Comments on: Margoth vs. Robert E. Lee

By: The Race Card « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

The Race Card « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:05:29 +0000

[...] Having reread the two-volume Donald bio of Sumner, I am more convinced than ever that Melville modeled his character Captain Ahab after Sumner. Just as “Ahab” was a “fighting Quaker”, Sumner’s first scandalous public oration– on the Fourth of July 1845, in Faneuil Hall, Boston, to an elite assemblage that included military brass sitting in the first row—denounced all wars and pledged his life to peace. The “fighting Quaker” moniker, plus the compassion that Ahab feels for the black boy Pip, going so far as to take “crazy” Pip into his cabin and promising never to abandon him, clinches the deal for me. For Sumner’s writing completed as Melville was writing Moby-Dick see http://clarespark.com/2009/10/05/charles-sumner-moderate-conservative-on-lifelong-learning/. Or see http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/. [...]

By: Updated index to Melville blogs « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

Updated index to Melville blogs « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:28:16 +0000

[...] http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/. [...]

By: The Abraham Lincoln Conundrum « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

The Abraham Lincoln Conundrum « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:06:54 +0000

[...] I find it impossible to laud Lincoln’s record as a moderate who succeeded in conciliating sectional conflict. We are still fighting over the Civil War, and the proposals of the so-called Radical Republicans might have done much to allay the bitterness that remains over this unresolved, traumatic and traumatizing conflict. (See http://clarespark.com/2011/02/20/are-we-still-fighting-the-civil-war/.) For a treatment of Herman Melville’s treatment of Robert E. Lee and the Civil War in general, see http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/. [...]

By: “Multiculturalism”: cui bono? « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

“Multiculturalism”: cui bono? « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:42:44 +0000

[...] its citizens from invasion and protects their civil rights, including property rights (See http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/). But there was a competing notion of “identity” derived first from German Romanticism [...]

By: Are we still fighting the Civil War? « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

Are we still fighting the Civil War? « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 03:27:01 +0000

[...] An entire generation of cultural historians has not only corrected the record, but has taken unto itself a grand piece of the conscience of the nation insofar as it supports big government programs or black studies programs (with a black nationalist flavor) to instruct the unregenerate nation. Ironically, some of these same historians have tended to view Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, proponents of land reform to start the freedmen on the road to capitalist independence, as extremists, as too harsh or even paranoid in their critiques of the old South/the Slave Power/unrepentant rebels (see my conference paper, http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/.) [...]

By: American Slavery vs. Nazi genocide « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

American Slavery vs. Nazi genocide « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:45:43 +0000

[...] [This blog is not about the Civil War or its causes, but about the hijacking of American history by some leftists, who write like the militant black nationalists I encountered at Pacifica Radio, and that David Horowitz described at length in his Hating Whitey. 2011 will see a huge upsurge in articles about whether that conflict could have been prevented by better statesmanship, the causes and objectives of the war, what exactly happened in the war, and what was the course of Reconstruction. I have already written a research paper on Reconstruction and its interpretation by Herman Melville in his poem on Robert E. Lee. The link is here: http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/. [...]

By: Railroading Ayn Rand/Alissa Rosenbaum/Dagny Taggart « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:11:10 +0000

[...] I am suggesting that Ayn Rand’s selection of the railroad as Dagny Taggart’s chief area of expertise and her leading preoccupation was no shot in the dark; rather, she continued an important Promethean line in the literature of the West. To illustrate that lineage, and some organic conservative opposition to the railroad, I offer a few paragraphs from my essay on Melville and his imagined Robert E. Lee (http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/): [...]

By: The New (anti) Americanism « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

The New (anti) Americanism « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:15:20 +0000

[...] masked as “progressives.” (Where is Charles Sumner in our historiography? See http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/, for an analysis of the contrasting rhetoric of such liberals as Sumner with that of Woodrow Wilson [...]

By: Herman Melville: Dead White Male « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

Herman Melville: Dead White Male « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 22:39:26 +0000

[...] 1. Melville’s annotations to Milton’s Paradise Lost, which strongly suggest that Melville identified with Milton’s Satan in his seduction of Eve (Book IX). Like the radical puritan, Milton himself in Melville’s reading, poked his nose into the affairs of his betters. When the annotations surfaced in the early 1980s, these materials were confined to a very few Melvilleans, and when finally published, leading scholars construed their message as evidence for the construction of a sobered-up moderate Melville (see http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/). [...]

By: What is a corporatist liberal? And why should they frighten us? « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:58:46 +0000

[...] formulations or belief systems of his patrons and family–clearly an impossible task (see http://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/). Similarly, in graduate school, I discovered that original historical research was demanded, but [...]