"Never bow the knee to Baal because Baal is in power ... never have patience with either Cowardice or Stupidity."

[source]

Hubert Harrison (1883-1927):

The old men whose minds are always retrospecting and reminiscing to the past, who are trained to read a few dry and dead books which they still fondly believe are hard to get—these do not know anything of the modern world… Get education. Get it not only in school and college, but in books and newspapers, in market-places, institutions, and movements. Prepare by knowing; and never think that you know until you have listened to ten others who know differently… Reverence is in one sense, is respect for what is antiquated because it is antiquated… Oldsters love ruts because they help them to “rub along,” they are easy to understand; they require the minimum of exertion and brains, they give the maximum of ease… If you wish to be spiritually alert and alive; to get the very best out of yourself—shun a rut as you would shun the plague! Never bow the knee to Baal because Baal is in power; never respect wrong and injustice because they are enshrined in the sacred institutions of our glorious land; never have patience with either Cowardice or Stupidity… Read, reason, and think on all side of all subjects… And set it before you, as a sacred duty always to surpass the teachers that taught you—and this is the essence of irreverence.

A good place to start for more Hubert Harrison is Jeffrey Perry's web site. And check out the Hubert Harrison Reader (2001).

"Away, away, from men and towns, to the wild wood and the downs- ... I am gone into the fields to take what this sweet hour yields."

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs—
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind.
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor:—
“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields;—
Reflection, you may come tomorrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.—
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,—
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,—
I will pay you in the grave,—
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
Today is for itself enough;"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, from "The Invitation"

"We were mesmerized by political charades, cheap consumerism and virtual hallucinations as we were ruthlessly stripped of power."

Chris Hedges:

Empires die over such long stretches of time that the exact moment when terminal decline becomes irreversible is probably impossible to document. That we are at the end, however, is beyond dispute.

[...]

We are ignorant of what is being done to us. We are diverted by the absurd and political theater. We are afraid of terrorism, of losing our job and of carrying out acts of dissent. We are politically demobilized and paralyzed. We do not question the state religion of patriotic virtue, the war on terror or the military and security state.

[...]

Human history, rather than a chronicle of freedom and democracy, is characterized by ruthless domination. Our elites have done what all elites do. They have found sophisticated mechanisms to thwart popular aspirations, disenfranchise the working and increasingly the middle class, keep us passive and make us serve their interests. The brief democratic opening in our society in the early 20th century, made possible by radical movements, unions and a vigorous press, has again been shut tight. We were mesmerized by political charades, cheap consumerism and virtual hallucinations as we were ruthlessly stripped of power.

The game is over. We lost. The corporate state will continue its inexorable advance until two-thirds of the nation is locked into a desperate, permanent underclass. Most Americans will struggle to make a living while the Blankfeins and our political elites wallow in the decadence and greed of the Forbidden City and Versailles. These elites do not have a vision. They know only one word—more.

"The brief democratic opening in our society in the early 20th century, made possible by radical movements, unions and a vigorous press, has again been shut tight."
- Chris Hedges

"To spend long centuries on earth, Awaiting their Devourer’s birth?"

'The Sending of the Animals'

‘The Animals, you say, were “sent”
For man’s free use and nutriment.
Pray, then, inform me, and be candid,
Why came they aeons before Man did,
To spend long centuries on earth,
Awaiting their Devourer’s birth?
Those ill-timed chattels, sent from Heaven,
Were, sure, the maddest gift e’er given –
“Sent” for Man’s usage (can Man believe it?)
When there was no Man to receive it!’

- Henry S. Salt, 1931

"There is no duty, prima facie or otherwise, to obey the law simply because it is the law."

Robert Paul Wolff:

...when I call myself an anarchist, I mean just exactly what I explained in my little book In Defense of Anarchism. I deny that there is or could be a de jure legitimate state. That is the sum and substance of what I call in that book my "philosophical anarchism."

[...]

My Marxism, as I have many times explained, is not a form of secular religious faith, but a conviction that Marx was correct when he argued that capitalism rests essentially on the exploitation of the working class.

[...]

I am not a libertarian, and I consider the arguments of people like Hayek, Friedman, Nozick and others to be incorrect. The pseudo-arguments of Ayn Rand and her epigones are absurd. I can see no conflict whatsoever between philosophical anarchism and Marxian socialism. The citizens of a socialist society, were one ever to come into existence [Gott sei dank!], would have no more obligation to obey the laws of that state, merely because it was socialist, than they have now to obey the laws of the United States, merely because America is [let us grant for the sake of argument] democratic. Both groups of citizens would stand under the universal duty of judging for themselves whether what the laws command is something that on independent grounds it is good to do. There is no duty, prima facie or otherwise, to obey the law simply because it is the law.

"I am not a libertarian, and I consider the arguments of people like Hayek, Friedman, Nozick and others to be incorrect. The pseudo-arguments of Ayn Rand and her epigones are absurd."
- Robert Paul Wolff

"All you rich bastards better watch your god-damned asses."

Louis Proyect:

The real need today happens to be for a genuine socialist movement. ... Something like the SP is sorely needed today and might even come into being as the ruling class becomes more and more aggressive in its attacks on the trade unions and basic social legislation like Medicare. Like sharks that have tasted blood in the water, they will continue to attack. When workers finally understand that their class interests are being threatened, they will finally begin to act. As someone in the Trotskyist movement once said, the student radicalization of the 1960s was like leaves shaking on a branch under the impact of a strong wind. But when the wind reaches tornado-like intensity, the trunk of the tree—the working class—will finally begin to move. When that happens, all you rich bastards better watch your god-damned asses.

"We see right now all around us the menace of the untaught—the menace to themselves and to us..."

Jacques Barzun:

We see right now all around us the menace of the untaught—the menace to themselves and to us, which amounts to saying that they are unselfgoverned and therefore ungovernable. There is unfortunately no method or gimmick that will replace teaching. ... Teaching will not change; it is a hand-to-hand, face-to-face encounter. There is no help for it—we must teach and we must learn, each for himself and herself, using words and working at the perennial Difficulties. That is the condition of living and surviving at least tolerably well...

"They disdain the attributes of compassion, empathy, beauty, justice and truth."

Back to the basics with Chris Hedges.

MAKE HOPE VISIBLE!

"Which do we wish to prevail, sentiments and principles of justice and humanity or those of cupidity, avarice, and greed?"

Sir Hartley Williams, from The New Age, March 28, 1908:

As has been well said, “the relation between man and his fellow-man is the beginning and end of human existence. Selfishness and greed caused all the trouble in the garden of Eden, and they have been doing the same ever since.” Throughout the Bible we find constant rebukes levelled against love of riches, gain, and material profit, and in the same book we are frequently enjoined to love and help our neighbour, and to do to others as we would they should do unto us. Unless the brain and heart be illuminated and warmed by the fire of altruistic love, Socialistic ideals and theories will drag but wearily along towards realisation and consummation.

[...]

It is this spirit of altruistic love, this ungrudging longing for the welfare of the whole, which may justly be described as the Dynamic of Socialism.

[...]

The questions which we have each one of us to answer in our consciences are these : which do we wish to prevail, sentiments and principles of justice and humanity or those of cupidity, avarice, and greed? Is it possible that we can feel happy cognisant of and realising the hopeless misery and hideous suffering of which such appalling numbers of our fellow-men and fellow-women and so many helpless children are the victims? Is it not inevitable that joy and gladness would be our portion, were all those who live at or below the poverty-line raised to and enjoying that normal degree of comfort to which as human beings living in a civilised community they are reasonably entitled? Is self-interest and class-interest to govern the conditions of human life or that comprehensive love which has its roots in the solidarity of humanity, which recognises no difference, and which is conscious of no separation?

"We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate"?

Obama on Bradley Manning:

"We're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law."
- Barack Obama

We don't? How do you explain torture? How do explain Wall Street? How do you explain Deepwater Horizon? The truth is that the rich and powerful get to break the law while small-fry like Bradley Manning and Tim DeChristopher get the full, ugly force of government brought down on their heads.

"In my experience, the cornerstone of happiness is love."

From a nice article by John Zerzan on happiness:

Many studies show that happiness levels fall with increasing accumulation of wealth. In removing ourselves from nature, we become insensible to its wholeness and approach it as another passive object to be consumed.

[...]

In my experience, the cornerstone of happiness is love. Here is the dimension where we find the greatest fulfillment. Frantz Fanon, better known for his work on other subjects, subscribed to a standard of “authentic love––wishing for others what one postulates for oneself.” There are other satisfactions, but do they match the satisfying and enriching quality of love relations? If a child has love and protection, there is the basis for happiness throughout life. If neither is provided, his or her prospects are very limited. If only one of them is to be given, I think that love outranks even protection or security in terms of the odds for happiness.

[...]

In our own lives we are so lucky to have a sense of being blessed, to have some gladness, a sense of worth. To have a certain astonishment at being here at all. For ourselves, meaning and happiness are always interwoven. Happiness is grounded in meaningfulness; a life of meaning is the meaning of life. “To happiness, the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it,” in Adorno’s pithy formulation.

He also said, “Philosophy exists in order to redeem what you see in the look of an animal.” “To meet myself face to face,” in Thoreau’s words. To realize ourselves in our distinctly human capacities within what is possible (i.e. not to blame ourselves for the limits imposed on us). And to find the strength to speak the unsaid. Unhappiness is not the result of understanding the real depth of our predicament; in fact, this understanding can be liberating, strengthening. It may lead to something that could hardly be more momentous: the quest for directness and immediacy in the real world. The project of confronting the very nature of our domesticated, civilized, technology-ridden unhappiness.

"There’s nothing funny, naïve or impractical about empathy, about compassion, solidarity and social responsibility."

[source]

Glenn W. Smith:

Compassion and solidarity should be defining marks of civilization. A vicious Hobbesian or Ayn Randian “all-against-all” or “dog-eat-dog” society is not a society. It is barbarism, barbarism doomed to darkness.

And yet the populist Right and its exploiters among the rich have successfully spread the notion that empathy and social responsibility are barbarous and immoral. It’s insane, really.

Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are perhaps the most successful cooperative social programs in history. They are, essentially, promises to one another that Americans have kept. I should add public education to this list. All are under assault by the Right because they are successful.

None of these cooperative efforts are give-aways. They are based on our founding principle that all are created equal and on the democratic belief that we must be responsible for our selves and for one another. They represent our recognition that we all share the fate of the world, including the fates of others.

[...]

There’s nothing funny, naïve or impractical about empathy, about compassion, solidarity and social responsibility. In fact, America has achieved profoundly humane cooperative programs that embody these values.

The budget being negotiated in the halls of government reflects a fundamental shift in worldviews: we are moving towards a society dominated by greed and away from one based in significant part on compassion. What happens to social programs in the budget will shape the course of the country for generations. Let us stand up, not for the viciousness and exploitation that stain the conservative cause, but for the compassion and kinship that ennoble the progressive.

"The collective mind of the consumer state propels us forward to the next empty agenda, the next perfunctory task, the next meaningless purchase."

Phil Rockstroh travels to Georgia:

Enclosed in our vehicles, we hurdle from one sterile, impersonal location to the next sterile, impersonal location, and then on to the next. As forbiddingly huge trucks, loaded with the cargo of extinction, bear down on us, we grip the steering wheel -- we know to stop is to risk death therefore we continue onward, believing we must drive and consume and drive and consume in order to survive.

[...]

The commercial come-ons insist that the heart's grief and a lost soul's emptiness and panic can be fixed by some new bright and shiny: a new appliance, therapy, "hope and change". By the incessant promotion of the gospels of the hyper-capitalist sects of Happiness Uber Alles, the implicit message imparted is … suffering is a character flaw that can be mitigated, elevated -- even redeemed by consumerism, antidepressants, acquiring a positive attitude -- all the uttered homilies and donned vestments of the consumer state.

[...]

By any means possible, we preserve the death-styles of empire.

 This mode of being is far removed from the norms of nature and the revelries and attendant sublimations necessary to engage in civic life ... Here, ruthlessness and rationalization banish reason; ambition trumps merit; expediency pushes aside wisdom; and empty sensation masquerades as experience.

 Like interstate travel, the collective mind of the consumer state propels us forward to the next empty agenda, the next perfunctory task, the next meaningless purchase.



"The creation of gross wealth is the precondition for deep poverty--without one, we wouldn't have the other."

Sherry Wolf:

So getting back to Obama's presumption about Americans' feelings toward the rich, I need no study or poll to ascertain one basic fact. If the U.S. government continues to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate America, which guarantees the income and wealth gap will continue to grow, resentment of the rich and their wealth will grow, and eventally spill over to outrage. And rightly so.

What Obama will never admit is that ghettos and hovels don't merely exist alongside mansions and penthouses in this world. The creation of gross wealth is the precondition for deep poverty--without one, we wouldn't have the other. And that's nothing to celebrate.

Remember Hazel Dickens, June 1, 1935 – April 22, 2011

Rustbelt Radical:

Today we lost one of the best. An irreplaceable loss. Hazel Dickens gave voice, her own inimitable voice, to working people and especially the miners and hill folk of her native Appalachia. A partisan of the class war, a fierce working class feminist and a link of steel in the chain, she will remain a voice of her class and her community for as long as there are ears to hear and voices to sing. Still, it is a heartbreaking loss and a sad thought to know she will not sing again, she has passed and no longer with us.

"At present we are led to despise the very word 'spiritual', which has become the stock-in-trade of parasites and poseurs."

Upton Sinclair, from Profits of Religion (1918):

What is it that keeps the average workingman in subjection to the exploiter? Simply terror, the terror of losing his job. And if you could get into the inmost soul of Christian ministers, you would find that precisely the same force is keeping many of them slaves to Tradition. They are educated men, and thousands of them must resent the dilemma which compels them to be either fools or hypocrites. They have caught enough of the spirit of their time not to enjoy having to pose as miracle-mongers, rain-makers and witch-doctors; they would like to say frankly that they do not believe that Jonah ever swallowed the whale, and even that they are dubious about Hercules and Achilles and other demigods. But they are part of a machine, and the old men and the rich men who run the machine have laid down the law. Those who find themselves tempted to think, remember suddenly that they have wives and children; they have only one profession, they have been unfitted for any other by a life-time of study of dead things, as well as by the practice of altruism.

[...]

The Social Revolution will compel all churches, Christian, Hebrew, Buddhist, Confucian, or what you will, to drive out their formalists and traditionalists. If there is any church that refuses so to adapt itself, the swift progress of enlightenment and freedom will leave it without followers.

[...]

So the churches, like all the rest of the world, are caught in the great revolutionary current, and swept on towards a goal which they do not forsee, and from which they would shrink in dismay: the Church of the future, the Church redeemed by the spirit of Brotherhood, the Church which we Socialists will join. They call us materialists, and say that we think about nothing but the belly—and that is true, in a way; because we are the representatives of a starving class, which thinks about its belly precisely as does any individual who is ravening with hunger. But give us what that arrant materialist, James, the brother of Jesus, calls "those things which are needful to the body," and then we will use our minds, and even discover that we have souls; whereas at present we are led to despise the very word "spiritual", which has become the stock-in-trade of parasites and poseurs.

"There was no no other way under Heaven by which they could make the poor better off except by making the wealthy poorer than they are."

From The New Age, May 13, 1909:

Incomparable opportunities are afforded by the Budget debates for the public discussion of many details of Socialism.

[...]

One of the most striking debates took place on an old familiar axiom of Socialism, that you cannot make the poor richer without at the same time making the rich poorer. This axiom, so obvious to modern economists, is nothing less than a sinister paradox to pre-Marxian economists and their unthinking followers. Mr. Balfour, for example, quite thought that he would carry the House with him when he declared that they “must, of course, remember, that what we are suffering from now is not having too many rich men, but having too many poor men.” That is like saying that while there are not too many hills there are too many valleys. Mr. Snowden, in his courageous and able reply a day or two later, pointed out this with excellent emphasis. “The extreme Socialist school,” he said, “had often been charged with wanting to make the rich poorer and the poor richer. He had never denied that that was his purpose, because there was no no other way under Heaven by which they could make the poor better off except by making the wealthy poorer than they are.” At this not only the “Times ” was staggered but the “Daily News ” grew a little alarmed. Yet the fact is obvious on inspection.

[...]

The idle rich naturally would prefer to believe that poverty can be abolished without reducing their own income very much ; and when events prove that every amelioration of the condition of the poor threatens in the long run to encroach on Rent and Interest, the cry is raised that the poor are preparing to despoil the rich.

"...ours is an Empire comparable to Rome and Persia and Babylon. Well, at their fall, some two per cent of the total population of these Empires owned practically the whole of the wealth of their States. In the latter days of Rome for example under 2,000 families owned the known world."

"The strength of the idea of private enterprise lies in its terrifying simplicity ... the totality of life can be reduced to one aspect - profits."

[source]

E. F. Schumacher, from Small is Beautiful:

The strength of the idea of private enterprise lies in its terrifying simplicity. It suggests that the totality of life can be reduced to one aspect - profits. The businessman, as a private individual, may still be interested in other aspects of life - perhaps even in goodness, truth and beauty - but as a businessman he concerns himself only with profits. In this respect, the idea of private enterprise fits exactly into the idea of The Market, which, in an earlier chapter, I called ‘the institutionalisation of individualism and non-responsibility’. Equally, it fits perfectly into the modern trend towards quantification at the expense of the appreciation of qualitative differences; for private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only with what it gains from production.

Everything becomes crystal clear after you have reduced reality to one - one only - of its thousand aspects. You know what to do - whatever produces profits; you know what to avoid - whatever reduces them or makes a loss. And there is at the same time a perfect measuring rod for the degree of success or failure. Let no one befog the issue by asking whether a particular action is conducive to the wealth and well-being of society, whether it leads to moral, aesthetic, or cultural enrichment. Simply find out whether it pays; simply investigate whether there is an alternative that pays better. If there is, choose the alternative.

It is no accident that successful businessmen are often astonishingly primitive; they live in a world made primitive by this process of reduction. They fit into this simplified version of the world and are satisfied with it. And when the real world occasionally makes its existence known and attempts to force upon their attention a different one of its facets, one not provided for in their philosophy, they tend to become quite helpless and confused.

[...]

It is a foregone conclusion for them that a different scheme of things, a business, for instance, that is not based on private ownership, cannot possibly succeed. If it succeeds all the same, there must be a sinister explanation - ‘exploitation of the consumer’, ‘hidden subsidies’, ‘forced labour’, ‘monopoly’, ‘dumping’, or some dark and dreadful accumulation of a debit account which the future will suddenly present.

"The slow disease of money-getting and money worship .. must end in death."

[source]

"It seems to me sometimes as if the slow disease of money-getting and money worship, by which we have been so long tormented, must end in death, and though I do believe inwardly and heartily in a regenerative power for societies as well as individuals, the signs of its active presence here are not as yet manifest to me. Neither in Conservatism nor Liberalism, as I find them here, can I see what is to make the dead bones stir and live."
- F.D. Maurice, 1870

"Midas is, and always has been, the Vatican's King of Kings."

Barry Crimmins:

...the way to begin to rid humanity of the pox that is your church is to stand up and say, "I am beyond your threats. I do not answer to your hypocritical demand that I remain in respectful silence before an organization that has enriched itself at the expense of the poor while defiling spirituality with centuries of assaults on innocents, committed by those to whom we entrusted our very souls."

No wisdom can guess how many lives your church has destroyed but decent people everywhere are beginning to hold Catholicism accountable for its copious sins. Many have taken the first step by walking out of your ornate edifices, never to return. I hope others join me in the next step by demanding excommunication from your church. Excommunication, you see, is the only act of spiritual value you have available to those who believe that we must our cleanse our souls of the bloody fingerprints of Catholicism if we are ever to live redemptive lives.

I denounce and scoff at your attempts to make us fall in line with your dogma by proclaiming we will never reach paradise if we are excommunicated from your church. Any paradise that allows your church to control its gates is just Hell operating under another name. You hold the keys to nothing but vaults containing the unimaginable bounty riches you have conned out of your followers and stolen from the rest of humanity. Midas is, and always has been, the Vatican's King of Kings.

"For a fight it is; and a long one, and a deadly one — a fight against all the armies of Mammon."

J. M. Ludlow, from The Christian Socialist (1850):

A new idea has gone abroad into the world. That Socialism, the latest-born of the forces now at work in modern society, and Christianity, the eldest-born of those forces, are in their nature not hostile, but akin to each other; or rather, that the one is but the development, the outgrowth, the manifestation of the other. . . . That Christianity, however feeble and torpid it may seem to many just now, is truly but as an eagle at moult; that Socialism is but its livery of the nineteenth century, which it is even now putting on, to spread erelong its wings for a broader and heavenlier flight. That Socialism without Christianity, on the one hand, was lifeless as the feathers without the bird, however skilfully the stuffer may dress them up into an artificial semblance of life. That every socialist system which has maintained itself, has stood upon the moral grounds of righteousness, self-sacrifice, mutual affection, and common brotherhood. . . . That Christianity, on the other hand, in this nineteenth century of ours, becomes in its turn chilly and helpless when stripped of its social influences; or, in other words, when divorced from Socialism. That if the Gospel speaks true, and "ye cannot serve God and Mammon," it is wholly incompatible with a political economy which proclaims self-interest to be the very pivot of social action;

[...]

... If it be given us to vindicate for Christianity its true authority over the realms of industry and trade, for Socialism its true character as the great Christian revolution of the nineteenth century, so that the title of Socialist shall be only a bugbear to the idle and to the wicked, and society from the highest rank to the lowest shall avowedly regulate itself upon the principle of co-operation, and not drift rudderless upon the sea of competition, as our let-alone political economists would have it do — then, indeed, we shall have achieved our task; and no amount of obloquy, ridicule, calumny, neglect, shall make us desert it, so long as we have strength and means to carry on the fight. For a fight it is; and a long one, and a deadly one — a fight against all the armies of Mammon.

"You can’t shop your way to a better world."

"You can’t shop your way to a better world."
- Doug Henwood

Sad but increasingly true, at least when it comes to the organic food industry. Phil Howard writes:

The number of firms responsible for producing most of the food consumed in the United States gets smaller every year. This consolidation is a result of the largest companies buying out their closest competitors, with many of the remaining companies going out of business. The result is that markets become less competitive, giving dominant companies the power to artificially raise prices for consumers—or lower the prices they pay farmers and other suppliers.

In addition to this economic impact, consolidation gives a rapidly shrinking minority the power to determine other aspects of food production, such as how food is produced; how much is produced; where it is grown, processed, transported, and sold; and ultimately, who gets to eat. And, as the recent egg recall taught us, an overly consolidated food system makes the whole country vulnerable to the dangerous practices of just a few farms.

There are alternatives to this highly consolidated food system, though some of the most successful are now threatened by consolidation, as well. Organic food, for example, is intended to promote more ecologically sustainable production practices. But as organic became more mainstream, it attracted the interest of multinational corporations. Scores of pioneering organic brands were acquired by these corporations, starting in the late 1990s, though very few make these ownership ties apparent on their labels. As a result, while “organic” remains a less chemical intensive alternative to conventional agriculture, the label may fall short for other ethical ideals. Organic foods may still be heavily packaged, highly processed, shipped thousands of miles, and produced by exploited laborers.

Howard's shop doctine? Research the companies you buy from, buy directly from food producers, and grow your own. Bring on the revolution.

"Isn't it amazing what we can accomplish when we don't let the nation get in our way."

"Men do not of themselves institute revolutions, but certain periods make men revolutionary."

J. Glasse, from Christian Socialist (1891):

The Socialists have no doubt erred, but in comparison with the selfishness displayed by the few and the indifference exhibited by the many, they have least of all cause to be considered the enemies of wisdom or the apostles of disorder. Every reformer has of course been blamed for a desire to turn the world upside down, and the Christians in particular have shared in this reproach, but it so happens that Marx, one of the great teachers of Socialism, holds that such a system cannot be initiated by the will either of an individual or a party, but can only be brought about by a concurrence of all the forces in the world itself. Men do not of themselves institute revolutions, but certain periods make men revolutionary.

[...]

There is certainly more than enough of discontent. The age is full of it. Our gilded youth drawl forth amid luxury and refinement their languid pessimism, while the denizens of lane and alley weary with the burden of life wail forth in the ear of heaven their inarticulate groanings. There is little reason indeed to preach discontent, but one may well pray for its removal, and the Socialists are specially active in this direction. The heaven of the Christian was for long the refuge of the heavy laden, but this through the spread of scepticism has become dim so that but for Socialism the discontent of the workers will in such circumstances deepen into despair. The value of religion or rather of superstitution, for to him the two were evidently one, according to Napoleon consisted in keeping the poor from killing the rich. The religion of Socialism, which in our opinion is one with Christianity, on the contrary, constrains the rich to render justice to the poor, and by removing the many grounds of complaint in the present, furnish them with cheering visions of the future.

"What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power."

Henry George, from Progress and Poverty (1879):

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. This same tendency, operating with increasing force, is observable in our civilization today, showing itself in every progressive community, and with greater intensity the more progressive the community. Wages and interest tend constantly to fall, rent to rise, the rich to become very much richer, the poor to become more helpless and hopeless, and the middle class to be swept away.

[...]

There is no mistaking it -- the very foundations of society are being sapped before our eyes, while we ask, how is it possible that such a civilization as this, with its railroads, and daily newspapers, and electric telegraphs, should ever be destroyed?

[...]

The most ominous political sign in the United States today is the growth of a sentiment which either doubts the existence of an honest man in public office or looks on him as a fool for not seizing his opportunities. That is to say, the people themselves are becoming corrupted. Thus in the United States today is republican government running the course it must inevitably follow under conditions which cause the unequal distribution of wealth.

Where that course leads is clear to whoever will think. As corruption becomes chronic; as public spirit is lost; as traditions of honor, virtue, and patriotism are weakened; as law is brought into contempt and reforms become hopeless; then in the festering mass will be generated volcanic forces, which shatter and rend when seeming accident gives them vent. Strong, unscrupulous men, rising up upon occasion, will become the exponents of blind popular desires or fierce popular passions, and dash aside forms that have lost their vitality. The sword will again be mightier than the pen, and in carnivals of destruction brute force and wild frenzy will alternate with the lethargy of a declining civilization.

"The sword will again be mightier than the pen, and in carnivals of destruction brute force and wild frenzy will alternate with the lethargy of a declining civilization."
- Henry George

"Certain cases may be sad, But the system can’t be bad, If it gives such satisfaction to the wealthy."

The Song of the Respectables

Respectables are we,
And we fain would have you see
Why we confidently claim to be respected;
In well-ordered homes we dwell,
And discharge our duties well—
Well dressed, well bred, well mannered, well connected.

We hate the common cant
About poverty and want,
And all that is distressing and unhealthy;
Certain cases may be sad,
But the system can’t be bad,
If it gives such satisfaction to the wealthy.

As the Times each day we read,
We realize the need
Of more and more repression for the Masses;
And we muse with wondering awe
On the sanctity of Law,
As administered and construed by the Classes.

To us the breath of Change
Is ominous and strange,
And Reform is but a cloak for Revolution;
Our concern is not for self,
Not for property nor pelf,
Oh no, but for the British Constitution:

And our care transcends e’en that,
For in sable coat and hat
We never fail to flock to church each Sunday,
That with renovated zest,
And conscience lulled to rest,
We may yield our hearts to Mammon on the Monday.

So our wealth, which swells apace,
Is the outward sigh of grace,
As property goes step by step with piety:
In the present world we thrive,
Then save our souls alive,
And move for evermore in good society.

Thus on through life we march,
Stiff with decency and starch,
Well bred, well fed, well mannered, well connected—
For Respectables are we,
And you cannot fail to see
Why we confidently claim to be respected.

Henry Stephen Salt, 1896, from The Song of the Respectables and Other Verses

A song for our times, don't you think?

"Slowly, and unconsciously, as the child is shaped in the womb, this movement shapes itself in the bosom of our time."

Olive Schreiner, from Woman and Labour (1911):

That the Woman's Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any mere process of theoretic argument; that it breaks out, now here and now there, in forms divergent and at times superficially almost irreconcilable; that the majority of those taking part in it are driven into action as the result of the immediate pressure of the conditions of life, and are not always able logically to state the nature of all causes which propel them, or to paint clearly all results of their action; so far from removing it from the category of the vast reorganising movements of humanity, places it in a line with them, showing how vital, spontaneous, and wholly organic and unartificial is its nature.

The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and at times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and social duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined endeavour after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly in a resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour for women; while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to reco-ordinate the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual it manifests itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for liberty of personal action; while in another it is being fought out silently in the depth of the individual consciousness–that primal battle-ground, in which all questions of reform and human advance must ultimately be fought and decided;–all this diversity, and the fact that the average woman is entirely concerned in labour in her own little field, shows, not the weakness, but the strength of the movement; which, taken as a whole, is a movement steady and persistent in one direction, the direction of increased activity and culture, and towards the negation of all possibility of parasitism in the human female. Slowly, and unconsciously, as the child is shaped in the womb, this movement shapes itself in the bosom of our time, taking its place beside those vast human developments, of which men, noting their spontaneity and the co-ordination of their parts, have said, in the phraseology of old days, "This thing is not of man, but of God."

"The richest and most powerful layers have acquired staggering levels of wealth by plundering society."

[source]

Barry Grey:

The Office of Thrift Supervision has not referred a single case to the Justice Department since 2000, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a unit of the Treasury Department, has referred only three in the last decade.

How is this to be explained? Why are Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, the former CEO of Washington Mutual, Kerry Killinger, as well as Treasury Secretary Geithner and his predecessor, Henry Paulson (previously CEO of Goldman), not in prison?

[...]

One reason for the absence of prosecutions is the power of the individuals involved, all of whom wield immense influence over politicians, the media and the legal system. But it goes deeper than the status of individuals, just as the sordid state of affairs as a whole arises not from individual greed, but rather from a profound crisis of the entire system.

The criminalization of the American ruling class is the outcome of more than three decades in which the accumulation of wealth by the corporate-financial elite has become increasingly separated from real production. In its pursuit of profit, the ruling class has dismantled huge sections of industry and turned ever more decisively to financial manipulation and speculation.

The ascendancy of the most parasitic sections of the capitalist class has been accompanied by a sharp decline in the living standards of the working class. The richest and most powerful layers have acquired staggering levels of wealth by plundering society.

The ruling class itself senses that to prosecute any of the leading figures in the defrauding of the American people (and the rest of humankind) would rapidly expose the criminality of the entire system. It would mean putting the capitalist system itself on trial.

"No man is bold enough to take a questionable step without representing it as the fulfilment of a divine behest."

George Bernard Shaw (from "Science v. Common Sense," Humane Review, April 1900):

Put the question, what have my three centuries taught me about my own species? I reply, mainly to regard men's principles as excuses for doing what they want to do. Why do they shrink with such an exquisite shyness from asserting their will as valid in itself? I do not know: the shyness seems as fundamental as the will itself: no man is bold enough to take a questionable step without representing it as the fulfilment of a divine behest, or the logical conclusion from ethical principles of supreme authority. You meet a respectable citizen, for example, who drinks brandy or beats his children heartily. You ask him why. If he were to reply simply that he enjoys both practices, you would be shocked, and set him down as no gentleman. Therefore he tells you, with a martyred air, that he is compelled to drink brandy for the sake of his digestion, and that he chastises his offspring, feeling every blow himself more than the child does, because he cannot bear untruthfulness. The one thing he will not do is to reveal himself in his own nature, and confess that his principles, his politics, his religion and his morals are all mere superstructure, founded on his native impulses, and unsettled only in so far as the Balance of Power changes as between these impulses by their natural waxing and waning.

"A PLAGUE UPON YOUR IGNORANCE & THE GRAY DESPAIR OF YOUR UGLY LIFE"

[source]

What's the ugliest
Part of your body?

What's the ugliest
Part of your body?
Some say your nose
Some say your toes
But I think it's YOUR MIND
I think it's your mind, woo woo
ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR
UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF
SYSTEMS BEYOND THEIR
CONTROL
A PLAGUE UPON YOUR
IGNORANCE & THE GRAY
DESPAIR OF YOUR UGLY LIFE
Where did Annie go
When she went to town?
Who are all those creeps
That she brings around?
ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE POOR
UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS OF LIES
YOU BELIEVE
A PLAGUE UPON YOUR
IGNORANCE THAT KEEPS
THE YOUNG FROM THE TRUTH
THEY DESERVE...

- Frank Zappa

"The old structures can no longer stand—their very foundations are shifted— At the sound of the new word spoken— At the sound of the word Democracy."

[source]

We are a menace to you, O civilisation!

We have seen you—we allow you—we bear with you for a time,

But beware! for in a moment and, when the hour comes, inevitably,

We shall arise and sweep you away!

[...]

The old structures can no longer stand—their very foundations are shifted—

And men run forth in terror from the old before they can yet find firm ground for the new.

In all directions gulfs and yawning abysses,

The ground of society cracking, the fire showing through,

The old ties giving way beneath the strain, and the great pent heart heaving as though it would break—

At the sound of the new word spoken—

At the sound of the word Democracy.

No volcano bursting up through peaceful pastures is a greater revolution than this;

No vast mountain chain thrown out from ocean depths to form the primitive streak of a new continent looks further down the future;

For this is lava springing out of the very heart of Man;

This is the upheaval of heaven-kissing summits whose streams shall feed the farthest generations,

This is the draft and outline of a new creature,

The forming of the wings of Man beneath the outer husk—

The outspread pinions of Equality, whereon arising he shall at last lift himself over the Earth and launch forth to sail through Heaven.

- Edward Carpenter, from Towards Democracy

"For it is clothed in liberty and light, And casts destroying sun-shafts through their night !"

From a more innocent time, a poem from Henry S. Salt's excellent anthology, Songs of Freedom:

THE NEWSPAPER.

IT goeth forth, an instrument of power,
Ruling and ruled by great society;
Noting the human business of the hour,
With retrospection far, and prophecy;
Showing the world the world, and to the tide
Of Time its own vast flowings self-supplied!

A wondrous and a mighty Thing it is,
Speaking to distant millions as to near;
Rousing all passions and all sympathies,
And forcing the earth's space to disappear
By its connecting course o'er all the lands,
Which makes the globe's antipodes shake hands!
Before its all-detecting, all-proclaiming,
And all-truth-telling voice, the Tyrant's throne
And the bald Bigot's altar, heavenward flaming
With fires derived from hell, quiver and groan;
For it is clothed in liberty and light,
And casts destroying sun-shafts through their night!
Hail it, ye stirring Millions, as your Saver
From the old law of things, that kept ye under
The foot-tread of the Few as the way-paver
To your redemption-goal! And, of its thunder
Ye who sit throned the Joves invisible,
Use the mighty weapon well!
Hide it not in cloudy sphere
Of pale apathy or fear;
But ever let its radiant bolts be hurl'd
Against the giant Ills that still bestride the World!

- Thomas Wade (1805-1875)

"We the People are reduced to being helpless spectators at our own evisceration."

[source]

OHolllern:

Truthfully I’m almost beyond caring about it. One group of slimy politicians called Republicans quibbled with another group of slimy politicians called Democrats over which of our limbs are expendable. American bombs are still falling abroad, Goldman Sachs is still making historic profits, and We the People are reduced to being helpless spectators at our own evisceration. That’s all we’re going to be with these kinds of ‘historic’ leaders.

By the way, here’s a lesser known part of the historic deal:

Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, said the budget bill included his proposal to remove gray wolves in Montana and Idaho from the federal list of endangered species. This would enable the two states to manage their wolf populations and to allow hunting of the animals if they choose.

“This wolf fix isn’t about one party’s agenda,” Mr. Tester said. “It’s about what’s right for Montana and the West.”

How nice. Screw the poor and kill the animals. What bold historical actors our leaders are!

The Center for Biological Diversity sent this in email:

Congress has never previously overridden the Endangered Species Act to remove a species from the endangered list. The rider could easily have been stopped by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the White House, but instead they used it as a political bargaining chip in a last-minute deal designed to help Tester get re-elected in 2012. Tester, who is one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the upcoming elections, has cynically decided to engage in a wolf-hating contest with his Republican opponent in a bid for conservative votes.

"'Didn't you think it was wonderful?' she insisted..."

"Wasn't it wonderful?" said Fifi Bradlaugh. "Wasn't it simply wonderful?" She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement–for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace. For the Solidarity Service had given as well as taken, drawn off only to replenish. She was full, she was made perfect, she was still more than merely herself. "Didn't you think it was wonderful?" she insisted, looking into Bernard's face with those supernaturally shining eyes.

- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Yes, "a rich and living peace" descends on rapturous liberals everywhere as Obama promises things he won't ever deliver. As Digby says, "Let's just say that these rhetorical lines in the sand have a way of being conveniently re-interpreted when they hit the sausage making machine. "

"Awake!-arise!-or be for ever fallen."

[source]

DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.

G OVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.

2 IF these individuals think that the form of government which they, or their forefathers constituted is ill adapted to produce their happiness, they have a right to change it.
3 Government is devised for the security of rights. The rights of man are liberty, and an equal participation of the commonage of nature.
4 As the benefit of the governed, is, or ought to be the origin of government, no men can have any authority that does not expressly emanate from their will.
5 Though all governments are not so bad as that of Turkey, yet none are so good as they might be; the majority of every country have a right to perfect their government, the minority should not disturb them, they ought to secede, and form their own system in their own way.
6 All have a right to an equal share in the benefits, and burdens of Government. Any disabilities for opinion, imply by their existence, barefaced tyranny on the side of government, ignorant slavishness on the side of the governed.

[...]
24 A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren.
25 If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!
26 Those who believe that Heaven is, what earth has been, a monopoly in the hands of a favoured few, would do well to reconsider their opinion: if they find that it came from their priest or their grandmother, they could not do better than reject it.
27 No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions, but those of virtue and talents. Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth, a libel on its possessor.
28 No man has a right to monopolise more than he can enjoy; what the rich give to the poor, whilst millions are starving, is not a perfect favour, but an imperfect right.
29 Every man has a right to a certain degree of leisure and liberty, because it is his duty to attain a certain degree of knowledge. He may before he ought.
30 Sobriety of body and mind is necessary to those who would be free, because, without sobriety a high sense of philanthropy cannot actuate the heart, nor cool and determined courage, execute its dictates.
31 The only use of government is to repress the vices of man. If man were to day sinless, to-morrow he would have a right to demand that government and all its evils should cease.
______ Man! thou whose rights are here declared, be no longer forgetful of the loftiness of thy destination. Think of thy rights; of those possessions which will give thee virtue and wisdom, by which thou mayest arrive at happiness and freedom. They are declared to thee by one who knows thy dignity, for every hour does his heart swell with honourable pride in the contemplation of what thou mayest attain, by one who is not forgetful of thy degeneracy, for every moment brings home to him the bitter conviction of what thou art. Awake!-arise!-or be for ever fallen.

"Scott Noble eviscerates the myth of the American dream, laying bare the grinning, skeletal greed at its core."

Lifting the Veil web site.

Two quotations to go along with this excellent documentary:

"What has Obama done for young black men? For young black women? For the poor? For the working class? For organized labor? For the one million black men and women in prison? For all those in prison? For undocumented immigrants? For gays and lesbians? For those who don’t have adequate or any health care? For the world’s impoverished masses? I am afraid that the answer to all of these questions is 'next to nothing.'"
- Michael Yates

“I come from a new generation of Americans. I don’t want to fight the battles of the Sixties.”
- Barack Obama

They all see no excuse for Bradley Manning's "degrading and inhumane pretrial punishment."

Bruce Ackerman, Yale Law School
Yochai Benkler, Harvard Law School
Jack Balkin, Yale Law School
Richard L. Abel, UCLA Law
David Abrams, Harvard Law School
Martha Ackelsberg, Smith College
Julia Adams, Sociology, Yale University
Kirsten Ainley, London School of Economics
Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University
Philip Alston, NYU School of Law
Anne Alstott, Harvard Law School
Elizabeth Anderson, Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan
Kevin Anderson, University of California
Scott Anderson, Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Claudia Angelos, NYU School of Law
Donald K. Anton. Australian National University College of Law
Joyce Appleby, History, UCLA
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton University
Stanley Aronowitz, Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center
Jean Maria Arrigo, PhD, social psychologist, Project on Ethics and Art in Testimony
Reuven Avi-Yonah, University of Michigan Law
H. Robert Baker, Georgia State University
Katherine Beckett, University of Washington
Duncan Bell, Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
Steve Berenson, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Michael Bertrand, UNC Chapel Hill
Christoph Bezemek, Public Law, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Michael J. Bosia, Political Science, Saint Michael's College
Bret Boyce, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law
Rebecca M. Bratspies, CUNY School of Law
Jason Brennan, Philosophy, Brown University
Talbot Brewer, Philosophy, University of Virginia
John Bronsteen, Loyola University Chicago
Peter Brooks, Princeton University
James Robert Brown, University of Toronto
Sande L. Buhai,Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
Ahmed I Bulbulia, Seton Hall Law School
Susannah Camic, University of Wisconsin Law School
Lauren Carasik, Western New England College School of Law
Teri L. Caraway, University of Minnesota
Alexander M. Capron, University of Southern California, Gould School of Law
Michael W. Carroll, Law American University
Marshall Carter-Tripp, Ph.D, Foreign Service Officer, retired
Jonathan Chausovsky, Political Science, SUNY-Fredonia
Carol Chomsky, University of Minnesota Law School
John Clippinger, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Andrew Jason Cohen, Georgia State University
Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University
Marjorie Cohn, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Doug Colbert, Maryland School of Law
Sheila Collins, William Paterson University
Nancy Combs, William& Mary Law School
Stephen A. Conrad, Indiana University Mauer School of Law
Steve Cook, Philosophy, Utica College
Robert Crawford,Arts and Sciences, University of Washington
Thomas P. Crocker, University of South Carolina
Jennifer Curtin, UCI School of Medicine
Deryl D. Dantzler, Walter F. Gorge School of Law of Mercer University
Benjamin G. Davis, University of Toledo College of Law
Rochelle Davis, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Wolfgang Deckers, Richmond University, London
Michelle M. Dempsey, Villanova University School of Law
Wai Chee Dimock, English, Yale University
Sinan Dogramaci, Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
Zayd Dohrn, Northwestern University
Jason P. Dominguez, Texas Southern University
Judith Donath, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Norman Dorsen, New York University School of Law
Michael W. Doyle, International Affairs, Law and Political Science, Columbia
Bruce T. Draine, Astrophysics, Princeton University
Jay Driskell,History, Hood College
Michael C. Duff, University of Wyoming College of Law
Lisa Duggan, Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Graduate Center,CUNY
Stephen M. Engel, PhD, Political Science, Marquette University
Simon Evnine, Philosophy, University of Miami
Mark Fenster, Levin College of Law, University of Florida
Martha Field, Harvard Law School
Justin Fisher, Philosophy, Southern Methodist University
William Fisher, Harvard Law School
Joseph Fishkin, University of Texas School of Law
Mark Fishman, Sociology, Brooklyn College
Martin S. Flaherty, Fordham Law School
George P. Fletcher, Columbia University, School of Law
John Flood, Law and Sociology, University of Westminster
Michael Forman, University of Washington Tacoma
Bryan Frances, Philosophy, Fordham University
Katherine Franke, Columbia Law School
Nancy Fraser, Philosophy and Politics, New School for Social Research
Eric M. Freedman, Hofstra Law School
Monroe H. Freedman, Hofstra University Law School
Kennan Ferguson, University of Wisconsin, MilWaukee
John R. Fitzpatrick, Philosophy, University of Tennessee/Chattanooga
A. Michael Froomkin, University of Miami School of Law
Gerald Frug, Harvard Law School
Louis Furmanski, University of Central Oklahoma
James K. Galbraith, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin
Herbert J Gans, Columbia University
William Gardner, Pediatrics, Psychology,& Psychiatry, The Ohio State University
Urs Gasser, Harvard Law School, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Julius G. Getman, University of Texas Law School
Todd Gitlin, Columbia University
Bob Goodin, Australian National University
Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, Human Rights, University of Washington
David Golove, NYU School of Law
James R. Goetsch Jr., Philosophy, Eckerd College
Thomas Gokey, Art and Information Studies, Syracuse University
Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School
Stephen E. Gottlieb, Albany Law School
Mark A. Graber, University of Maryland School of Law
Jorie Graham, Harvard University
Roger Green, Pol. Sci. and Pub. Admin., Florida Gulf Coast
Daniel JH Greenwood, Hofstra University School of Law
Christopher L. Griffin, Visiting, Duke Law School
James Grimmelmann, New York Law School
James Gronquist,Charlotte School of Law
Jean Grossholtz, Politics, Mount Holyoke College
Lisa Guenther, Philosophy, Vanderbilt University
Christopher Guzelian, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Gillian K. Hadfield, Law, Economics, University of Southern California
Jonathan Hafetz, Seton Hall University School of Law
Lisa Hajjar, University of California - Santa Barbara
Susan Hazeldean, Robert M. Cover Fellow, Yale Law School
Dirk t. D. Held, Classics, Connecticut College
Kevin Jon Heller, Melbourne Law School
Lynne Henderson, UNLV--Boyd School of Law (emerita)
Stephen Hetherington, Philosophy, University of New South Wales
Kurt Hochenauer, University of Central Oklahoma
Lonny Hoffman, Univ of Houston Law Center
Michael Hopkins, MHC International Ltd
Nathan Robert Howard, St. Andrews
Marc Morjé Howard, Government, Georgetown University
Kyron Huigens, Cardozo School of Law
Alexandra Huneeus, University of Wisconsin Law School
David Ingram, Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago
David Isenberg, Isen.com
Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard Kennedy School
Christopher Jencks, Harvard Kennedy School
Paula Johnson, Alliant International University
Robert N. Johnson, Philosophy, University of Missouri
Albyn C. Jones, Statistics, Reed College
Lynne Joyrich, Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
David Kairys, Beasley Law School
Eileen Kaufman, Touro Law Center
Kevin B. Kelly, Seton Hall University School of Law
Antti Kauppinen, Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School
Daniel Kevles, Yale University
Heidi Kitrosser, University of Minnesota Law School
Gillian R. Knapp, Princeton University
Seth F. Kreimer University of Pennsylvania Law School
Alex Kreit, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Stefan H. Krieger, Hofstra University School of Law
Mitchell Lasser, Cornell Law School
Mark LeBar, Philosophy, Ohio University
Brian Leiter, University of Chicago
Mary Clare Lennon, Sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
George Levine,Rutgers University
Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School
Margaret Levi, Pol. Sci., University of Washington and University of Sydney
Tracy Lightcap, Political Science, LaGrange College
Daniel Lipson, Political Science, SUNY New Paltz
Stacy Litz, Drexel University
Fiona de Londras, University College Dublin, Ireland
John Lunstroth, University of Houston Law Center
David Luban, Georgetown University Law Center
Peter Ludlow, Philosophy, Northwestern University
Cecelia Lynch, University of California
David Lyons, Boston University
Colin Maclay, Harvard University, Berkman Center
Joan Mahoney, Emeritus, Wayne State University Law School
Chibli Mallat, Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
Phil Malone, Harvard Law School
Jane Mansbridge, Harvard Kennedy School
Jeff Manza, Sociology, New York University
Dan Markel, Florida State University
Daniel Markovits, Yale Law School
Richard Markovits, University of Texas Law School
Michael R. Masinter, Nova Southeastern University
Ruth Mason, University of Connecticut School of Law
Rachel A. May, University of South Florida
Jamie Mayerfeld, Political Science, University of Washington
Diane H. Mazur, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Jason Mazzone, Brooklyn Law School
Jeff McMahan, Philosophy, Rutgers University
Richard J. Meagher Jr., Randolph-Macon College
Agustín José Menéndez, Universidad de León and University of Oslo
Hope Metcalf, Yale Law School
Frank I. Michelman, Harvard University
Gary Minda, Brooklyn Law School
John Mikhail, Georgetown University Law Center
Gregg Miller, Political Science, University of Washington
Eben Moglen, Columbia Law School and Software Freedom Law Center
Immanuel Ness, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Charles Nesson, Harvard University
Joel Ngugi, Law, African Studies, University of Washington
Ralitza Nikolaeva, ISCTE Business School, Lisbon University Institute
John Palfrey, Harvard Law School
James Paradis, Comparative Media Studies, MIT
Emma Perry, London School of Economics and Political Science
Charles Pigden, University of Otago
Adrian du Plessis, Wolfson College, Cambridge University
Patrick S. O'Donnell, Philosophy, Santa Barbara City College
Hans Oberdiek, Philosophy, Swarthmore College
Duane Oldfield, Political Science, Knox College
Michael Paris, Political Science, The College of Staten Island (CUNY)
Philip Pettit, University Professor of Politics and Human Values, Princeton
Frank A. Pasquale, Seton Hall Law School
Matthew Pierce, University of North Carolina
Charles Pigden, Philosophy, University of Otago
Leslie Plachta, MD MPH, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Thomas Pogge, Yale University
Giovanna Pompele, University of Miami
Joel Pust, Philosophy, University of Delaware
Ulrich K. Preuss, Law& Politics, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin
Margaret Jane Radin, University of Michigan and emerita, Stanford University
Aziz Rana, Cornell University Law School
Gustav Ranis, Yale University
Rahul Rao, School of Oriental& African Studies, University of London
Calair Rasmussen, Affiliation: Political Science, University of Delaware
Daniel Ray, Thomas M. Cooley Law School
Jeff A. Redding, Saint Louis University School of Law
C. D. C. Reeve, Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bryan Register, Philosophy, Texas State University
Robert B. Reich, University of California, Berkeley
Cassandra Burke Robertson, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
John A. Robertson, University of Texas Law School
Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center
Clarissa Rojas, CSU Long Beach
Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Susan Rose-Ackerman, Law, Political Science, Yale University
Norm Rosenberg, History, Macalester College
Clifford Rosky, University of Utah
Brad R. Roth, Poli. Sci. and Law, Wayne State University
Barbara Katz Rothman, Sociology, City University of New York
Bo Rothstein Political Science, University of Gothenburg
Laura L. Rovner,University of Denver College of Law
Donald Rutherford,Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
Leonard Rubenstein, JD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Chester M. Rzadkiewicz, History, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
DeWitt Sage, Flimmaker
Cindy Skach, Comparative Government and Law, Oxford
William J. Talbott, Philosophy, University of Washington
Natsu Taylor Saito, Georgia State University College of Law
Dean Savage, Queens College, Sociology, CUNY
Kent D. Schenkel, New England Law
Kim Scheppele, Princeton Univeristy
Ben Schoenbachler, Psychiatry, University of Louisville
Jeffrey Schnapp, Harvard University
Kenneth Sherrill, Political Science, Hunter College
Claire Snyder-Hall, George Mason University
Jeffrey Selbin, Yale Law School
Wendy Seltzer, Fellow, Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
Jose M. Sentmanat, Philosophy, Moreno Valley College, California
Omnia El Shakry, History, University of California
Scott Shapiro, Yale University
Stephen Sheehi, Languages, Lit. and Cultures, University of South Carolina
James Silk, Yale Law School
Robert D. Sloane, Boston University School of Law
Ronald C. Slye, Law, Seattle University
Matthew Noah Smith, Philosophy, Yale University
Stephen Samuel Smith, Political Science, Winthrop University
John M. Stewart, Emeritus, Psychology, Northland College
Peter G. Stillman, Vassar College
Alec Stone Sweet, Yale Law School
Robert N. Strassfeld, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, SUNY-Buffalo Law School
Jeanne Theoharis, Brooklyn College of CUNY
Frank Thompson, University of Michigan
Matthew Titolo, West Virginia University College of Law
Massimo de la Torre, University of Hull Law School
John Torpey, CUNY Graduate Center
Vilna Bashi Treitler, Black& Hispanic Studies, Baruch College, City
Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard University
David M. Trubek, University of Wisconsin (emeritus)
Robert L. Tsai, American University, Washington College of Law
Peter Vallentyne, Philosophy, University of Missouri
Joan Vogel, Vermont Law School
Paul Voice, Philosophy, Bennington College
Victor Wallis,Berklee College of Music
David Watkins, Political Science, University of Dayton
Jonathan Weinberg, Wayne State University
Henry Weinstein, Law, Literary Journalism, University of California
Margaret Weir, Political Science,University of California, Berkeley
Christina E. Wells, University of Missouri School of Law
Danielle Wenner, Rice University
Bryan H. Wildenthal, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Langdon Winner,Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Naomi Wolf, author
Lauris Wren, Hofstra Law School
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Attorney and author
Betty Yorburg, Emerita, City University of New York
Benjamin S. Yost, Philosophy, Providence College
Jonathan Zasloff, UCLA School of Law
Michael J. Zimmer, Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago
Lee Zimmerman, English, Hofstra University
Mary Marsh Zulack, Columbia Law School

[the letter they signed]
[all the signatures]

"Nor dreams of other law than that of perfect equality"

And a voice came to me, saying:

In every creature, in forest and ocean, in leaf and tree and bird and beast and man, there moves a spirit other than its mortal own,

Pure, fluid, as air—intense as fire,

Which looks abroad and passes along the spirits of all other creatures, drawing them close to itself,

Nor dreams of other law than that of perfect equality;

And this is the spirit of immortality and peace.

- Edward Carpenter

The Oppressor Hating the Oppressed

[source]

Hilaire Belloc in 1938:

The human relation has disappeared, you have the naked contrast between an employing class exploiting a vastly larger employed class for profit. The interests of the two are directly hostile. The wage-worker is the enemy of the paymaster. It is the business of the paymaster to give the wage earner as little as possible, and to make him work as hard as possible for that little. It is the business of the wage-worker to work, and therefore to produce, as little as possible for as much as he can get out of the paymaster. The whole scheme of wealth production becomes irrational and topsy-turvy.

[...]

Meanwhile, every sort of social abomination arises from this evil root. There is the spiritual abomination of what is called “Class Hatred.” The oppressed hating the oppressor. There is the corresponding spiritual abomination of contempt, injustice, and falsehood. The secure oppressor despises the wage-earner, does him the injustice of using his labor without thought of the wage-earner’s advantage or of the community, and he tells a falsehood that was a truth at the beginning of the affair but is now a lie: he says that all this is based on free contract and is therefore rightly enforced by the courts of law and the armed services of the community.

There you have the plain statement of the monstrous evil we are out to remedy.

In America today, the "oppressed hating the oppressor" morphs into the oppressor hating the oppressed. The helping hand becomes the hurting hand. The whole scheme of government has become "irrational and topsy-turvy."

My My Blue Thunder

Thinkin' how blue it looks
Feelin how it turns
I was singin' somethin'
Out on Route 128
Thinkin' how blue it looks
Singin' out aloud

My my blue thunder

"I know the programs are not going to be there for me when I retire."

[source]

Raw Story:

"What we [House Republicans] have said is this: We'll protect today's seniors and those nearing retirement, but for the rest of us, all of us, who are 54 and younger, I know the programs are not going to be there for me when I retire," Cantor told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

"They can't," he added.

Social security lifts almost 20 million Americans out of poverty. Republicans want to thrust those 20 million back into poverty.

Here's free marketeer Bruce McQuain [older white male American photo]:

If we agree we are the sum of our choices in life, and those who’ve made consistently bad choices (drop out of school, take up drug use, commit criminal acts) end up in poverty, how is it they don’t “deserve” what they now suffer? Certainly I can think of examples of the poor who may be poor through no real fault of their own – the mentally deficient who haven’t the skills to earn high wages, etc. But for the most part, if everyone is offered essentially the same opportunities as others and they choose not to take advantage of them, how does one relegate their descent into poverty as “undeserved”? Especially when others in precisely the same circumstances make different decisions that raise them out of poverty?

By the same logic, Social Security prevents millions of people from getting exactly what they deserve, therefore it must be abolished. We can't turn to the President Obama for leadership on this issue because he's going along for the Republican ride.

Republicans know they have a weakling and a powder puff in the White House and they are using that fact for all it is worth. The fallout will be disastrous for the country.

"We have more riches than any Nation ever had before; we have less good of them than any Nation ever had before."

Thomas Carlyle, from Past and Present (1843):

To whom, then, is this wealth of England wealth? Who is it that it blesses ; makes happier, wiser, beautifuler, in any way better? Who has got hold of it, to make it fetch and carry for him, like a true servant, not like a false mock-servant ; to do him any real service whatsoever? As yet no one. We have more riches than any Nation ever had before; we have less good of them than any Nation ever had before. Our successful industry is hitherto unsuccessful ; a strange success, if we stop here! In the midst of plethoric plenty, the people perish ; with gold walls, and full barns, no man feels himself safe or satisfied. Workers, Master Workers, Unworkers, all men, come to a pause ; stand fixed, and cannot farther. Fatal paralysis spreading inwards, from the extremities, in St. Ives workhouses, in Stockport cellars, through all limbs, as if towards the heart itself. Have we actually got enchanted, then; accursed by some god?—

True, it must be owned, we for the present, with our Mammon-Gospel, have come to strange conclusions. We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totallest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named “fair competition” and so forth, it is a mutual hostility. We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that Cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings; we think, nothing doubting, that it absolves and liquidates all engagements of man. “My starving workers?” answers the rich mill-owner: “Did not I hire them fairly in the market? Did I not pay them, to the last sixpence, the sum covenanted for? What have I to do with them more?” — Verily Mammon-worship is a melancholy creed. When Cain, for his own behoof, had killed Abel, and was questioned, “Where is thy brother?” he too made answer, “Am I my brother's keeper?” Did I not pay my brother his wages the thing he had merited from me?

"Have we actually got enchanted, then; accursed by some god?—" The enchantment and the curse is capitalism.

"Verily Mammon-worship is a melancholy creed."
- Thomas Carlyle

Get to know a socialist: William Morris

[source]

Northrop Fry on William Morris (interviewed by Christopher Lowry). Get to know a socialist!

Lowry: Morris declared that “the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization” (“How I Became a Socialist”). News From Nowhere seems to be a vision of supplanting that. That is, what he called civilization was socialism which is a society of equality. Do you think this dream was viable then, at the end of the nineteenth century in some way?

Frye: Well, Morris simply applied a different sort of criteria to society which he got mainly through Ruskin. He looked at nineteenth-century England and decided it was ugly, and he looked at what nineteenth-century restorers did to medieval cathedrals and he thought it was totally destructive. In other words, certain ages have a sense of beauty and a sense of craftsmanship and other ages just lack them entirely, and he saw the industrialization, the decay, the degeneration of craftsmanship and an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. It’s the same thing as Ezra Pound picked up later, the perception of misery as something that industrialized civilization is cursed with.

Lowry: Morris envisioned supplanting this corruption that passes for civilization with a new society where there are no rich, no poor, there’s no waste: the true meaning of commonwealth. Do you think that there’s any potential to integrate that in the future, or is something going on towards that now?

Frye: People are beginning to wake up to the fact that the unlimited exploitation of nature will not work and is very dangerous, and after we’ve used up everything there won’t be very much to go on with, and Morris certainly told them that one hundred years ago.

[...]

Lowry: In News From Nowhere, Morris writes that “The spirit of the new days, of our days, was to be delight in the life of the world; intense and overweening love of the very skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells, such as a lover has in the fair flesh of the woman he loves; this, I say, was to be the new spirit in time.” It seems to me that many people are now beginning to absorb and express this idea and this dream from many sources and in many ways. Would you agree with that?

Frye: Well, I certainly agree that the awareness of nature as man’s habitat and as a kind of complement to human life is much more intense than it has been, and in a way the relation of man and nature takes up a great deal of what used to be sexual games, which, again, were an upper-class amusement.

Lowry: Do you think there’s any potential for the realization of this kind of new spirit of the age through some kind of long-range, morphic resonance?

Frye: Well, yes, trends start with a very small minority, and they gradually grow; if the conditions are right, they begin to turn into mass movements.

“The spirit of the new days, of our days, was to be delight in the life of the world; intense and overweening love of the very skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells, such as a lover has in the fair flesh of the woman he loves; this, I say, was to be the new spirit in time.”
- William Morris