The Clare Spark Blog

December 21, 2014

Origins of free speech and the Cuba question

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 8:52 pm
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War Production Board, 1942-43, NARA

War Production Board, 1942-43, NARA

There is an impression, widely disseminated by supporters of the Obama administration, that renewing “diplomatic relations” and/or freer trade with Cuba (i.e., the lifting of the embargo) will lead to an improvement in the human rights situation there. This blog explores the origins of free speech, and it had nothing to do with free trade or capitalism, though one leftist newspaper thinks it does, perhaps because Marx supported free trade in the hopes of accelerating the socialist revolution: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jul/01/in-praise-of-william-cobbett, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cobbett.

Here are some other societies thought to be outposts of cultural freedom: ancient Greece (although Plato wanted to banish poets from the Republic, and Aristotle wrote that some men were born to be slaves); England, both in the Magna Carta and in the time of the English Civil War (Milton’s Areopagitica and/or Paradise Lost its most famous examples); the seventeenth century scientific revolution, mostly British, but also the short-lived Dutch Republic, with Spinoza leading the way; and most famously the American Revolution with its Constitution, particularly the First Amendment, soon to be followed by the French Revolution and its Declaration of Human Rights; and finally the invention of social media and the no-holds-barred free-wheeling internet. But free speech was a privilege of elites and did not extend to ordinary persons, who were either slaves, serfs, landless, or under-educated and irrational. (New England Puritans were ever in the vanguard of free public education.)

I prefer to periodize the onset of free speech with the invention of the printing press, enabling the progress of mass literacy over many centuries. In prior blogs, I have suggested that although we technically enjoy freedom of expression, various elites have placed road blocks to the “liberty” we imagine that we possess. Moreover, I have more than hinted that the chief target of anti-Semitism is intellectual combativeness, a habit of mind that led one Melville scholar (Princeton’s Lawrance Thompson) to entitle his study of Herman Melville, “Melville’s Quarrel With God”(1952). In other words, HM was all too ‘Hebraic’, luring readers to perdition. Such consistent double-talking, self-erasing texts, and unequivocal assaults on authority, even his own (Ahab! See https://clarespark.com/2013/01/08/is-ahab-ahab-the-free-will-debate/). “Such a Jew” (Charles Olson’s notes) could not be tolerated in “free Ameriky” as one character mocked in The Confidence-Man and again in his post-Civil War poem Clarel.

AhabJezebel

I will end this blog with a quote from George Orwell, who has been taken up by conservatives as a fierce critic of “totalitarianism,” ignoring his strong attachment to working class men, to materialism, and to the Left:

[Orwell, Looking Back on the Spanish War, 1942:] “I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, of they struggled after the truth, knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that “the facts” existed and were more or less discoverable. …Nazi theory…specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as “science.” There is only “German science”, “Jewish science” etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future, but the past….”

orwell

We are living in this nightmare world today, and until we all rouse ourselves to address the “postmodern” “multicultural” education that is hegemonic and that supports only “group facts” indecipherable to other “races” or “genders” we will continue to wither, or at best, to sell out inside Nineteen Eighty-Four.

For a related blog see https://clarespark.com/2014/10/08/index-to-blogs-on-totalitarianism/. “Totalitarianism” is a term that Orwell used frequently, but is now out of date. Equating Nazis and Soviets was a tool in the Cold War, tarring the “progressive” brush with Soviet communism.

June 6, 2013

Morale in the time of crisis overload

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:33 pm
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MORALE_G_20110814213222[This blog is dedicated to the thousands of Americans and allies who gave their lives in the invasion of Europe: D-Day, June 6, 1944. They knew what a fascist was.] Here is an excerpt from my research in the Harvard University Archives that seems especially relevant today, in the light of multiple scandals, even panic, descending upon our electorate, for we may be in danger of losing the will to resist the juggernaut of anti-Americanism, surveillance, and corruption that has been revealed since the Benghazi affair last September:

[Book excerpt, Hunting Captain Ahab, chapter 2:] In the case of the [Henry A.] Murray-[Gordon] Allport worksheets [distributed nationally to progressive groups ca. 1941], those limits were scientistically delineated; the Jeffersonian tradition was co-opted and redefined in the indispensable “Values of the Past”: “The more awareness there is of the group’s heroic past the better the morale. (Freedom from Old World Oppression, Jeffersonian Democracy, etc.) The more awareness of a national tradition of which the group is ashamed or guilty, the worse the morale…The slogan “Make The World Safe For Democracy” was anchored neither in the historical past or future. A durable morale must be historically anchored in the past and in the future, as well as in the present (Worksheet #4, 4, 5).” So much for the messianic republican mission…. The ever-questioning, self-critical temper of the Enlightenment, the very Head and Heart of the libertarian eighteenth century, could only lead to bad morale. … they went on to say that racial or economic discrimination were bad for morale, that there could be no doubt about the prospects for a better postwar world. A hodge-podge of factors: “communism, fascism, economic chaos, depression, or uncertainty,” all would impair morale (6). Peace aims were suggested: an International Police Force would ensure that “There will be a better distribution of the goods of the earth; all classes will be benefited” (Red-bound typescript, 13).” But war aims must remain vague, for we were a “pluralist society,” not a “unified society”; there were different strokes for different folks: “Disparities of statements shouldn’t be too obvious or made visible” (#4, 7).Properly guided we would be historically anchored in promises of abundance and an illusion of unity, yet we were not fascists. [end excerpt https://clarespark.com/2011/03/27/progressive-mind-managers-ca-1941-42/.]

I have been in red-hot conflict with some internet comments that insist we are already under the thumb of fascists (as opposed to, say, proto-fascists as the Murray-Allport worksheets suggested), and that civil war is inevitable. My line is this: as long as the internet and dissenting publications and television stations exist, the republic is not finished, and certainly not comparable to Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, or Franco’s Spain, at least not yet. (See https://clarespark.com/2013/04/21/fascism-what-it-is-what-it-is-not/.) These persons whom I oppose are either trolls, agents provocateurs (same as trolls), or paranoid. They have been egged on by the doom and gloom contingent of internet rightist magazines, that ask for our financial support in the emergency that never goes away. I am familiar with this technique having participated in innumerable Pacifica Radio fund drives.

However, I do remember David Dellinger at one of our KPFK teach-ins warning other post-60s activists not to lead “emergency lives” (his exact words). In warning against burn-out Dellinger echoed the advice of Murray and Allport, quoted above: too much emphasis on failure in the nation’s past is bad for morale. Instead they recommend that moral failures be corrected. (I didn’t care for their particular nostrums, but that is another story.)

There is something obscene in the claims of these trolls or deluded rightists that all is lost, and those who would stop this administration must mount the barricades.  It is true that thanks to checks and balances and the internal reformation of the Republican party (still in process), that there are reputable journalists who have uncovered lawbreakers and liars in the current administration. But there has been no military coup to shred the Constitution or any demonstrable move by POTUS to remain in office past his second term.

Instead, we have the most vigorous debates over key issues, possibly the best writers on the once impenetrable Middle East (Barry Rubin, David P. Goldman, a.k.a. “Spengler”) that I can remember. It is true that some conflicts seem confused and murky (such as the arguments pro and con immigration reform), and that not enough attention is paid to public education, but that too is changing.

Political affiliations are not carved in stone. We can collapse in exhaustion and depression, or we can take heart that our institutions have been exposed, which gives an opening for new political choices. Our future will depend on our ability to be flexible and alert for fresh coalitions, perhaps even to relegate the distractions of the culture wars to the bottom of our list of “must think about now.” (For my defense of secularism see https://clarespark.com/2012/04/01/secularism-and-the-affordable-care-act/.)

De Chirico: The Terrible Games, 1925

De Chirico: The Terrible Games, 1925

June 2, 2013

Hair and Make-up: Megyn Kelly smackdown

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 2:09 am
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bettygrable2

[Update 10-26-16:last night, MK demanded that Trump “take responsibility” for his insults in an interview with Mike Pence, then took on Newt Gingrich who failed to back down in their dispute over media bias.]

[Update, 10-1-16: Megyn Kelly continues to present herself as a feminist, while seemingly regressing to an “aw shucks” parody of femininity and defending (obesity) in the name of outraged womanhood.]

Megyn Kelly, often considered the brainiest of Fox News Channel anchors, does not overtly define herself as a feminist, but she sure sounded like one in her spirited and feisty interviews with Lou Dobbs (Fox News Channel commentator) and Erick Erickson (editor of Redstate.com), May 31, 2013. So much so that liberal blogs have been gleefully covering her encounter with the two conservative males.

(See the smackdown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN_EP3zcUXs )

Before I go on to the time wasted by women in decking themselves out as dolls and harem girls (Betty Grable, illustrated: the number  one pinup girl in WW2), I must make this point about the internal contradiction of some “Christian” thought: Much of what Dobbs and Erickson presented as incontrovertible truth relies upon some brand of sociobiology: men were, they insisted, biologically determined to be protectors of the weaker females, especially during the vulnerable period of pregnancy and child-rearing. Working women who defied these God- and Nature-given sex roles are obviously responsible for social decadence and worse. (The same would go for ‘unnatural’ gay marriages where the usual division of labor between father and mother would not prevail.)

On the other hand, many social conservatives often believe that our species is not in Nature, but stands above it: nothing so irritating as a Spinoza follower, who often drops into pantheism.  (See Leon Wieseltier’s commencement speech quoted here: https://clarespark.com/2013/05/30/nostalgia-for-the-middle-ages/. Wieseltier draws a sharp line between Man and Nature and laments the period when the two were conflated. )

I would have preferred that Megyn Kelly, herself an experienced lawyer, point out this contradiction, but she chose to stand up for working women and for married gay parents, suggesting that research had shown that their children were not harmed by the lack of a traditional father and mother.

Nothwithstanding her smackdown of Dobbs and Erickson, Kelly is a babe, whatever she says about herself;  I felt some cognitive dissonance watching her stand up to the two conservatives, for she is a beautiful, expertly-coiffed, heavily made-up blonde. After seeing the encounter yesterday, I thought I should say something about “hair and makeup”, those two time-consuming, nature-defying imperatives for women out in the world or waiting at home for the male breadwinner to return to his castle.

Antiquity-dreams...Deviant Art

Antiquity-dreams…Deviant Art

In the nineteenth century, during the first wave of feminism, the female pioneers whose tireless efforts and dedication gave women the consideration and political power they wield today, were not babes. They were usually religious Protestants, were plainly dressed, and certainly did not waste hours and hours on coloring their hair or applying make-up to enhance their lips, cheeks, and eyes, let alone painting their fingernails and toenails or lusting after high heeled shoes by Christian Louboutin. Rather, such decorations were generally confined to actresses and fancy women.  There were not enough hours in the day for self-education (19th century women did not attend male colleges or have their own–with a few exceptions– and were denied entrance to the professions, though their [maternal]nursing skills were highly valued); these heroic early feminists were traveling to remote parts of America to further feminist  causes (including abolition, temperance, votes for women, cleaning up corrupt city governments, and rescuing prostitutes from a life of disease, degradation and early death). Some of them were unmarried, while others had large families: household help was cheaper and husbands pitched in. In regarding their intertwined efforts at elevating our country, historian David Pivar has described their cause as a “purity crusade.”

Generally considered to be killjoys determined to pry into the affairs of men, these women have been caricatured by other male opponents.  As a rising class, as progressive women “who want to make the whole world home-like”, they are blamed for “the nanny state” and for “the fetishism of facts.” Their masculinist opponents “want a girl, just like the girl that married dear old Dad.” Lots of luck, guys. (For more blogs on the various stages of feminism, see https://clarespark.com/2012/09/04/links-to-blogs-on-feminism/, or its twin https://clarespark.com/2012/03/19/links-to-feminist-blogs/.)

The photographer of the Deviant Art image is John Lynn of SNTP, and is on Facebook, as is Raven Winter, stylist and model.

its time to wear the pants

May 30, 2013

Nostalgia for the “Middle Ages”

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:15 pm
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old tapestry(Update: there is a big fight among academics as to whether or not the late Middle Ages were not the true originators of science and great art. New Left and Catholic scholars seem to be in the vanguard of this move. The arguments are very heated, and suggest many persons reject modernity/mass politics/technology/machines, unless they can be reconciled with religion, particularly Catholicism or its hybrids. The Greens, who merge with Nature (as opposed to modern domination of Nature) might be considered as romantic medievalists.)

New Republic literary critic Leon Wieseltier was quoted in the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, May 29, 2013 as “Notable and Quotable.” These excerpts were taken from the commencement speech delivered by Wieseltier at Brandeis University on May 19, which warned students not to yield to the blandishments of science and technology.: “There is no task more urgent in American intellectual life at this hour than to offer some resistance to the two imperialisms of science and technology, and to recover the old distinction—once bitterly contested, then generally accepted , now almost completely forgotten—between the study of nature and the study of man.  …You who have elected to devote yourselves to the study of literature and languages and art and music and philosophy and religion and history—you are the stewards of that quality….Perhaps culture is now the counterculture. “

Wieseltier believes that this “saving remnant” will protect us against “the twittering acceleration of American consciousness….” [What on earth does he mean by that?]

This imprecation to drastically sever the link between the study of man with the study of nature, coupled with his nod to “religion” rhymes very well with the occasional turn to medievalism at such bastions of ex-leftist or populist thinking as Pajamas Media (see http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/28/video-in-defense-of-the-middle-ages/, seen also on the Dennis Prager “university” http://www.prageruniversity.com/History/Were-the-Middle-Ages-Dark.html. These videos are based on the work of Anthony Esolen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_M._Esolen)   It has been my position as both a student of intellectual history (with a strong interest in art and literary history), that the freethinking individual was unknown and often burned at the stake for daring to deviate from the rules laid down by medieval and even Renaissance priests and monarchs.

weapons-of-middle-ages

The Promethean impulse was sorely punished before the Enlightenment, and even Voltaire had to publish anonymously. And that pioneer Spinoza was hounded as a heretic for his materialist philosophy that joined Man with Nature and for his support of the short-lived but pathbreaking Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century.

But what is most disturbing, almost laughable, is Wieseltier’s posture as a revolutionary naysayer to the most advanced democracy in the history of our species, when he comes out as a diehard reactionary. Perhaps he likes girls with long tresses. The Middle Ages lingered into the 19th century with the vogue for William Morris craftsmanship, or before his ascendancy, the prestige of the Pre-Raphaelites, now in revival as a protest against the “desecration of nature.”

A contemporary version of Archangel Raphael

A contemporary version of Archangel Raphael

The real Middle Ages were a period of anarchy and arbitrary authority, localism,  interminable warfare, short life expectancy, institutionalized Jew-hatred, material deprivation, and slavery to powerful overlords, whose control over the lower orders was reinforced by “religion” that Wieseltier lauds as the proper study of his new counterculture (note that he does not distinguish between religions at odds with each other and with secularism. Such vagueness is typical of the moderate men who do not want anyone to be angry with them).  The centuries of struggle and sacrifice that brought us to pluralist, secularized modernity should not be so casually overturned by Brandeis University and its supportive media institutions. As for the study of cultural artifacts that Wieseltier recommends, it is not so easily accomplished as he imagines. Art works do not speak for themselves: they are always positioned against competing ideas and rules: look to their patrons and you will find the key to their artworks. Indeed, one of the great neglected themes in Melville scholarship (and the same might be said for his contemporary Victor Hugo) is ambivalence, as artists struggle with themselves either to accept or reject their freedom to write as they feel, for social cohesion is at stake, including their own interior conflicts that they imagine can hurl them into the abyss of poverty and artistic failure. (Melville’s father-in-law was Lemuel Shaw, a conservative Whig and Chief Justice of Massachusetts, also his patron.)

There is much to be criticized in this modern world, but its defects are not traceable to the “imperialism” of science and technology, but to the reactionary forces that thought that the transition from feudalism to capitalism could be managed without quality mass education and the preservation of the individual conscience and its rights as institutionalized in the First Amendment to the American Constitution. I remember Dr. Henry A. Murray, mind-manager extraordinaire, complaining about religious pluralism because the very fact that some had different belief systems suggested that one’s own religion  might be fallible. Such self-doubt (often described as ambiguity) fostered social division, not the desired social cohesion. (See https://clarespark.com/2012/03/26/henry-a-murray-and-the-tat/, or https://clarespark.com/2014/12/29/the-leader-principle/, or https://clarespark.com/2012/09/22/materialist-history-and-the-idea-of-progress/.) Is it any wonder that so many artists and writers must write under a mask, simply to express their inner selves?Mask-SuttonHoo7thC

May 3, 2012

Index to blogs on education reform

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 8:04 pm
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ad for Spinoza toy

This series of blogs not only reviews  recent work on the reform of our education system, but points out disagreements in what is wrongly considered to be a unified establishment. Some of the blogs also insist upon the materialist epistemology of the Constitution. Culture warriors take note!

https://clarespark.com/2010/09/22/links-to-arne-duncan-blogs/

https://clarespark.com/2009/10/01/perfectly-progressive-parenthood/

https://clarespark.com/2009/09/06/the-hebraic-american-landscape-sublime-or-despotic/

https://clarespark.com/2010/01/02/jottings-on-the-culture-wars-both-sides-are-wrong/

https://clarespark.com/2010/06/15/the-classics-as-antidote-to-science-education/

https://clarespark.com/2011/08/03/jobs-program-for-education-reformers-or-the-new-prometheus/

https://clarespark.com/2012/01/21/the-persistence-of-white-racism/

https://clarespark.com/2011/08/31/review-steven-brills-class-warfare/ (Read this one first)

https://clarespark.com/2011/05/12/the-great-common-goes-to-the-white-house/

https://clarespark.com/2011/05/16/questions-for-education-reformers/

https://clarespark.com/2011/06/23/the-u-s-history-establishment-divided-and-failing/ (my correspondence with Ravitch, contrasting Ravitch with Gary Nash)

https://clarespark.com/2011/05/28/who-is-a-racist-now-2/ (retitled Diane Ravitch and the higher moderation)

https://clarespark.com/2011/07/17/literary-criticism-ravitch-variant/.

https://clarespark.com/2011/10/09/vox-populi-vox-big-brother/ (A review of Terry M. Moe’s new book)

https://clarespark.com/2012/01/28/popular-sovereignty-on-the-ropes/.

https://clarespark.com/2012/03/22/3760/ (On the great dumbing down)

https://clarespark.com/2012/01/15/prometheus-bound-but-good/

https://clarespark.com/2012/09/19/bullies/

https://clarespark.com/2012/11/09/race-and-the-problem-of-inclusion/

https://clarespark.com/2013/01/05/american-fascism-and-the-future-of-english-and-american-literature/ (On Common Core curriculum)

https://clarespark.com/2013/02/27/american-exceptionalism-retold/

https://clarespark.com/2011/01/26/obama-and-the-rhetoric-of-the-political-family/

https://clarespark.com/2014/02/01/harvard-ed-school-leads-in-vaguely-dumbing-down/

https://clarespark.com/2015/07/09/harvards-advocacy-of-simplicity-as-remedy-for-failing-schools/

https://clarespark.com/2015/07/14/depraved-indifference-to-education-reform/

Arne Duncan and Obama at play

April 1, 2012

Secularism and the Affordable Care Act

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 10:11 pm
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I asked my FB friends what they thought the word “secular” meant, and got a number of responses suggesting that it meant one thing: atheism.

It appears that the culture wars have done their job: to most of the responders, “secular” signifies atheism, which may indicate narcissism, nihilism, and amorality to them. But in its older meaning, pre-culture wars, “secular” simply referred to matters of this world, as opposed to other-worldliness in religions that emphasized heaven and hell. But more significantly, secularism is a political science term that refers to the separation of church and state, meaning that no religion has priority over others, and that no religion is the established state religion. In the U.S. we enjoy religious pluralism. But triumphalist religions have managed to minimize the Founding Fathers’ commitment to the separation of church and state. And culture warriors such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Newt Gingrich have turned “the secularist” into the bogey man, insisting that the Constitution, like the Declaration of Independence before it, was divinely inspired, rather than the institutionalization of natural rights. But read the Federalist papers and see that Hamilton puts ultimate authority in the people, which is another word for popular sovereignty. Just as (later) in the French Revolution, power, knowledge and virtue had passed from Kings and Church to the People, who would then comprise the red specter to this very day, at least in the U.S. The U.S. Constitution was written to create a strong and effective national government, and owed its inception to epistemological materialism and to the Enlightenment. (See https://clarespark.com/2010/09/02/spinoza-as-culture-critic/.)

Alexander Hamilton was a church-goer, but to his most venomous critics he was not just a bastard-upstart, a foreigner, and a monarchist; he was a crypto-Jew, i.e., a variant of the anti-Christ. Recall that the Reformation convulsed Europe, with protestants (of many stripes) being defined as heretics by the outraged Catholic Church, who went on to purify their practice in the Counter-Reformation, a development that went on to censor such as Spinoza and other freethinkers at a time of burgeoning literacy among the lower orders.  (See Radical Enlightenment, Jonathan Israel’s 2001 book on Spinoza and censorship throughout Europe following the underground publication of his works; there is now a shorter work published in 2009 treating the Radical Enlightenment and the roots of democracy. But I view J. Israel as a social democrat and doubt that we have the same genealogy for democracy and free thought, since my vanguard includes such as Hayek, von Mises, and the Friedmans, but not Maynard Keynes.)

For decades, I have followed the academic assault on empiricism, medicine, and psychiatry (including the “historicizing” and discrediting of all of the mental health practitioners, Freudian and non-Freudian alike). Doctors do not share any one religious or non-religious orientation, but they do focus their training on healing the sick, which means studying the human body in various states of health, trauma,  and disease. Theirs is a secular profession, but one that finds itself in conflict with those religions that see sickness and health as dispensations from God, as part of God’s plan for the individual and for the world. Thus we find unresolved and perhaps unresolvable conflicts over such practices as abortion, contraception, abortifacients, embryonic stem-cell research, and assisted suicide in the terminally ill.

I find it odd that in all the publicity over the Affordable Care Act that these culture war issues have not been emphasized, yet the cost of medical care and what is covered or excluded is related to larger conflicts over appropriate professional intervention in the processes of life and death. Not surprisingly, much of the opposition to the ACA comes from the religious Right that correctly fears government-run “death panels” or other instances of rationing (see https://clarespark.com/2012/03/29/james-pagano-m-d-on-affordable-care-act/). They are not paranoid in this respect. In an ironic coalition, God-Squads and Doc-Squads may find themselves on the same side.

Illustrated: Top: Jonathan Israel, Middle: Spinoza toy; Bottom: Joel Strom DDS, organizer for www.docsquads.org.

October 5, 2009

Charles Sumner, “moderate conservative,” on lifelong learning

Filed under: 1 — clarelspark @ 6:01 pm
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Charles Sumner as sculpted by Anne Whitney

Readers of this website have shown interest in primary source materials, so I am posting my notes on the speeches of a founder of the Republican Party, Charles Sumner, the anti-slavery Senator from Massachusetts, and later a “Black Republican” (i.e., an advocate of a far-reaching Reconstruction that would have transformed U.S. history). I took these notes from Sumner’s speeches up through the period that Herman Melville was writing Moby-Dick to demonstrate affinities between the thought of Captain Ahab’s and Sumner’s. (The bold-face headlines are taken from Melville’s own phrases or themes. Some notes from Jonathan Israel’s book on the Radical Enlightenment are also included because J. Israel’s idea of “free thought” is not the same as the empiricism and science that Sumner advocated. )

I ask my readers to compare the value placed on science, lifelong learning, and human brotherhood in Sumner’s speeches, which were also turned into pamphlets and commanded a broad following, at least in the North. What is significant as we contemplate the vacuousness of the current discourse on education (begun in the blogs on Arne Duncan’s statism), is the literacy that Sumner expected from his nineteenth-century audience. What “moderate” intellectuals today would dare to write for a popular audience with the expectation that the audience would read important books or share his passion for an excellent scientific and moral education? Also, note that “local control” in today’s debates over educational policies can signify resistance to Sumner’s conception of liberal nationalism. See my blog https://clarespark.com/2008/05/03/margoth-vs-robert-e-lee/. The Wikipedia article on Sumner is almost unremittingly hostile, like some of his contemporaries, blaming his moral intransigence for the Civil War.  (For an opportunistic (?) appropriation of Sumner, see https://clarespark.com/2011/03/30/eric-foners-christianized-lincoln/, or more recently, https://clarespark.com/2012/01/03/the-race-card/.) Moreover, the cultural history establishment (social democrats all) have defined him as paranoid, as a hater or as harsh in his proposals for Reconstruction, though that may be changing.

[Added, 11/21/09: The roots of the Republican Party are not found in the Reagan administration, but in the pre-Civil War Republican Party, founded by such as Charles Sumner, the great proponent of modernity, and with Thaddeus Stevens after the war, opponent to those who would rehabilitate the Southern rebels, hence injuring the freedmen for decades. Had the “Black Republicans” prevailed, American history would have been transformed. The essay on Robert E. Lee, linked above, lays it out, with Melville’s postwar views on the fate of the freedmen suggesting a departure from his earlier anti-racism.]

MY NOTES:  CHARLES SUMNER, HIS COMPLETE WORKS With Introduction by Hon. George Frisbie Hoar [The bold-faced capitalized prefixes to Sumner’s speeches refer to Melville’s common phrases in his more advanced works.]
VITAL TRUTH OF HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
[Sumner, from “Fame and Glory.  An Oration Before The Literary Societies of Amherst College At Their Anniversary, August 11, 1847”, Works, Vol.2 (Negro Universities Press, NY, 1969] p.183 (on the cynical promotion of evil characters)
“  …our own English Dryden lent his glowing verse to welcome and commemorate a heartless, unprincipled monarch and a servile court. Others, while refraining from eulogy, unconsciously surrender to sentiments and influences, the public opinion of the age in which they live,—investing barbarous characters and scenes, the struggles of selfishness and ambition, and even the movements of conquering robbers, with colors to apt to fascinate or mislead. Not content with that candor which should guide our judgment alike of the living and the dead, they yield sympathy even to injustice and wrong, when commended by genius or elevated by success, and especially if coupled with the egotism of a vicious patriotism. Not feeling practically the vital truth of Human Brotherhood, and the correlative duties it involves, they are insensible to the true character and the shame of transactions by which it is degraded or assailed, and in their estimate depart from that standard of Absolute Right which must be the only measure of true and permanent Fame. (183)
…Such labors [promoting “the happiness of mankind”] are the natural fruit of obedience to the great commandments. Reason, too, in harmony with these laws, shows that the true dignity of Humanity is in the moral and intellectual nature, and the labors of Justice and Benevolence, directed by intelligence and abasing that part which is in common with beasts, are the highest forms of human conduct. (184)
[on p.185, he quotes Milton, Paradise Regained, Book III, 71-80, condemning war and conquest]

ENCELADUS LIKENED TO SLAVE POWER

, pp. 211-212, Springfield Mass, Whig State Convention, Sept. 29, 1847. “Necessity Of Political Action Against The Slave Power And The Extension Of Slavery.”

[THE QUARTER-DECK OATH?] ANTISLAVERY LINKED TO FRENCH REVOLUTION AND ATTACK ON BASTILLE (p.229)
(“Union Among Men Of All Parties Against The Slave Power And The Extension Of Slavery.” Speech Before A Mass Convention At Worcester, June 28, 1848). “[the Slave Power:] Lords of the lash and lords of the loom….” (233) p.234: “This [new coalition of antislavery men] will be the Freedom Power whose single object will be to resist the Slave Power. We will put them face to face, and let them grapple. Who can doubt the result?” [cf. Ahab, chapter 135: “…Towards thee I roll, thou all destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee….”]  Continuity with American Revolution, p.237. pp.238-239. [To our principled leader] we commit the direction of the engine. …Let Massachusetts, nurse of the men and principles that made our earliest revolution, vow herself anew to her early faith. Let her once more elevate the torch which she first held aloft, or, if need be, pluck fresh coals from the living altar of France, proclaiming, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,”–Liberty to the captive, Equality between master and slave, Fraternity with all men, –the whole comprehended in that sublime revelation of Christianity, the Brotherhood of Man. …the great cause of Liberty, to which we now dedicate ourselves, will sweep the heart-strings of the people. It will smite all the chords with a might to draw forth emotions such as no political struggle ever awakened before….”

DESCARTES AND LIFELONG LEARNING (“The Law of Human Progress. An Oration Before The Phi Beta Kappa Society Of Union College, Schenectady, July 25, 1848) quoting Descartes, “Discourse on Method” (1637): “In these new triumphs of knowledge, he says, ‘men may learn to enjoy the fruits of the earth without trouble; their health will be preserved, and they will be able to exempt themselves from an infinitude of ills, as well of body as of mind, and even, perhaps, from the weakness of old age.’ As I repeat these words, uttered long before the steam-engine, the railroad, the electric telegraph, and the use of ether, I seem to hear a prophecy, the prophecy of Science, which each day helps to fulfill. …There is grandeur in the assurance with which the great philosopher announces the Future. (258)

ROMANTIC WANDERING JEW

? Quoting Pascal (same essay), a repressed chapter in Les Pensées (first ed. 1669), “Of Authority in Matters of Philosophy”. “Not until the next century was the testimony of Pascal disclosed to the world. ‘By a special prerogative of the human race,’ says he, ‘not only each man advances day by day in the sciences, but all men together make continual progress therein, as the universe grows old; because the same thing happens in the succession of men which takes place in the different ages of an individual. So that the whole succession of men in the course of so many ages may be regarded as one man who lives always and who learns continually…. “(258-259)

GEOLOGY

“THAT UNIMPEACHED INTERPRETER OF THE PAST…” (p.271) (Post-Civil War, Melville wrote Clarel, distancing himself from his Promethean characters, Taji, Ahab, and Pierre. The geologic Jew Margoth is mocked by the other characters, but it is not clear if Melville shared their views.)

ON RACE, BROTHERHOOD AND UPLIFT LED BY AMERICA. (CF. WHITE-JACKET)

(P.271). “It is true, doubtless, that there are various races of men; but there is but one great Human Family, in which Caucasian, Ethiopian, Chinese, and Indian are all brothers, children of one Father, and heirs to one happiness. Though variously endowed, they are all tending in the same direction; nor can light obtained by one be withheld from any. [Melville agreed with this, though racial difference is hotly disputed today.] The ether discovered in Boston will soothe pain hereafter in Africa and in Asia, in Abyssinia and in China. So are we all knit together, that words of wisdom and truth, which first sway the hearts of the American people, may help to elevate benighted tribes of the most distant regions. The vexed question of modern science, whether these races proceeded originally from one stock, does not interfere with the sublime revelation of Christianity, the Brotherhood of Man. In the light of science and of religion, Humanity is an organism, complex, but still one,–throbbing with one life, animated by one soul, every part sympathizing with every other part, and the whole advancing in one indefinite career of Progress.”

THE ISABEL FACTOR: ORDINARY PEOPLE AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH: DESTINY AND THE RAINBOW (p.285)

“Thus ever has Truth moved on,–though opposed and reviled [by resistant conservatives, not the moderate ones], still mighty and triumphant. Rejected by the rich and the powerful, by the favorites of fortune and of place, she finds shelter with those who often have no shelter for themselves. It is such as these that most freely welcome moral truth, with its new commandments [i.e. abolition of slavery, C.S.]. Not the dwellers in the glare of the world, but the humble and lowly, most perceive this truth–as watchers placed in the depths of a well observe the stars which are obscured to those who live in the effulgence of noon. Free from egotism and prejudice, whether of self-interest or of class, without cares and temptations, whether of wealth or power, dwelling in the mediocrity and obscurity of common life, they discern the new signal, and surrender unreservedly to its guidance. The Saviour knew this. …[Let everyone embrace this new law (of progress) “It will give to all…a new revelation of their destiny”: Progress] will be as another covenant, witnessed by the bow in the heavens, not only that no honest, earnest effort for the welfare of man can be in vain, but that it shall send a quickening influence through uncounted ages, and contribute to the coming of that Future of Intelligence, Freedom, Peace we would now secure for ourselves, but cannot. (285-287)
“OUT ON (caste) PRIVILEGES,” p.81(AHAB). “Equality Before The Law: Unconstitutionality Of Separate Colored Schools In Massachusetts. Argument Before The Supreme Court Of Massachusetts In The Case Of Sarah C. Roberts v. The City of Boston, December 4, 1849.” (vol.3, 51-100)  The term equality before the law is introduced in America for the first time: its precedents are Diderot, Condorcet, Declaration of Independence, and Massachusetts State constitution [Sumner should have included legislation in the Dutch Republic. C.S.]. (Editor’s comment: “…Shaw reduced it to very small proportions, when he said that it meant “only that the rights of all, as they are settled and regulated by law, are equally entitled to the paternal consideration and protection of the law for their maintenance and security.” This made it mean nothing; but such was the decision.” (The legislature repaired the error in 1855) On stigma of separation: (p.88) “The Jews in Rome are confined to a particular district known as the Jewish Quarter. It is possible that their accommodations are as good as they would be able to occupy if left free to choose throughout Rome and Frankfort; but this compulsory segregation from the mass of citizens is of itself an inequality which we condemn. It is a vestige of ancient intolerance directed against a despised people. It is of the same character with the separate schools in Boston.”

ABSOLUTELY INDEPENDENT SUMNER/AHAB

, the Faneuil Hall speech against the Fugitive Slave Bill as prompting his election as Senator (April 23, 1851), and the signal for break in the Union; pp.158-159 (editor’s comments, then quotation from London Times, May 24, 1851): “The election of Mr. Sumner to the Senate is everywhere regarded as an emphatic declaration, on the part of his own State, that the law is at least not to remain in its present form unassailed. The South responds to such an election by louder declarations of its resistance to all infractions on its local institutions, even at the sacrifice of the integrity of the Union.” (Sumner has succeeded Daniel Webster as spokesman for Massachusetts principles.)

Sumner’s Faneuil Hall speech: “Our Immediate Antislavery Duties. Speech At A Free-Soil Meeting At Faneuil Hall, November 6, 1850. (122-148, Vol. 3) Links the current struggle with Pilgrims and Revolutionary Fathers, resistance to Stamp Act. Shortly after this, Sumner is made Free-Soil candidate for Senator, and elected. [Lemuel Shaw upholds the Fugitive Slave Law in April, 1851. All these events take place before the completion of Melville’s Moby-Dick. See Michael Rogin, Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville, Chapter 4 “Moby-Dick and the American 1848”. Rogin, aware of the Shaw decision and of the label “monomaniac” applied to abolitionists, plays off the abolitionist Theodore Parker against Leviathan, viewing Ahab as an egotistical merchant capitalist enslaver of the working-class crew and interested only in his own power. There is no reference to Charles Sumner in the book. When Rogin wrote his book (published in 1983), the Melville annotations to Paradise Lost had not yet been revealed.

[Cf. Margoth. The following notes refer to Jonathan I. Israel, The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001).] God’s decrees are Nature’s order. “Thus when in Genesis 9:13 God tells Noah He will set a rainbow in the clouds, this action is definitely nothing other, contends Spinoza, than the reflection and refraction of the sun’s rays in droplets of water in the sky.” The Bible exists to instill “wonder” and “piety in the minds of the multitude”, not search for truth. (221-222; also 246-47: his preoccupation with the rainbow). [Spinoza’s enemies equate atheists, scientists, and Jews: all are enemies of Christian Scripture.] [J. Israel, deploying Spinoza, is apparently arguing against empiricism and experimentation in favor of “a broadly correct, wider, theoretical and philosophical framework.” (249) Cite chapter 15, “Philosophy, Politics, and the Liberation of Man” for Radical Enlightenment stress on free speech and expression as opposed to freedom of conscience. [I think this is incorrect insofar as Spinoza is concerned. C.S.] References to Spinoza as “Jew”and fanatic, 503, 504, 537.

Samuel Clarke objects to freethinkers like Anthony Collins: “there could be no such thing as liberty or a power of self-determination.” P.616.  (Freethought for Israel means freedom to philosophize and speculate; Vico, a radical, believes that “the truth of the philosophers can never be the truth of the people and must remain segregated, excluded from the sphere of commonly held and publicly approved notions which underpin institutions, laws, and government.” P.668) Incredulous mechanical materialists are worse than the Jews, Mohammedans, or Idolators: (The Venetian scholar Concina, author of Theologia Christiana Dogmatico-Moralis, 1754) “The deists and spiriti forti of our days are incomparably more blind, obstinate, and more malign, that [sic] the Jews themselves.” P. 681 Concina’s hostility to Saint-Evremond, Toland, Collins, and Mandeville, p.682. Also pantheists like Epictetus.

Final words (in Jonathan Israel): (approving of “the general will”) “Spinoza, Diderot, Rousseau: all three ground their conception of individual liberty in man’s obligation to subject himself to the sovereignty of the common good.” (720) Cf. Lippmann, The Phantom Public. At a UC:A conference, I asked Prof. Israel to either declare himself a statist social democrat or to deny it, but he appeared nonplussed at my question. After reading Ayn Rand again, I could have been more confrontational.

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