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"content": "On Social Science<br /><br />For more than a century people have taken the idea of looking at society with a modern critical eye, rather than the philosophic or religious of the ages past. I will present this quote before I add more, my views on the subject, and its effects today and in the future.<br /><br />[Quote Begins]<br />The Method proper to the Science of Society must be, in substance, the same as in all other sciences; the interrogation and interpretation of experience, by the twofold process of Induction and Deduction. But its mode of practising these operations has features of peculiarity. In general, Induction furnishes to science the laws of the elementary facts, from which, when known, those of the complex combinations are thought out deductively: specific observation of complex phaenomena yields no general laws, or only empirical ones; its scientific function is to verify the laws obtained by deduction. This mode of philosophizing is not adequate to the exigencies of sociological investigation. In social phaemomena the elementary facts are feelings and actions, and the laws of these are the laws of human nature, social facts being the results of human acts and situations.<br /><br />Since, then, the phaenomena of man in society result from his nature as an individual being, it might be thought that the proper mode of constructing a positive Social Science must be by deducing it from the general laws of human nature, using the facts of history merely for verification. Such, accordingly, has been the conception of social science by many of those who have endeavoured to render it positive, particularly by the school of Bentham. M. Comte considers this as an error. We may, he says, draw from the universal laws of human nature some conclusions (though even these, we think, rather precarious) concerning the very earliest stages of human progress, of which there are either no, or very imperfect, historical records. But as society proceeds in its development, its phaenomena are determined, more and more, not by the simple tendencies of universal human nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations over the present.<br /><br />The human beings themselves, on the laws of whose nature the facts of history depend, are not abstract or universal but historical human beings, already shaped, and made what they are, by human society. This being the case, no powers of deduction could enable any one, starting from the mere conception of the Being Man, placed in a world such as the earth may have been before the commencement of human agency, to predict and calculate the phaenomena of his development such as they have in fact proved. If the facts of history, empirically considered, had not given rise to any generalizations, a deductive study of history could never have reached higher than more or less plausible conjecture. By good fortune (for the case might easily have been otherwise) the history of our species, looked at as a comprehensive whole, does exhibit a determinate course, a certain order of development: though history alone cannot prove this to be a necessary law, as distinguished from a temporary accident. Here, therefore, begins the office of Biology (or, as we should say, of Psychology) in the social science.<br /><br />The universal laws of human nature are part of the data of sociology, but in using them we must reverse the method of the deductive physical sciences: for while, in these, specific experience commonly serves to verify laws arrived at by deduction, in sociology it is specific experience which suggests the laws, and deduction which verifies them. If a sociological theory, collected from historical evidence, contradicts the established general laws of human nature; if (to use M. Comte's instances) it implies, in the mass of mankind, any very decided natural bent, either in a good or in a bad direction; if it supposes that the reason, in average human beings, predominates over the desires, or the disinterested desires over the personal; we may know that history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory is false. On the other hand, if laws of social phaenomena, empirically generalized from history, can when once suggested be affiliated to the known laws of human nature; if the direction actually taken by the developments and changes of human society, can be seen to be such as the properties of man and of his dwelling-place made antecedently probable, the empirical generalizations are raised into positive laws, and Sociology becomes a science.<br />--John-Stuart Mill,1865<br />[Quote Ends]<br /><br />Human nature is not a social construct, however it may be augmented and amplified by society. It may be said that now we have pushed too hard and it has oscillated out of control. I suggest that these oscillations have had staggering effects on people for as long as we have been people. No doubt it will, should we survive as a species, do so for many years more. It could be said that we live in an age that exemplifies this, but that may be said of other times too. It is difficult to say as only fragments of past times have been recorded and preserved to us. The best we can do is learn from what remains, write about it, and share that which others have found before us. And always keep in mind that we are people with a desire to understand what it means to be people. Keep being who you are, regardless of what others say, and stay firm in your own sense of self. It is also important for you to tell us what that means to you... we are listening and, with luck, it will pass on to those who follow us in time.",
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"content": "On Social Science\n\nFor more than a century people have taken the idea of looking at society with a modern critical eye, rather than the philosophic or religious of the ages past. I will present this quote before I add more, my views on the subject, and its effects today and in the future.\n\n[Quote Begins]\nThe Method proper to the Science of Society must be, in substance, the same as in all other sciences; the interrogation and interpretation of experience, by the twofold process of Induction and Deduction. But its mode of practising these operations has features of peculiarity. In general, Induction furnishes to science the laws of the elementary facts, from which, when known, those of the complex combinations are thought out deductively: specific observation of complex phaenomena yields no general laws, or only empirical ones; its scientific function is to verify the laws obtained by deduction. This mode of philosophizing is not adequate to the exigencies of sociological investigation. In social phaemomena the elementary facts are feelings and actions, and the laws of these are the laws of human nature, social facts being the results of human acts and situations.\n\nSince, then, the phaenomena of man in society result from his nature as an individual being, it might be thought that the proper mode of constructing a positive Social Science must be by deducing it from the general laws of human nature, using the facts of history merely for verification. Such, accordingly, has been the conception of social science by many of those who have endeavoured to render it positive, particularly by the school of Bentham. M. Comte considers this as an error. We may, he says, draw from the universal laws of human nature some conclusions (though even these, we think, rather precarious) concerning the very earliest stages of human progress, of which there are either no, or very imperfect, historical records. But as society proceeds in its development, its phaenomena are determined, more and more, not by the simple tendencies of universal human nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations over the present.\n\nThe human beings themselves, on the laws of whose nature the facts of history depend, are not abstract or universal but historical human beings, already shaped, and made what they are, by human society. This being the case, no powers of deduction could enable any one, starting from the mere conception of the Being Man, placed in a world such as the earth may have been before the commencement of human agency, to predict and calculate the phaenomena of his development such as they have in fact proved. If the facts of history, empirically considered, had not given rise to any generalizations, a deductive study of history could never have reached higher than more or less plausible conjecture. By good fortune (for the case might easily have been otherwise) the history of our species, looked at as a comprehensive whole, does exhibit a determinate course, a certain order of development: though history alone cannot prove this to be a necessary law, as distinguished from a temporary accident. Here, therefore, begins the office of Biology (or, as we should say, of Psychology) in the social science.\n\nThe universal laws of human nature are part of the data of sociology, but in using them we must reverse the method of the deductive physical sciences: for while, in these, specific experience commonly serves to verify laws arrived at by deduction, in sociology it is specific experience which suggests the laws, and deduction which verifies them. If a sociological theory, collected from historical evidence, contradicts the established general laws of human nature; if (to use M. Comte's instances) it implies, in the mass of mankind, any very decided natural bent, either in a good or in a bad direction; if it supposes that the reason, in average human beings, predominates over the desires, or the disinterested desires over the personal; we may know that history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory is false. On the other hand, if laws of social phaenomena, empirically generalized from history, can when once suggested be affiliated to the known laws of human nature; if the direction actually taken by the developments and changes of human society, can be seen to be such as the properties of man and of his dwelling-place made antecedently probable, the empirical generalizations are raised into positive laws, and Sociology becomes a science.\n--John-Stuart Mill,1865\n[Quote Ends]\n\nHuman nature is not a social construct, however it may be augmented and amplified by society. It may be said that now we have pushed too hard and it has oscillated out of control. I suggest that these oscillations have had staggering effects on people for as long as we have been people. No doubt it will, should we survive as a species, do so for many years more. It could be said that we live in an age that exemplifies this, but that may be said of other times too. It is difficult to say as only fragments of past times have been recorded and preserved to us. The best we can do is learn from what remains, write about it, and share that which others have found before us. And always keep in mind that we are people with a desire to understand what it means to be people. Keep being who you are, regardless of what others say, and stay firm in your own sense of self. It is also important for you to tell us what that means to you... we are listening and, with luck, it will pass on to those who follow us in time.",
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"content": "On the empowerment of women<br />(longer post this time, but take the time to read)<br />In the American experiences there is an unusual path that one can see some various directions. This should not be strange. All movements have jigs and jaws in the path towards some kind of position that holds beyond a single day. Is there some middle way? Is there something that we all can can agree on? It is a complex set of questions. I have a far libertarian and leftists point of view, which may tilt my opinion and I do do not grudge or fear any castigation for those not being so. Bring it on, and I will stand my ground; hold and support your own with as much force as I will my own. We, both, will state our position and with respect for each other. State what you wish to say, and damn those that try to silence you.<br /><br />[Quote begins]<br />For many reasons Texas was slow in entering the movement for woman suffrage. There was some agitation of the subject from about 1885 and some organization in 1893-6 but the work done was chiefly through the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In February, 1903, a meeting was called at Houston by Miss Annette Finnigan, a Texas girl and a graduate of Wellesley College. Here, with the help of her sisters, Elizabeth and Katharine Finnigan Anderson, an Equal Suffrage League was formed with Annette as president. The following month Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, lectured in Houston under its auspices. During the summer Annette and Elizabeth Finnigan spoke several times in Galveston and secured a suffrage committee of twenty-five there. With this nucleus a State Woman Suffrage Association was organized at a convention held in Houston, in December, which lasted two days and was well attended. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president of the National Association, was present at all the sessions, spoke at both evening meetings and took a deep interest in the new organization. Annette Finnigan was elected State president and during the following year made an effort to organize in Beaumont, San Antonio and Austin but the women, although interested, were too timid to organize for suffrage. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman spoke under the auspices of the league.<br /><br />The second State convention or conference was held in Houston in December, 1904, Galveston and La Porte being represented. Reports were given and officers elected, Annette Finnigan remaining president. The Houston league had a paid up membership of one hundred, regular meetings were held and the subject of woman suffrage was kept constantly before the public. An effort was made to get a woman on the school board but the Mayor refused to appoint one. Among those active in the work were Althea Jones, Miss Mary W. Roper, Mrs. E. F. and Miss Ruby McGowen of Houston; Mrs. A. Adella Penfield of La Porte, Mrs. C. H. Moore and Miss Julia Runge of Galveston. The Finnigan sisters were the leaders and the league prospered for several years until they left the State. The movement became inactive and the society formed in Austin in 1908 with twenty-five members was the only one that continued.<br /><br />In 1912 through the efforts of Miss M. Eleanor Brackenridge of San Antonio and Miss Anna Maxwell Jones, a Texas woman residing in New York, suffrage clubs were organized in San Antonio, Galveston, Dallas, Waco, Tyler and San Marcos. Miss Finnigan returned to Texas and the Houston league was revived. The third State convention was held in San Antonio in March, 1913. Miss Brackenridge was elected president, Miss Finnigan honorary president. The convention was spirited and showed that the suffrage movement was well launched. This was just ten years after the first club was started. Miss Brackenridge possessed large means and a wide acquaintance and gave much prestige to the association. A number of notable speakers were brought to the State and the subject was introduced in women's organizations. This year through the San Antonio league a bill was introduced in the Legislature but never came to a vote.<br /><br />In April, 1914, the State convention was held in Dallas and Miss Brackenridge was made honorary president and Miss Finnigan again elected president. During the year State headquarters were opened in Houston and the clubs were increased from eight to twenty-one. Miss Pearl Penfield, as headquarters and field secretary, organized the State work. The president sent letters to all the legislators asking them to pledge themselves to vote for a woman suffrage amendment to the State constitution. None of them had an idea that any of the others would agree to support it and a considerable number in a desire to \"please the ladies\" wrote charming letters of acquiescence. When in January, 1915, they confronted a large group of women lobbyists, experiences were hurriedly compared and consternation reigned among them. \"Uncle\" Jesse Baker of Granbury, of honored memory, introduced the resolution to submit an amendment to the electors. The Legislative Committee were inexperienced but they worked with such zeal that it received a vote in the House of 90 to 32. It was not considered by the Senate.<br /><br />Among those who worked with Miss Finnigan during the three months in Austin were Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham, president of the Galveston Equal Suffrage Association; Mrs. Tex Armstrong of the Dallas association; Mrs. J. O. Creighton of the Austin association; Mrs. Ed. F. Harris and Mrs. J. H. W. Steele of Galveston; Mrs. David Doom, Mrs. Robert Connerly, Mrs. L. E. Walker, Mrs. A. B. Wolfe and Mrs. R. H. Griffith, all of Austin; Mrs William H. Dunne of San Antonio; Mrs. Elizabeth Herndon Potter of Tyler; Mrs. W. E. Spell of Waco.<br /><br />On Sunday afternoon, March 28, Dr. Shaw, the guest of Miss Brackenridge, delivered a great speech in Beethoven Hall under the auspices of the San Antonio Equal Franchise Society, accompanied on the stage by its president, Mrs. Dan Leary; J. H. Kirkpatrick, president of the Men's Suffrage League, the Rev. George H. Badger and Miss Marie B. Fenwick, a veteran suffragist. Many converts were made. In April the State convention met in Galveston and reports showed twenty-one auxiliaries. Mrs. Cunningham was elected president, alert, enthusiastic and bringing to the cause the valuable experience of work in it for the past two years. The president and new board prosecuted the work so vigorously that during the year there was a 400 per cent. increase in organizations. Miss Kate Hunter, president of the Palestine league, gave her entire summer vacation to field work.<br /><br />In May, 1916, the State convention met in Dallas, re-elected Mrs. Cunningham to the presidency and instructed the executive committee to ask for suffrage planks in State and National Democratic platforms. The name was changed from Woman Suffrage to Equal Suffrage Association and the Senatorial district plan of organization was adopted, following the lines of the Democratic party. When the State Democratic convention met in San Antonio this month to elect a national committeeman there were scores of women in the galleries proudly wearing their suffrage colors but Governor James E. Ferguson and ex-U. S. Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey, both of unhallowed memory, united their forces and woman suffrage had not a remote chance.<br /><br />Texas women went to the National Republican convention in Chicago in June and a sufficient number of them to form half a block in the \"golden lane\" at the National Democratic convention in St. Louis. At the latter Governor Ferguson brought in the minority report of the Resolutions Committee against a woman suffrage plank in the platform, and let it be recorded that there were only three other men on the committee who would sign it, the remainder signing the majority report placing the plank in the platform. In August the Democratic convention met in Houston to nominate State candidates and prepare the State platform. Mrs. Cunningham, Mrs. Helen Moore and Mrs. J. M. Quinnof appeared before the platform committee and with all the eloquence at their command urged it to insert a woman suffrage plank or at least to endorse the National platform. This committee was entirely in the hands of the liquor ring and Ferguson was czar of the convention, so<br />woman suffrage was ignored.<br /><br />Mrs. Edith Hinkle League, the headquarters secretary, shared the president's ten, twelve and even fourteen-hour days of labor, so that Mrs. Cummingham was able to leave the office in charge of her and volunteer assistants while she helped to fill the pressing need of field workers and organizers. She had the assistance of Miss Lavinia Engle, one of the National Association's organizers. Despite the lack of funds when word came of West Virginia's need of Mrs. Cunningham in its amendment campaign the executive board paid her expenses to that State and she donated her services. Upon her return to Texas she devoted July and August to field work, averaging two or three speeches a day during these insufferably hot months.<br /><br />When the Legislature convened in January, 1917, the Legislative Committee were on hand. The following report by Mrs. Cunningham summarizes the work:<br /><br /> First. Opening suffrage headquarters on the main street at Austin<br /> near the Capitol. Second. A luncheon, at which the attendance<br /> exceeded the capacity of the largest hotel. The program was a<br /> mock legislative session at which the suffrage bill came up for<br /> the third reading and debate, those opposed imitating the style<br /> of the leading \"antis\" at hearings. Third. A very successful mass<br /> meeting at the Hancock Opera House with good speakers. Fourth.<br /> Introduction of the House Joint Resolution for a suffrage<br /> amendment, signed by twenty members, including some who had<br /> opposed it in 1915. Fifth. Mass meeting in the House of<br /> Representatives the night before the amendment came to a vote,<br /> invitation for this being extended by resolution of the House.<br /> Speaker F. O. Fuller presided and House and gallery were crowded.<br /><br /> Sixth. Introduction of the Primary suffrage bill in the Senate<br /> and House. Seventh. Introduction of the Presidential suffrage<br /> bill. Eighth. Speakers touring the State and keeping the cities<br /> and towns aroused; a constant stream of letters to organizations<br /> and individuals and from them to Representatives. Ninth. Press<br /> work, a weekly news letter to those papers which would reach the<br /> legislators; getting in touch with reporters and editors of the<br /> large daily papers in the State in Austin for the session. First,<br /> last and all the time work at the Capitol, interviewing members<br /> of the House and Senate, Speaker, President, and public men who<br /> could and if asked might help a little here and there. This work<br /> was carried on daily for nearly three months.<br /><br /> It is my judgment that the Presidential suffrage bill could have<br /> been passed (anticipating the Governor's veto though) but for the<br /> fact that the closing days of the session were taken up by the<br /> investigation of the Governor on charges preferred in the House.<br /><br />On January 31 the Primary suffrage bill was favorably reported by the Senate committee but was not taken from the calendar. On February 6 the resolution to submit an amendment to the voters received 76 ayes, 56 noes in the House, lacking the required two-thirds. It was not acted upon by the Senate. On February 19 the Presidential suffrage bill was referred to a Senate committee and on the 26th was returned with a favorable minority report but not acted upon.<br /><br />Early in 1917 the misdeeds of Governor Ferguson culminated and a great campaign was begun to secure his impeachment. He was the implacable foe of woman suffrage and of every great moral issue for which women stood, therefore at the very beginning of the campaign word was sent to the committee in Austin that the State Equal Suffrage Association had abandoned all other work temporarily and placed its entire resources at their command. The offer was accepted at once and the character and value of the services which the women performed may be judged from the following statement from D. K. Woodward, Jr., secretary of the Central Committee in charge of the campaign:<br /><br /> The impeachment of former Governor Ferguson could not have been<br /> brought about without the cooperation of the women of the<br /> State.... Their work was under the direction of Mrs. Cunningham,<br /> president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, who came at<br /> once to Austin and established headquarters. The women were asked<br /> to reach the remote sections, to eradicate prejudice and leave<br /> understanding in its stead.... They did all that was asked of<br /> them and more. The most confirmed skeptic on the question of<br /> women's participation in public life must have been converted had<br /> he witnessed the unselfish, tireless, efficient work of these<br /> hundreds of devoted women and the striking ability of their<br /> leader, whose genius for organization, knowledge of public<br /> affairs and public men of Texas and sound judgment on all<br /> questions of policy were of untold value.<br /><br />Then came the entrance of the United States into the World War and the suffragists consecrated time, strength, life itself if necessary to its demands. The call to the annual convention held in Waco in May, 1917, indicated with what directness and intelligence the women approached their added responsibilities. It was \"a call to the colors,\" to work for the war. War and Woman's Service; What can we do? Our Need of the Ballot to do it; True Americanism, were among the subjects considered. It voted to ask the War Department to abolish saloons in the soldiers' concentration and mobilization camps. Resolutions were passed pledging \"loyal and untiring support to the Government.\" The convention expressed itself in no uncertain tones in the following resolution telegraphed to President Wilson: \"For nearly seventy years the women of the United States have tried the State rights' route with its long and tortuous path. Since the Texas Legislature has repeatedly refused submission of the suffrage amendment to the voters, thereby repudiating the State rights' principle of the Democratic party, the State Equal Suffrage Association hereby urges your support of the Federal Suffrage Amendment to enfranchise the women of our country.\"<br />--Ida Husted Harper (editor) 1900-1920<br />[Quote ends]<br /><br />While I am no SJW I do have a great amount of support for any gender, however you define it... or however you might use your pronouns, yet I will use my own for you... ‘squid’ is the most likely, as I am a great fan of Sponge Bob.",
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"content": "On the empowerment of women\n(longer post this time, but take the time to read)\nIn the American experiences there is an unusual path that one can see some various directions. This should not be strange. All movements have jigs and jaws in the path towards some kind of position that holds beyond a single day. Is there some middle way? Is there something that we all can can agree on? It is a complex set of questions. I have a far libertarian and leftists point of view, which may tilt my opinion and I do do not grudge or fear any castigation for those not being so. Bring it on, and I will stand my ground; hold and support your own with as much force as I will my own. We, both, will state our position and with respect for each other. State what you wish to say, and damn those that try to silence you.\n\n[Quote begins]\nFor many reasons Texas was slow in entering the movement for woman suffrage. There was some agitation of the subject from about 1885 and some organization in 1893-6 but the work done was chiefly through the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In February, 1903, a meeting was called at Houston by Miss Annette Finnigan, a Texas girl and a graduate of Wellesley College. Here, with the help of her sisters, Elizabeth and Katharine Finnigan Anderson, an Equal Suffrage League was formed with Annette as president. The following month Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, lectured in Houston under its auspices. During the summer Annette and Elizabeth Finnigan spoke several times in Galveston and secured a suffrage committee of twenty-five there. With this nucleus a State Woman Suffrage Association was organized at a convention held in Houston, in December, which lasted two days and was well attended. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president of the National Association, was present at all the sessions, spoke at both evening meetings and took a deep interest in the new organization. Annette Finnigan was elected State president and during the following year made an effort to organize in Beaumont, San Antonio and Austin but the women, although interested, were too timid to organize for suffrage. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman spoke under the auspices of the league.\n\nThe second State convention or conference was held in Houston in December, 1904, Galveston and La Porte being represented. Reports were given and officers elected, Annette Finnigan remaining president. The Houston league had a paid up membership of one hundred, regular meetings were held and the subject of woman suffrage was kept constantly before the public. An effort was made to get a woman on the school board but the Mayor refused to appoint one. Among those active in the work were Althea Jones, Miss Mary W. Roper, Mrs. E. F. and Miss Ruby McGowen of Houston; Mrs. A. Adella Penfield of La Porte, Mrs. C. H. Moore and Miss Julia Runge of Galveston. The Finnigan sisters were the leaders and the league prospered for several years until they left the State. The movement became inactive and the society formed in Austin in 1908 with twenty-five members was the only one that continued.\n\nIn 1912 through the efforts of Miss M. Eleanor Brackenridge of San Antonio and Miss Anna Maxwell Jones, a Texas woman residing in New York, suffrage clubs were organized in San Antonio, Galveston, Dallas, Waco, Tyler and San Marcos. Miss Finnigan returned to Texas and the Houston league was revived. The third State convention was held in San Antonio in March, 1913. Miss Brackenridge was elected president, Miss Finnigan honorary president. The convention was spirited and showed that the suffrage movement was well launched. This was just ten years after the first club was started. Miss Brackenridge possessed large means and a wide acquaintance and gave much prestige to the association. A number of notable speakers were brought to the State and the subject was introduced in women's organizations. This year through the San Antonio league a bill was introduced in the Legislature but never came to a vote.\n\nIn April, 1914, the State convention was held in Dallas and Miss Brackenridge was made honorary president and Miss Finnigan again elected president. During the year State headquarters were opened in Houston and the clubs were increased from eight to twenty-one. Miss Pearl Penfield, as headquarters and field secretary, organized the State work. The president sent letters to all the legislators asking them to pledge themselves to vote for a woman suffrage amendment to the State constitution. None of them had an idea that any of the others would agree to support it and a considerable number in a desire to \"please the ladies\" wrote charming letters of acquiescence. When in January, 1915, they confronted a large group of women lobbyists, experiences were hurriedly compared and consternation reigned among them. \"Uncle\" Jesse Baker of Granbury, of honored memory, introduced the resolution to submit an amendment to the electors. The Legislative Committee were inexperienced but they worked with such zeal that it received a vote in the House of 90 to 32. It was not considered by the Senate.\n\nAmong those who worked with Miss Finnigan during the three months in Austin were Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham, president of the Galveston Equal Suffrage Association; Mrs. Tex Armstrong of the Dallas association; Mrs. J. O. Creighton of the Austin association; Mrs. Ed. F. Harris and Mrs. J. H. W. Steele of Galveston; Mrs. David Doom, Mrs. Robert Connerly, Mrs. L. E. Walker, Mrs. A. B. Wolfe and Mrs. R. H. Griffith, all of Austin; Mrs William H. Dunne of San Antonio; Mrs. Elizabeth Herndon Potter of Tyler; Mrs. W. E. Spell of Waco.\n\nOn Sunday afternoon, March 28, Dr. Shaw, the guest of Miss Brackenridge, delivered a great speech in Beethoven Hall under the auspices of the San Antonio Equal Franchise Society, accompanied on the stage by its president, Mrs. Dan Leary; J. H. Kirkpatrick, president of the Men's Suffrage League, the Rev. George H. Badger and Miss Marie B. Fenwick, a veteran suffragist. Many converts were made. In April the State convention met in Galveston and reports showed twenty-one auxiliaries. Mrs. Cunningham was elected president, alert, enthusiastic and bringing to the cause the valuable experience of work in it for the past two years. The president and new board prosecuted the work so vigorously that during the year there was a 400 per cent. increase in organizations. Miss Kate Hunter, president of the Palestine league, gave her entire summer vacation to field work.\n\nIn May, 1916, the State convention met in Dallas, re-elected Mrs. Cunningham to the presidency and instructed the executive committee to ask for suffrage planks in State and National Democratic platforms. The name was changed from Woman Suffrage to Equal Suffrage Association and the Senatorial district plan of organization was adopted, following the lines of the Democratic party. When the State Democratic convention met in San Antonio this month to elect a national committeeman there were scores of women in the galleries proudly wearing their suffrage colors but Governor James E. Ferguson and ex-U. S. Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey, both of unhallowed memory, united their forces and woman suffrage had not a remote chance.\n\nTexas women went to the National Republican convention in Chicago in June and a sufficient number of them to form half a block in the \"golden lane\" at the National Democratic convention in St. Louis. At the latter Governor Ferguson brought in the minority report of the Resolutions Committee against a woman suffrage plank in the platform, and let it be recorded that there were only three other men on the committee who would sign it, the remainder signing the majority report placing the plank in the platform. In August the Democratic convention met in Houston to nominate State candidates and prepare the State platform. Mrs. Cunningham, Mrs. Helen Moore and Mrs. J. M. Quinnof appeared before the platform committee and with all the eloquence at their command urged it to insert a woman suffrage plank or at least to endorse the National platform. This committee was entirely in the hands of the liquor ring and Ferguson was czar of the convention, so\nwoman suffrage was ignored.\n\nMrs. Edith Hinkle League, the headquarters secretary, shared the president's ten, twelve and even fourteen-hour days of labor, so that Mrs. Cummingham was able to leave the office in charge of her and volunteer assistants while she helped to fill the pressing need of field workers and organizers. She had the assistance of Miss Lavinia Engle, one of the National Association's organizers. Despite the lack of funds when word came of West Virginia's need of Mrs. Cunningham in its amendment campaign the executive board paid her expenses to that State and she donated her services. Upon her return to Texas she devoted July and August to field work, averaging two or three speeches a day during these insufferably hot months.\n\nWhen the Legislature convened in January, 1917, the Legislative Committee were on hand. The following report by Mrs. Cunningham summarizes the work:\n\n First. Opening suffrage headquarters on the main street at Austin\n near the Capitol. Second. A luncheon, at which the attendance\n exceeded the capacity of the largest hotel. The program was a\n mock legislative session at which the suffrage bill came up for\n the third reading and debate, those opposed imitating the style\n of the leading \"antis\" at hearings. Third. A very successful mass\n meeting at the Hancock Opera House with good speakers. Fourth.\n Introduction of the House Joint Resolution for a suffrage\n amendment, signed by twenty members, including some who had\n opposed it in 1915. Fifth. Mass meeting in the House of\n Representatives the night before the amendment came to a vote,\n invitation for this being extended by resolution of the House.\n Speaker F. O. Fuller presided and House and gallery were crowded.\n\n Sixth. Introduction of the Primary suffrage bill in the Senate\n and House. Seventh. Introduction of the Presidential suffrage\n bill. Eighth. Speakers touring the State and keeping the cities\n and towns aroused; a constant stream of letters to organizations\n and individuals and from them to Representatives. Ninth. Press\n work, a weekly news letter to those papers which would reach the\n legislators; getting in touch with reporters and editors of the\n large daily papers in the State in Austin for the session. First,\n last and all the time work at the Capitol, interviewing members\n of the House and Senate, Speaker, President, and public men who\n could and if asked might help a little here and there. This work\n was carried on daily for nearly three months.\n\n It is my judgment that the Presidential suffrage bill could have\n been passed (anticipating the Governor's veto though) but for the\n fact that the closing days of the session were taken up by the\n investigation of the Governor on charges preferred in the House.\n\nOn January 31 the Primary suffrage bill was favorably reported by the Senate committee but was not taken from the calendar. On February 6 the resolution to submit an amendment to the voters received 76 ayes, 56 noes in the House, lacking the required two-thirds. It was not acted upon by the Senate. On February 19 the Presidential suffrage bill was referred to a Senate committee and on the 26th was returned with a favorable minority report but not acted upon.\n\nEarly in 1917 the misdeeds of Governor Ferguson culminated and a great campaign was begun to secure his impeachment. He was the implacable foe of woman suffrage and of every great moral issue for which women stood, therefore at the very beginning of the campaign word was sent to the committee in Austin that the State Equal Suffrage Association had abandoned all other work temporarily and placed its entire resources at their command. The offer was accepted at once and the character and value of the services which the women performed may be judged from the following statement from D. K. Woodward, Jr., secretary of the Central Committee in charge of the campaign:\n\n The impeachment of former Governor Ferguson could not have been\n brought about without the cooperation of the women of the\n State.... Their work was under the direction of Mrs. Cunningham,\n president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, who came at\n once to Austin and established headquarters. The women were asked\n to reach the remote sections, to eradicate prejudice and leave\n understanding in its stead.... They did all that was asked of\n them and more. The most confirmed skeptic on the question of\n women's participation in public life must have been converted had\n he witnessed the unselfish, tireless, efficient work of these\n hundreds of devoted women and the striking ability of their\n leader, whose genius for organization, knowledge of public\n affairs and public men of Texas and sound judgment on all\n questions of policy were of untold value.\n\nThen came the entrance of the United States into the World War and the suffragists consecrated time, strength, life itself if necessary to its demands. The call to the annual convention held in Waco in May, 1917, indicated with what directness and intelligence the women approached their added responsibilities. It was \"a call to the colors,\" to work for the war. War and Woman's Service; What can we do? Our Need of the Ballot to do it; True Americanism, were among the subjects considered. It voted to ask the War Department to abolish saloons in the soldiers' concentration and mobilization camps. Resolutions were passed pledging \"loyal and untiring support to the Government.\" The convention expressed itself in no uncertain tones in the following resolution telegraphed to President Wilson: \"For nearly seventy years the women of the United States have tried the State rights' route with its long and tortuous path. Since the Texas Legislature has repeatedly refused submission of the suffrage amendment to the voters, thereby repudiating the State rights' principle of the Democratic party, the State Equal Suffrage Association hereby urges your support of the Federal Suffrage Amendment to enfranchise the women of our country.\"\n--Ida Husted Harper (editor) 1900-1920\n[Quote ends]\n\nWhile I am no SJW I do have a great amount of support for any gender, however you define it... or however you might use your pronouns, yet I will use my own for you... ‘squid’ is the most likely, as I am a great fan of Sponge Bob.",
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"content": "On Progressivism<br /><br />The fractured nature of any movement, in any time, (shakes fist at People's Front of Judea), is that members rarely meet every criteria of your ideology. Some may be too dark, others too light, some may wish for reforms that seem to you as minor to an issue. The list is as vast as the issues that may need to be reviewed. The trivial and idiotic creeps in and tempers flare. Then splintering, as riffed above, will sap any progress that you have worked towards.<br /><br />[Quote begins]<br />\"Good Heavens, these are not the people for me!\" I thought. \"And what a fool I have made of myself before them! I let Ferfitchkin go too far, though. The brutes imagine they are doing me an honour in letting me sit down with them. They don't understand that it's an honour to them and not to me! I've grown thinner! My clothes! Oh, damn my trousers!<br /><br />Zverkov noticed the yellow stain on the knee as soon as he came in .... But what's the use! I must get up at once, this very minute, take my hat and simply go without a word ... with contempt! And tomorrow I can send a challenge. The scoundrels! As though I cared about the seven roubles. They may think .... Damn it! I don't care about the seven roubles. I'll go this minute!\"<br /><br />Of course I remained. I drank sherry and Lafitte by the glassful in my discomfiture. Being unaccustomed to it, I was quickly affected. My annoyance increased as the wine went to my head. I longed all at once to insult them all in a most flagrant manner and then go away. To seize the moment and show what I could do, so that they would say, \"He's clever, though he is absurd,\" and ... and ... in fact, damn them all!<br /><br />I scanned them all insolently with my drowsy eyes. But they seemed to have forgotten me altogether. They were noisy, vociferous, cheerful.<br />Zverkov was talking all the time. I began listening. Zverkov was talking of some exuberant lady whom he had at last led on to declaring her love (of course, he was lying like a horse), and how he had been helped in this affair by an intimate friend of his, a Prince Kolya, an officer in the hussars, who had three thousand serfs.<br /><br />\"And yet this Kolya, who has three thousand serfs, has not put in an appearance here tonight to see you off,\" I cut in suddenly.<br /><br />For one minute every one was silent. \"You are drunk already.\"<br />Trudolyubov deigned to notice me at last, glancing contemptuously in my direction. Zverkov, without a word, examined me as though I were an insect. I dropped my eyes. Simonov made haste to fill up the glasses with champagne.<br /><br />Trudolyubov raised his glass, as did everyone else but me.<br />--Feodor Dostoevsky<br />[Quote ends]<br /><br />What can be done about this? When most groups push for rigid conformity to the stated aims, goals, and platforms of the creed? Obligatory uniformity in the extreme rarely works for more than a decade and a half. It mostly serves only to bolster opposition. Where it has worked, for longer, in history, is where brute force and suborning of the title of a movement has taken place, usually from a military cabal or an oligarchy made of both the nobility and merchant class that has had the power to dominate. Resist friends, resist. Take the high-road and be strong in the face of it.",
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"content": "On Progressivism\n\nThe fractured nature of any movement, in any time, (shakes fist at People's Front of Judea), is that members rarely meet every criteria of your ideology. Some may be too dark, others too light, some may wish for reforms that seem to you as minor to an issue. The list is as vast as the issues that may need to be reviewed. The trivial and idiotic creeps in and tempers flare. Then splintering, as riffed above, will sap any progress that you have worked towards.\n\n[Quote begins]\n\"Good Heavens, these are not the people for me!\" I thought. \"And what a fool I have made of myself before them! I let Ferfitchkin go too far, though. The brutes imagine they are doing me an honour in letting me sit down with them. They don't understand that it's an honour to them and not to me! I've grown thinner! My clothes! Oh, damn my trousers!\n\nZverkov noticed the yellow stain on the knee as soon as he came in .... But what's the use! I must get up at once, this very minute, take my hat and simply go without a word ... with contempt! And tomorrow I can send a challenge. The scoundrels! As though I cared about the seven roubles. They may think .... Damn it! I don't care about the seven roubles. I'll go this minute!\"\n\nOf course I remained. I drank sherry and Lafitte by the glassful in my discomfiture. Being unaccustomed to it, I was quickly affected. My annoyance increased as the wine went to my head. I longed all at once to insult them all in a most flagrant manner and then go away. To seize the moment and show what I could do, so that they would say, \"He's clever, though he is absurd,\" and ... and ... in fact, damn them all!\n\nI scanned them all insolently with my drowsy eyes. But they seemed to have forgotten me altogether. They were noisy, vociferous, cheerful.\nZverkov was talking all the time. I began listening. Zverkov was talking of some exuberant lady whom he had at last led on to declaring her love (of course, he was lying like a horse), and how he had been helped in this affair by an intimate friend of his, a Prince Kolya, an officer in the hussars, who had three thousand serfs.\n\n\"And yet this Kolya, who has three thousand serfs, has not put in an appearance here tonight to see you off,\" I cut in suddenly.\n\nFor one minute every one was silent. \"You are drunk already.\"\nTrudolyubov deigned to notice me at last, glancing contemptuously in my direction. Zverkov, without a word, examined me as though I were an insect. I dropped my eyes. Simonov made haste to fill up the glasses with champagne.\n\nTrudolyubov raised his glass, as did everyone else but me.\n--Feodor Dostoevsky\n[Quote ends]\n\nWhat can be done about this? When most groups push for rigid conformity to the stated aims, goals, and platforms of the creed? Obligatory uniformity in the extreme rarely works for more than a decade and a half. It mostly serves only to bolster opposition. Where it has worked, for longer, in history, is where brute force and suborning of the title of a movement has taken place, usually from a military cabal or an oligarchy made of both the nobility and merchant class that has had the power to dominate. Resist friends, resist. Take the high-road and be strong in the face of it.",
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"content": "On hoops<br /><br />The flowering of accusations of cultural appropriation has been growing. So, I was reminded by this poem from a century ago. The theme and flavour of this wonderful bit of sarcasm seems timeless. It also bends the character illustrated to both of worth and worthless in turns as it plays out. A double edge is the mark of a writer who is not willing to exclude the dual nature of a person having some good and some bad ideas within them.<br /><br />[Quote starts]<br />THE POSTER GIRL<br />The blessed Poster Girl leaned out<br />From a pinky-purple heaven;<br />One eye was red and one was green;<br />Her bang was cut uneven;<br />She had three fingers on her hand,<br />And the hairs on her head were seven,<br /><br />Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,<br />No sunflowers did adorn;<br />But a heavy Turkish portiere<br />Was very neatly worn;<br />And the hat that lay along her back<br />Was yellow like canned corn.<br /><br />It was a kind of wobbly wave<br />That she was standing on,<br />And high aloft she flung a scarf<br />That must have weighed a ton;<br />And she was rather tall--at least<br />She reached up to the sun.<br /><br />She curved and writhed, and then she said<br />Less green of speech than blue:<br />\"Perhaps I am absurd--perhaps<br />I don't appeal to you;<br />But my artistic worth depends<br />Upon the point of view.\"<br /><br />I saw her smile, although her eyes<br />Were only smudgy smears;<br />And then she swished her swirling arms,<br />And wagged her gorgeous ears,<br />She sobbed a blue-and-green-checked sob,<br />And wept some purple tears.<br />Carolyn Wells --1903<br />[Quote ends]<br /><br />Say what you will, and do it with style.",
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"content": "On hoops\n\nThe flowering of accusations of cultural appropriation has been growing. So, I was reminded by this poem from a century ago. The theme and flavour of this wonderful bit of sarcasm seems timeless. It also bends the character illustrated to both of worth and worthless in turns as it plays out. A double edge is the mark of a writer who is not willing to exclude the dual nature of a person having some good and some bad ideas within them.\n\n[Quote starts]\nTHE POSTER GIRL\nThe blessed Poster Girl leaned out\nFrom a pinky-purple heaven;\nOne eye was red and one was green;\nHer bang was cut uneven;\nShe had three fingers on her hand,\nAnd the hairs on her head were seven,\n\nHer robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,\nNo sunflowers did adorn;\nBut a heavy Turkish portiere\nWas very neatly worn;\nAnd the hat that lay along her back\nWas yellow like canned corn.\n\nIt was a kind of wobbly wave\nThat she was standing on,\nAnd high aloft she flung a scarf\nThat must have weighed a ton;\nAnd she was rather tall--at least\nShe reached up to the sun.\n\nShe curved and writhed, and then she said\nLess green of speech than blue:\n\"Perhaps I am absurd--perhaps\nI don't appeal to you;\nBut my artistic worth depends\nUpon the point of view.\"\n\nI saw her smile, although her eyes\nWere only smudgy smears;\nAnd then she swished her swirling arms,\nAnd wagged her gorgeous ears,\nShe sobbed a blue-and-green-checked sob,\nAnd wept some purple tears.\nCarolyn Wells --1903\n[Quote ends]\n\nSay what you will, and do it with style.",
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"content": "The current year.<br /><br />\"Your dogs and swine eat the food of men, and you do not know to store up of the abundance. There are people dying from famine on the roads, and you do not know to issue your stores for their relief. When men die, you say, 'It is not owing to me; it is owing to the year,' In what does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying, 'It was not I; it was the weapon'? Let your Majesty cease to lay the blame on the year and instantly the people, all under the sky, will come to you.\"<br /><br />King Hwuy of Leang said, \"I wish quietly to receive your instructions.\" Mencius replied, \"Is there any difference between killing a man with a stick and with a sword?\" \"There is no difference,\" was the answer.<br /><br />Mencius continued, \"Is there any difference between doing it with a sword and with governmental measures?\" \"There is not,\" was the answer again.<br /><br />RIP Daphne Caruana Galizia",
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"content": "The current year.\n\n\"Your dogs and swine eat the food of men, and you do not know to store up of the abundance. There are people dying from famine on the roads, and you do not know to issue your stores for their relief. When men die, you say, 'It is not owing to me; it is owing to the year,' In what does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying, 'It was not I; it was the weapon'? Let your Majesty cease to lay the blame on the year and instantly the people, all under the sky, will come to you.\"\n\nKing Hwuy of Leang said, \"I wish quietly to receive your instructions.\" Mencius replied, \"Is there any difference between killing a man with a stick and with a sword?\" \"There is no difference,\" was the answer.\n\nMencius continued, \"Is there any difference between doing it with a sword and with governmental measures?\" \"There is not,\" was the answer again.\n\nRIP Daphne Caruana Galizia",
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"content": "On the education of young women<br /><br />It is interesting that the modern Marxists have abandoned the notion of class, and have focused their attentions to that of the perceived categories of power, race, and privilege.<br /><br />This is a gross error on their part. SJWs, and indeed the authoritarian right, have fully embraced the idea that our destiny is defined by our birth. Be it of gender, colour, poverty, or of simple ignorance. And no amount of action, reform, education, or even simple growth, will ever change who and what our position in society will be. Improvement is, in their view is only that, improvement, not change. While we, in this era, can at least modify our gender; yet even that is not quite good enough for those who seek to compartmentalize us into cards that may be played in the game of oppression olympics. Make no mistake, oppression is what these people wish for, if only to validate their existence as 'voices' on our/your behalf. In addition, do not think that you could or can ever speak for yourself. They will do it for you, and will surely gather all the laurels for doing so. This is not a new phenomena, this has been so for more than five thousand years. The quote for this post speaks of a more recent time, and I might draw your attention to more than just one of the primary factors here... but keep 'class' top most in your minds.<br /><br /><br />[Quote Begins]<br />About ten years ago, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the condition of the education of the country; and though the plan first contemplated, included only boys' schools, the commissioners were later instructed to extend their inquiry to girls' schools. The report of this commission bore the most concurrent testimony, that the girls' schools were much inferior to the boys' schools. They complained that too many subjects were attempted, too little thoroughness was attained; that there was a disposition to limit the education too largely to moral training; that much time was wasted on music; arithmetic is spoken of as \"a weak point,\" and mathematics, beyond this, as seldom attempted. I have not space for the full consideration of the points brought out by the commissioners. I give only enough to show that the average and almost universal education of English women is wholly of the old-time feminine type -- useful sewing, reading, writing, and religious instruction for the girls of the lower classes; ornamental needlework, music, modern languages, history, and English composition for the girls of the higher classes. The result is, as far as I have been able to judge, women who are in a rare degree truthful, pure, and faithful to recognized obligations, but, as a rule, their range of recognized obligations is not very wide, and the subjects in which they take an interest are very limited. Among the lower classes men are said to seek society in the beer-shops, and in the higher classes, at the clubs and with their gentlemen friends, because they have little companionship at home. The education is so different that there is far less of companionship between men and women than with us. Among the lower classes, great wastefulness in the family economies is attributed to the ignorance of the women. In the report of one of the meetings of the Social Science Congress, I find the statement of a working man which, I am sure, expresses the general feeling of the people of the country. In referring to the want of education, and the consequent want of the home-creating power among the women, he said: \"The homes of our artisans are not nearly equal to the work they execute, nor to the wages they earn.\" Among the higher classes, I am disposed to believe, that nowhere else can women be found so exactly fitted for the place that the popular sentiment expects them to fill; in short, that the handiwork of man shows no higher triumph of skill in adapting its instrument to the purpose it is meant to serve, than is seen in these moral, healthy, dignified, orderly, executive English matrons; and though the place they fill in the work of the world is not very large, it is not strange that the conservative sentiment of the country dreads to disturb the perfect balance.<br /><br />The narrow intellectual attainments of these women do not interfere very much with the general prosperity of the family. Social position depends so largely upon birth that no amount of intelligence or grace would enable them to add very much to acquaintance or popularity; and the servants are so skilful in their departments, that the cleverest amateur could help them but little.<br /><br />All these women of the upper class uniformly write and speak better English than we do. This is, perhaps, quite as much due to the fact that they neither hear nor read anything but good English, as to the careful drill in English composition given in English schools. I am speaking now of the intellectual attainments of the very large proportion of the women in this upper class; but among them are women, forming a considerable class, with whom we have very few to compare, and none to equal the best. But these highly educated women do not owe their attainments to the schools and governesses. For the most part, they are the daughters of learned men, by whom they have been taught, or they have kept along with their brothers, who were getting \"honors\" at the public schools and universities. If women have once studied enough to create an intellectual appetite, the privacy of English homes, especially rural homes, furnishes great facilities for fostering it. In regard to the school habits of girls under eighteen, I quote the following statements, from the letter of a teacher whose opinion and practice respecting these matters would be received with as much authority as that of any person in England:<br /><br />-1st. We insist upon plenty of sleep. Our oldest pupils go to bed at nine o'clock, the younger ones at eight or half-past eight; and none rise before six. We have no work before breakfast. We allow no later hours, and no omission of out-door exercises when preparing for examination.<br /><br />-2d. We do not allow them to work immediately after a meal, and after dinner we have no lessons (recitations), except music and dancing, and no heavy study.<br /><br />-3d. We regularly secure from one to two hours' exercise in the open air, and we never keep them too long at one occupation; but they must work vigorously while they are about it.<br /><br />-4th. We make a great point of warm clothing and careful ventilation of the rooms.<br /><br />-5th. The intellectual work is not allowed to exceed six hours per day; and if more than one hour is given to music, the other work is diminished.<br /><br />-6th. Each girl is watched, and little ailments are attended to.<br /><br />This schedule represents the general practice in the best schools and under the best governesses, and the poorer schools differ mainly only in this, that they permit more dawdling work. In a few schools, girls who are a little older, or are exceptionally strong, are permitted to exceed the six-hour limit of work; but the general habit and feeling would be so much against it, that, as a rule, the girl would not think of asking the exceptional favor, and the teacher would not like the responsibility of giving it. These rules, of course, are not always thoroughly carried out; but with the careful home discipline, the habits of obedience in girls, and the frank intercourse and co-operation between parents and teachers, it is safe to say a pretty strict observance of them is secured.<br /><br />In regard to the care taken of girls during the few years of their most rapid and culminating development there are no rules uniformly observed, except that riding, and very vigorous exercises, are prohibited on the occasions when the system has less than its usual vigor. Beyond this, the sixth rule given above covers the whole ground. Whatever especial care is needed, is adapted to individual cases. If paleness, languor, or unusual color is observed, it is at once traced to its cause, and that cause is removed. The schools that expect to get the daughters from the best families must show the best results in health. I quote the following from the letter of a teacher whose large and varied experience in teaching girls and women, and whose present educational position, together with her especial knowledge of physiology, makes her, I think, the best authority upon this point: \"The result of my observation is, that English mothers and schoolmistresses are very careful about the health of girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen -- in fact, rather disposed to be over-careful, and to listen to the fears of medical men as to overwork. I have known girls who suffered from unnatural conditions of their functional organization, but I can safely say these have never been brought on by mental work; they have been induced by change of diet, such as girls brought into town from the country must always experience, or by coming into a sedentary life after an active one, or from inattention to the action of the digestive organs, but none from mental work. My own experience would lead me most unhesitatingly to say that regular mental occupation, well arranged, conduces wholly to the health of a girl in every way, and that girls who have well-regulated mental work are far less liable to fall into hysterical fancies than those who have not such occupation.\"<br />--Mary E. Beedy (1872) Edited by Anna C. Brackett (1874)<br />[Quote Ends]<br /><br />Postscript:<br />The author, and editor, of the quote may have some good intentions, and have some sympathy for the plight of the lower classes, but it is clear that she has no idea as to the level of poverty faced by the vast majority of people in her time. There is Class (big cee) in all its sordid and delusional ignorance, in full view. Reformers and social engineers of the late nineteenth century had an amazing ability to ignore the under-class(es) --yes ee fucking ess-- in any measure beyond the need to virtue signal as hard as any SJW of our own time. It should be also noted that the author and those she quotes do not think that women and girls are unequal to the intellectual attainment that men and boys might aspire to. It is why I have used this quote here. Misguided such commentators might be in our eyes today, there is clear indications that some were beginning to question and challenge themselves and their peers to see beyond the limitations imposed by a rigid social order. Be it gender, class, or colour. I am no SJW, but we can and should seek to continue to do this, to challenge bias and assumptions that limit growth and achievement, regardless of any pigeon-hole that someone else stuffs us into for their own use. And use us they will, if we do not stand for ourselves.",
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"content": "On the education of young women\n\nIt is interesting that the modern Marxists have abandoned the notion of class, and have focused their attentions to that of the perceived categories of power, race, and privilege.\n\nThis is a gross error on their part. SJWs, and indeed the authoritarian right, have fully embraced the idea that our destiny is defined by our birth. Be it of gender, colour, poverty, or of simple ignorance. And no amount of action, reform, education, or even simple growth, will ever change who and what our position in society will be. Improvement is, in their view is only that, improvement, not change. While we, in this era, can at least modify our gender; yet even that is not quite good enough for those who seek to compartmentalize us into cards that may be played in the game of oppression olympics. Make no mistake, oppression is what these people wish for, if only to validate their existence as 'voices' on our/your behalf. In addition, do not think that you could or can ever speak for yourself. They will do it for you, and will surely gather all the laurels for doing so. This is not a new phenomena, this has been so for more than five thousand years. The quote for this post speaks of a more recent time, and I might draw your attention to more than just one of the primary factors here... but keep 'class' top most in your minds.\n\n\n[Quote Begins]\nAbout ten years ago, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the condition of the education of the country; and though the plan first contemplated, included only boys' schools, the commissioners were later instructed to extend their inquiry to girls' schools. The report of this commission bore the most concurrent testimony, that the girls' schools were much inferior to the boys' schools. They complained that too many subjects were attempted, too little thoroughness was attained; that there was a disposition to limit the education too largely to moral training; that much time was wasted on music; arithmetic is spoken of as \"a weak point,\" and mathematics, beyond this, as seldom attempted. I have not space for the full consideration of the points brought out by the commissioners. I give only enough to show that the average and almost universal education of English women is wholly of the old-time feminine type -- useful sewing, reading, writing, and religious instruction for the girls of the lower classes; ornamental needlework, music, modern languages, history, and English composition for the girls of the higher classes. The result is, as far as I have been able to judge, women who are in a rare degree truthful, pure, and faithful to recognized obligations, but, as a rule, their range of recognized obligations is not very wide, and the subjects in which they take an interest are very limited. Among the lower classes men are said to seek society in the beer-shops, and in the higher classes, at the clubs and with their gentlemen friends, because they have little companionship at home. The education is so different that there is far less of companionship between men and women than with us. Among the lower classes, great wastefulness in the family economies is attributed to the ignorance of the women. In the report of one of the meetings of the Social Science Congress, I find the statement of a working man which, I am sure, expresses the general feeling of the people of the country. In referring to the want of education, and the consequent want of the home-creating power among the women, he said: \"The homes of our artisans are not nearly equal to the work they execute, nor to the wages they earn.\" Among the higher classes, I am disposed to believe, that nowhere else can women be found so exactly fitted for the place that the popular sentiment expects them to fill; in short, that the handiwork of man shows no higher triumph of skill in adapting its instrument to the purpose it is meant to serve, than is seen in these moral, healthy, dignified, orderly, executive English matrons; and though the place they fill in the work of the world is not very large, it is not strange that the conservative sentiment of the country dreads to disturb the perfect balance.\n\nThe narrow intellectual attainments of these women do not interfere very much with the general prosperity of the family. Social position depends so largely upon birth that no amount of intelligence or grace would enable them to add very much to acquaintance or popularity; and the servants are so skilful in their departments, that the cleverest amateur could help them but little.\n\nAll these women of the upper class uniformly write and speak better English than we do. This is, perhaps, quite as much due to the fact that they neither hear nor read anything but good English, as to the careful drill in English composition given in English schools. I am speaking now of the intellectual attainments of the very large proportion of the women in this upper class; but among them are women, forming a considerable class, with whom we have very few to compare, and none to equal the best. But these highly educated women do not owe their attainments to the schools and governesses. For the most part, they are the daughters of learned men, by whom they have been taught, or they have kept along with their brothers, who were getting \"honors\" at the public schools and universities. If women have once studied enough to create an intellectual appetite, the privacy of English homes, especially rural homes, furnishes great facilities for fostering it. In regard to the school habits of girls under eighteen, I quote the following statements, from the letter of a teacher whose opinion and practice respecting these matters would be received with as much authority as that of any person in England:\n\n-1st. We insist upon plenty of sleep. Our oldest pupils go to bed at nine o'clock, the younger ones at eight or half-past eight; and none rise before six. We have no work before breakfast. We allow no later hours, and no omission of out-door exercises when preparing for examination.\n\n-2d. We do not allow them to work immediately after a meal, and after dinner we have no lessons (recitations), except music and dancing, and no heavy study.\n\n-3d. We regularly secure from one to two hours' exercise in the open air, and we never keep them too long at one occupation; but they must work vigorously while they are about it.\n\n-4th. We make a great point of warm clothing and careful ventilation of the rooms.\n\n-5th. The intellectual work is not allowed to exceed six hours per day; and if more than one hour is given to music, the other work is diminished.\n\n-6th. Each girl is watched, and little ailments are attended to.\n\nThis schedule represents the general practice in the best schools and under the best governesses, and the poorer schools differ mainly only in this, that they permit more dawdling work. In a few schools, girls who are a little older, or are exceptionally strong, are permitted to exceed the six-hour limit of work; but the general habit and feeling would be so much against it, that, as a rule, the girl would not think of asking the exceptional favor, and the teacher would not like the responsibility of giving it. These rules, of course, are not always thoroughly carried out; but with the careful home discipline, the habits of obedience in girls, and the frank intercourse and co-operation between parents and teachers, it is safe to say a pretty strict observance of them is secured.\n\nIn regard to the care taken of girls during the few years of their most rapid and culminating development there are no rules uniformly observed, except that riding, and very vigorous exercises, are prohibited on the occasions when the system has less than its usual vigor. Beyond this, the sixth rule given above covers the whole ground. Whatever especial care is needed, is adapted to individual cases. If paleness, languor, or unusual color is observed, it is at once traced to its cause, and that cause is removed. The schools that expect to get the daughters from the best families must show the best results in health. I quote the following from the letter of a teacher whose large and varied experience in teaching girls and women, and whose present educational position, together with her especial knowledge of physiology, makes her, I think, the best authority upon this point: \"The result of my observation is, that English mothers and schoolmistresses are very careful about the health of girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen -- in fact, rather disposed to be over-careful, and to listen to the fears of medical men as to overwork. I have known girls who suffered from unnatural conditions of their functional organization, but I can safely say these have never been brought on by mental work; they have been induced by change of diet, such as girls brought into town from the country must always experience, or by coming into a sedentary life after an active one, or from inattention to the action of the digestive organs, but none from mental work. My own experience would lead me most unhesitatingly to say that regular mental occupation, well arranged, conduces wholly to the health of a girl in every way, and that girls who have well-regulated mental work are far less liable to fall into hysterical fancies than those who have not such occupation.\"\n--Mary E. Beedy (1872) Edited by Anna C. Brackett (1874)\n[Quote Ends]\n\nPostscript:\nThe author, and editor, of the quote may have some good intentions, and have some sympathy for the plight of the lower classes, but it is clear that she has no idea as to the level of poverty faced by the vast majority of people in her time. There is Class (big cee) in all its sordid and delusional ignorance, in full view. Reformers and social engineers of the late nineteenth century had an amazing ability to ignore the under-class(es) --yes ee fucking ess-- in any measure beyond the need to virtue signal as hard as any SJW of our own time. It should be also noted that the author and those she quotes do not think that women and girls are unequal to the intellectual attainment that men and boys might aspire to. It is why I have used this quote here. Misguided such commentators might be in our eyes today, there is clear indications that some were beginning to question and challenge themselves and their peers to see beyond the limitations imposed by a rigid social order. Be it gender, class, or colour. I am no SJW, but we can and should seek to continue to do this, to challenge bias and assumptions that limit growth and achievement, regardless of any pigeon-hole that someone else stuffs us into for their own use. And use us they will, if we do not stand for ourselves.",
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"content": "On the other:<br /><br />In the ebb and flow of our lives there is something that sets us apart from the animals. We, as aware creatures, can and do understand that there is more to existence than just our ability to exist. It is a wonder and something profound [IMHO], it is perhaps even amazing; that we can imagine things beyond the framework of physics -- the mere mechanics of our universe. If thought was, as it is suggested by the misguided, that we are our solely defined by our thoughts... Lucas might travel faster than light, Christie would be a mass-murderer, Clancy a war-criminal, Darwin a daemon, Dumas a drunken man-at-arms. Yet, we, I hope, can see that what we think is not equivalent to what our actions are. Some among us would like to conflate thought with action, and thereby castigate those who think differently. We cannot, and I might be so bold as to say should not, look at what is in people’s minds with the notion that thought is sin or hatred; as it is clear that opinion and taste is not action. More to the key point here, sin or crime is all to often something that those who would seek to harm us use and they have created the concept to instil and exploit our fears and doubts. Manufacturing fear, of what is not understood or more importantly something not chief among the precepts of their ideologies, is in fact their design and goal.<br /><br />It is all a sad part of the tremendously unique nature of a creature that has become self-aware and, alas, it can become massively deranged and stray from the common thread that has bound us for a couple million years. Some, as I have pointed out, become afraid about any divergence in thought; in the past and they will again -- until the end of us. They look about at the others around them, and they then trundle on to thinking that there must be some way to alter and mould others to their specific world-view in order to reduce their own fears. Fears that they have created for themselves. Conformity or unification, in their eyes, is an imperative that grows from this fear, that there might be entities that do not share in exactly their perceptions is all too frightening to them... then force is used... and then it leads, too often, to death(s).<br />A small quote, and then I will expand a little more.<br /><br />[Quote Begins]<br />To find if the cold wave were pitiful and good--<br />And someday I shall see come drifting home, I know,<br />To all-forgiving Lesbos on the twilight flood<br />The loved remains of Sappho, who set forth long ago<br />To find if the cold wave were pitiful and good;<br /><br />Of Sappho, poet and lover, the virile, calm, and brave,<br />More beautiful than Venus, by force of earthly grief--<br />More beautiful than blue-eyed Venus, for her grave<br />And dusky glance disclosing the sorrows past belief<br />Of Sappho, poet and lover, the virile, calm, and brave:<br /><br />More beautiful than Venus arising to the world<br />And scattering all round her the iridescent fire<br />Of her blond loveliness with rainbow hues impearled<br />Upon the old green ocean, her bedazzled sire;<br />More beautiful than Venus arising to the world!<br /><br />--Of Sappho, dying swiftly the day of her soul's crime<br />When, faithless to her creed and to her ritual pledge,<br />She flung the occult dark roses of her love sublime<br />To a vain churl whose scorn rebuked the sacrilege<br />Of Sappho, dying swiftly the day of her soul's crime.<br /><br />And from that day to this the isle Lesbos mourns,<br />And heedful of the world's late homage in no wise,<br />Gives answer but with the hollow moaning of her bourns,<br />The sea's long cry of anguish to the unhearing skies,<br />And from that day to this the isle of Lesbos mourns.<br /><br />-- George Dillon, 1936 (Flowers Of Evil)<br />[Quote Ends]<br /><br />Postscript:<br />Why must we fight? Why must we insist that all others do as we might do? The answer is quite difficult to unpack. Many great and wise people have spoken of this, for more than six millennia, and we are still left wanting for a full answer. Is there some kind of death-wish, deep within humanity, that drives us to hate, that drives us to reject love?<br /><br />I say no, there is not.<br /><br />If there was such a force we, humanity, would not be here to ask that question. Love, friendship, comradeship, and on to society itself would not have prospered to have a planet where there are billions of wonderful people. Who all, except for a tiny minority of nihilistic fucktards, are joyful in life; despite hardship and the difficult situations we can and do create for one another, and even in the face of the astoundingly massive forces that move our universe -- that could crush us all within a microsecond. And they/we do this regardless of what anyone might have under their clothes, what they might own, what they might think, or wherever they might be from. For they, like us all, are what we are and where we came from. The vast majority of us were born from, are sustained by, and vehemently exult that joy; and we will forever seek it and will forever seek to share it to and with everyone we can.",
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"content": "On the other:\n\nIn the ebb and flow of our lives there is something that sets us apart from the animals. We, as aware creatures, can and do understand that there is more to existence than just our ability to exist. It is a wonder and something profound [IMHO], it is perhaps even amazing; that we can imagine things beyond the framework of physics -- the mere mechanics of our universe. If thought was, as it is suggested by the misguided, that we are our solely defined by our thoughts... Lucas might travel faster than light, Christie would be a mass-murderer, Clancy a war-criminal, Darwin a daemon, Dumas a drunken man-at-arms. Yet, we, I hope, can see that what we think is not equivalent to what our actions are. Some among us would like to conflate thought with action, and thereby castigate those who think differently. We cannot, and I might be so bold as to say should not, look at what is in people’s minds with the notion that thought is sin or hatred; as it is clear that opinion and taste is not action. More to the key point here, sin or crime is all to often something that those who would seek to harm us use and they have created the concept to instil and exploit our fears and doubts. Manufacturing fear, of what is not understood or more importantly something not chief among the precepts of their ideologies, is in fact their design and goal.\n\nIt is all a sad part of the tremendously unique nature of a creature that has become self-aware and, alas, it can become massively deranged and stray from the common thread that has bound us for a couple million years. Some, as I have pointed out, become afraid about any divergence in thought; in the past and they will again -- until the end of us. They look about at the others around them, and they then trundle on to thinking that there must be some way to alter and mould others to their specific world-view in order to reduce their own fears. Fears that they have created for themselves. Conformity or unification, in their eyes, is an imperative that grows from this fear, that there might be entities that do not share in exactly their perceptions is all too frightening to them... then force is used... and then it leads, too often, to death(s).\nA small quote, and then I will expand a little more.\n\n[Quote Begins]\nTo find if the cold wave were pitiful and good--\nAnd someday I shall see come drifting home, I know,\nTo all-forgiving Lesbos on the twilight flood\nThe loved remains of Sappho, who set forth long ago\nTo find if the cold wave were pitiful and good;\n\nOf Sappho, poet and lover, the virile, calm, and brave,\nMore beautiful than Venus, by force of earthly grief--\nMore beautiful than blue-eyed Venus, for her grave\nAnd dusky glance disclosing the sorrows past belief\nOf Sappho, poet and lover, the virile, calm, and brave:\n\nMore beautiful than Venus arising to the world\nAnd scattering all round her the iridescent fire\nOf her blond loveliness with rainbow hues impearled\nUpon the old green ocean, her bedazzled sire;\nMore beautiful than Venus arising to the world!\n\n--Of Sappho, dying swiftly the day of her soul's crime\nWhen, faithless to her creed and to her ritual pledge,\nShe flung the occult dark roses of her love sublime\nTo a vain churl whose scorn rebuked the sacrilege\nOf Sappho, dying swiftly the day of her soul's crime.\n\nAnd from that day to this the isle Lesbos mourns,\nAnd heedful of the world's late homage in no wise,\nGives answer but with the hollow moaning of her bourns,\nThe sea's long cry of anguish to the unhearing skies,\nAnd from that day to this the isle of Lesbos mourns.\n\n-- George Dillon, 1936 (Flowers Of Evil)\n[Quote Ends]\n\nPostscript:\nWhy must we fight? Why must we insist that all others do as we might do? The answer is quite difficult to unpack. Many great and wise people have spoken of this, for more than six millennia, and we are still left wanting for a full answer. Is there some kind of death-wish, deep within humanity, that drives us to hate, that drives us to reject love?\n\nI say no, there is not.\n\nIf there was such a force we, humanity, would not be here to ask that question. Love, friendship, comradeship, and on to society itself would not have prospered to have a planet where there are billions of wonderful people. Who all, except for a tiny minority of nihilistic fucktards, are joyful in life; despite hardship and the difficult situations we can and do create for one another, and even in the face of the astoundingly massive forces that move our universe -- that could crush us all within a microsecond. And they/we do this regardless of what anyone might have under their clothes, what they might own, what they might think, or wherever they might be from. For they, like us all, are what we are and where we came from. The vast majority of us were born from, are sustained by, and vehemently exult that joy; and we will forever seek it and will forever seek to share it to and with everyone we can.",
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"content": "On Unlimited Growth<br /><br />There are a number of misconceptions about growth. It is said by many that we, the people of the earth, should be aware that such a concept, unlimited growth, is unmaintainable. However, the reality is that this planet is vast. It is also said, by Malthusians, that there is a limit to how much, or how many, people this planet can sustain. Malthus claimed that two billion would break us, post-Maltusians, after the planet had born four billion, said that six would break us. Now, as we approach eight billion, the numbers have changed yet again. That is not to say that the plight of far too many is utter shit. That is indeed a reality too, and one that I, as a far-south-lefty, cannot look on without a large amount of distaste and anger. This is due to the knowledge that this is by design by those who would, and will, seek to divide us for their own gain. There is great profit to be gained when nation opposes nation, tribe fights tribe, and communities are manufactured to be in conflict. We are blessed, if I might use that term in irony and fun, by a universe that has a vast array of options; beyond the limited and constrained notions that the idiotic power players would like, if not need, us to believe. History, science, and philosophy has taught us that we are more than the constraints imposed by the synthesis of eternal limits and zero-sum thinking. Now don't think that I or other social critics are unaware of the natural limits of such things as the finite amount of oil and gas, the limits of arable land, and the giant well of gravity that we live in is not a reality that may be stupendously difficult to overcome without delving deeply into the depths of our abilities and intellect. These are all hard and even very hard barriers that must, and will, be subdued in time. And I will point out here that the agrarian revolution, on to the development of refined nitrides, and back to that of the advances of the seventeenth and fourteenth centuries and still further back to even then to that of the tenth and sixth centuries BCE prove that it is truly all in our minds.<br /><br />To the quote for this post...<br /><br />[Quote Begins]<br />Those who confound the power of a nation with the size of its army and navy are mistaking the check-book for the money. A child, seeing its father paying bills in checks, assumes that you need only plenty of check-books in order to have plenty of money; it does not see that for the check-book to have power there must be unseen resources on which to draw. Of what use is domination unless there be individual capacity, social training, industrial resources, to profit thereby? How can you have these things if energy is wasted in military adventure? Is not the failure of Spain explicable by the fact that she failed to realize this truth? For three centuries she attempted to live upon conquest, upon the force of her arms, and year after year got poorer in the process and her modern social renaissance dates from the time when she lost the last of her American colonies. It is since the loss of Cuba and the Philippines that Spanish national securities have doubled in value. (At the outbreak of the Hispano-American War Spanish Fours were at 45; they have since touched par.) If Spain has shown in the last decade a social renaissance, not shown perhaps for a hundred and fifty years, it is because a nation still less military than Germany, and still more purely industrial, has compelled Spain once and for all to surrender all dreams of empire and conquest. The circumstances of the last surrender are eloquent in this connection as showing how even in warfare itself the industrial training and the industrial tradition--the Cobdenite ideal of militarist scorn--are more than a match for the training of a society in which military activities are predominant. If it be true that it was the German schoolmaster who conquered at Sedan, it was the Chicago merchant who conquered at Manila. The writer happens to have been in touch both with Spaniards and Americans at the time of the war, and well remembers the scorn with which the Spaniards referred to the notion that the Yankee pork-butchers could possibly conquer a nation of their military tradition, and to the idea that tradesmen would ever be a match for the soldiery and pride of old Spain. And French opinion was not so very different. Shortly after the war I wrote in an American journal as follows:<br /><br />Spain represents the outcome of some centuries devoted mainly to military activity. No one can say that she has been unmilitary or at all deficient in those qualities which we associate with soldiers and soldiering. Yet, if such qualities in any way make for national efficiency, for the conservation of national force, the history of Spain is absolutely inexplicable. In their late contest with America, Spaniards showed no lack of the distinctive military virtues. Spain's inferiority--apart from deficiency of men and money--was precisely in those qualities which industrialism has bred in the unmilitary American. Authentic stories of wretched equipment, inadequate supplies, and bad leadership show to what depths of inefficiency the Spanish service, military and naval, had fallen. We are justified in believing that a much smaller nation than Spain, but one possessing a more industrial and less military training, would have done much better, both as regards resistance to America and the defence of her own colonies. The present position of Holland in Asia seems to prove this. The Dutch, whose traditions are industrial and non-military for the most part, have shown greater power and efficiency as a nation than the Spanish, who are more numerous.<br /><br />Here, as always, it is shown that, in considering national efficiency, even as expressed in military power, the economic problem cannot be divorced from the military, and that it is a fatal mistake to suppose that the power of a nation depends solely upon the power of its public bodies, or that it can be judged simply from the size of its army. A large army may, indeed, be a sign of a national--that is, military--weakness. Warfare in these days is a business like other activities, and no courage, no heroism, no \"glorious past,\" no \"immortal traditions,\" will atone for deficient rations and fraudulent administration. Good civilian qualities are the ones that will in the end win a nation's battles. The Spaniard is the last one in the world to see this. He talks and dreams of Castilian bravery and Spanish honor, and is above shopkeeping details.... A writer on contemporary Spain remarks that any intelligent middle-class Spaniard will admit every charge of incompetence which can be brought against the conduct of public affairs. \"Yes, we have a wretched Government. In any other country somebody would be shot.\" This is the hopeless military creed: killing somebody is the only remedy.<br />-- Norman Angell, 1910<br />[Quote Ends]<br /><br />Postscript:<br />It is obvious that I have provided this commentary and quote in response to, or is inspired by, the new proposed budget of the USA. The expansion of their military to over half the expenditures of the American public’s money is a growth of something quite disturbing. Not just from the obvious; once something raised it rarely goes down, and once budgeted it is nearly impossible to reduce unless useful for political advantage of some kind or another. On the other hand we should laugh, if darkly, that they will never find enough foes in our era to use it for; laugh, friends, laugh; it will be the last, and we will have it. Perhaps not all of us, alas, but there will be enough of us left to hear it. And if fate is generous... I will be honoured to share in it with you.",
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"content": "On Unlimited Growth\n\nThere are a number of misconceptions about growth. It is said by many that we, the people of the earth, should be aware that such a concept, unlimited growth, is unmaintainable. However, the reality is that this planet is vast. It is also said, by Malthusians, that there is a limit to how much, or how many, people this planet can sustain. Malthus claimed that two billion would break us, post-Maltusians, after the planet had born four billion, said that six would break us. Now, as we approach eight billion, the numbers have changed yet again. That is not to say that the plight of far too many is utter shit. That is indeed a reality too, and one that I, as a far-south-lefty, cannot look on without a large amount of distaste and anger. This is due to the knowledge that this is by design by those who would, and will, seek to divide us for their own gain. There is great profit to be gained when nation opposes nation, tribe fights tribe, and communities are manufactured to be in conflict. We are blessed, if I might use that term in irony and fun, by a universe that has a vast array of options; beyond the limited and constrained notions that the idiotic power players would like, if not need, us to believe. History, science, and philosophy has taught us that we are more than the constraints imposed by the synthesis of eternal limits and zero-sum thinking. Now don't think that I or other social critics are unaware of the natural limits of such things as the finite amount of oil and gas, the limits of arable land, and the giant well of gravity that we live in is not a reality that may be stupendously difficult to overcome without delving deeply into the depths of our abilities and intellect. These are all hard and even very hard barriers that must, and will, be subdued in time. And I will point out here that the agrarian revolution, on to the development of refined nitrides, and back to that of the advances of the seventeenth and fourteenth centuries and still further back to even then to that of the tenth and sixth centuries BCE prove that it is truly all in our minds.\n\nTo the quote for this post...\n\n[Quote Begins]\nThose who confound the power of a nation with the size of its army and navy are mistaking the check-book for the money. A child, seeing its father paying bills in checks, assumes that you need only plenty of check-books in order to have plenty of money; it does not see that for the check-book to have power there must be unseen resources on which to draw. Of what use is domination unless there be individual capacity, social training, industrial resources, to profit thereby? How can you have these things if energy is wasted in military adventure? Is not the failure of Spain explicable by the fact that she failed to realize this truth? For three centuries she attempted to live upon conquest, upon the force of her arms, and year after year got poorer in the process and her modern social renaissance dates from the time when she lost the last of her American colonies. It is since the loss of Cuba and the Philippines that Spanish national securities have doubled in value. (At the outbreak of the Hispano-American War Spanish Fours were at 45; they have since touched par.) If Spain has shown in the last decade a social renaissance, not shown perhaps for a hundred and fifty years, it is because a nation still less military than Germany, and still more purely industrial, has compelled Spain once and for all to surrender all dreams of empire and conquest. The circumstances of the last surrender are eloquent in this connection as showing how even in warfare itself the industrial training and the industrial tradition--the Cobdenite ideal of militarist scorn--are more than a match for the training of a society in which military activities are predominant. If it be true that it was the German schoolmaster who conquered at Sedan, it was the Chicago merchant who conquered at Manila. The writer happens to have been in touch both with Spaniards and Americans at the time of the war, and well remembers the scorn with which the Spaniards referred to the notion that the Yankee pork-butchers could possibly conquer a nation of their military tradition, and to the idea that tradesmen would ever be a match for the soldiery and pride of old Spain. And French opinion was not so very different. Shortly after the war I wrote in an American journal as follows:\n\nSpain represents the outcome of some centuries devoted mainly to military activity. No one can say that she has been unmilitary or at all deficient in those qualities which we associate with soldiers and soldiering. Yet, if such qualities in any way make for national efficiency, for the conservation of national force, the history of Spain is absolutely inexplicable. In their late contest with America, Spaniards showed no lack of the distinctive military virtues. Spain's inferiority--apart from deficiency of men and money--was precisely in those qualities which industrialism has bred in the unmilitary American. Authentic stories of wretched equipment, inadequate supplies, and bad leadership show to what depths of inefficiency the Spanish service, military and naval, had fallen. We are justified in believing that a much smaller nation than Spain, but one possessing a more industrial and less military training, would have done much better, both as regards resistance to America and the defence of her own colonies. The present position of Holland in Asia seems to prove this. The Dutch, whose traditions are industrial and non-military for the most part, have shown greater power and efficiency as a nation than the Spanish, who are more numerous.\n\nHere, as always, it is shown that, in considering national efficiency, even as expressed in military power, the economic problem cannot be divorced from the military, and that it is a fatal mistake to suppose that the power of a nation depends solely upon the power of its public bodies, or that it can be judged simply from the size of its army. A large army may, indeed, be a sign of a national--that is, military--weakness. Warfare in these days is a business like other activities, and no courage, no heroism, no \"glorious past,\" no \"immortal traditions,\" will atone for deficient rations and fraudulent administration. Good civilian qualities are the ones that will in the end win a nation's battles. The Spaniard is the last one in the world to see this. He talks and dreams of Castilian bravery and Spanish honor, and is above shopkeeping details.... A writer on contemporary Spain remarks that any intelligent middle-class Spaniard will admit every charge of incompetence which can be brought against the conduct of public affairs. \"Yes, we have a wretched Government. In any other country somebody would be shot.\" This is the hopeless military creed: killing somebody is the only remedy.\n-- Norman Angell, 1910\n[Quote Ends]\n\nPostscript:\nIt is obvious that I have provided this commentary and quote in response to, or is inspired by, the new proposed budget of the USA. The expansion of their military to over half the expenditures of the American public’s money is a growth of something quite disturbing. Not just from the obvious; once something raised it rarely goes down, and once budgeted it is nearly impossible to reduce unless useful for political advantage of some kind or another. On the other hand we should laugh, if darkly, that they will never find enough foes in our era to use it for; laugh, friends, laugh; it will be the last, and we will have it. Perhaps not all of us, alas, but there will be enough of us left to hear it. And if fate is generous... I will be honoured to share in it with you.",
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"content": "On capitalism<br /><br />There is no nation, or people, more suited to trade than the Chinese. It may be a bit racialist, perhaps even bigoted, to say so. However, the past centuries have shown that they have always proved to be the most adept at the idea of commerce. While communism did flourish and still holds a special place among them, there is also the backbone of something more robust than any mere ideology. It would also be incorrect to lump all Chinese into the Han, as China is vast and has perennially incorporated people from all nations and races. Even Scottish and Irish mercenaries, Italian merchants, North African craftsmen, the list is endless and as diverse as the people who have tried and failed to claim that great land as their own. A funny observation is that the Chinese have never quite managed to conquer themselves or others for more than a few decades of control, in thousands of years. The main part of that is the people themselves. There is a constant thrum or flow that matches with the weather, the land, and the successive generations of amazing people that inhabit the soft green hills, high mountains, arid plains, and bright rivers that is China.<br /><br />[Quote begins]<br />As it requires two to make a bargain, it would be an imperfect account of the China trade which omitted such an important element as the efficiency of the native trader. To him is due the fact that the foreign commerce of his country, when uninterfered with by the officials of his Government, has been made so easy for the various parties concerned in it. Of all the accomplishments the Chinese nation has acquired during the long millenniums of its history, there is none in which it has attained to such perfect mastery as in the science of buying and selling. The Chinese possess the Jews' passion for exchange. All classes, from the peasant to the prince, think in money, and the instinct of appraisement supplies to them the place of a ready reckoner, continuously converting objects and opportunities into cash. Thus surveying mankind and all its achievements with the eye of an auctioneer, invisible note-book in hand, external impressions translate themselves automatically into the language of the market-place, so that it comes as natural to the Chinaman as to the modern American, or to any other commercial people, to reduce all forms of appreciation to the common measure of the dollar. A people imbued with such habits of mind are traders by intuition. If they have much to learn from foreigners, they have also much to teach them; and the fact that at no spot within the vast empire of China would one fail to find ready-made and eager men of business is a happy augury for the extended intercourse which may be developed in the future, while at the same time it affords the clearest indication of the true avenue to sympathetic relations with the Chinese. In every detail of handling and moving commodities, from the moment they leave the hands of the producer in his garden-patch to the time when they reach the ultimate consumer perhaps a thousand miles away, the Chinese trader is an expert. Times and seasons have been elaborately mapped out, the clue laid unerringly through labyrinthine currencies, weights, and measures which to the stranger seem a hopeless tangle, and elaborate trade customs evolved appropriate to the requirements of a myriad-sided commerce, until the simplest operation has been invested with a kind of ritual observance, the effect of the whole being to cause the complex wheels to run both swiftly and smoothly.<br /><br />To crown all, there is to be noted, as the highest condition of successful trade, the evolution of commercial probity, which, though no monopoly of the Chinese merchants, is one of their distinguishing characteristics. It is that element which, in the generations before the treaties, enabled so large a commerce to be carried on with foreigners without anxiety, without friction, and almost without precaution. It has also led to the happiest personal relations between foreigners and the native trader.<br /><br /> When the business of the season was over, says Mr<br /> Hunter, contracts were made with the Hong merchants for<br /> the next season. They consisted of teas of certain<br /> qualities and kinds, sometimes at fixed prices, sometimes<br /> at the prices which should be current at the time of the<br /> arrival of the teas. No other record of these contracts was<br /> ever made than by each party booking them, no written<br /> agreements were drawn up, nothing was sealed or attested. A<br /> wilful breach of contract never took place, and as regards<br /> quality and quantity the Hong merchants fulfilled their<br /> part with scrupulous honesty and care.<br /><br />The Chinese merchant, moreover, has been always noted for what he himself graphically calls his large-heartedness, which is exemplified by liberality in all his dealings, tenacity as to all that is material with comparative disregard of trifles, never letting a transaction fall through on account of punctilio, yielding to the prejudices of others wherever it can be done without substantial disadvantage, a \"sweet reasonableness,\" if the phrase may be borrowed for such a purpose, which obviates disputation, and the manliness which does not repine at the consequences of an unfortunate contract. Judicial procedure being an abomination to respectable Chinese, their security in commercial dealings is based as much upon reason, good faith, and non-repudiation as that of the Western nations is upon verbal finesse in the construction of covenants.<br /><br />Two systems so diametrically opposed can hardly admit of real amalgamation without sacrifice of the saving principle of both. And if, in the period immediately succeeding the retirement of the East India Company, perfect harmony prevailed between the Chinese and the foreign merchant, the result was apparently attained by the foreigners practically falling in with the principles and the commercial ethics of the Chinese, to which nothing has yet been found superior. The Chinese aptitude for business, indeed, exerted a peculiar influence over their foreign colleagues. The efficiency and alacrity of the native merchants and their staff were such that the foreigners fell into the way of leaving to them the principal share in managing the details of the business. When the venerable, but unnatural, Co-hong system of Old Canton was superseded by the compradoric, the connection between the foreign firm and their native staff became so intimate that it was scarcely possible to distinguish between the two, and misunderstandings have not unfrequently arisen through third parties mistaking the principal for the agent and the agent for the principal.<br /><br />Such a relationship could not but foster in some cases a certain lordly abstraction on the part of the foreign merchant, to which climatic conditions powerfully contributed. The factotum, in short, became a minister of luxury, everywhere a demoralising influence, and thus there was a constant tendency for the Chinese to gain the upper hand, -- to be the master in effect though the servant in name. The comprador was always consulted, and if the employer ventured to omit this formality the resulting transaction would almost certainly come to grief through inexplicable causes. Seldom, however, was his advice rejected, while many of the largest operations were of his initiation. Unlimited confidence was the rule on both sides, which often took the concrete form of considerable indebtedness, now on the one side now on the other, and was regularly shown in the despatch of large amounts of specie into the far interior of the country for the purchase of tea and silk in the districts of their growth. For many years the old practice was followed of contracting for produce as soon as marketable, and sometimes even before. During three or four months, in the case of tea, large funds belonging to foreign merchants were in the hands of native agents far beyond the reach of the owners, who could exercise no sort of supervision over the proceedings of their agents. The funds were in every case safely returned in the form of produce purchased, which was entered to the foreign merchant at a price arbitrarily fixed by the comprador to cover all expenses. Under such a régime it would have needed no great perspicacity, one would imagine, to foretell in which pocket the profits of trading would eventually lodge. As a matter of fact, the comprador generally grew rich at the expense of his employer. All the while the sincerest friendship existed between them, often descending to the second or third generation.<br />[Quote ends]<br /><br />Postscript:<br />Trade, and methodologies of trade, have had many names and schools of thought about what trade means and should be. The key factor that Keynes to Smith have all failed in recognising is that trade always boils down to a factor of trust between tradespeople. That trust is solely based on the ability to deliver what has been agreed on. You want tea? The question is never why, it is -- when do you want it and how much are you willing to exchange for it? That, my dear reader, is how business flourishes and people prosper.",
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"published": "2017-01-28T15:39:28+00:00",
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"content": "On capitalism\n\nThere is no nation, or people, more suited to trade than the Chinese. It may be a bit racialist, perhaps even bigoted, to say so. However, the past centuries have shown that they have always proved to be the most adept at the idea of commerce. While communism did flourish and still holds a special place among them, there is also the backbone of something more robust than any mere ideology. It would also be incorrect to lump all Chinese into the Han, as China is vast and has perennially incorporated people from all nations and races. Even Scottish and Irish mercenaries, Italian merchants, North African craftsmen, the list is endless and as diverse as the people who have tried and failed to claim that great land as their own. A funny observation is that the Chinese have never quite managed to conquer themselves or others for more than a few decades of control, in thousands of years. The main part of that is the people themselves. There is a constant thrum or flow that matches with the weather, the land, and the successive generations of amazing people that inhabit the soft green hills, high mountains, arid plains, and bright rivers that is China.\n\n[Quote begins]\nAs it requires two to make a bargain, it would be an imperfect account of the China trade which omitted such an important element as the efficiency of the native trader. To him is due the fact that the foreign commerce of his country, when uninterfered with by the officials of his Government, has been made so easy for the various parties concerned in it. Of all the accomplishments the Chinese nation has acquired during the long millenniums of its history, there is none in which it has attained to such perfect mastery as in the science of buying and selling. The Chinese possess the Jews' passion for exchange. All classes, from the peasant to the prince, think in money, and the instinct of appraisement supplies to them the place of a ready reckoner, continuously converting objects and opportunities into cash. Thus surveying mankind and all its achievements with the eye of an auctioneer, invisible note-book in hand, external impressions translate themselves automatically into the language of the market-place, so that it comes as natural to the Chinaman as to the modern American, or to any other commercial people, to reduce all forms of appreciation to the common measure of the dollar. A people imbued with such habits of mind are traders by intuition. If they have much to learn from foreigners, they have also much to teach them; and the fact that at no spot within the vast empire of China would one fail to find ready-made and eager men of business is a happy augury for the extended intercourse which may be developed in the future, while at the same time it affords the clearest indication of the true avenue to sympathetic relations with the Chinese. In every detail of handling and moving commodities, from the moment they leave the hands of the producer in his garden-patch to the time when they reach the ultimate consumer perhaps a thousand miles away, the Chinese trader is an expert. Times and seasons have been elaborately mapped out, the clue laid unerringly through labyrinthine currencies, weights, and measures which to the stranger seem a hopeless tangle, and elaborate trade customs evolved appropriate to the requirements of a myriad-sided commerce, until the simplest operation has been invested with a kind of ritual observance, the effect of the whole being to cause the complex wheels to run both swiftly and smoothly.\n\nTo crown all, there is to be noted, as the highest condition of successful trade, the evolution of commercial probity, which, though no monopoly of the Chinese merchants, is one of their distinguishing characteristics. It is that element which, in the generations before the treaties, enabled so large a commerce to be carried on with foreigners without anxiety, without friction, and almost without precaution. It has also led to the happiest personal relations between foreigners and the native trader.\n\n When the business of the season was over, says Mr\n Hunter, contracts were made with the Hong merchants for\n the next season. They consisted of teas of certain\n qualities and kinds, sometimes at fixed prices, sometimes\n at the prices which should be current at the time of the\n arrival of the teas. No other record of these contracts was\n ever made than by each party booking them, no written\n agreements were drawn up, nothing was sealed or attested. A\n wilful breach of contract never took place, and as regards\n quality and quantity the Hong merchants fulfilled their\n part with scrupulous honesty and care.\n\nThe Chinese merchant, moreover, has been always noted for what he himself graphically calls his large-heartedness, which is exemplified by liberality in all his dealings, tenacity as to all that is material with comparative disregard of trifles, never letting a transaction fall through on account of punctilio, yielding to the prejudices of others wherever it can be done without substantial disadvantage, a \"sweet reasonableness,\" if the phrase may be borrowed for such a purpose, which obviates disputation, and the manliness which does not repine at the consequences of an unfortunate contract. Judicial procedure being an abomination to respectable Chinese, their security in commercial dealings is based as much upon reason, good faith, and non-repudiation as that of the Western nations is upon verbal finesse in the construction of covenants.\n\nTwo systems so diametrically opposed can hardly admit of real amalgamation without sacrifice of the saving principle of both. And if, in the period immediately succeeding the retirement of the East India Company, perfect harmony prevailed between the Chinese and the foreign merchant, the result was apparently attained by the foreigners practically falling in with the principles and the commercial ethics of the Chinese, to which nothing has yet been found superior. The Chinese aptitude for business, indeed, exerted a peculiar influence over their foreign colleagues. The efficiency and alacrity of the native merchants and their staff were such that the foreigners fell into the way of leaving to them the principal share in managing the details of the business. When the venerable, but unnatural, Co-hong system of Old Canton was superseded by the compradoric, the connection between the foreign firm and their native staff became so intimate that it was scarcely possible to distinguish between the two, and misunderstandings have not unfrequently arisen through third parties mistaking the principal for the agent and the agent for the principal.\n\nSuch a relationship could not but foster in some cases a certain lordly abstraction on the part of the foreign merchant, to which climatic conditions powerfully contributed. The factotum, in short, became a minister of luxury, everywhere a demoralising influence, and thus there was a constant tendency for the Chinese to gain the upper hand, -- to be the master in effect though the servant in name. The comprador was always consulted, and if the employer ventured to omit this formality the resulting transaction would almost certainly come to grief through inexplicable causes. Seldom, however, was his advice rejected, while many of the largest operations were of his initiation. Unlimited confidence was the rule on both sides, which often took the concrete form of considerable indebtedness, now on the one side now on the other, and was regularly shown in the despatch of large amounts of specie into the far interior of the country for the purchase of tea and silk in the districts of their growth. For many years the old practice was followed of contracting for produce as soon as marketable, and sometimes even before. During three or four months, in the case of tea, large funds belonging to foreign merchants were in the hands of native agents far beyond the reach of the owners, who could exercise no sort of supervision over the proceedings of their agents. The funds were in every case safely returned in the form of produce purchased, which was entered to the foreign merchant at a price arbitrarily fixed by the comprador to cover all expenses. Under such a régime it would have needed no great perspicacity, one would imagine, to foretell in which pocket the profits of trading would eventually lodge. As a matter of fact, the comprador generally grew rich at the expense of his employer. All the while the sincerest friendship existed between them, often descending to the second or third generation.\n[Quote ends]\n\nPostscript:\nTrade, and methodologies of trade, have had many names and schools of thought about what trade means and should be. The key factor that Keynes to Smith have all failed in recognising is that trade always boils down to a factor of trust between tradespeople. That trust is solely based on the ability to deliver what has been agreed on. You want tea? The question is never why, it is -- when do you want it and how much are you willing to exchange for it? That, my dear reader, is how business flourishes and people prosper.",
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"content": "--The Party Manager and the Gentleman--<br /><br />A Party Manager said to a Gentleman whom he saw minding his own business:<br /><br />\"How much will you pay for a nomination to office?\"<br /><br />\"Nothing,\" the Gentleman replied.<br /><br />\"But you will contribute something to the campaign fund to assist in your election, will you not?\" asked the Party Manager, winking.<br /><br />\"Oh, no,\" said the Gentleman, gravely. \"If the people wish me to work for them, they must hire me without solicitation. I am very comfortable without office.\"<br /><br />\"But,\" urged the Party Manager, \"an election is a thing to be desired. It is a high honour to be a servant of the people.\"<br /><br />\"If servitude is a high honour,\" the Gentleman said, \"it would be indecent for me to seek it; and if obtained by my own exertion it would be no honour.\"<br /><br />\"Well,\" persisted the Party Manager, \"you will at least, I hope, indorse the party platform.\"<br /><br />The Gentleman replied: \"It is improbable that its authors have accurately expressed my views without consulting me; and if I indorsed their work without approving it I should be a liar.\"<br /><br />\"You are a detestable hypocrite and an idiot!\" shouted the Party Manager.<br /><br />\"Even your good opinion of my fitness,\" replied the Gentleman, \"shall not persuade me.\"<br />--Ambrose Bierce, 1899",
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"content": "--The Party Manager and the Gentleman--\n\nA Party Manager said to a Gentleman whom he saw minding his own business:\n\n\"How much will you pay for a nomination to office?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" the Gentleman replied.\n\n\"But you will contribute something to the campaign fund to assist in your election, will you not?\" asked the Party Manager, winking.\n\n\"Oh, no,\" said the Gentleman, gravely. \"If the people wish me to work for them, they must hire me without solicitation. I am very comfortable without office.\"\n\n\"But,\" urged the Party Manager, \"an election is a thing to be desired. It is a high honour to be a servant of the people.\"\n\n\"If servitude is a high honour,\" the Gentleman said, \"it would be indecent for me to seek it; and if obtained by my own exertion it would be no honour.\"\n\n\"Well,\" persisted the Party Manager, \"you will at least, I hope, indorse the party platform.\"\n\nThe Gentleman replied: \"It is improbable that its authors have accurately expressed my views without consulting me; and if I indorsed their work without approving it I should be a liar.\"\n\n\"You are a detestable hypocrite and an idiot!\" shouted the Party Manager.\n\n\"Even your good opinion of my fitness,\" replied the Gentleman, \"shall not persuade me.\"\n--Ambrose Bierce, 1899",
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"content": "On popular rule (Democracy)<br /><br />The modern form of democracy is a recent invention. If a span of nearly three centuries can be said to be recent. There is a tendency to attribute its origins further back, millennia, however this is a bit of a misnomer. It is also a misnomer to say that it was or is rule by the people. Suffrage was not, and still is not, universal. Take children for example; can one really say that they have no position in the future of their nation? Perhaps they might not have all the faculties of adulthood, but are they truly any less swayed by demagoguery and misdirection than the adult populous at large? The supposed lack of ability to be not swayed was the argument against the landless, native, black, and yellow suffrage, and then again towards women. It may seem silly or farcical to suggest that suffrage be extended to any person, of any age, of any ability, yet when you look at it more there is a curious pivot point where the logic of the notion makes perfect sense. As usual a quote from someone who's works you will gain immensely by reading more than this small sample.<br /><br />[Quote begins]<br />Although the philosophers who have been supposed the inspirers of the French Revolution did attack certain privileges and abuses, we must not for that reason regard them as partisans of popular government. Democracy, whose role in Greek history was familiar to them, was generally highly antipathetic to them. They were not ignorant of the destruction and violence which are its invariable accompaniments, and knew that in the time of Aristotle it was already defined as \"a State in which everything, even the law, depends on the multitude set up as a tyrant and governed by a few declamatory speakers.\"<br /><br />Pierre Bayle, the true forerunner of Voltaire, recalled in the following terms the consequences of popular government in Athens:-- \"If one considers this history, which displays at great length the tumult of the assemblies, the factions dividing the city, the seditious disturbing it, the most illustrious subjects persecuted, exiled, and punished by death at the will of a violent windbag, one would conclude that this people, which so prided itself on its liberty, was really the slave of a small number of caballers, whom they called demagogues, and who made it turn now in this direction, now in that, as their passions changed, almost as the sea heaps the waves now one way, now another, according to the winds which trouble it. You will seek in vain in Macedonia, which was a monarchy, for as many examples of tyranny as Athenian history will afford.\"<br /><br />Montesquieu had no greater admiration for the democracy. Having described the three forms of government--republican, monarchical, and despotic-- he shows very clearly what popular government may lead to:-- \"Men were free with laws; men would fain be free without them; what was a maxim is called severity; what was order is called hindrance. Formerly the welfare of individuals constituted the public wealth, but now the public wealth becomes the patrimony of individuals. The republic is spoil, and its strength is merely the power of a few citizens and the licence of all.\"<br /><br />\". . . Little petty tyrants spring up who have all the vices of a single tyrant. Very soon what is left of liberty becomes untenable; a single tyrant arises, and the people loses all, even the advantages of corruption.\"<br /><br />\"Democracy has therefore two extremes to avoid; the extreme of the spirit of equality leads to the despotism of a single person, as the despotism of a single person leads to conquest.\"<br /><br />The ideal of Montesquieu was the English constitutional government, which prevented the monarchy from degenerating into despotism. Otherwise the influence of this philosopher at the moment of the Revolution was very slight.<br /><br />As for the Encyclopaedists, to whom such a considerable role is attributed, they hardly dealt with politics, excepting d'Holbach, a liberal monarchist like Voltaire and Diderot. They wrote chiefly in defence of individual liberty, opposing the encroachments of the Church, at that time extremely intolerant and inimical to philosophers. Being neither Socialists nor democrats, the Revolution could not utilise any of their principles.<br /><br />Voltaire himself was by no means a partisan of democracy. \"Democracy,\" he said, \"seems only to suit a very small country, and even then it must be fortunately situated. Little as it may be, it will make many mistakes, because it will be composed of men. Discord will prevail there as in a convent full of monks; but there will be no St. Bartholomew's day, no Irish massacres, no Sicilian Vespers, no Inquisition, no condemnation to the galleys for having taken water from the sea without paying for it; unless we suppose this republic to be composed of devils in a corner of hell.\"<br /><br />All these men who are supposed to have inspired the Revolution had opinions which were far from subversive, and it is really difficult to see that they had any real influence on the development of the revolutionary movement. Rousseau was one of the very few democratic philosophers of his age, which is why his Contrat Social became the Bible of the men of the Terror. It seemed to furnish the rational justification necessary to excuse the acts deriving from unconscious mystic and affective impulses which no philosophy had inspired.<br /><br />To be quite truthful, the democratic instincts of Rousseau were by no means above suspicion. He himself considered that his projects for social reorganisation, based upon popular sovereignty, could be applied only to a very small State; and when the Poles asked him for a draft democratic Constitution he advised them to choose a hereditary monarch.<br /><br />Among the theories of Rousseau that relating to the perfection of the primitive social state had a great success. He asserted, together with various writers of his time, that primitive mankind was perfect; it was corrupted only by society. By modifying society by means of good laws one might bring back the happiness of the early world. Ignorant of all psychology, he believed that men were the same throughout time and space and that they could all be ruled by the same laws and institutions. This was then the general belief. \"The vices and virtues of the people,\" wrote Helvetius, \"are always a necessary effect of its legislation. . . . How can we doubt that virtue is in the case of all peoples the result of the wisdom, more or less perfect, of the administration?\"<br /><br />There could be no greater mistake. --Gustave le Bon<br />[Quote ends]<br /><br />Postscript:<br />A mistake it may be, although there are grave mistakes and then there are mistakes that are affordable and perhaps even moral. The founders of the United States of America also had an interesting diversity in their opinions of what democracy meant to them. And yet, they found a position of compromise, founded a nation, and created a methodology that was flexible enough to build on and preserves a goodly portion of liberty. It has its faults, is often rather bizarre in application, many times unrepresentative when claiming it represents, and has mostly been at war while touting peace. Is it a perfect form of government? Has its creators and followers indeed found a moral and just society? The answer to both is no, however it does have its good points and is capable of achieving great things and sustaining great people. As you make your way to the polls remember that the great people are rarely the ones you are voting for; the real great ones, at least as great as can ever be, are you.",
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"content": "On popular rule (Democracy)\n\nThe modern form of democracy is a recent invention. If a span of nearly three centuries can be said to be recent. There is a tendency to attribute its origins further back, millennia, however this is a bit of a misnomer. It is also a misnomer to say that it was or is rule by the people. Suffrage was not, and still is not, universal. Take children for example; can one really say that they have no position in the future of their nation? Perhaps they might not have all the faculties of adulthood, but are they truly any less swayed by demagoguery and misdirection than the adult populous at large? The supposed lack of ability to be not swayed was the argument against the landless, native, black, and yellow suffrage, and then again towards women. It may seem silly or farcical to suggest that suffrage be extended to any person, of any age, of any ability, yet when you look at it more there is a curious pivot point where the logic of the notion makes perfect sense. As usual a quote from someone who's works you will gain immensely by reading more than this small sample.\n\n[Quote begins]\nAlthough the philosophers who have been supposed the inspirers of the French Revolution did attack certain privileges and abuses, we must not for that reason regard them as partisans of popular government. Democracy, whose role in Greek history was familiar to them, was generally highly antipathetic to them. They were not ignorant of the destruction and violence which are its invariable accompaniments, and knew that in the time of Aristotle it was already defined as \"a State in which everything, even the law, depends on the multitude set up as a tyrant and governed by a few declamatory speakers.\"\n\nPierre Bayle, the true forerunner of Voltaire, recalled in the following terms the consequences of popular government in Athens:-- \"If one considers this history, which displays at great length the tumult of the assemblies, the factions dividing the city, the seditious disturbing it, the most illustrious subjects persecuted, exiled, and punished by death at the will of a violent windbag, one would conclude that this people, which so prided itself on its liberty, was really the slave of a small number of caballers, whom they called demagogues, and who made it turn now in this direction, now in that, as their passions changed, almost as the sea heaps the waves now one way, now another, according to the winds which trouble it. You will seek in vain in Macedonia, which was a monarchy, for as many examples of tyranny as Athenian history will afford.\"\n\nMontesquieu had no greater admiration for the democracy. Having described the three forms of government--republican, monarchical, and despotic-- he shows very clearly what popular government may lead to:-- \"Men were free with laws; men would fain be free without them; what was a maxim is called severity; what was order is called hindrance. Formerly the welfare of individuals constituted the public wealth, but now the public wealth becomes the patrimony of individuals. The republic is spoil, and its strength is merely the power of a few citizens and the licence of all.\"\n\n\". . . Little petty tyrants spring up who have all the vices of a single tyrant. Very soon what is left of liberty becomes untenable; a single tyrant arises, and the people loses all, even the advantages of corruption.\"\n\n\"Democracy has therefore two extremes to avoid; the extreme of the spirit of equality leads to the despotism of a single person, as the despotism of a single person leads to conquest.\"\n\nThe ideal of Montesquieu was the English constitutional government, which prevented the monarchy from degenerating into despotism. Otherwise the influence of this philosopher at the moment of the Revolution was very slight.\n\nAs for the Encyclopaedists, to whom such a considerable role is attributed, they hardly dealt with politics, excepting d'Holbach, a liberal monarchist like Voltaire and Diderot. They wrote chiefly in defence of individual liberty, opposing the encroachments of the Church, at that time extremely intolerant and inimical to philosophers. Being neither Socialists nor democrats, the Revolution could not utilise any of their principles.\n\nVoltaire himself was by no means a partisan of democracy. \"Democracy,\" he said, \"seems only to suit a very small country, and even then it must be fortunately situated. Little as it may be, it will make many mistakes, because it will be composed of men. Discord will prevail there as in a convent full of monks; but there will be no St. Bartholomew's day, no Irish massacres, no Sicilian Vespers, no Inquisition, no condemnation to the galleys for having taken water from the sea without paying for it; unless we suppose this republic to be composed of devils in a corner of hell.\"\n\nAll these men who are supposed to have inspired the Revolution had opinions which were far from subversive, and it is really difficult to see that they had any real influence on the development of the revolutionary movement. Rousseau was one of the very few democratic philosophers of his age, which is why his Contrat Social became the Bible of the men of the Terror. It seemed to furnish the rational justification necessary to excuse the acts deriving from unconscious mystic and affective impulses which no philosophy had inspired.\n\nTo be quite truthful, the democratic instincts of Rousseau were by no means above suspicion. He himself considered that his projects for social reorganisation, based upon popular sovereignty, could be applied only to a very small State; and when the Poles asked him for a draft democratic Constitution he advised them to choose a hereditary monarch.\n\nAmong the theories of Rousseau that relating to the perfection of the primitive social state had a great success. He asserted, together with various writers of his time, that primitive mankind was perfect; it was corrupted only by society. By modifying society by means of good laws one might bring back the happiness of the early world. Ignorant of all psychology, he believed that men were the same throughout time and space and that they could all be ruled by the same laws and institutions. This was then the general belief. \"The vices and virtues of the people,\" wrote Helvetius, \"are always a necessary effect of its legislation. . . . How can we doubt that virtue is in the case of all peoples the result of the wisdom, more or less perfect, of the administration?\"\n\nThere could be no greater mistake. --Gustave le Bon\n[Quote ends]\n\nPostscript:\nA mistake it may be, although there are grave mistakes and then there are mistakes that are affordable and perhaps even moral. The founders of the United States of America also had an interesting diversity in their opinions of what democracy meant to them. And yet, they found a position of compromise, founded a nation, and created a methodology that was flexible enough to build on and preserves a goodly portion of liberty. It has its faults, is often rather bizarre in application, many times unrepresentative when claiming it represents, and has mostly been at war while touting peace. Is it a perfect form of government? Has its creators and followers indeed found a moral and just society? The answer to both is no, however it does have its good points and is capable of achieving great things and sustaining great people. As you make your way to the polls remember that the great people are rarely the ones you are voting for; the real great ones, at least as great as can ever be, are you.",
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"content": "On the patriarchy<br /><br />The previous post included or introduced Gage. As a standout in the zeroth-wave of feminism, she saw a time where patriarchy actually had meaning, and spoke eloquently as to its origin, power, and failures. A keen student of history and well versed in the works of the free-thinkers of her age she fleshes out the beast and stabs it with both fact and sarcasm. The quote below is from near the end of this book, yet I think such a synopsis might keep this from being a double-sized wall-of-text. Full text is on Project Gutenberg #45580 -Woman, Church & State, and as always I say, it will be instructive read the whole book quoted.<br /><br />[Quote begins]<br />The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her own judgment, her own conscience, her own will. The unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man, according to Buckle, is that although its separate parts have been examined with considerable ability, hardly any one has attempted to outline them into a whole and ascertain the way they are connected with each other. While this statement is virtually true as regards the general history of mankind, it is most particularly so in reference to the position of woman in its bearings upon race development. A thorough investigation of her connection with our present form of civilization, or even with that of the past, as compared with each other, or as influencing the whole, has never yet been authoritatively undertaken. This failure has not been so largely due to willful neglect as to incapacity upon the part of man to judge truly of this relation. Woman herself must judge of woman. The most remote feminine personality is not less incomprehensible to man than the woman of today; he now as little understands the finer qualities of her soul or her high intuitive reasoning faculties as in the past. Reason is divided into two parts, theoretical and practical; the former appertains to man; the latter, composed of those intuitive faculties which do not need a long process of ratiocination for their work, inhere in woman. <br /><br />Although the course of history has given many glimpses of her superiority, and the past few decades have shown in every land a new awakening of woman to a recognition of her own powers, man as man is still as obtuse as of yore. He is yet under the darkness of the Patriarchate, failing to recognize woman as a component part of humanity, whose power of development and influence upon civilization are at least the equal of his own. He yet fails to see in her a factor of life whose influence for good or for evil has ever been in direct ratio with her freedom. He does not yet discern her equal right with himself to impress her own opinions upon the world. He still interprets governments and religions as requiring from her an unquestioning obedience to laws she has no share in making, and that place her as an inferior in every relation of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson with keen insight into the fallibility of law-makers, declared that “good men must not obey the laws too well.” Woman is showing her innate wisdom in daring to question the infallibility of man, his laws, and his interpretation of her place in creation. She is not obeying “too well,” and yet man fails to analyze her motives in this defection. The church and the state have long done man’s thinking for him, the ideas of the few, whose aim is power, have been impressed upon the many; individualism is still characterized as the essence of evil; self-thought, self-control as heretical. The state condemns both as a crime against itself, the church as a sin against heaven. Both church and state claiming to be of divine origin have assumed divine right of man over woman; while church and state have thought for man, man has assumed the right to think for woman.<br /><br />As man under fear of eternal damnation surrendered to the irresponsible power of church and state, so woman yielded to that power which closed every external avenue of knowledge to her under pretext of her sinfulness. One-tenth of the human race, within the period covered by modern civilization, has compelled the other nine-tenths to think their thoughts and live lives according to their commands. This has been the chief effort of governments and religion. The most formidable general evil under which woman has suffered during the Christian ages has been that of protection; a non-recognition of her ability to care for herself, rendering watchful guardianship over her a recognized part of man’s law; not alone to prevent her sinking into depths of vice but to also prevent her entire subversion of government and religion. Buckle and other writers have recognized the protective spirit as the greatest enemy to civilization, its influence causing the few to establish themselves as guardians of the many in all affairs of life. The American Revolution in proclaiming the rights of humanity struck a blow at the protective system. This system has ever based itself upon a declaration of the supreme rights of a God, and certain rights as pertaining to certain classes of men by virtue of authority from that God. The defense of such authority has ever been the chief business of church and state, and thus religions and governments have neither found time nor inclination to uphold the rights of humanity. <br /><br />Under the christian system, woman as the most rebellious against God in having eaten a forbidden fruit, has found herself condemned through the centuries to untold oppression in order that the rights of God might be maintained. Yet while constantly teaching that woman brought sin into the world, the church ever forgets its own corollary; that if she brought sin she also brought God into the world, thus throwing ineffable splendor over mankind. The whole theory regarding woman, under christianity, has been based upon the conception that she had no right to live for herself alone. Her duty to others has continuously been placed before her and her training has ever been that of self-sacrifice. Taught from the pulpit and legislative halls that she was created for another, that her position must always be secondary even to her children, her right to life, has been admitted only in so far as its reacting effect upon another could be predicated. That she was first created for herself, as an independent being to whom all the opportunities of the world should be open because of herself, has not entered the thought of the church; has not yet become one of the conceptions of law; is not yet the foundation of the family.<br /><br />But woman is learning for herself that not self-sacrifice, but self-development, is her first duty in life; and this, not primarily for the sake of others but that she may become fully herself; a perfectly rounded being from every point of view; her duty to others being a secondary consideration arising from those relations in life where she finds herself placed at birth, or those which later she voluntarily assumes. But these duties are not different in point of obligation, no more imperative upon her, than are similar duties upon man. The political doctrine of the sovereignty of the individual, although but partially recognized even in the United States, has been most efficacious in destroying that protective spirit which has so greatly interfered with the progress of humanity. This spirit yet retains its greatest influence in the family, where it places a boundary between husband and wife. Of all circumstances biasing the judgment and restricting the sympathies, none have shown themselves more powerful than physical differences, whether of race, color or sex. When those differences are not alone believed to be a mark of inferiority, but to have been especially created for the pleasure and peculiar service of another, the elements of irresponsible tyranny upon one side, and irremediable slavery upon the other, are already organized. If in addition, that inferior is regarded as under an especial curse for extraordinary sin, as the church has ever inculcated in reference to women; and when as in the case of woman and man an entire separation of interests, hopes, feelings and passions is impossible, we have reached the extreme of injustice and misery under the protective system. <br /><br />Consequently no other form of “protection” has possessed so many elements of absolute injustice as that of man over woman. Swedenborg taught, and experience declares, that morality cannot exist except under conditions of freedom. Hence we find much that has been called morality is the effect of dependence and lessened self-respect, and has really been immorality and degradation. While in every age, the virtues of self-sacrifice have been pointed to as evidence of the highest morality, we find those women in whom it has been most apparent, have been those doing least justice where justice first belongs—to themselves. Justice as the foundation of the highest law, is a primal requirement of the individual to the self. It is none the less a serious impeachment of the religious-moral idea, that the doctrine of protection and the duty of woman’s self-sacrifice, were taught under the theory of divine authority. No faith was more profound, none could be more logical if resting on a true foundation, than the church theory regarding woman. Life assumed a sterner reality to men who believed themselves in point of purity and priority nearer their Creator than woman. Thereafter, she was to be protected from herself, the church and man cheerfully assuming this duty. Under the protective spirit it is not so very long since men sold themselves and their families to some other man in power, either lay or religious, under promise of protection, binding themselves to obey the mandates of such lord evermore. The church protected and directed the thought of the world. To think for one’s self is not even now the tendency of mankind; the few who dare, do so at great peril. It will require another hundred years of personal and political freedom for men to appreciate what liberty really is—for them to possess confidence in their own judgment upon religious questions—for the man of humble station to fully believe in himself and in his own opinions when opposed to the authority of church or state.<br /><br />Women of the present century whose struggle for equal opportunity of education with men; for a chance to enter the liberal professions; for a fair share of the world of work; for equal pay in that work; for all demands of equality which make the present a noted age in the world’s history, have met their greatest opposition from this protective spirit. No less than during the darkest period of its history does the church still maintain the theory that education and public life are not fitting for woman—indelicate for herself and injurious to the community. During the Christian ages, the church has not alone shown cruelty and contempt for woman, but has exhibited an impious and insolent disregard of her most common rights of humanity. It has robbed her of responsibility, putting man in place of God. It has forbidden her the offices of the church and at times an entrance within its doors. It has denied her independent thought, declaring her a secondary creation for man’s use to whom alone it has made her responsible. It has anathematized her sex, teaching her to feel shame for the very fact of her being. It has not been content with proclaiming a curse upon her creative attributes, but has thrust the sorrows and expiations of man’s “curse” upon her, and in doing these things the church has wrought her own ruin. A religious revolution of the most radical kind, has even now assumed such proportions as to nearly destroy the basic creeds of various sects, and undermine the whole fabric of christendom. It everywhere exists although neither the world nor the church seem to realize the magnitude of its proportions. As a legitimate result of two opposing forces, a crisis in the life of the church is at hand; nay, even upon it. While we see it making organized effort for extension of power and entire control of the state, we also find great increase of radical thought, and development of individual conscience and individual judgment. With thought no longer bound by fear of everlasting punishment, mankind will cease to believe unproved assertions, simply because made by a class of men under assumed authority from God. Reason will be used, mankind will seek for truth come whence it may, lead where it will, and with our own Lucretia Mott, will accept “truth for authority and not authority for truth.”<br /><br />In knocking at the door of political rights, woman is severing the last link between church and state; the church must lose that power it has wielded with changing force since the days of Constantine, ever to the injury of freedom and the world. The immeasurable injustice of woman, and her sufferings under christianity, her intellectual, moral and spiritual servitude, will never be understood until life with its sorrows shall be opened to our vision in a sphere more defined than the present one. The superstitions of the church, the miseries of woman, her woes, tortures, burnings, rackings and all the brutalities she has endured in the church, the state, the family, under the sanction of christianity, would be incredible had we not the most undeniable evidence of their existence, not alone in the past but as shown by the teachings, laws and customs of the present time. “She has suffered under a theology which extended its rule not only to her civil and political relations, but to her most significant domestic and personal concerns, regulating the commerce of husband and wife, of parent and child, of master and servant, even prescribing her diet and dress, her education and her industries.” Edmund Noble speaks in like manner of the ancient Russians under the tyrannical provisions of the Greek church, saying, “clearly, such a system of theocratic supervision and direction as this, is compatible only with the lowest possible spiritual condition of the subject, or the lowest possible conception of God.” Possessing no proof of its existence, the church has ever fostered unintelligent belief. To doubt her “unverified” assertion has even been declared an unpardonable sin. The supreme effort of the church, being maintenance of power, it is but recently that woman has been allowed to read history for herself, or having read it, dared to draw her own conclusion from its premises. <br /><br />Ignorance and falsehood created a sentiment in accord with themselves, crushing all her aspirations. In the family, man still decides the rights and duties of the wife, as of old. As legislator and judge, he still makes and executes class laws. In the church, he yet arrogates to himself the interpretation of the bible; still claims to be an exponent of the Divine will, that grandest lesson of the reformation, the right of private interpretation of the scriptures, not yet having been conceded to woman. The premises upon which the church is based being radically false, and this, most especially in everything related to woman. Trained from infancy by the church to a belief in woman’s inferiority and incapacity for self-government, men of the highest station have not hesitated to organize societies in opposition to her just demands. As early as 1875, an anti-woman’s franchise association was formed in London, under the name of “Association for Protecting the Franchise from the Encroachment of Women”.<br />--Matilda Joslyn Gage 1893<br />[Quote ends]<br /><br />Postscript:<br />As Gage points out in the beginning of this book, the patriarchate (as she spells it) was not universal and not in place throughout all time. It was a response and an attempt by social forces to control what they saw as an intractable powerbase; mothers. It is often neglected to illustrate exactly how powerful this force is. One part is that of love, and one part is fear. Of the two, the latter has motivated people the most. Every tyrant, every saint, every pauper, and every monarch has a mother and she knows just how much of a pain in the ass you were and are. She knows exactly what buttons worked and did not for her child, and might just share that most horrible moment in your youth publicly. Or may only need to threaten to do so. History is filled with the results of this power, and also filled with the attempts by men, and yes even women, trying to avoid and curtail this power. Gage focuses mainly on the christian church here, and the developments that took place from its inception. However, the pattern she highlights can be applied to many times and many religions. From studying her work we can see that the SJW/Feminist caricature of the patriarchy is one that did exist, at various times, but has been vanquished and its adherents reduced to a few mental dwarves mumbling in a dark corner about a time long-long ago. Modern feminist's attempts to paint them as active dragons to be slain is laughable. Even though there are some places where there some still have an important amount of control to address, but it is, according to most SJWs, racist to point them out.",
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"content": "On the patriarchy\n\nThe previous post included or introduced Gage. As a standout in the zeroth-wave of feminism, she saw a time where patriarchy actually had meaning, and spoke eloquently as to its origin, power, and failures. A keen student of history and well versed in the works of the free-thinkers of her age she fleshes out the beast and stabs it with both fact and sarcasm. The quote below is from near the end of this book, yet I think such a synopsis might keep this from being a double-sized wall-of-text. Full text is on Project Gutenberg #45580 -Woman, Church & State, and as always I say, it will be instructive read the whole book quoted.\n\n[Quote begins]\nThe most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her own judgment, her own conscience, her own will. The unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man, according to Buckle, is that although its separate parts have been examined with considerable ability, hardly any one has attempted to outline them into a whole and ascertain the way they are connected with each other. While this statement is virtually true as regards the general history of mankind, it is most particularly so in reference to the position of woman in its bearings upon race development. A thorough investigation of her connection with our present form of civilization, or even with that of the past, as compared with each other, or as influencing the whole, has never yet been authoritatively undertaken. This failure has not been so largely due to willful neglect as to incapacity upon the part of man to judge truly of this relation. Woman herself must judge of woman. The most remote feminine personality is not less incomprehensible to man than the woman of today; he now as little understands the finer qualities of her soul or her high intuitive reasoning faculties as in the past. Reason is divided into two parts, theoretical and practical; the former appertains to man; the latter, composed of those intuitive faculties which do not need a long process of ratiocination for their work, inhere in woman. \n\nAlthough the course of history has given many glimpses of her superiority, and the past few decades have shown in every land a new awakening of woman to a recognition of her own powers, man as man is still as obtuse as of yore. He is yet under the darkness of the Patriarchate, failing to recognize woman as a component part of humanity, whose power of development and influence upon civilization are at least the equal of his own. He yet fails to see in her a factor of life whose influence for good or for evil has ever been in direct ratio with her freedom. He does not yet discern her equal right with himself to impress her own opinions upon the world. He still interprets governments and religions as requiring from her an unquestioning obedience to laws she has no share in making, and that place her as an inferior in every relation of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson with keen insight into the fallibility of law-makers, declared that “good men must not obey the laws too well.” Woman is showing her innate wisdom in daring to question the infallibility of man, his laws, and his interpretation of her place in creation. She is not obeying “too well,” and yet man fails to analyze her motives in this defection. The church and the state have long done man’s thinking for him, the ideas of the few, whose aim is power, have been impressed upon the many; individualism is still characterized as the essence of evil; self-thought, self-control as heretical. The state condemns both as a crime against itself, the church as a sin against heaven. Both church and state claiming to be of divine origin have assumed divine right of man over woman; while church and state have thought for man, man has assumed the right to think for woman.\n\nAs man under fear of eternal damnation surrendered to the irresponsible power of church and state, so woman yielded to that power which closed every external avenue of knowledge to her under pretext of her sinfulness. One-tenth of the human race, within the period covered by modern civilization, has compelled the other nine-tenths to think their thoughts and live lives according to their commands. This has been the chief effort of governments and religion. The most formidable general evil under which woman has suffered during the Christian ages has been that of protection; a non-recognition of her ability to care for herself, rendering watchful guardianship over her a recognized part of man’s law; not alone to prevent her sinking into depths of vice but to also prevent her entire subversion of government and religion. Buckle and other writers have recognized the protective spirit as the greatest enemy to civilization, its influence causing the few to establish themselves as guardians of the many in all affairs of life. The American Revolution in proclaiming the rights of humanity struck a blow at the protective system. This system has ever based itself upon a declaration of the supreme rights of a God, and certain rights as pertaining to certain classes of men by virtue of authority from that God. The defense of such authority has ever been the chief business of church and state, and thus religions and governments have neither found time nor inclination to uphold the rights of humanity. \n\nUnder the christian system, woman as the most rebellious against God in having eaten a forbidden fruit, has found herself condemned through the centuries to untold oppression in order that the rights of God might be maintained. Yet while constantly teaching that woman brought sin into the world, the church ever forgets its own corollary; that if she brought sin she also brought God into the world, thus throwing ineffable splendor over mankind. The whole theory regarding woman, under christianity, has been based upon the conception that she had no right to live for herself alone. Her duty to others has continuously been placed before her and her training has ever been that of self-sacrifice. Taught from the pulpit and legislative halls that she was created for another, that her position must always be secondary even to her children, her right to life, has been admitted only in so far as its reacting effect upon another could be predicated. That she was first created for herself, as an independent being to whom all the opportunities of the world should be open because of herself, has not entered the thought of the church; has not yet become one of the conceptions of law; is not yet the foundation of the family.\n\nBut woman is learning for herself that not self-sacrifice, but self-development, is her first duty in life; and this, not primarily for the sake of others but that she may become fully herself; a perfectly rounded being from every point of view; her duty to others being a secondary consideration arising from those relations in life where she finds herself placed at birth, or those which later she voluntarily assumes. But these duties are not different in point of obligation, no more imperative upon her, than are similar duties upon man. The political doctrine of the sovereignty of the individual, although but partially recognized even in the United States, has been most efficacious in destroying that protective spirit which has so greatly interfered with the progress of humanity. This spirit yet retains its greatest influence in the family, where it places a boundary between husband and wife. Of all circumstances biasing the judgment and restricting the sympathies, none have shown themselves more powerful than physical differences, whether of race, color or sex. When those differences are not alone believed to be a mark of inferiority, but to have been especially created for the pleasure and peculiar service of another, the elements of irresponsible tyranny upon one side, and irremediable slavery upon the other, are already organized. If in addition, that inferior is regarded as under an especial curse for extraordinary sin, as the church has ever inculcated in reference to women; and when as in the case of woman and man an entire separation of interests, hopes, feelings and passions is impossible, we have reached the extreme of injustice and misery under the protective system. \n\nConsequently no other form of “protection” has possessed so many elements of absolute injustice as that of man over woman. Swedenborg taught, and experience declares, that morality cannot exist except under conditions of freedom. Hence we find much that has been called morality is the effect of dependence and lessened self-respect, and has really been immorality and degradation. While in every age, the virtues of self-sacrifice have been pointed to as evidence of the highest morality, we find those women in whom it has been most apparent, have been those doing least justice where justice first belongs—to themselves. Justice as the foundation of the highest law, is a primal requirement of the individual to the self. It is none the less a serious impeachment of the religious-moral idea, that the doctrine of protection and the duty of woman’s self-sacrifice, were taught under the theory of divine authority. No faith was more profound, none could be more logical if resting on a true foundation, than the church theory regarding woman. Life assumed a sterner reality to men who believed themselves in point of purity and priority nearer their Creator than woman. Thereafter, she was to be protected from herself, the church and man cheerfully assuming this duty. Under the protective spirit it is not so very long since men sold themselves and their families to some other man in power, either lay or religious, under promise of protection, binding themselves to obey the mandates of such lord evermore. The church protected and directed the thought of the world. To think for one’s self is not even now the tendency of mankind; the few who dare, do so at great peril. It will require another hundred years of personal and political freedom for men to appreciate what liberty really is—for them to possess confidence in their own judgment upon religious questions—for the man of humble station to fully believe in himself and in his own opinions when opposed to the authority of church or state.\n\nWomen of the present century whose struggle for equal opportunity of education with men; for a chance to enter the liberal professions; for a fair share of the world of work; for equal pay in that work; for all demands of equality which make the present a noted age in the world’s history, have met their greatest opposition from this protective spirit. No less than during the darkest period of its history does the church still maintain the theory that education and public life are not fitting for woman—indelicate for herself and injurious to the community. During the Christian ages, the church has not alone shown cruelty and contempt for woman, but has exhibited an impious and insolent disregard of her most common rights of humanity. It has robbed her of responsibility, putting man in place of God. It has forbidden her the offices of the church and at times an entrance within its doors. It has denied her independent thought, declaring her a secondary creation for man’s use to whom alone it has made her responsible. It has anathematized her sex, teaching her to feel shame for the very fact of her being. It has not been content with proclaiming a curse upon her creative attributes, but has thrust the sorrows and expiations of man’s “curse” upon her, and in doing these things the church has wrought her own ruin. A religious revolution of the most radical kind, has even now assumed such proportions as to nearly destroy the basic creeds of various sects, and undermine the whole fabric of christendom. It everywhere exists although neither the world nor the church seem to realize the magnitude of its proportions. As a legitimate result of two opposing forces, a crisis in the life of the church is at hand; nay, even upon it. While we see it making organized effort for extension of power and entire control of the state, we also find great increase of radical thought, and development of individual conscience and individual judgment. With thought no longer bound by fear of everlasting punishment, mankind will cease to believe unproved assertions, simply because made by a class of men under assumed authority from God. Reason will be used, mankind will seek for truth come whence it may, lead where it will, and with our own Lucretia Mott, will accept “truth for authority and not authority for truth.”\n\nIn knocking at the door of political rights, woman is severing the last link between church and state; the church must lose that power it has wielded with changing force since the days of Constantine, ever to the injury of freedom and the world. The immeasurable injustice of woman, and her sufferings under christianity, her intellectual, moral and spiritual servitude, will never be understood until life with its sorrows shall be opened to our vision in a sphere more defined than the present one. The superstitions of the church, the miseries of woman, her woes, tortures, burnings, rackings and all the brutalities she has endured in the church, the state, the family, under the sanction of christianity, would be incredible had we not the most undeniable evidence of their existence, not alone in the past but as shown by the teachings, laws and customs of the present time. “She has suffered under a theology which extended its rule not only to her civil and political relations, but to her most significant domestic and personal concerns, regulating the commerce of husband and wife, of parent and child, of master and servant, even prescribing her diet and dress, her education and her industries.” Edmund Noble speaks in like manner of the ancient Russians under the tyrannical provisions of the Greek church, saying, “clearly, such a system of theocratic supervision and direction as this, is compatible only with the lowest possible spiritual condition of the subject, or the lowest possible conception of God.” Possessing no proof of its existence, the church has ever fostered unintelligent belief. To doubt her “unverified” assertion has even been declared an unpardonable sin. The supreme effort of the church, being maintenance of power, it is but recently that woman has been allowed to read history for herself, or having read it, dared to draw her own conclusion from its premises. \n\nIgnorance and falsehood created a sentiment in accord with themselves, crushing all her aspirations. In the family, man still decides the rights and duties of the wife, as of old. As legislator and judge, he still makes and executes class laws. In the church, he yet arrogates to himself the interpretation of the bible; still claims to be an exponent of the Divine will, that grandest lesson of the reformation, the right of private interpretation of the scriptures, not yet having been conceded to woman. The premises upon which the church is based being radically false, and this, most especially in everything related to woman. Trained from infancy by the church to a belief in woman’s inferiority and incapacity for self-government, men of the highest station have not hesitated to organize societies in opposition to her just demands. As early as 1875, an anti-woman’s franchise association was formed in London, under the name of “Association for Protecting the Franchise from the Encroachment of Women”.\n--Matilda Joslyn Gage 1893\n[Quote ends]\n\nPostscript:\nAs Gage points out in the beginning of this book, the patriarchate (as she spells it) was not universal and not in place throughout all time. It was a response and an attempt by social forces to control what they saw as an intractable powerbase; mothers. It is often neglected to illustrate exactly how powerful this force is. One part is that of love, and one part is fear. Of the two, the latter has motivated people the most. Every tyrant, every saint, every pauper, and every monarch has a mother and she knows just how much of a pain in the ass you were and are. She knows exactly what buttons worked and did not for her child, and might just share that most horrible moment in your youth publicly. Or may only need to threaten to do so. History is filled with the results of this power, and also filled with the attempts by men, and yes even women, trying to avoid and curtail this power. Gage focuses mainly on the christian church here, and the developments that took place from its inception. However, the pattern she highlights can be applied to many times and many religions. From studying her work we can see that the SJW/Feminist caricature of the patriarchy is one that did exist, at various times, but has been vanquished and its adherents reduced to a few mental dwarves mumbling in a dark corner about a time long-long ago. Modern feminist's attempts to paint them as active dragons to be slain is laughable. Even though there are some places where there some still have an important amount of control to address, but it is, according to most SJWs, racist to point them out.",
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