David > Recent Status Updates

"How unpardonable would it have been in you to have been a blockhead." (Abigail writing to her son John Quincy, cautioning him not to be arrogant with his knowledge, given all the advantages he had.)

"The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many."

On her first ocean voyage, to England, Abigail brought her daughter, two servants and a cow. (The cow had won a lottery.)

Are the bigshots in the Netherlands still known as "Their High Mightinesses?"

"You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket."

In Spain, wrote Adams, "nothing appeared rich but the churches, nobody fat but the clergy."

In the constitution Adams writes for Massachusetts, he declares it the "duty" of government to provide education and to "cherish" the interests of literature and science. Very enlightened!

"For every sailor in the British navy killed in action or who died of wounds in the era of the American Revolution, seventeen died of disease."

Each bill of Continental money was signed by hand. Scrivener Nathan Sellers signed 4,800 bills in one day!

The false law of "survival of the fittest," which was the sociologist Spencer's coinage, not the biologist Darwin's, lives on -- unspoken -- in the supposed virtuousness of the free market.

So far (through the turn of the 20th century), all the philosophers, economists and sociologists have mistaken adaptation for progress. They're using evolution as a convenient metaphor and justification for their biases, to varying degrees.

Over 100 years later, the fight between the disciples of competition and those of cooperation continues in the debate over health care reform. But why isn't the debate informed by real-world evidence? Because the evidence is an inconvenient truth for the privatizers.

"If nature progresses through the destruction of the weak, man progresses through the protection of the weak" (Lester Ward).

Republican philosophy is still where it was 150 years ago when Herbert "Survival of the Fittest" Spencer found eager disciples in the industrialists of America. Their diabolical brilliance is in using cultural issues to get the masses to buy into policies inimical to their own interests.

Now for some lite reading....

"The belief instinct may never be completely deprogrammed in our animal brains, but by understanding it for what it is rather than subscribing uncritically to the intuitions it generates, we can distance ourselves from an adaptive system that was designed, ultimately, to keep us hobbled in fear."

"...the mind is what the brain does -- it's more a verb than it is a noun."

"Our minds make meaning by disambiguating the meaningless."

Really fascinating account of the 1755 earthquake, which had great philosophical effects as well as physical ones. The Marques de Pombal, who led the rebuilding of Lisbon, also despotically enforced the enlightenment on Portugal, which was otherwise deep in the darkness of the Inquisition.

What an awesome sight it must have been when Lincoln appeared in Richmond, capital of the defeated Confederacy. Whites shut themselves indoors while the streets filled with emancipated slaves "shouting and praising God, and Father, or Master Abe" (as the chaplain of a black regiment described it).

Abolishing slavery led to a new and fuller definition of freedom, with implications for whites as well as blacks.

Who would doubt that Lincoln faced the greatest challenges of any president. He really was in uncharted territory, although there had been civil wars before and other nations had renounced slavery. He seems to have worked things out as he went along, adapting to circumstances, and finally finding that slavery is not something that cannot be ended gradually. The forces all around are too explosive.

HERE'S equality: Lincoln threatens "to assign a southern prisoner of war to hard labor for each black soldier sold into slavery."

Damn, what a sight it must have been for Confederates to confront the black, armed soldiers of the Union, their former slaves!

Legislatively and in all ways, the Civil War was even more chaotic than I thought. Even the Emancipation Proclamation is not a single thing, enacted once and that's that. Individual states tried to take advantage of a better deal, while Lincoln hoped in vain that former slaves would want to emigrate to Central America or Africa. The vast majority were wise and wary enough not to trust the "opportunity."

What other class of people besides gays and lesbians were not recognized by the federal government to have spouses? Slaves.

The South would not have been satisfied with maintaining the status quo. They wanted to expand slavery. Worse, they felt threatened by anti-slavery sentiment and wanted to outlaw anti-slavery expression.

By the 1850s, a higher percentage of blacks in the US were native-born than whites, and yet even Lincoln promoted colonization -- freeing slaves to return to Africa -- as returning them to their "native land."

"Our government rests on public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion can change government."

Lincoln's early anti-slavery actions seem weak and tentative from today's perspective but his condemnation of slavery as an Illinois legislator was not likely to help him politically. Some leaders were anti-slavery but wouldn't have voted accordingly.