When I was in High School I read the book A Peoples History of the US by Howard Zinn. At the time my young, ideologically stoic self liked much of the book, although the political angle seemed retarded to me even then. This is my attempt at re-telling some of the fundamental parts of American history that seem to have been completely "re-interpreted" in our modern times..
America pre-Revolutionary war was a fucking party, since most people were silly, whorefucking drunk. Drinking in the US was at its highest during the pre-Revolutionary war times. In Philadelphia for example there was 1 saloon per ~100 residents, currently its 1 per 1034, the highest for any big city in the US. From the early colonial period to early the early industrial period workers had no work schedule, they would show up whenever they wanted, left whenever they wanted and drank openly all day while working. It was in fact expected for employers to provide liquor and workers would walk off jobs if liquor ran out. “Proper” historians excuse the practice by saying that this was pre-purified water and since alcohol was boiled it was safer to drink, while that’s true, when looked at from a broader perspective the people just enjoyed the party back then.
Many Historians tend to focus on Puritan New England during the pre-revolutionary times, how was the rest of the Colonies? Lawless, culturally libertine, British rule was lax because the king had most of the decision making power and he was an ocean away. Personal liberty was by far highest during those times. For example no whore houses were shut down in that time, and there was a bunch, Samuel Adams stated in a letter that he saw 6 on his short walk from his hotel to State House while working on the Declaration of Independence.
Socially the country was much more different than it is currently presented. Women had a lot of freedoms, ½ of the saloons in Charleston, Virginia were owned by women for example. There was a tremendous degree of racial integration in the lower classes as well; biracial people were called molato back then and they made up a substantial minority back then.
The precipitator event that led to the revolution was the Boston Massacre, which historians cover in a heroic manner, but was more or less a bunch of drunks that walked out of a bar and were agitating the Red Coats until they responded, by shooting Crispus Attucks, a very popular black man and (at least in the past) a rum runner, which set the rest of the crowd off and a Brit named Samuel Maverick and an Irish guy named Patrick Carr were also shot.
The founding fathers by the way were not happy with the culture and populace. Every one of them at some point during the revolution issued denunciations of the public and wrote that they hoped the British would win so that the population would be policed more. John Adams in fact represented the soldiers during their murder trial of the killings during the Boston Massacre.
The libertine culture was one of the biggest obstacles the founding fathers had to overcome to convince the population to revolt, so they used the two lures that always tend to work on the fish, power and social justice. The founding fathers on the other hand believed democracy required virtue, self-sacrifice, and a renunciation of ones desires for the good of community, in giving up what people enjoyed-for political power.
Contrary to what people think founding fathers would be labeled as “classic Liberals”, a theology which revolves around the “self regulating individual”. They believed democracy requires an assault on ones individual desires, not modern gov repression but teaching through shame, a disciplinarian to enforce virtue and goodness. Except Benjamin Rush, who wanted the new gov to round up the populace and put them in sobriety reformatories. He’s also the guy who introduced into culture the concept that the cure for addiction is lifelong sobriety, based on mostly not liking drunks.
Contrary to what Rush Limbaugh preaches founding fathers created the politically cultural environment that allowed nanny laws to be developed and flourish in. Their “moral lessons” were first taken by local authorities and turned into restrictive laws, etc.
The founding fathers were very successful; they instilled a very repressive, confining Victorian culture in the country, especially in the north. A culture that stressed discipline and a hard work ethic, one that seen work in itself as Godly and considered every minute a man wasn’t working or spending with family as a minute he gave to the devil. Sexual repression was popular; one of the biggest industries at the time was devices to stop a person from sex or masturbating, like hobbles that prevented a woman from opening her legs. Ironically southern slave culture was jealously envied back then, one proof of that is early traveling “black face” shows were the most popular entertainment back then and were not about humor at all, they were a celebration of the culture. The lack of protestant ideals was envied; they lived a less self-restrained life than much of the population. The average northern states American farmer back then worked from sun up to sundown, on average they worked 400 hours more a year than the slaves.
The leading opponents of slavery were also opponents of personal freedom, they were puritanical abolitionist Calvinists, very self restrained and they hated that slaves had “too mush self-freedom”. Much of their abolitionist writing focused on correcting the terrible morals and work ethic, on making the south look like the north culturally. Both Frederick Douglas and William Blake Anderson wrote that what was morally wrong about slavery was that it was a system of external control, which creates people who live like savages, they wanted a system of internal control, they wanted Puritanical Christians and implanting internal shame. After the war they created the Freed Mans Bureau which created school all over the south, which taught very little reading/writing, mostly they taught the new culture, then they sent them back to the same plantations they were freed from, sometimes by force.
Similarly Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, one of the starters of the birth control movement, was deeply about self control, but a little differently. She believed in eugenics, believed poor people were poor due to biological defects. She used that argument in her successful bid to congress to fund free birth control in Harlem, which later spread. Many people were forcefully sterilized back then: criminals, retards, hookers and “fallen” (poor) women.
Eugenics was actually primarily invented in the US by American social sciences, psychiatrists and doctors. The eugenics movement was a part of what was called the progressive movement. Progressives were primarily interested in social control because the second great wave of immigration was occurring at the time and the new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were rejecting the industrial discipline. The wave also made cities grow and they were becoming politically controlled by the immigrants, progressives wanted to bring social order and destroy that power base.
Progressive movement ideology birthed the American New Deal. There were three New Deals created between 1933 and 1939, in the US, Italy and Germany. All three are almost identical in the methods of controlling the economy and influencing public opinion and grand government projects as a projection of state power, authority and centralization of power.
Another thing ours and the two Fascist ones have in common was Classic Corporatism-a form of economic governance that shared power between gov, labor and business, with gov having ultimate control but business leaders having ultimate control in executive decisions. One result was business cartels composed of the biggest businesses in a field having a board that together sets quotas, prices etc. Another usurped true competition for big companies, letting them impose regulations on the field their in.
Roosevelt however wasn’t a fascist or a fascist sympathizer; he was an adamant imperialist and disliked the competition the fascists presented, he just saw an opportunity. Rexford Tugwell, Roosevelt’s cabinet member however was an explicitly sympathetic to fascist rule and openly critical of democracy, hostile of free market. He was one of the biggest people responsible for the National Recovery Act part of the New Deal, which extensively curbs the free trade rules. The New Deal Progressive movement eventually split, one branch becoming modern Liberal Democrats and the other becoming the Neo-Conservatives.
One of the reasons for the split was World War II, which wasn’t as popularly fought war as the History Channel tries to convince people it was. 2/3 of the soldiers were constricted for the effort, didn’t volunteer, they were drafted. There wasn’t an open opposition but the war effort was tacitly opposed. 6 million workers, working for the war effort at one time or another participated in what were called wild-cat strikes.
There is more, but these are the bigger discrepancies between what I learned in school and what I have found on my own time. I am sure my angle of the events is skewed, I’m very opinionated, but I hope at least some of what I wrote resonates.
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