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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Contemporary American Politics: Essential Reading List

    


The Last Known Photos of Lincoln


When Stephen Douglas accused Lincoln of being two-faced, he replied: "If I had another face, do you think I'd be wearing this one?"
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                                                                             Essential Reading List:

1.) Ronald Reagan’s Budget Director David Stockman on America's inconceivable wealth inequality 
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009217n

2.) Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%" 
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

3.) "Our Banana Republic" by Nicholas Kristof - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html

4.) "A Hedge Fund Republic" by Nicholas Kristof - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/opinion/18kristof.html

5.) "How to End The Great Recession" by Robert Reich -http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html

6.) “A Dogma to Wreck the Country” by Thatcherite conservative, Niall Ferguson - http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/07/24/gop-antitax-dogma-endangers-the-country.html

8.)  “The American Dream” by (foul-mouthed but brilliant) George Carlin - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

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Extract from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous “class warfare” speech in Madison Square Garden. October 31, 1936

"For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred."

Entire text of the 30 minute speech is at http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/od2ndst.html
                                                                                   
Roosevelt’s Warning About The Republican Party - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUZGkNAUSvY&feature=related


Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris

25 Dec. 1783

"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.

All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."  http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html


Reagan Budget Director, David Stockman, who oversaw the biggest tax cut in the history of humankind: “In 1985, the top five percent of the households – the wealthiest five percent – had net worth of $8 trillion – which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.” Elsewhere in this same CBS “60 Minutes” interview, Mr. Stockman describes America's obsession with tax cuts as "religion, something embedded in the catechism," "rank demagoguery, we should call it what it is," and "We've demonized taxes. We've created... the idea that they're a metaphysical evil." And finally, this encompassing observation: "The Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves."  - http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009217n&tag=contentMain;contentAux   ///  http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/obama-gop-agree-to-tax-breaks-but-%22we-need-major-tax-increases%22-david-stockman-says-535688.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,GLD,DIA,TBT,TLT,UUP   ///  http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/david-stockman-lack-of-middle-class-jobs-low-growth-alleged-recovery-yftt_535691.html  ///   http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009246n&tag=contentBody;housing  (There is a self-resolving glitch near the beginning of this final clip.)
     

Teddy Roosevelt: “Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses —whether these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or to allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive idleness and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of high social position, foreign or native, for his daughter. Such a man is only the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless of the working men, whom they oppress, and of the State, whose existence they imperil. There are not very many of them, but there is a very great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type, and, just in so far as they do so approach, they are curses to the country." Theodore Roosevelt - February, 1895 -  http://books.google.com/books?id=2wIoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=%E2%80%9CToo+much+cannot+be+said+against+the+men+of+wealth+who+sacrifice+everything+to+getting+wealth.+%22&source=bl&ots=tlzVCZMAuz&sig=DZ9KUKiPiBTUlThoSVs6KzQTvF4&hl=en&ei=OxibTcHrCIGdgQev_o2eBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CToo%20much%20cannot%20be%20said%20against%20the%20men%20of%20wealth%20who%20sacrifice%20everything%20to%20getting%20wealth.%20%22&f=false  


Abraham Lincoln: "In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life. Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless. Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."  Read more: State of the Union Address: Abraham Lincoln (December 3, 1861) — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/73.html#ixzz17XlRsbev

Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope…. [and] the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. 

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it…. I must face it and speak out.

There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its ‘finger men’ (to point out enemies), its ‘muscle men’ (to destroy enemies), its ‘brain men’ (to plan war preparations), and a “Big Boss” (super-nationalistic capitalism). 

It may seem odd for a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. 

I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested….

I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket…. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents…. 

Our exploits against the American Indian, the Filipinos, the Mexicans, and against Spain are on a par with the campaigns of Genghis Khan, the Japanese in Manchuria and the African attack of Mussolini.

No country has ever declared war on us before we first obliged them with that gesture. Our whole history shows we have never fought a defensive war.” 

The entire text of "War is a Racket" is freely available at http://www.ratical.com/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Smedley Butler's Wikipedia page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

In his lifetime, Major General Butler was the most decorated Marine ever. 
In retirement, General Butler, a life-long Republican, ran for a Pennsylvania Senate seat.


Pat Buchanan (the living American who has spent most time inside the White House): "The Republican philosophy might be summarized thus: To hell with principle; what matters is power, and that we have it, and that they do not.” "Where the Right Went Wrong" - http://www.amazon.com/Where-Right-Went-Wrong-Neoconservatives/dp/0312341156


Thomas Merton: "The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton


“Duke Divinity School Professor of Christian ethics Stanley Hauerwas says Americans are, for the most part, good, decent and hardworking people, but “so were the people that supported the Nazis,” Hauerwas said. "Goodness can become deeply corrupted by its innocence. ... most of the time innocence is deeply immoral because it is such a lie not to acknowledge that we live in a very complex world that we benefit from, and we don’t have to acknowledge the havoc our benefits depend upon.”
"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adolf Hitler: "All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X [1]

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