I think something people get caught up on on reparations is that they think that it’s a punishment for slave owners. But it’s not called “retribution” it’s called “reparations.” it’s about the grand societal debt that we owe to those who were robbed of labor and their descendants. Every ounce of wealth generated by this country is on the backs of the cotton empire that ruled the economy from 1783 to 1860. There is not a well to do person in this country who has not benefited from the economic prosperity America enjoyed in this years, and thus we are all in debt to those who built it.
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"From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass., 1847, while I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful of its peaceful abolition. My utterances became more and more tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.” – Fredrick Douglass, quoted by WEB DuBois. This passage was very revealing to me as it showed that Brown was responsible for Douglass’s radicalization and disillusionment with the conscious wings of the Democratic and Whig parties. Although Douglass knew the condition of slavery’s victims better, and thus understood why Brown’s plan couldn’t work, Brown did expose to Douglass that there was no way out of slavery without bloodshed.
Side note: DuBois writes of an essay Brown wrote titled “Sambo’s Mistakes” where he puts on verbal blackface to demonstrate the degradation slaves go through. I can’t find the essay but if any of you can please post a link here.
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I feel like Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are getting too much flack from the progressive press right now. They are getting a lot of pieces written about them about the bile they spewed towards the 14th Amendment, but these pieces convenient leave out their friendships with William Lloyd Garrison and the fact that they went to Kansas in the 1850s – which was basically a war zone – to campaign for abolition.
Side note can someone reply to this? I’m about to hit the 5 post limit.
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I have been noticing that too and do not know why.
I find it funny when you said the progressive press, I knew exactly what you were talking about. Yet when some boomer uses the phrase “the liberal media” they mean anyone that isn’t fox news. Just sorta interesting that one means something and one doesn’t despite them being fairly similar phrases.
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I think Aaron Burr would’ve made a comeback if he hadn’t conspired with the Spanish. He would’ve had to relocate from New York after his duel with Hamilton but he was already courting Southerners by allying himself with the Jeffersonians. He probably would have led an opposition to the Democratic-Republicans during the Era of Good Feelings and challenged James Monroe for the Presidency. Might have even won.
I’m going to see Eric Foner again on the 19th. He’s giving a talk for the release of his new book, The Second Founding. I’m looking forward to having another of his books signed.
That’s pretty awesome.
Only tangentially related to history, but in yesterday’s Last Week Tonight, the history of the senate filibuster was discussed (along with, amusingly the history of the phrase “the cooling saucer”). I kept feeling like he didn’t take the next logical step and advocate for abolishing the senate but whatever, you take what you can.
As a counterpoint for the argument “the filibuster is a tool that allows minorities to have the full extent of their issues heard in the senate” the caning of Sumner was held up as a counterpoint.
Here’s the episode if anyone’s interested.
On the topic of abolishing the senate in that we should abolish a system where a very small number of people have a disproportionate representation in government. Same as abolishing the electoral college. However, I have to say, I personally like the idea of the legislative body being two separate houses that are different and important. The house needs to have more seats, but can otherwise stay as is. The senate really just needs to be elected very differently than it is today.
Crazy idea: The house continues to be based on districts, just a lot more districts without gerrymandering. Terms last 2 years as they do now. Add a limit of maybe 3-4 terms. The 50 senators are elected by a nationwide IRV. You rank the top 50 people on a giant list. Current term of 6 years is ok, but maybe even up to 10 would be acceptable. If people resign/die we can have an easier IRV where we rank and only the top 1 person gets that seat. At the beginning it will be hard to rank 50, but as people die/resign over the years, and the terms are staggered, it will get easier. Maybe there’s a fair way to stagger the terms to begin with.
5/10 mentioned Charles Sumner but did not mention Huey Long’s game changing Filibusters or Strom Thurmond’s phone book.
Oddly enough I cannot find any trace of who enacted the first Filibuster. It was some Democrat in opposition to Henry Clay’s Third Bank of The United States, but which Senator that was seems to not be on the internet.
EDIT: Interesting aside, my dad has informed my that his grandfather, (b. 1889) used a cooling saucer for his coffee.
As big a step as it would be to fix the gerrymandering problem in the U.S., do you really think the House is otherwise OK as it is?
The combination of single-member districts and first-past-the-post voting heavily reinforces the de facto two-party system in the US; surely it would be better to fix that?
If you really want to keep a degree of local representation in federal government (and I often wonder whether that’s even worth it) it seems to me that it would be better to switch to either multi-member districts or mixed-member proportional representation.
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Making the districts smaller would basically have an equivalent effect.
No, it wouldn’t. Smaller districts only give voice to minority views that have some significant degree of geographic concentration.
Also, systems with small districts that elect only one representative are still much more vulnerable to influence from political spending as compared to systems that aim for a greater degree of overall proportionality.
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Keep the Senate but change it’s membership to be closer to how the House works, based on a state’s population, but instead of being district based keep it a statewide vote for each seat. It wouldn’t fix everything but would be better than the current Senate.
That’s not the worst idea.
House you have tiny districts and lots of members with short terms.
Senate you do state-wide IRV and pick the top X people. Bigger states still have more senators than small ones, but the total number of senators is still small relative to the house. Also longer terms.
What specific purpose within the legislation does the senate serve if its just a smaller scale replica of the house? Bicameral legislative bodies exist specifically to distinguish between the popular will in one house and an inherently anti-populist design in the other. This is true in the US, UK, Canada, Austrailia, Italy, and France (the largest, examples of long standing, still standing bicameral legislatures).
Realistically you should just abolish the Senate if a population based representation is the goal.
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Also CCPGray did a great series of videos on districting and voting systems basically highlighting redividing the existing Congressional districts via algorithm, making each have 3 representatives, and implementing an Australian style voting system to ensure that the political will of everyone is represented as best as possible.
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The middle school explanation goes like this:
The biggest difference is really the term limits. Someone with a longer term limit doesn’t have to constantly worry about elections They would be much less pressured by a short-term hot-button issue. They could instead spend lots of time debating and working to put together big long term things. In the house however, you do get the balance by having people who are constantly worrying about elections. So the hot-button topic of the day does get representation.
There are also separation of duties. The house at least on paper has “the power of the purse” and all legislation regarding taxing and spending must originate there. The senate also has unique duties, like confirming appointments, specifically judicial appointments. The house has nothing to do with that at all.
And of course, you still have the other one-off things like for impeachment the house votes to impeach, and then the senate holds the actual trial.
Also you have to remember that originally, and until the early 1900s, senators weren’t directly elected. The state representatives chose them. This goes back to the thing about senators not being subject to whim and elections and able to have long term thinking without having to worry too much about the fiery whims of the people.
Your proportional senate makes more sense to me if its an appointed position than simply the advantage of longer terms (Canada works this way still and of course thats how the US Senate used to function as you brought up). Of course it has separate issues. I’m not discounting the specific powers and responsibilities the senate has separate from the house in our current system, just stating that the inherent lack or proportionality was an intended feature of our and many other bicameral systems.