Kshama Sawant and Leon Trotsky

Kshama Sawant, an avowed socialist, was recently elected to the Seattle City Council. I think this is a healthy event; I applaud Ms. Sawant's peaceful route to the extremely limited power one has as a city council person. But Ms. Sawant is a member of a Trotskyist Party. Most American's don't know much about Trotsky or the parties that carry his flag, mainly because they are small and usually quite obscure.

Americans are not likely to take to any party that idolizes a foreign political leader. Ms. Sawant and Socialist Alternative have not chosen one of the many American socialist leaders or parties to idolize. So why Leon Trotsky?

Leon Trotsky is a lot like Thomas Jefferson. I don't mean that in a positive way. I mean that his rhetoric is attractive to idealists, but his life betrays his rhetoric. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, it which he talks of freedom and the equality of man (mostly plagiarizing British writers). He owned slaves. When the British freed his slaves during the American Revolution, he demanded their return (he got a number back when the British surrendered at Yorktown). He supported his spendthrift habits (fine wines, fancy horses and the endless expansion of Monticello) partly by forcing child-slaves to spend their days in his nail factory.

Leon Trotsky was a Russian Marxist revolutionary running his own political party until the Russian Revolution. Then he joined up with the Bolshevik Party to stage a coup that both killed the Czar (who by then was only a figurehead) and overthrew the government established by the workers and peasants and their political parties. He was then assigned the task of organizing the murder of anyone Left, Right, or Center, who disagreed with the new dictatorship of middle-class intellectuals led by Lenin. He headed the Red Army that murdered hundreds of thousands of opponents during the Civil War. He did not object to the killing of socialist opponents by the brutal Leninist political police.

So why would a nice, thoughtful person like Kshama subscribe to the ideology of such a madman? After Lenin died a new leader, really dictator, was needed. Naturally Trotsky thought that with so much blood on his hands, he was the natural choice. But Joseph Stalin outmaneuvered him, eventually forcing Leon into exile.

By then Trotsky had a large following both in the Soviet Union (Russia plus places Trotsky had conquered, notably the Ukraine, where anarchists had tried to set up a non-dictatorial socialist system) and within the many communist parties around the world. He changed his tune. He began to use the rhetoric of democracy to improve his chances of eventually becoming a dictator. He criticized Joe Stalin, saying he (not the entire bunch of Leninists) had perverted the Russian Revolution, transforming it into a bureaucratic dictatorship.

For radicals of a certain mindset Trotskyism has a deep appeal. You can be a revolutionary and imagine that you are in a vanguard party in the line of Marx and Lenin, while talking about freedom and democracy. In the United States since around 1970s the numerous (but each small) Trotskyist parties have been particularly adept at recruiting LGBT radicals.

Their inability to see the contradiction between Trotsky's rhetoric and the factual historic record, or worse still their acceptance of it, is a key to understanding activists like Kshama. The world is a bright and shiny place just needing some nice rhetoric to wake up "the masses" to complete the glorious worldwide Leninist revolution that went astray when Stalin got his grubby hands on it.

If a socialist party wants to succeed in the United States, it should reject Trotsky.

If socialism is the best system for running society, it should be so on its own merit. It should not need the "blessing" of some Marxist saint like Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Trotsky.

If an American socialist party wants some saints, it could at least use American socialists. There have been plenty of them, and their example is much better than that of any of the Russian leaders, even if they did not bring a socialist revolution to the U.S.A. [note no Trotskyist political party has ever come to power anywhere in the world]. Look to Mother Jones, the Industrial Workers of the World, Daniel De Leon, or Emma Goldman for inspiration.

Over the decades I interviewed many leaders of American Trotskyist parties. They all lacked the confidence to speak out about the historical reality of Trotsky's life. Their tiny cults trapped them in error: to renounce Trotsky, after building their parties around worshipping him, would have meant being ostracized.

If Kshama Sawant wants to graduate to being a socialist leader herself, she needs to denounce the legacy of mass murder that is the life of Leon Trotsky. If she can't do that, she is a moral cripple who cannot be trusted to build a genuine popular socialist movement.

See also: A Rare Elected Voice for Socialism Pledges to Be Heard in Seattle [New York Times, December 29, 2013]

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

Philippines War, American Christianity, and Islam

"It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths." — Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke

As part of my preparation (or really procrastination) for writing The U.S. War Against Asia (aka The Asian War) I recently completed the most excellent God's Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902 by Susan K. Harris.

In tracing how an ostensibly democratic and anti-imperialist nation rationalized becoming an imperialist power by seizing Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines against the will of their inhabitants, Susan Harris goes into the details of the 19th century transformation of the United States into an overtly Christian nation. Part of that project (for it did not occur spontaneously) was a re-writing of the history of 18th century America, particularly the period between 1750 and the passing (marred by massive fraud) of the U.S. Constitution.

History is always a summation. We cannot study, even if we wanted to, what each American inhabitant did and thought, for instance, on each day of 1776, important as all those thoughts and actions in that particular year must have been. When doing a summary the acts of including or excluding may make for very different end products.

In the 19th century the Enlightenment, which was secular and non-religious, was largely erased from the story of the American Revolution and the creation of the U.S. Constitution. Tom Paine was practically obliterated from history, not for writing Common Sense, which was acceptable to patriots, but for writing Age Of Reason, which was unacceptable to Christians. Thomas Jefferson could not be so easily obliterated, but his early atheism and later deism (which is just atheism with its ass covered) was quietly dropped from the discussion.

In the 19th century, despite the Abolitionists and Emancipation Proclamation, Christianity became deeply intertwined with racism in these United States. How did a doctrine that originated as anti-racialist, and explicitly welcoming all human beings, come to be deeply racist? It started long before the first Church of England member stepped foot in Virginia. [Note also the myth that our nation was founded by Puritans in Massachusetts. That is post-Civil war malarkey. Most Americans who bothered with religion before 1776 were Church of England, and Virginia was the first and most prominent English colony in America.]

Christianity became a European, or "white race," religion, because it was supplanted by Islam as a global religion between 700 and 1500 A.D. Christianity became the dominant religion in the "Near East" and in northern Africa by supplanting previous localist religious cults between 300 and 600 A.D. Islam was created specifically to correct obvious errors in Christianity, Judaism, and paganism. The idea that God (now Allah) needed a son for a co-god was replaced with the idea that Jesus Christ was a great prophet like Moses. Most of the Koran consists of retelling of Bible tales and early Christian fables.

Islam was remarkably successful as a philosophy, culture, and mode of governance. Pretty soon Christianity, already in its Dark Ages, had retreated to the core of Europe. Islam became a global, multiracial religion that extended from Spain across north Africa to Indonesia. When Christianity emerged again in the form of Portuguese and Spanish piracy in the late 1400's, it was incapable of seeing non-whites as full human beings. While some converting to Christianity did occur amidst the pillaging of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, in almost every case non-white Christians were supervised by white priests.

However, it is not fair to blame the destruction of the American Indian tribes in what is now the United States on Christianity alone. Greed played the major part, and it affected the subscribers to the Age of Reason. Nor were the Rationalists immune to racist sentiments. They simply rationalized their racism. For Christian slave owners God ordained the inferiority of the black race; for atheist slave owners like Thomas Jefferson, Nature ordained that same inferiority.

Sexism, too, seemed pre-ordained to almost all men, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, and atheist alike. The Roman Catholic church, to this day, teaches the inferiority of women as a major theological truth. Protestant sects have changed their minds, or not, sect by sect over time. Atheists have led in the women's liberation department, but for decades allowed practice to lag theory.

Apparently it was Robert Ingersoll who reminded Americans of the role of Thomas Paine in the American Revolution and the creation of our system of governance. Even as the Sugar Trust and its imperialist allies enslaved Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines at the turn of the century, the prestige of science was rising with the prestige of America's industrial might. The world of trains, telephones, and radio had not been foreseen by the prophets of the Bible or Koran. Americans became more secular, even as most tried to keep a gloss of Christianity as a cover. The racial barriers crumbled, gradually at first, and then in a great tumble in the 1960s.

The military-christian-political complex, however, regained a lot of momentum after the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 brought Islam to the fore as the new Enemy.

We seem to have come to an odd point in history. We have a not-entirely-white President of the United States who has been accused of being a Muslim because his absentee father was nominally an adherent of Islam. Barack Obama professes to be a mainstream Christian Protestant. He has proven he is just as good at killing non-white non-Christians as any prior American president. Half the nations of the world remain home to at least one American military base. Republicans in Congress demand war with Iran and Syria and Democrats keep their mouths shut for fear of Christian backlash.

Religious crazies of all sorts have become used to using the products of scientific reasoning. Soon crazies (other than Obama) will be sending out cheap unmanned drones to smite their enemies. Meanwhile, sects new and old can fish for converts with smartphones and Facebook.

I began this essay thinking about how resilient (and destructive) the Christian America myth has been. Now I am thinking: how do we know if we are in a period of stability? The elements of change could be in place already. Changes in allegiance as great as when Christianity swept over Eurasia in the 4th century, Islam swept over the world in the 7th century, and Communism swept over much of the world in the 20th century could be upon us. Some sect I have never heard of could be getting ready to conquer the world, without its members even being aware of their destiny.

Or perhaps the Age of Man is coming to a close just as surely as the Age of Dinosaurs once did.

Still, apocalypses are pretty rare. Like the rest of humanity tomorrow I will wake up and make the best of the situation at hand, just like any other day. I'm lucky I'm not not in Somalia or Mali or Afghanistan where Obama's henchmen fight it out with Islamic extremists and ordinary people get caught in the crossfire (including the economic crossfire).

Halloween Horrors from American History

When people think of horrors rising from the grave at Halloween, if they think about American history the best they can come up with is usually Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. That just shows how well-built our mental defenses are against true horror.

Perhaps tonight some unlucky people will see the ghost of John Woods. His older brother had been conscripted into the Tennessee militia in the war of 1812. For reasons unknown John, who was just 17, took his brother's place in Andrew Jackson's army in February, 1814. They had been fighting Indians, and none too victoriously. "He made the mistake of arguing with the Officer of the Day outside of the General's tent. Jackson stepped outside and ordered: "Shoot him." Two days later, on March 14th, at 10 A.M. John Woods was shot dead by his fellow soldiers at Jackson's command. The General now believed he was ready to fight the Red Sticks again, with less insubordination from his underlings." [from Andrew Jackson Fights the Red Sticks]

John Woods was hardly the only victim of Andrew Jackson, a slaver who went on to create the Democratic Party and use it to make himself President, but let's make this a variety horror show. There were, of course, the natives. If every murdered American Indian showed up on Halloween, it would be a sight. Practically every major figure in American history up to the Civil War was an Indian killer of some magnitude. George Washington killed Indians, as did Thomas Jefferson, as did hordes of forgotten European colonizers. The rapid accumulation of wealth and establishment of a ruling class in the United States was largely accomplished by the murder of Indians and theft of their lands.

Ghosts of dead slaves, too, could put together quite a Halloween ball. Many died horrible deaths while in chains in Africa or on the ships that brought them across the Atlantic. In America the life expectancy, and living conditions, of slaves working at cotton or tobacco culture was nothing to sing songs to Jesus for the blessings of Christianity about. Again, the same names pop out of our history books, slavers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson not being particularly noted for their cruelty, but rather as the political frontmen for the owners of larger lots of expendable human workforce. Of course, even after the Civil War, the Democratic Party made sure that life for African Americans was halloween everyday in the former slave states.

White people, don't despair. Not all of our ancestors were Indian killers and racists. In fact, most white people who arrived in the colonies before the American Revolution came over as indentured servants, and their ghosts, in their millions, could tell some tales. While indentured slavery was for a period of time, usually 7 years, and many survived and went free, most were worked and starved to death by the end of their term, that being more profitable than turning free a healthy, well fed human being.

I cannot neglect to mention the foreign wars. There are too many ghosts and spooks to mention them all here, even in lumps, so a few must represent all. The Philippines War, an addendum to the Spanish American War, was carried on with the same principles of an Indian extermination campaign. No one knows how many Filipino freedom fighters and civilians died under the cheery tutelage of Theodore Roosevelt and crew, but rough estimates range from a low of about one-half million to a high of two million. The U.S. war to occupy Korea and the Vietnam War are worth an all-saints mention.

If you are looking for glow-in the dark zombies, perhaps you would enjoy the resurrection of the only large bodies of people killed by atomic weapons, the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The average American, who deserves to be haunted into an early grave, simply repeats the charming meme, "it saved lives of American soldiers." That the rules of war have always said it is not okay to kill civilians to save your own soldiers seems lost on people. That Science, which should be a beacon of light, was bent to this unholy purpose, makes it all the more criminal. President Harry Truman, the leader of the Democratic Party, made the decision to drop the bomb. The Democratic Party is the only party in history that has dropped atomic weapons on human beings. Had America lost World War II, or had a fair and impartial system of international justice been created, the Democratic Party would have been permanently banned, just like the National Socialist German Workers Party was.

For me, the horror is walking out into a world where a bunch of Democratic Party zombies grope about in continual denial of the reality of what their party has done, and what they have embraced by joining it. How many more people will die violent deaths at Democrats' hands before its reign of terror fades into history?

Kidnapping, Slavery, and Islamic Terror: To the Shores of Tripoli

Earlier today I had a discussion with a military guy, in this case a defense contractor highly-paid consultant type, I think.

Soon I was saying, "The U.S. military has always been used for aggression. It has never been used for self defense. First it was used to steal native American tribal land. No, first it was used to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion and establish the Federal Government's authority to collect taxes under the new Constitution. Then we did our first attacks on the Islamic nations, under President Thomas Jefferson. You know, the raids on the Barbary 'Pirate' states."

That was in 1801, I now know because I looked it up in my Bailey's The American Pageant, A History of the Republic. Tripoli is a city in present-day Libya.

"That was self-defense," my new friend said. "They were capturing American ships and citizens and holding them for ransom!"

"So," I said, having a thought I never had before, "if you kidnap people, that is a pretext for a just war?"

"Of course it is," he said. "All U.S. wars have been just wars."

"Let's stick to the war against the Pasha of Tripoli for a moment. At that time, was slavery legal in the United States of America."

"Slavery is a different issue. I am not for slavery, and I am not a racist."

"Fine, but slavery was legal, right?"

"Yes."

"And importing slaves was legal, right?"

"But at some point we made importing new slaves illegal."

"But not at that point. I could be wrong, but I think that was later. [it was 1808] So where did these slaves come from?"

"Africa."

"And Tripoli was in?"

"Africa."

"So the United States of America was kidnapping Africans, by proxy anyway, and keeping them as permanent slaves. Whereas the Islamic states just were taxing the passing of ships in their waters, and when Jefferson decided he would not pay the tax, they confiscated our ships, and in effect kidnapped some of our citizens."

"We weren't taking slaves from Tripoli," he countered. "The slaves we were taking had a right to fight back, and probably a lot of them did. And we had a right to send in the Marines at Tripoli."

"Nice parting of the waters, there," I admitted. "But that just leaves Jefferson and the U.S. military as hypocrites. We could have used military force to shut down the slave trade in Africa, and we could have gone ahead and had a civil war in the U.S. to end slavery here. Instead we attacked an Islamic state because we did not want our merchants to have to pay taxes to sale ships through their waters."

"And we kicked their butts. Right or wrong, we always kick their butts."

And we are always the defenders of all that is good and just. A few white people landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts and Jamestown, Virginia in the early 1600's, and using only-self defense and hard work ended up with an empire that includes not just 50 states and a bunch of territories, but military bases and political puppets all around the world. Semper Fidelis.

[quotes are to the best of my memory. The other guy probably remembers how he won the argument.]

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.

Independence and the 200 Year Hangover

The first independence day was July 4th, 1776. The Declaration of Independence, written by committee but attributed with some cause to Thomas Jefferson, was meant to explain to the world why the gentlemen assembled in Philadelphia did not want to be ruled by Great Britain.

The Declaration carefully skirted at least two of the main reasons that select group of mostly rich men were so eager to split up with England. Before examining them in detail let me say clearly: I believe in democracy. I believe that the U.S. colonies of England should have become independent. I just believe that much bad policy was packaged up in the independence deal.

The idea of independent colonies, bound together or not, was not new in 1776. It had had advocates for decades. But interestingly, until 1772, agitation for independence had gotten nowhere. Why did things change in 1772? Because of a court case in Great Britain.

A slave of African descent from Virginia, named Somerset (or Sommerset or Somersett; spelling was no exact science in those days) had run away from his master, who had taken him to be his servant in London. After lengthy procedings a British judge, Lord Mansfield, declared Somerset to be free. He declared that slavery did not exist in England; that English soil was free soil; that whatever you prior status, when you stepped on English soil you became free. [See Slave Nation by Alffred and Ruth Blumrosen].

This decision, which Ben Franklin wrote about, endangered the livelihoods and thus the liberty of slave owners in Virginia and other U.S. colonies. Thomas Jefferson and other slavers formed the now famous Committees of Correspondence, linking up with certain New England merchants who were also keen on independence. They did not demand representation in Parliament, for that would have made it even clearer that American soil was English soil and that the slaves would have to be freed. Instead they moved the country steadily and inexorably towards independence and their own liberty to continue to own slaves. The American Revolution was underway.

Another thing that was bothering a great number of wealthy (and some not so wealthy) Americans, and here George Washington is the perfect example, was something called the Line of 1763. Most wealth in America was accumulated by land speculation; native American Indian land had to be seized for this game to continue. But the British Crown had negotiated with various Indian tribes for peace and guaranteed that no land would be stolen beyond this line of 1763. State legislatures, being even more corrupt back then than they are now, had granted certain individuals vast lands that lay past the line. Washington belonged to such an investment group. To make the claims good the land speculators had to convince king and Parliament to forget about the treaties and line. The king and Parliament did not want the expense of another Indian war, so they protected the Indians from the colonists.

The two-hundred year hangover came not from independence itself, but from the institution of slavery and greed for other people's land. During the American Revolution the British freed American slaves (funny how we know about the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the earlier granting of freedom), but the freed slaves were handed back to their owners, including Washington and Jefferson, when England lost the war.

The treaty ending the war also ceded lands beyond the 1763 line to the the United States. The fact that these lands belonged to Indian nations was immediately forgotten. The grabbing did not even stop at the Pacific Ocean; the government of the greedy, by the greedy, for the greedy eventually grabbed Hawaii and the Philippines.

For the most part the Native Americans were simply exterminated, but the African slaves became an internal problem, such were there numbers. The Dred Scott decision held the opposite of the Somerset case: in the U.S. you remained a slave even if you lived on the soil of a state that had abolished slavery. In theory slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but the Democratic Party (the party of slavery and the Confederacy) enacted Jim Crow (segregation) laws in the states it controlled that lasted until the 1970's.

Now we celebrate Independence Day (the Fourth of July) in an era of global interdependence. Green house gas emissions in the United States caused global warming that expands deserts in China; plastics manufactured in China accumulate their toxic burden in America's landfills.

Independence Day should be a day for somber reflection and for resolutions to do better. The hangover from today's foolishness looks like it will last much longer than a mere 200 years.

More data:

Line of 1763
Declaration of Independence
Somerset case