[Peace-discuss] on Kucinich and Paul

[C. G. Estabrook]

Having been reared in Virginia, I've always been partial to Cyrus 
Griffin.  Of course, his office was undermined by the treasonous 
assembly in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.  They'd all sworn 
allegiance to the Articles of Confederation and were supposed to suggest 
only improvements, but instead made an executive power-grab because they 
were afraid that only a militarily strong executive could put down the 
movements toward social transformation underway at the time (e.g., 
Shays' Rebellion).

The Philadelphia putschists were consciously trying to roll back the 
clock on democracy, in order to protect wealth: as their chronicler 
(James Madison) said, the coup they engineered that year was designed 
"to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."  So poor 
Cyrus (named for the Persian king who allowed the Jews to return to 
Jerusalem) had to go.  (He then went off to negotiate personally for 
reconciliation with the Creek nation, as he had done in regard to Great 
Britain fifteen years before.)

For more recent times, we have the lapidary judgment of Noam Chomsky, 
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American 
president would have been hanged."

Before the war H. L. Mencken is supposed to have said, "One party always 
devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is 
unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right..."

I'd suggest, if you haven't read it, a recent edition of Howard Zinn's 
People's History of the Untied States, which tells the story with the 
politics left in. We usually get only the jingoist version.  --CGE


Karen Medina wrote:
> Carl,
> 
> I pick on you because you are a historian, is there a president that
> you did like? I'd be especially interested in comparing that person's
> campaign rhetoric and their deeds.
> 
> -karen medina
> 
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:47:53 -0600 From: "C. G. Estabrook"
>> <galliher at uiuc.edu> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] on Kucinich and
>> Paul To: kmedina at uiuc.edu Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> 
>> There's very little correlation.  Remember Bush the Less campaigned
>>  against the Clinton admin's "nation building."
>> 
>> Classic case is the 1932 election, when FDR campaigned against
>> incumbent Herbert Hoover in the midst of the Great Depression.  At
>> the center of FDR's campaign was a promise to balance the budget,
>> over against Hoover's deficit spending!
>> 
>> Roosevelt said: "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for
>> the American people", coining a slogan that was later adopted for
>> his legislative program as well as his new coalition.  But during
>> the campaign, it meant the opposite of what it came to mean.
>> Roosevelt campaigned on the Democratic platform advocating
>> "immediate and drastic reductions of all public expenditures" and
>> for a "sound currency to be maintained at all hazards."
>> 
>> In some cases expediency, in others flat-out lies.  To the latter 
>> category belong John Kennedy's 1960 "missile gap" scare stories,
>> which Kennedy knew weren't true. (But his belligerent, semi-fascist
>> rhetoric was all too true and announced what was probably the most
>> dangerous admin until the current one.) --CGE
>> 
>> 
>> Karen Medina wrote:
>>> Peace discuss,
>>> 
>>> Anyone know some good political science studies that look at the
>>>  campaigns of presidential candidates and then the terms in
>>> office that shows what they say and what they end up doing.
>>> 
>>> I know we all get general impressions and there are media reports
>>>  that summarize things like the first 100 days in office, but I
>>> am more interested in a deeper analysis. Can anyone suggest one?
>>> 
>>> With regard to Tom Mackaman's complaint that one particular
>>> person did not stand up for the peace demonstrators as they were
>>> removed from the Democratic National Convention, was there anyone
>>> who did stand up for the demonstrators? And ultimately is there
>>> anything we can say about all of those who did not defend the
>>> demonstrators?
>>> 
>>> Who would Ron Paul have defended?
>>> 
>>> -karen medina
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