pyramids.
As for those who built houses, their place is no more.
Behold what has become of them.
I have heard the words of Imhotep and Harzozef,
Whos utterances are of much reputation:
Yet how are the places thereof?
Their walls are in ruin, their places are no more,
As if they had never been.
None cometh from thence
That he might tell us of their state.
That he might restore our hearts
Until we too die.

Let the heart dwell upon that which is profitable for thee.
Follow thy desire while thou livest.
Follow thy desire and they pleasure
And mold your affairs on earth
After the mandates of your heart,
Until the day of lamentation comes to you,
When your stilled heart cannot hear their mourning.
Lamentation recalls no man from the tomb.
Celebrate life, do not rest before death,
For you take nothing with you to death
And no man returns from death who has gone there.

[Interpreted anonymous song in James Henry Breasted, History of Egypt, Bantam Classic paperback edition, page 172-173]

This song stands in contrast to the worship of Osiris and the "Chapters on Going Forth by Day," better known as the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Already at that time people believed that they would be judged after death and be sent to a pleasant or unpleasant afterlife according to that judgement. Just as Christians and Moslems do today. It is believed that men acted in a just manner because they feared this judgement. Apparently fear of the government was not enough.

If you believe that, then the attitude expressed in this song is a dangerous one. If you will not be judged after death, then perhaps you will be unjust in this life. You might steal or murder or be unkind or unhelpful to your neighbors.

On the other hand, a system of social control based on nonsense about life after death is no guarantee of good people or a good society. Religions often group people into categories, allowing the treatment of slaves or woemn, for instance, to be an exception to the rules for treating peers. Religious rules can suppress the truth in favor of dogma.

And faith can be shattered, leaving people dependent on fictions morally adrift.

Note that the creator of the song does not say there is no afterlife, so feel free to pillage. Just as a community can create civil laws for the guidance of its citizens, so people who do not believe in the afterlife can be good neighbors.

In fact, I prefer people who don't believe in the afterlife. They value life, usually including the lives of others. They don't expect other men to slave away building them a pyramid. They don't dream of the mummy life. They tend to their gardens and their handiwork because that is what makes life pleasant.

I'll be commenting quite a bit about the worship of Osiris because much of what is essential about Christianity is borrowed directly from this Egyptian religion.