Our American Winter

This is an update on my thoughts about our current secular crisis.  The basic idea is that our culture cycles through four cultural eras, labeled the high, the awakening, the unraveling, and the secular crisis.  These four eras are equated with the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.  And, we are in winter.  The idea comes from the work of Neil Howe and William Strauss, especially a book called The Fourth Turning (here).  I have described American eras previously (here).

The most important idea to take away about the secular crisis era is that it is a cultural identity crisis.  It may have powerful economic and/or political issues to resolve but ultimately it is about who we are as a people that is the core of the problem.  I summarized much of this previously (here).

To reiterate I think our current crisis is about the question: is America, the US, still Number One?

We have had horrific events, such as the World Trade Center attack, the War on Terrorism, the Great Recession, the FED stupidly owning everything, and we can expect an episode of genocidal warfare.

We can also expect a status quo change, such as: perhaps the US Dollar being replaced by something else; perhaps the US will see a decline in international economic and political influence; perhaps some wealthy people will be torn down from their gilded balconies.

The final resolution will be such that America becomes a more powerful Superpower, or a fallen and shattered one, or just a less influential player shunned by most others.  The fall (a full-blown collapse or just a big trip) can come quickly, as evidenced by the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1999. Alternatively, we might take over another large portion of the world.

My previous statements on this crisis had it begin with 9/11 because after that event our government became much larger (a usual sign of a crisis era).  The Big Brother effects of that event are still playing out, especially with the attention to NSA lately.  Homeland security is the mantra as they take away our constitutional freedoms. A focus on this issue means that the core question is:  are we a free people? I think the issue is bigger than this.

Many other people proclaim that the crisis era began with the credit crisis of 2007 and the Great Recession that followed.  We have been in a mild depression since 2007 and I think it eventually gets worse before the economic troubles are resolved.  There is no doubt that fear and anxiety in America (another important indicator of the crisis era) ratcheted up significantly after the market crash of 2008.  A focus on economic issues is one way to view the crisis.  Again, I see it as bigger than that.

Folks in the blogosphere who discuss these things ask us to take sides, our “crisis began in 2001 or 2007”. Choose one.

I am not certain that we can make such proclamations, especially as they would be used to suggest when the crisis ends.

The crisis ends when it does.

If we expect the era to last 20-25 years then it spans 2001-2021 or  to 2026.

On the other hand, it spans 2007-2027 or to 2032.

Either way we have a long way to go.

The difficulty in determining when it began has more to do with our Dionysian age rather than micro analyzing each weird event that has happened. 

In Apollonian ages, events will appear to be linear.  It is easier to identify when a crisis begins and ends.  Our American Revolution and the Great Depression-WWII are two crises that played out under Apollonian values.

During Dionysian ages, reflexive and reciprocal relations are more active. Thus, events are not going to line up in obvious linear sequences. When did the Glorious Revolution start and end? Or, how about the slavery dispute-Civil War-reconstruction? Those crises did not have clear-cut start/end dates, and neither does the current crisis.

It is best to just say, “It began in the early part of the 21^st century”.

Thirty years from now, we will have a good idea of about when it ended.

Our American Empire versus Morris Berman

This weekend I have watched several videos about Morris Berman (hat tip to Jesse’s Café for reminding me of Berman) who is a student of American culture and, some would say, one of its harsher critics.  For more about him see here and here.  Berman’s work is important because he summarizes much of the basic underlying narrative of American culture.  Unfortunately, he chooses to believe that the crass side of it is always dominant.  Thus, his description and forecast is a negative one.  I am in agreement with 90 percent of his analysis except I believe we a have a chance of a positive outcome.  We can have a better America and it doesn't have to be excessively crass and stupid.

Here are two versions of his recent lecture that he seems to be giving frequently called The Way We Live Today but is typically referred to as Why America Failed, the title of his most recent book.

Berman’s message is a dark one.  He sees America as a failed culture filled with hustlers; his recent book of that title is a “postmortem” on the culture.  The end is here.  When asked if it can be corrected he basically says no, that the process has to play out.  It is a fatalist view.  For individuals, you can leave, as he did by moving to Mexico, or you can live a “monastic” life by finding solace and community locally, live small and tough it out.  Another option, which he thinks is unlikely, is that the culture will be turned upside down and will improve.

Berman has taken a narrow view of the American character.  I think we are more than simple hustlers.  This hustler idea comes from historian McDougall, Freedom Just Around the Corner.  However, in that same book, McDougall also described the “betterment ethic” that is so deeply embedded in the American, and Western, psyche.  And, that ethic is not tied solely to crass materialism but also to spiritualism and empathy.

Berman decries the decline of empathy in America, and argues that more cruelty is coming.  He may be correct but that does not mean that empathy will never rebound.  To me, Berman is manifesting those qualities and ideas that mark the crisis era and that develop out of the unraveling era.  In the four part cycle of cultural high, awakening, unraveling, and crisis, ideas about the end of the world (end of culture) seem to be present.  In fact, as each part of the cycle turns there are often anticipations of the end of something.  In 1987 the band REM released a song called It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) that enjoyed much success.  The song was a manifestation of the end of the Fourth Awakening (1960-1990), a recognition that a phase of American culture was over, and a new one had begun.

Now, to be clear here, I do believe that our crisis gets much darker before it ends and I have written of this previously, here and here.  And when this crisis is over, there will be a new America.  I for one, think it will be a much stronger entity and much larger.  Our current “decline” is a step back before a leap forward.

One of the things I haven’t seen from the various Berman videos is any discussion about the life cycle of empires, the rise and fall of empires.  Certainly, Jared Diamond has gotten much attention along that line but when one argues that the US has failed I think that the empire discussion is relevant.  Berman is against American empire.

My understanding of empires comes from a little known political sciencist from UC Irvine, Rein Taagepera.  I met him when I was a student there, and sat through some of his lectures.  His main essays on empires are:

(1968), Growth curves of empires, General Systems 13, 171-175.

(1978), Size and duration of empires: Systematics of size, Social Science Research 7,108-127.

 (1978), Size and duration of empires: Growth-decline curves, 3000 to 600 BC, Social Science Research 7, 180-196.

(1979), Size and duration of empires: Growth-decline curves, 600 BC to 600 AD, Social Science History 3, 115-139.

All of which I read in the late 1970s - early 1980s but continue to use because of the strong cyclical empahisis.  I accept America as an empire and assume there will be a strong public desire to continue it.  The gist of Taagepera's argument is that successful empires that have long durations tend to develop slowly and expand geographically.  Empires that expand too fast will decline quickly (Nazi Germany, Alexander the Great).  Empires that grow slowly can continue for many centuries (Rome, Great Britain).

The American empire has been developing slowly since the 17^th century, first as a child of Britain, then on its own.  This empire continued to grab up new territory until the early 20^th century at which point it stopped geographically expanding (Alaska and Hawaii being the last states added to its list) and switched to an economic-military extractive posture.  Through most of the 20^th century and into the 21^st it has used its extensive military bases around the world to project its power and to extract resources from allies/partners/the third world without actually colonizing them.

For the American empire to continue it must periodically expand geographically, or break up.  And, since the first priority of any superpower is to remain one as long as possible, it is time for America to expand geographically.

This can come about in many ways:

1.      Peacefully; the US can announce to the world that it will accept more states.  Invite other nations to join the US.  I assume there will be takers.  This is a empathetic path.

2.      Violently; America conquers another nation and chooses to colonize (oil nations of Africa and South America come to mind). This is a non empathetic path.

3.      Out of economic necessity; a political Union of North America comprising Canada, US, and Mexico is created and politically merged. This offers the possibility of an empathetic union.

4.      WW3 with China creates the opportunity to incorporate Taiwan and or South Korea into the US empire.  This is a non-empathetic path.

The point here is that empires require LAND not pseudo colonies based on economic exploitation.  I hope for versions 1 or 3 or some combination.

The above options require a mindset, an ethos, that helps rationalize the expansion.  Can it be done with harmony and a sense of doing good and bettering society?  Or, must it be a surge of American crassness?

I think that 40 years of run amok crassness and materialism is about to end and the pendulum will swing the other way, toward increased empathy.  Americans could also be shamed into this position.

In one video Berman spoke about how he did not believe that Americans can change from their hustling ways.  We are not like the violent Norse who became the socialist Scandinavians.

Berman offers no options but I think there are plenty.  The Norse did change; and many Germans are embarrassed about their Nazi past; and the Japanese are no longer samurai warriors.  Americans can become Saints living peacefully on a hill if they chose to do it.  They can turn their world upside down (remember the song from Yorktown). 

The Mass of Christ

Did the early Christians steal a pagan festival or was it the other way around?

Here is some interesting reading

http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2011/12/whose-christmas-is-it-anyway.html and

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2011/12/24/christmas-and-the-adoption-of-the-pagan-solstice/?feed=rss_home

Anthropology's Rotten Egg

A while back I commented on the book Reversed Gaze:  An African Ethnography of American Anthropology by Mwenda Ntarangwi (here).  It is time to follow up on a problem he identifies.

As he introduces the book and his motivations for doing it, Ntarangwi writes (2010: vii)

 It is also a story hemmed within a specific discourse and views about anthropology that can be best represented by remarks from fellow graduate students who wondered what I was doing in a “racist” discipline…I became quite disturbed by the “racist” label placed on anthropology by fellow graduate students in other disciplines, particularly those in sociology and political science.

Later, I discover that this is not a rare problem.  Hawaiian native Ty Tengan (2005: 247) writes:

When I entered the anthropology graduate program at the University of Hawai‘i at

Ma¯noa (UHM) in 1998, I was dismayed to find that I was forced to justify my

positionality as both an ‘O¯iwi (Indigenous Hawaiian) and an anthropologist...Those I met were shocked that I was in anthropology and told me that it was ‘an evil white discipline’ that was ‘racist towards Hawaiians’.

Okay, no argument, anthropology, a profession found in many countries, is tainted with racism.  Among others, Hsu (1973; 1979), a Chinese born scholar, pointed it out years ago.

In a land full of racism such as America, you must assume that people born and raised here will likely bring their cultural baggage with them as they enter anthropology.  So, American anthropology is tainted with racism, although many anthropologists are not racists, and many are trying to lessen the problem.

The point here is that anthropology has an image problem within the American academy.  The issue above was found at universities in Illinois and Hawaii.  Apparently, graduate students in other disciplines don’t worry about the racist label, and, they are happy to sling it at anthropology.  Thus, Anthropology students do have to worry about it.  Anthropology seems like a scapegoat.

When and why has this stinky image cast its pall over anthropology within the American academy?  When did anthropology become the poster child of scientific racism and colonialism?

It’s hard to imagine that political science, economics, sociology, or any other discipline, had no part in the expansion of American capitalism and imperialism after World War II.  And, if they exist on American soil, they too will be tainted with racism.  Have you ever seen a black economist or a Native American sociologist?  I suppose there are a few but they are not common.

American anthropologists have to fix this image and identity problem.  Third party intervention is needed using savvy marketing consultants.  No amount of Anthropology of Anthropology can fix it.  Navel gazing is not the answer.  The brand of anthropology needs to be re-invented.

I know the racist discussion has been out there ever since Boas fought the issue at the beginning of the 20^th century.  However, as a graduate student in the 1980s I don’t ever remember anything like this, especially since I did an ethnography of anthropology in those years.

Was it the political correctness of the late 1980s and 1990s that led to this image?  Was it the self flagellation of the culture critique crowd that led to it?  Did so many people inside anthropology piss on the discipline  such that other professions noticed the stink and took advantage of it?  Maybe so, maybe the fears of Herbert Lewis (1999: 716) about Misrepresentation and its Consequences have come to fruition:

This article deals with several of the most common charges leveled at anthropology, notably that it has regularly and necessarily exoticized "Others," has been ahistorical, and has treated each culture as if it were an isolate, unconnected to any other. It demonstrates how inaccurate and easily falsifiable such claims are and recommends a critical reevaluation of these unexamined and destructive clichés…[emphasis added]

Maybe anthropologists painted “racist” on their foreheads in their never ending desire for self destruction.  I don’t know.

I do know that no graduate student in any discipline should ever have to worry about such a label.

References cited:

Hsu, Francis L. K.

1973  Prejudice and Its Intellectual Effect in American Anthropology:  An Ethnographic Report.  American Anthropologist 75(1):  1-19.

1979  The Cultural Problem of the Cultural Anthropologist.  American Anthropologist 81(3):  517-532.

Lewis, Herbert S.

1999  The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and Its Consequences.  American Anthropologist 100(3):  716-731.

Ntarangwi, Mwenda

2010  Reversed Gaze:  An African Ethnography of American Anthropology.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Tengan, Ty P. Kawika

2005  Unsettling Ethnography:  Tales of an ‘Oiwi in the Anthropological Slot.  Anthropological Forum 15(3):  247–256.

Stealth Collectivism

Are we embracing more collectivism? 

Back in 2006 the US Census Bureau reported that a “new minority” was present in America--the married household.  It was the first time in the history of reporting such figures that married households had fallen below 50 percent, to 49.7 percent.  All other households were individuals living by themselves, single parent households, or cohabitating non-married couples.  I argued then (here, pg. 162) that the data should be viewed as a peaking of individualism and that the momentum was going to turn the other way, towards strengthening community values.  Today I checked the numbers again (BLS web site, Table H1).  The 2010 married household data is still at 49.7 percent (married households/total).

Based on this data point, America is still strongly individualistic even after the mortgage crisis, the increase in bankruptcies, and the reshuffling of households that has happened since 2007.  I haven't looked at other possible dynamics in the numbers. 

How do I interpret this based on the Cultural Seasons model that I have been following?  The model suggests that during the secular crisis--which I believe we are in--there should be a shift away from individualism towards a stronger collectivism.  Based on the above statistic, this has not yet happened, and that a trend change in that variable is not even under way.

This statistic has long bothered me because the cultural model suggests (to me at least) that the peak of individualism should be near the beginning of the secular crisis.  I have long believed that the crisis began with 9/11 2001.  However, the four-year data point above better supports a 2007 beginning of the crisis (began with the credit crisis of Aug. 2007).

Having said all that, this blog is about qualitative analysis. I only use numbers now and then as a cross check. Let's look at some qualitative data.

The secular crisis is about heightened dark moods and a wider and louder sense of survivalist perspectives, much of which is present in American culture.  Maybe stronger collectivism comes midway or in the latter half of the crisis era.

There have been some loud and clear signals lately that overt collectivism is appearing in our culture [1].  The best examples are the new commercials for military recruiting based on a new campaign by the Department of Defense.  Here is the campaign:

Here is a commercial:

This new DoD campaign seems to elaborate on the Army Strong campaign that started about 2007 that targeted the Millennial generation..  (Recent Navy, Air Force and Marine commercials continue pushing Gen X themes such a adventure, excitement, and honor). 

An important aspect of individualism is making ones own choices in life.  For the last several decades, a life choice, such as going into the military, has been a Me decision.  Most Boomers and Gen Xers were raised to make their own decisions in life--decisions are Mine to Make.

Today, this appears to be changing.  We now are seeing the public acceptance of life decisions as being overtly a family matter.  When a Millennial kid joins the military it is no longer a 'Me' decision; it is a 'We' decision.

Overt collectivism is creeping into our culture.

Note

1.  I say overt because we all know that covertly, family and friends influence people's decisions. The point here is that these influences are displayed either in public or private. 

Anthropology: after ‘Bitter’ comes ‘Sweet’

Recently American Anthropologists had a little tiff about “science” in their profession.  A good summary is here and I had a few words about it as well (here).

That discussion is still playing out as some have turned to redefining (and marketing) Anthropology (here and here).  Concurrent with that discussion is a “What does Anthropology mean to me” discussion.  As a Valentine’s Day effort Rex asked folks to write loves letters to Anthropology as a way to get passed the bitterness of the previous tiff.   It is a good idea as it offers catharsis.  Here are some responses:

Rex writes Why I <3 Anthropology

Living Anthropologically writes Loving Anthropology

Barbara King writes Why I Love Anthropology

There are probably others with more to come in.

My intent here is to be participant observer.

Note that the two web sites Savage Minds and Neuroanthropology are leading these efforts. These two sites, and the OAC, are currently leaders in the Anthropology blogosphere.  Both sites are collaborative projects by people who are roughly in the same age groups, generally known in the US as Generation X.

I cannot reiterate the Generations Model as it would be too long (see here for a summary).  Basically, America is in cultural crisis, a era that will last about 20 years; we have many years to go before it is done [1].  The leadership of one generation, idealists/prophets (in this case Boomers), starts the crisis.  Idealist generations are the recurring polarizer’s of American culture and they have begun every major crisis in our history (Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, slavery debate-Civil War, depression-WWII, and today).

The crisis era closes as the next generation, the reactive nomads, our Gen X, leads the way out. During the crisis era, some nomads become commanders who take pragmatic leadership roles in many institutions and politics.  If they arrive too early and push too hard like autocrats, they eventually get vilified and burned [2].  If they go slow they can become great leaders who will be much admired.  I discussed this for archaeologists here.

However, reactive nomads make poor visionaries.  The one example of a reactive visionary is Hitler, obviously not a good role model for Gen Xers.  Reactive commanders do best when they have a clear destination in mind and are allowed to go after it. They themselves likely will not conceive of the destination but will receive it from another. 

The latter half of the crisis era instills a vision of the future that becomes the founding principles of a reborn culture.  In the past, that vision has always been provided by an idealist known in generational theory as the Grey Champion (John Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, and ??).  In our current national crisis the GC has not emerged; it’s not Bernanke as he is one of the culture destroyers. Maybe Hilary Clinton or Ron Paul will get to play the role but I suspect it will be someone less well known.

Institutions also need their Grey Champions.  Anthropology currently needs one.  Anthropology died and was reborn previously in the years 1925-1945; the Boasians were marginalized as the modernists with their general system theories and evolution became mainstream.  Their GC was likely Ales Hrdlichka.  Today, the modernists have been marginalized but no one is standing up offering a prophetic vision for the future of Anthropology.

I have looked hard at the Boomer class of Anthropologists and none seems to stand out.  Too many of them want to fight the culture wars or they are jaded from the battles.

The title of Lende’s essay sounds like its offering a vision. But, in true Xer fashion, he can only say  

We are pragmatists – we recognize the need to rewrite an outdated long-range plan and the need to be inclusive. We are sadder-but-wiser, ready to get on with things, but not really clear where we need to be getting to...Anthropologists do seem to be searching for a new identity, something to lend us vision, a plan of action for the future.

His essay is more a quest than a revelation. He’ll make a great commander but not a prophet.  

Anthropology needs direction and a destination.  I offer these humble clues to what the destination is.

1. Let the Enlightenment go--it is no longer needed.

2. Say No to Descartes—the mind/body is one system; nature/culture is one system.

3. Embrace chaos and complexity—the world is rarely linear.

4. Embrace the philosophy of Pragmatism

5. Create an inquiry of situational behavior (includes non-situational and desituated)
6. Enjoy the next 50 years of Dionysian dance; Apollo can return after that.

7. Our goal is to develop Old Masters, and, we can enjoy the young geniuses as they do their one-hit-wonder routine (Galenson).

How do we get there?  I don't know; I'm not the GC and don't want the job.

There are Boomers out there that offer a way forward.  Lakoff and Johnson’s magnum opus Philosophy in The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought is a place to start.  Johnson followed it with The Meaning of the Body:  Aesthetics of Human Understanding.  (Lakoff has returned to being a culture warrior).   The Strauss and Howe model mentioned above is also useful, as is the work of Robert Shiller in economics.  There must be more out there but I don’t see any Boomer Anthropologist that fits the role of GC.  Let’s hope that someone steps forward and publishes the path ahead.

Notes

1.  Some argue it started with 9/11/2001, others in August of 2007 with the credit crisis that becomes the global financial crisis.  Either way we have many years to a resolution, circa 2022-2027. And, hell lays in between. Remember, the culture has to ritually die before its reborn.

2. Think of Michelle Rhee for DC and maybe what’s coming for Scott Walker in Wisconsin; and never forget Jacob Leisler, a nomad of the Glorious Revolution. Obama has been less forceful; all he knows how to do is jump from one idea to another, like a fart in a skillet. The GC will have strong convictions and will hold fast when facing hell, something a nomad is unlikely to do.

The Angst of Freedom

Today marks the 150^th anniversary of the birth of the Confederacy.  In 1861, eleven states formed a union and would go on to elect Jefferson Davis as its one and only president.  Within weeks, America was in civil war, a war that is still the greatest tragedy of this nation’s history.  I find it frustrating and shameful that we are not embracing the CW anniversary at a national level.  Our political leaders and the mainstream media are ignoring it.  Such is the state of our nation, our culture of denial.  Leave it to the BBC to cover it.

America does need to embrace this tragedy; actually more than that—it needs to wallow in it for a few years because there is catharsis in doing so.  Barack Obama is not your typical Afro American man because his father was from Angola rather than, say, Alabama.  He has no ethos of slavery, no cloud of being the down trodden, and he lacks the soul of the blues, sacred harp, and gospel.  So he doesn’t get it.  His advisers should at least coach him on how to lead--he can pretend that he gets it. That would be a start.

Those southerners celebrating  (and here) today exemplify many of the paradoxes of our times. Let us read the South Carolina Succession Ordinance because it is short and to the point:

“AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America."

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved.

Done at Charleston the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.” Source & here

The first source gives all the succession ordinances.  They all read similar to SC’s.  They are Declarations of Independence.

Several states published Declaration of Causes of Succession.  Here are some statements (Source):

“The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”

And

“In the momentous step which our State [Mississippi] has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course…Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.”

These two statements are direct and blunt about their motives—the threat to the institution of slavery was the reason they succeeded.   South Carolina was a little more complicated as they provided a legal history of the conflict and tied their behavior directly to the documents of the American Revolution and the compacts about preserving slavery therein:

“The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue……They [the 13 Colonies in 1776] further solemnly declared that whenever any ‘form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.’ Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies ‘are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved”

South Carolina argued that several states and the federal government had not upheld their part of the bargain.

“For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution…Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.”

Therefore:

“The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy…Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief…We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.”

There you have it.  The causes of succession were slavery and the belief that the constitutionally guaranteed “states rights” about slavery had been broken.  “States rights” about other institutions were not issues of conflict.  That is the truth of the matter from their documents. In South Carolina, 25% of the male population would die during the CW protecting the right to have property called “slaves”.

I rarely pass judgment on issues but I abhor the idea of slavery.  The institution was and is evil--knowing that it still exists in parts of the world.   I say this knowing that many of my ancestors from South Carolina were slaveholders.  I do not apologize for them and I do not condemn them.  It is historical fact and I take it for what it is.  They are also dead, so long ago that their behavior and ideas bears no weight on mine.  

The above documents do reveal some interesting ideas.  First, those people clearly believed in what they were doing.  The anger seething in the Georgia document is hard to miss.  Anyone willing to die for their beliefs is worthy of honor.

Therefore, I say to all Southerners, honor your past, wave your flags and march in the streets.  By all Southerners I include the blacks too because today’s South is a heterogeneous cultural landscape.  The Sons of the South should shake the hands of their black neighbors just as the Confederate veterans did with the Union veterans on the fields of glory in the 1890s.

Today, there would be nothing to celebrate if there had not been slavery, a war to end it, and all the Lost Cause mythology to extend it. 

South Carolina reminds us of another idea—that…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” here

Notice how they left out the statement all men are created equal.  The people of South Carolina didn’t believe in equality in those days of 1860.  My question for all Southerners is:

Do you believe in equality now, for all men and women, regardless of color?

The answer will help determine if we are any wiser in this country.

BTW, lets not forget that when a form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government...

Pay attention DC and Wall Street...Egypt is closer than you think.