Day: March 2, 2023

The Lead Up To The Civil War

Since there are so many right wing dullards that are trying to re-write our history I thought I would join the debate to try and help clarify the events that lead up to the American Civil War….there are more things that lead to the outbreak of war other than the firing on Ft. Sumter….9 to be exact.

After the American Revolution, a divide between the North and South began to widen. Industrialized northern states gradually passed laws freeing enslaved people, while southern states became increasingly committed to slavery. Many southerners came to view slavery as a linchpin of their agricultural economy, and as a justifiable social and political institution.

Throughout the first half of the 1800s, the nation struggled to manage the clash between these two incompatible viewpoints, working out deals such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which sought to balance the number of new free and slave states and drew a line through the nation’s western territories, with freedom to the north and slavery to the south. But in the last decade before war broke out, the conflict gained momentum and intensity. 

“Throughout the 1850s, a series of events increased sectionalism, emboldened southern secessionists, and deepened northern resolve to defend the Union and end slavery,” explains Jason Phillips, the Eberly Family Professor of Civil War Studies at West Virginia University, and author of the 2018 book Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth Century Americans Imagined the Future. “Many of these crises revolved around politics, but economic, social and cultural factors also contributed to the war’s origins.”

Here are nine events from the 1850s to the early 1860s that historians view as critical in the march toward the American Civil War.

https://www.history.com/news/civil-war-causes-issues

This illustrates that there were complex issues that lead to the outbreak of war than the simplistic whitewash that the era gets in history classes these days.

I will do my part to correct the misconceptions….now we all need to do our part and learn our history….all of it….the good, the bad and the ugly.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Class dismissed!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Legalized Political Bribery

I have been writing about the whole corruption thing that the Supreme Court brought about awhile back.

Here I am talking about the decision of the Supreme Court known as “Citizen United”.

This decision flung open the doors for the corruption in our political system….and made it legal.

…

the damage Republicans on the Supreme Court did to America when they legalized political bribery.

The good news is that there are numerous things Congress can do to undo the Court’s bizarre doctrine that money is the same thing as free speech and corporations have Bill of Rights freedoms and protections as “persons.”

Neither of these “rights to bribe” by the morbidly rich and corporations were recognized in the early years of our republic. Even today we’re unique among advanced democracies in holding these Supreme Court-created doctrines which underpin much if not most of today’s political corruption.

Congress has never, in the history of the United States, passed a law saying rich people buying politicians is the same thing as free speech or that corporations have a right to bribe politicians and lie to the public. To the contrary, Congress has passed hundreds of laws — which were overturned by these three Supreme Court decisions — regulating money in politics and criminalizing political corruption.

The Court’s inventing these twin doctrines has even corrupted the other two branches of government, leading today to legislative paralysis, an erosion of civil and voting rights, and widespread public cynicism.

The Executive branch of our government has done a lot of damage over the past five decades, from Nixon committing treason to blow up LBJ’s 1968 peace talks with Vietnam so he could beat VP Humphrey in that election, to Reagan’s massive tax cuts and defunding of our schools and colleges, to Bush’s two illegal and unnecessary $8 trillion wars, to Trump’s burning spies by passing classified information along to Russian intelligence while president.

The Legislative branch has also played a role in most of those fiascos and crimes, as well as the current Republican circus in the House of Representatives.

https://www.rawstory.com/amp/what-the-supreme-did-to-america-when-they-legalized-political-bribery-2659438661

Thanx to the Supreme Court has given real credence to the old say ….”the best government money can buy”.

There is no way out of this situation and it will only get worse as the money gets bigger.

Americans will remain the furthest thing from the minds of our elected officials.

If SCOTUS has legalized corruption then can we ask if the Court is corrupted?

Under the guise of the regressive legal theory of “originalism,” the United States Supreme Court Republican-appointed majority has issued a series of ultra-right rulings on such vital issues as votingrights, gerrymandering, unionorganizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, guncontrol, abortion, and campaign finance. The end goal appears to be nothing less than the dismantling of the last vestiges of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement.

But in addition to being reactionary, is the court also guilty of corruption? The answer depends on how we define and think of corruption.

In the strictest legal sense, the justices appear to be in the clear. Under federal law, “public corruption” is defined as “a breach of the public’s trust by government officials who use their public office to obtain personal gain,” asking for or receiving anything of value in exchange for an official act. In a 2016 decision reversing the bribery conviction of former Virginia GOP Governor Bob McDonnell, the Supreme Court narrowed the legal definition of public corruption to require strict proof of a “quid pro quo”—a swap of money or another benefit in return for a specific governmental favor.

But from a larger moral and political perspective, the court’s Republican majority is far from innocent. We expect all federal judges—and particularly those at the top of the judicial pyramid—not only to be law-abiding but to be free of political bias and conflicts of interest. We expect them to honor the enormous faith we have placed in them to use their lifetime appointments to be forthright stewards of justice and democracy.

That faith has been breached time and again.

https://www.alternet.org/us-supreme-court-2659400868/

My thought is….yes they are.

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”