Hello,

Just reading the religious proclamation [cited below], and I had some additional specifications to add to your institution of marriage, which we seem to suggest is a defining aspect of this timeless culture to which you refer. Since Solomon had 700 wives, I suppose there is Biblical justification for polygamy according to dimensions that I would have thought to have constituted gluttony on the part of the indulgent Hebrew Monarch. Therefore, your proposition that marriage is between a man and a woman needs correction: Marriage consists of a man and as many women as he can acquire. Why God only gave Adam one wife is probably related to physiological concerns that God had for Adam who was already missing a rib. Also, Abraham engaged in a rather peculiar practice in order to bare a descendant. The patriarch committed what I think qualifies as an act of rape, since it was after all a slave that he owned whom he imposed himself upon, in order to get past the inconvenience of having a wife who was barren.

The type of marriage that Christian Fundamentalists often mistake as a transcendental institution was more the byproduct of more recent events occurring during the industrial revolution when the emergent Bourgeoisie invented the modern ideology of sexuality and its correlates, such as the advent of heterosexuality, which they imposed upon the depraved masses in order to maintain the health and vigor of a population that was needed to serve effectively as cogs in the machinery constituting the modes industrial production.

Foucault’s revisionism is hard to accept when one is first exposed to it. However, his research is so thorough and compelling that eventually the student find himself convinced of its veracity.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.

Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. “Children are an heritage of the Lord” (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

This proclamation was read by President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society Meeting held September 23, 1995, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Tags: marriage, Modernity, religion, Social Change, society
Categories: Commentary, Society, Social Change, Religion
No Comments »

An Article by:

Steve Hammons

Originally published in the AmericanChronicle.com

http://americanchronicle.com/articles/53747

The recent controversial remarks from Cincinnati radio personality Bill Cunningham about Barack Obama at a McCain rally can be instructive about the Cincinnati region and Ohio.

I was born and raised in the Cincinnati area, was given the mandatory Ohio history classes in school and later went to college in southern Ohio at nearby Ohio University in Athens, a couple of hours east of Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati and southern Ohio region has a unique history that may be relevant in the run-up to the Democratic primary and the 2008 elections. This history and current flavor of the whole state might also be of interest.

We know that Ohio has been in the news during recent elections. Concerns about questionable election processes in Ohio have been part of this.

After Cunningham made his comments at the McCain rally, another Ohio politician followed him to address the crowd … former Congressman Rob Portman who represented the Cincinnati area.

Portman has been mentioned as a possible vice-presidential running mate with McCain, and a possible presidential candidate in 2012.

SPECIAL ELECTION

Portman left his congressional seat in 2005 to take a position in the George W. Bush administration as U.S. trade representative, which carries the rank of ambassador.

From 2006 to 2007, he took another position in the Bush administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He currently is working at a law firm in Cincinnati.

What is interesting is that when a special election was held for Portman’s congressional seat in 2005, the solidly Republican-voting area almost elected another attorney and Marine Corps Reserve major who had served in Iraq, and was running as a centrist Democrat.

That person was Paul Hackett, and during the campaign he said that he had opposed the Iraq war, yet felt it was his duty to volunteer to serve there.

In the congressional race in August 2005, Hackett, who notably opposed gun control, gained attention by referring to George W. Bush as a “chicken hawk” for avoiding combat service in Vietnam during that war.

Hackett also said Bush made “stupid” remarks such as “bring it on,” challenging insurgents in Iraq to attack U.S. troops there.

Hackett reportedly bluntly stated about Bush, “I’ve said I don’t like the S.O.B.”

Hackett’s opponent, Jean Schmidt, strongly supported Bush and the Iraq war.

Hackett lost by about 3,500 votes, getting about 48 percent of the vote in a district that routinely elected the previous Republican congressman there by about 70 percent.

This was a very surprising development in southwestern Ohio.

Obama’s stance on the invasion and occupation of Iraq may resonate in Ohio, where many active duty and reserve Army and National Guard personnel have been killed and wounded. Active duty Marines and Marine reservists from Ohio have also been killed and injured in high numbers in Iraq.

GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHICS

The hilly country of southwestern Ohio around Cincinnati is very much like southern Indiana next door and northern Kentucky, just south across the Ohio River.

If you go further east, the southern neighbor becomes West Virginia and southeastern Ohio is considered part of the Appalachian region, as the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains start there. There is coal mining in this region.

Many people in southern Ohio speak with a slightly or markedly southern-type accent.

An ancient glacier that flattened central and northern Ohio stopped just short of the still-hilly southern part of the state.

In that flat central Ohio area, there are plenty of farms, small and medium-size towns with the state capitol of Columbus right in the middle.

Northern Ohio has a lot of the industrial areas around Lake Erie that have had historical links with Detroit and other centers of the old “rust belt” regions.

Many people here speak with a somewhat northern type of accent.

There are many good union people in Ohio. Sometimes their social and political views are centrist and they might find positions and candidates of either major party to be valid.

Some Ohioans who have benefited from unions and have a middle class or even upper middle class economic status are educated enough to know that the struggles of the union and labor movements over the decades resulted in the benefits they have now.

Some realize that the social, economic and political forces in America that supported or opposed working people and the unions were associated in certain patterns with the two major political parties. Some Ohioans who have benefited from unions may not fully understand this history.

Obama’s efforts and results in Ohio will be related to many of these these factors.

OHIO HISTORY AND ETHNICITY

Will Obama’s mixed-ethnicity be a factor? Probably. There are not too many Ohioans who had a father from Kenya, Africa.

Although Ohio is not as diverse as Hawaii, where Obama mostly grew up, raised by his grandparents from Kansas, there is some interesting ethnic and historical background.

Today, you can find people of virtually every ethnic background living in Ohio.

Italian-Americans in northern Ohio, German-Americans in southwestern Ohio, you name it. People from Eastern Europe often came to work in Ohio’s steel mills and mines.

In the early 1800s, Germans were a dominant ethnicity that settled early Cincinnati.

There reportedly were German or even Nazi sympathizers there before and during U.S. entry into World War II.

At the same time, some local German-Americans, including some distant relatives of mine, thought about changing their very German names to avoid problems during the war years, such as being thought of as “the enemy.”

It could be that some German-Americans in Cincinnati then went overboard the other way, feeling that being a “super American patriot” required certain political and social positions.

Going further back in history, during slavery, for a period of time, laws provided that escaping slaves who crossed north of the Ohio River into southern Ohio could not be returned to slave owners and were, as a practical matter, free.

Subsequent laws required escaping slaves to reach Canada to be free from slave catchers.

Amish and Quakers are found throughout areas of Ohio. The Underground Railroad was very active in southern Ohio during the slavery era. Some Quaker relatives of mine, according to stories and rumors, were involved in the Underground Railroad in the rural areas of southwestern Ohio.

There is a problematic element here. Next door in southern and central Indiana, the KKK is quite strong and active. This is also an aspect of the region in general.

My grandfather told a story about a relative of ours who, decades earlier, had run for sheriff in Kentucky. One night the KKK came to visit him, white robes and all. They told him if he was not on board with the KKK, he would not get elected.

He apparently told them he was not on their side … and he did not get elected sheriff.

Many people entering southern Ohio in the 1800s and 1900s were migrating from the Appalachian Mountain regions in Kentucky, such as some relatives of mine, and from elsewhere in the Appalachian region.

In more recent decades, many Appalachians chose to escape the poverty, oppression and violence of the coal-mining regions. Cincinnati was a center for these escapees too.

Among these migrating groups were people who were mixed-ethnicity European and Native American Indians such as the Cherokee whose native lands were in the Appalachian region.

Many early explorers in the 1700s had intermarried with the Cherokee and generations of mixed English-Scottish and Cherokee families lived in the region.

In the years before the 1839 “Trail of Tears” forced march west, and the confiscation of Cherokee lands and homes, many mixed-ethnicity families blended into the mainstream society, with only a few family stories or suspicions remaining about the Indian connections in the family tree, such as my own family.

Another interesting aspect of Ohio is that after the American Revolution, many Revolutionary War veterans and their families moved over the mountains to settle in eastern Ohio. Today, in the cemeteries of southeastern Ohio, you can find the gravestones of many who fought in the American Revolution.

Ohio University, where I went to college, was founded by Revolutionary War veterans.

I am happy to say that I had ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and were associates and relatives of George Washington and the other American leaders of that period.

I also recently learned that, according to a genealogy researcher in the family, Obama and I are distantly related too.

How do all of these and many other cultural, ethnic, geographic and historical elements fit together in our current political landscape as we approach the Democratic primary and then the general election?

We will soon be finding out.

Obama will probably have significant support in Ohio from a wide variety of people.

I bet that many Ohioans will be thinking long and hard about Obama, about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, about the direction our country has been going in for the last few years and about themselves and their core beliefs, deep down inside.

 

Tags: democracy, ohio, politics, race, race relations, society, sociology, Steve Hammons
Categories: Commentary, Society, Democracy, Politics, Sociology, Steve Hammons
No Comments »

An Article by

Russell Cole

I have studied the development of this political and social ideology [neoconservatism] to some extent, and its primary forebear is a political philosopher by the name, Leo Strauss. He was most affected by Plato, and, in particular, The Republic. I presume this is where Strauss gained his authoritarian worldview, which is seeded in the monolithic polis speculated by Plato, where the society is structured according to a corporatist regime, negating any differentiation between polity and civil society.

Authoritarians, such as Strauss, tend to be moral realists, similarly to Plato, which provides them with their rhetorical devices needed to justify their ethnocentrism, making it appear not as an ideology spouted by a faction that strives to impose it upon others, but as the natural moral order to which all humanity should aspire and, indeed, be pushed.

However, this belief in absolutes – a single moral order that exists apart from the men and women who speculate over its contents – has the impact of diminishing reality in favor of an impression of the world that is propagated through the contrivance of ad hoc explanations for all events that seem to run contrary to the idealized vision of human sociality articulated in the moral realist’s camouflaged ethnocentrism.

This is the point at which I am mystified the most by the neo-cons: Moral realism results in a negation of the saliency that should otherwise be attributed to contingencies that unfold in empirical reality, in favor of an adoption of a faith-based form of reasoning, where one’s beliefs will always be vindicated in the long-run. In the context of this type of thinking, we can meaningfully interpret the expression “moral courage:” a quality that is lacking in anybody who espouses uncertainty as to the veracity of the neo-conservative system of beliefs. Moral realism, in this instance, ironically, appears to be more of an underlying posit supported by convictions of faith rather than any reflection of reality.

What all of this has to do with Bush, specifically, I do not know, because he is not necessarily intelligent enough to grasp the neocons’ system of thought, such as the case with the intellect of hubris personified, Paul Wolfiwitz. However, I am sure that Bush’s absolute convictions regarding his born again stature in the eyes of his god might translate into the same type of empirically uninformed decision-making processes. Only, in Bush’s case, he has mistaken Chaney whispering in his ear for the Word of the Lord Almighty.

So, then, the question now arises: Why, even as the neo-conservatives – through their follies in Iraq and other ‘terror,’ related policy matters – have completely undressed themselves - Americans continue, as a population, to fail to mobilize in opposition to the Bush Regime?

As far as getting people off of their couches and politically engaged, I believe the problem is the deference we as Americans are socialized to possess and exhibit, beginning at a young age, whereby we are instructed to demonstrate respect and obedience toward our extant sociopolitical institutions. It does not matter what people might suspect or come to believe according to the conclusions reached in their own internal contemplations as long as they are encumbered with a habitual deferential posture that is assumed in relationship to sociopolitical institutions; fixtures that we are socialized to take to be transcendent of human interference and contamination. Even Tocqueville remarked that Americans displayed obedience to sociopolitical institutions, which prevented, according to the French observer, radicalized political behavior. He speculated that American democracy might be made possible by this willing subservience. Therefore, it is a matter of reinvigorating Americans with a sense of existential angst that is the key to unlocking radicalized currents of both thoughts and their associative social undertakings.

Returning to concerns related to religion: I would assume that Bush, indeed, during moments of cynicism, does use religiosity as a political artifice. Remember, the remarks made by Bush in the lead up to the War in Iraq, where he made mention of a “Great Crusade,” that we, as a nation, were about to undertake. Obviously, in retrospect, we can recognize this as a ploy to garner support from the war-mongering-religious-right that finds a place in our unfortunate society.

These remarks are not intended to be a denouncement of all instances of religiosity. I do make a differentiation between the dogma of fundamentalism and the personal spiritualism – associated with countercultural religious movements – which I suspect Jesus – the historical figure – to have proffered the latter in his sermons, because it is only with absolutism and dogma that religiosity manifests its deleterious qualities; what we witness in the Christianity that was tragically left to us by the sexually impotent, female loathing, and physically diminutive Paul, who knew nothing of Jesus other than Christ’s appearances in Paul’s own hysteria and its precipitation of fanciful delusions.

Russell Cole

Tags: corporations, democracy, foreign policy, government, imperialism, National, neoconservatism, politics, Russell Coles Blog, social responsibility, society, sociology
Categories: Commentary, National, Society, Democracy, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Politics, Corporations, Sociology, Foreign Policy, Imperialism, social responsibility, neoconservatism
No Comments »

 Introduction to American Radicalized Sociopolitical Movements in Informationalism and the Network Society

a working paper by

Russell Cole

After becoming versed in this typically neglected aspect to the American story [Populism and the People’s Party], I became fixated on the truly unique poignancy it deserved in any narration of American sociopolitical history; one characterized, in most every other instance, as a historical rendering that has obfuscated class; economic inequality; as well as stratifications extant within sociopolitical institutions; all of which can be conceptualized – although they rarely happen to be – along patrician and plebeian dimensions. This stratification has persisted for so long and it has had such a profound influence upon the cultural codes circulating through American social formations that it has gone unmarked in the preponderance of American discourse.

It should not be understated the impact that implicit sociocultural traditions have upon the surface reality, the veneer of American politics. As Tocqueville pointed to, Americans rarely voiced radicalized sentiments toward their sociopolitical institutions and their operations. In fact, as he considered, American democracy – in the form it assumed – might not be possible without such willing obedience among the population of America.

The deferential posture that Americans have been conditioned to assume in relation to civil and political institutions reinforces this lack of discursive treatment of a society divided along elitist and commoner lines. American history, by and large, has been accounted for under the pre-determinacy of Whiggishness, discounting enduring quasi-caste distinctions as if they are temporal aberrations, epiphenomena to an underlying narrative that ultimately tells of America’s advancement toward an increasingly democratic condition. There are, of course, notable exceptions to American Whig renditions of history, such as The People’s History of the United States. However, another treatment of these issues is by no means a contribution to an already saturated field of political sociological inquiry.

Coming to Terms with Populism

As both a result of my new interest in an organization that called itself the Populist Party of America as well as a family history - although fairly distant at this point in time - that included political participation in populism - I began researching the history of this movement, which presented itself in its fullest embodiment in the form of the People’s Party. After becoming versed in populism, I was awe struck at what appeared to be an under treated anomaly when in taken in the purview of the overall course of American sociopolitical history: a narrative that persistently omits accounts of sociopolitical and economic inequality; a lack of criticality that contributes to a facade of civic egalitarianism originally manifested in what has become the persisting mythology of Jeffersonian republicanism. This false ideology configures a conceptualization of American political relations, which neglects to recognize the influences had upon political opportunity by the material conditions belonging to the economy.

The Jefferson’s early articulation of Libertarianism exclaimed the virtues of the citizen agriculturalist; a body collectively composed of citizens who stood side by side one another in lateral sociopolitical uniformity. Thus economic class was left unconceived in the Jeffersonian account of American sociopolitical relations, and, needless to say, such an account failed to address the impact that economic inequalities, or class, had upon the feasibility of each citizen coequally affecting the public policies of the American state[4].

Populism – as it was incepted in economic affairs of the Midwestern and Southern farmer in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century – was an emergent pattern of economically directed intellectualism, which – through processes of its development – came to identify itself as a political movement with a more prodigious agenda than mere economic reform. Furthermore, it was a consequence of organic intellectual social processes. By that, populism culminated largely out of social mechanisms that existed independently from the institutional guard belonging to the Academe and other vested interests. Of course, populism was affected by Marxism, and, on occasion, in some of its expressions, it appeared proto-Marxist. However, the populist critiques of the economy and, in particular, the finance and monetary systems proved to be not only original and penetrating, but, additionally, they ultimately served as the precipitants of economic reforms that had lasting legacies.

For instance, the contemporary conceptualization of the free-market is heavily indebted to the populist movement in America. It was through populism that legislative fixtures intended to promote free-market competition, such as anti-trust and anti-monopolistic statutes, came to regulate the practices of capitalist interests. Indeed, we can go so far as to say that it was through populism that the modern conception of the free-market came about. Even more, it was due to its emphasis upon a competitive market[5] that the Democratic Party was amenable to the infusion of the populist ideology into its platform, which would come to mark its public disposition throughout the first half of the Twentieth Century. I realize that many students of American political history would delineate among the Populist era: the period when Bryan was the leading figure; and the Progressive era – associated with Wilson, as well as, the New Deal, which, of course, was the domestic policy of FDR. No matter, as John Gerring has demonstrated through a careful content analysis of American Party rhetoric, the consistencies among the three proposed eras out-weighed the significance of the differences demonstrable in the three proposed historical periods of Democratic Party ideology.

Many discount the ethical accomplishments of the People’s Party, which was the first to embrace multiple racial identities; the first to include women in its organizations, prior even to Women’s suffrage; and the first to demand in a recognizable voice the democratization of various political institutions that had been, till then, the decision-making province of political elites. Recourse to the denial of populism as an event that demonstrated advanced ethical and moral sensibilities on the part of its conceivers, promoters, and adherents is typically sought through citing aspects of the multi-faceted social critique leveled by populism, with the intended result of identifying internal inconsistencies in the populist ideology.

For instance, one of the more prevalent criticisms of populism is that it reflected a racial tolerance while, concurrently, possessing a nativist agenda. However, this criticism speaks more of the lack of analytical faculties by those who make such a claim as it points to the lack of sophistication in the populist social critique formed in reflection of the American gilded age. I am always dumbfounded each and every time I find myself explaining to detractors of populism that there is no a priori analytical relationship between nativism and racism. Although there might be empirical relationships between the two conditions, where nativists tend also to be racists, this has nothing to do with the People’s Party, per se. America was already a multi-racial society prior to populism’s emergence, and the nativist policies taken up in the advocacies of the People’s Party were not latent with racial discrimination. Objecting to undesirable immigration is not necessarily predicated upon race. Instead, as in the case of the People’s Party, it was based upon the impact that particular elements of any society might bring about if permitted to migrate to the United States.

Additionally, and this should be apparent to anyone who has expended any efforts, at all, when attempting to come to terms with American immigration – despite the conventional wisdom, belonging to American economics – which we are persistently instructed to embrace and believe – immigration does not proportionally benefit all sectors of the economy. One such group that certainly does not experience positive outcomes resulting from immigration consists of those who dwell in the middle and lower tiers of the labor market. Immigration both diminishes the value of labor in every sector of the economy to which its skills happen to apply, as well as, posing obstructions to the successful formation of cooperative institutions, either constituting organized labor, or qualifying as the financial cooperatives, such as credit unions, that leverage the monetary resources of those who are excluded from the many implicit trusts that dominate the financial industries controlled by organized-capitalism.

Indeed, the recent revelations concerning the use of Visas for the import of labor to be employed in the technology sectors of the economy reinforces the conclusion that immigration is not advantageous for labor. Despite the conventional wisdom, as it turns out, the overwhelming preponderance of Information Technology workers who are allowed entry into the United States are in the lower strata of the technocratic hierarchy comprised of Information Technology laborers. Therefore, America is not taking in the best and the brightest; rather, corporate America is merely increasing productivity by importing cheap labor that is only qualified to work in the most entry level of positions in an organization’s IT infrastructure. This – topped with the fact that wage stagnation, in recent history, has been an enduring feature of the employment market for the middle and working classes – indicates that immigration is only beneficial for those who dwell in the higher socio-economic tiers of American social relations; the ownership classes belonging to corporate America.

Another ill conceived critique of populism consists of instances where commentators remark upon the internal inconsistency of populism’s anti-statism along with many of its ‘socialist’ sentiments. It is true that populism called for the nationalization of the railroading industry as well as the banking industry. However, unlike what nearly amounts to ideological absolutism on the part of contemporary Libertarians, the populists were not constrained when devising possible solutions for social problems by a conviction that all instances of government should be curtailed, even in scenarios where the absence of government intervention appears to create a more undesirable social condition. Additionally, populism and its instances of economic cooperatives is more an expression of anarchistic sensibilities than anything approaching socialism. Certainly, no one can credibly contend that organic cooperatives intended to extricate the American farmer from his social positioning that amounted to serfdom was motivated out of an affinity of statist institutions. Indeed, it was only until such endeavors proved to be ineffective against the trusts that had been established by organized-capitalism that the populist movement became politicized.

This is not to say that populism – especially when taken up by the Democratic Party – did not come to reflect a pro-statist position on the majority of matters qualifying as issues of public concern. Nevertheless, this ideological posture on the part of Democratic populists was perceived as a necessity in order to guard against the publicly harmful excesses of what came to be called “predator elites” in the economy. To paraphrase The Great Commoner; also known as William Jennings Bryan:

Men are the creation of God. Corporations are the creation of man, and what man creates man can destroy.

In respect to this – which can be identified with less ambiguity as the regulatory measures needed to quell the popularly harmful greed of the corporation – that the adoption of a pro-statist approach toward public policy reveals its real character: Government was a device of necessity, and the pro-statism of the Democratic populists should not be conflated – in its interpretation - with the authoritarianism embodied by the Whig-Republicans and their mercantilist conception of political and economic social relationships.

Finally, what more that can be said about populism arises from an inference that is generated from mechanisms that are alien to the processes of scholarly research, but deserves mentioning, nonetheless. The populist movement seemed to stimulate the activation of ethical dispositions belonging to the social characters of those who would come to be participate in this movement. Individuals, whose ideologies had been immured in white supremacist backdrops, eventually identified with African-Americans, as social agents with whom they suffered the exploitations engendered by common same social conditions. In fact, there are accounts of former slave owners coming to advance the causes of African-Americans by serving as chairs to African-American farmer alliances.

Therefore, rather than specifically addressing fabricated shortcomings of the People’s Party, it is more worthwhile for a student of political sociology to treat the aspects belonging to this movement that set it apart from nearly all other facets of the American experience. Specifically, what strikes the attention of the epistemic agent – who is not predisposed to dismiss the accomplishments of the various farmer alliances and the People’s Party, which they came to establish – is the fact that these dissolute, degraded, and politically inexperienced agrarians could come to mount the most redoubtable third-party insurgence to the duopoly embedded in partisan politics in the whole of American history.

Families in the Midwest and South – who dwelled in a social condition where observances of women and children afoot in bare feet was commonplace – arose from a state of sociopolitical ignorance to one of penetrating insight and criticism upon American social relations. Even more, the political ideology developed by populists was emergent, composed from intellectual processes that were organic. Additionally, the populists were faced – when developing this intellectual formation – with constructing their own social institutions through which their knowledge could be manufactured as well as disseminated. Journals needed to be published and circulated. Travelling lecturers had to be trained and financially supported. Financial schemes had to be creatively fostered a deployed in an attempt to coerce other economic agencies into bargaining directly with the farmer alliances, so that the trust under which the crop-lean system[6] was actualized and enacted could be overcome. Finally, populism transcended sectionalisms – which were the by-products of superficial material conflicts in American society, such as white supremacy and its opposition to African-American interests – in order for African-Americans as well as Southern Whites to attend the same gatherings and applaud enthusiastically as the political orator explained racism as an instrument used by Southern elites to deflect the attention of the farmers from their real adversaries, whom Blacks and Whites commonly faced.

The Contemporary Significance of Populism

Recently, I had listened to a service given by a Unitarian Church in New York, which commemorated the outing of the Pentagon Papers. At this service, I became audience to descriptions of the subversive inner-workings of activists responsible for the publication of these documents, which were entered into the Congressional Record by Gravel, and, finally, published in book form by a Unitarian publishing syndicate. I was struck by words that were spoken in reference to Gravel that remarked upon an aspect to American culture where Americans are taught – from the time they assume comfort upon a parent’s lap – to, “avoid looking silly,” or foolish; to avoid orating that which strays beyond the comfortable parameters of orthodoxy. According to the wisdom embedded in this shared stock of social knowledge, not adhering to such standards would render the speaker as suspect to aspersions labeling him or her as a crackpot or a voice from the margins of society to be dismissed, because he or she conveys sentiments that are outside of the recognizable: the familiar domestic environment qualifying as the mainstream.[i]

In contrast to the insightful words spoken of Gravel and his current candidacy for the Democratic Nomination, in recent weeks, I have also heard a speech given by Bill Clinton during the memorial for Arthur Schlesinger. Clinton’s - in remarks that can only be interpreted as self-congratulatory - lauded Lincoln, who had also given oratory at the theater where the service was being held, for attempting to reach out to the, “Great American center,” prior to the collapse of the Nation into civil war. According to Clinton, Lincoln’s initial attempt to avoid confrontation, by remaining amenable to slavery as long as it did not extend into new territories and states, demonstrated an understanding of the great American center and how it allows for progress to be made during intervals belonging to a larger cyclical pattern; where the mushy middle of American politics would slightly tip its balance toward the Left or toward the Right. During instances where the Left was favored, small, incremental steps of progress could be made. However, it required a savvy leader who could continue to appeal to the middle, in order to coax the Country in the right direction without inciting a backlash by introducing proposals that were too radical, which would entail too abrupt a departure from the trails that had already been worn into easily transverse paths.

What are we to make out of these two contrasting stylizations of political existentiality? It is in respect to this question - more than anything else - that has led me to firmly believe that populism has a role to play in the development of the sociology of democracy. My understandings of populism are primarily derived from the historian, Goodwyn, who possessed the uncommon tenacity for summarizing the necessary antecedents for an authentically democratic insurgency to unfold: First, a group must obtain the institutional autonomy needed to formulate a conceptualization of sociopolitical mechanisms operative in a political structure, which foments in contradistinction, and in to varying extent, opposition to the preemptive orders of knowledge and the sociopolitical institutions that are arranged under the cloak of legitimacy derived from these hegemonic discourses. However, as Goodwyn wisely points out, such a development - an alternative episteme - is not, in and of itself, sufficient for democratic insurgency. In America in particular, there is a long untreated - yet, all too pervasive - posture of deference habitually assumed by commoners in relations to the established institutional guards of sociopolitical power. Without a shaking off of the deference toward institutions of the old guard encumbering the shoulders of those - who have long been conditioned to internalize the identity of plebiscite - the provision of an alternative interpretation of the Human Condition - currently embodied in the way things stand - would fail to incite the mobilizing of masses.

According to this parsimonious and elegant rendering of the necessary conditions for a democratic insurgency to take root, Goodwyn goes on in his minor masterpiece, A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt, to catalog the events that culminated in the establishment of the People’s Party. The process that resulted in the type of psychic characteristics necessary for democratic insurgency was a slow incremental process, involving quite a few setbacks and failures on the part of the various farming alliances as they initially endeavored to extricate their members from the crop lien system, which basically amounted to a trust comprised of financial interests along with manufacturing - both of which maintained credit as well as distributional relationships with local town agents, who dealt directly with the farmers. These relationships that were established and protected by the these interests precluded the farmers from entering into the necessary financing arrangements for them to bypass the insufferable arrangements imposed upon them by the local town agents, who extorted as much as possible from the farmers each time the farmer was forced to obtain credit for the oncoming year.

It is in these considerations that Web 2.0 assumes significance. The democratization of representational spaces in civil society fosters both the intellectual autonomy necessary to form alternative sociopolitical interpretations as well as the political self-respect necessary to abandon to the deferential posture assumed in relation to the institutions of the old guard.

[1] The Green Party has associations with other Green Parties that exist in other states around the globe. However, these relationships are loosely defined and often more symbolic than anything else.

[2] The Populist Party of America is a micro-party that was incepted 2002, and is based in Las Angeles. At this point in time – with some exceptions – it is a virtual community that is radicalized. The exceptions consist of activism – involving activities such as the distribution of literature – that has taken place in the Las Angeles area.

[3] Grounded Theory is the approach that is typically assumed by sociologists who perform ethnography

[4] As Charles Goodwyn has pointed out, the Jeffersonian ideology was a major obstacle to the political radicalization of the populist movement.

[5] Free-trade was a staple of the Democratic ideology during the period when it opposed the mercantilist protectionism of the Whig-Republicans.

[6] The crop-lean system was enacted by the trust of economic relationships assumed by financial firms, manufacturers, and local town agents, who extorted farmers for as great as a share of the yearly productions of agricultural commodities by withholding credit that was necessary for the farmer to procure the manufactured supplies that were a requisite for planting and harvesting in the oncoming season.

[i] The Pentagon Papers Then and Now: Unitarian Universalists Confronting Government Secrecy

http://www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/2007/presentations/30971.shtml; UUA

Tags: constitution, corporations, democracy, direct democracy, economics, education, Farmers, government, history, labor, legislation, politics, populist party, self governance, Social Change, society, sociology, third parties
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Society, Populist Party, Democracy, constitution, government, Education, self-governance, Politics, Third Parties, Legislation, Labor, Farmers, Corporations, Direct Democracy, Social Change, Sociology, History
No Comments »

As the Populist Party of America grows in size, we are faced with some challenging obstacles and difficult decisions to make regarding the future of the Party: i.e., What type of structure should be given to the Populist Party of America? Should we strive for a strong national organization? Or, contrarily, should we stress decentralization, choosing to focus on the development of state and local parties without any overbearing emphasis placed upon the integration of the various pockets of Populist America into a monolithic formation? Thus far, I have been exposed to two contrasting visions for the future organization of the Party, as it continues to grow in size.

There is an argument that maintains the necessity of an organization to possess some kind of integrated structure, which would include members who would participate in planning and problem solving. This managerial core would contribute to the development of different actionable plans that could later be introduced to the membership at large, providing some options that have already been delineated, from which the membership might select to adopt and implement as a Party platform. This proposal calling for the Party to possess a kernel, consisting of more active members, who would be inclined to offer centralized planning for the Party as a whole, stands in stark opposition to the other conception for the appropriate structuring of the Party, as it continues to expand.

This proposed design for the Party - which stands in opposition to proposals for centralization - would not provide for an organization with a centralized nervous system. Alternatively, the Party would be allowed to proliferated along lateral dimensions while failing to create an integrated hierarchy of offices.

To relate this ideology of decentralized politic to contemporary sociological literature, the jargon that has come into fashion, as a result of the studies upon the Informational Economy, which were initiated by Manuel Castells, uses the reference, Networked Politics, to designate instances of decentralized patterns of political praxis.

This new form of political mobilization often transcends the geographical boundaries imposed by states and governments. Furthermore, Networked Politics are understood as a by-product of what has been termed by Castells as Informationalism, which simply designates the technological paradigm underlying the expansion of Internet communicative infrastructures. However, the type of sociopolitical opposition that is formed through the networking of diverse agents and groups via the communication channels provided for by the Web - despite the transnational character of these network configurations - fails to negate the embodiment of geographical locality and the coalescence of interests among advocates who reside in physical proximity to one another; thus, allowing for embodied interaction.

This condition, where localized concerns are situated and understood in the context of larger geo-economic and geopolitical social forces, has been referenced under the neologism, glocalization. This concept fits in well with the social theoretical framework that has been introduced by Castells, who discards with the global democracy thesis propounded by Habermas and Rorty - which was founded upon the notion of a cosmopolitan culture - in favor of an understanding of the globalizing trends, facilitated by Informationalism, where multiculturalism will be preserved; only such cultural differences will become circumspect within a global forum of manifold cultural identities, who will participate in a world representational space in order to express their uniqueness as well as discover the peculiar attributes of others.

It is here, in the conception of glocalization, that I propose as a guiding post serving as an indication for the appropriate trajectory in which Populist America should transverse, as the Party enters into its future stages of development, as it continues to grow larger.

[Future installment: the concretization of glocalization in the praxes of Populist America]

Russell Cole

Tags: centralization, communications, community, decentralization, Global, government, National, politics, populist party, populist party america, Populist Party organizational structure, Social Change, society, third parties
Categories: Commentary, National, Global, Society, Populist Party, government, Decentralization, Politics, Third Parties, Social Change
No Comments »

Despite the best efforts of the Luddite, Jim Crow bigots residing in the backwater town of Jena, Louisiana, the cap is about to burst on these white supremacists, who are in the process of committing what amounts to a lynching of several, young African-American males. This clinical lynching is being conducted under the veneer of a juridical canard. The African-American high school students presently face decades in prison for charges related to an assault that was committed upon a white student in the Jena, LA school district. The African-American students, who have been charged with attempted murder, allegedly assaulted a white student. However, if one is to learn about the circumstances under which these charges have been leveled against the African-American male high school students, a picture emerges that screams of injustice, resulting from a racism that is so severe that I was shocked when I became fully familiar with these insidious events.

Apparently, this whole incident began after African-American students, during their launch break, sat under a tree that had been the providence of white students. In reaction to this apparent affront by the African-Americans, the next day white students had tied lynching ropes from the trees under which the African-Americans had sat. Despite the fact that this symbolic gesture on the part of the young aspiring Klan members constituted nothing less that a direct threat of murder directed against the African-American high school students - where a bystander would be left only to assume that the lives of the black students were in immediate peril - the white students responsible for this unforgivable threat were given a three day suspension. On the days that followed, the assault, for which the Black teenage boys are accused, took place. The African-American adolescent males were arrested and charged, not with simple battery, but attempted murder and the reduced crime of aggravated assault. These hyperbolic charges are only applicable in instances where a deadly weapon is used, according to Louisiana statutes. The first of the Black males to stand trial was convicted for the lesser charge of aggravated assault. According to the jury, the African-American boy’s tennis shoes qualified as a deadly weapon.

To make this whole affair even more sickening, the jury was all white. Additionally, during the case, the judge preceding over the trial had issued a gag order on all witnesses. Consequentially, the parents of the African-Americans, who were to take the stand in defense of their children, were prevented under threat of contempt from making public issue out of this miscarriage of justice; consequentially, the parents were precluded from pursuing recourse through an appeal to the innumerable law professors who would have accepted this case pro bono!

To read more of this revolting affair, you can begin by visiting an article that someone has put up on Wikipedia. It has been marked as potentially biased, but from what I have gathered from other sources, including interviews that were taken by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, the account on Wikipedia appears to be, for the most part, spot on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_High_School

With the events that have taken place in Jena, LA, I am going to return to the issue of the Tenth Amendment and its properly conceived relation to the Fourteenth Amendment.

I had written three controversial essays focusing on the candidacy of Ron Paul. I had criticized Paul for opposing legislation and certain reforms, which could be implemented by Presidential Decree, that would effectively contribute to the alleviation of the discrimination faced by gays, lesbians, and cross-gender. Paul, of course, explained away his refusal to adopt platform positions in support of the establishment of measures contributing to the equal rights and opportunities by all members of society, via appeal to a Libertarian ideological tenet that embraces the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution over and beyond other Amendments that might lead to divergent conclusions with respect to the appropriate role of the Federal Government and its interventions into social affairs that might alternatively be left to the states in order to regulate. Using the Tenth Amendment and its implications as premises, Paul essentially concluded that the inclusion of gays in the military as well as the extension of Federal Hate Crime Statutes to include crimes motivated out of hate for gays, lesbians, and cross-gender were decisions better left to, in the case of the former, the Military - and its own independent deliberations regarding its Uniform Code of Conduct - and, in the latter, the States and municipalities, who, in the absence of Federal intervention, would assume full responsible for the prosecution of crimes against these sexual minorities.

In opposition to Paul’s stance, I had countered by contending that Federal intervention has been historically demonstrated as a necessary device to extend civil liberties and citizenship rights to marginalized minorities who suffer from persecution and exclusionary practices within the provincial affairs of certain states. In short, my conclusions came down to unavoidable inferences drawn from the brute raw fact that without Federal interdiction these vulnerable minorities might not have their rights protected. I further argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was at stake - which in my opinion is far more significant than any appeal made to the nebulously defined Tenth Amendment

The Tenth Amendment - if one analyzes it with care - does not make specific references to the instances in which it should be prioritized over and beyond other possibly germane and applicable Amendments. In other words, rather than an Amendment intended to delineate specific rights, such as a clear and certain range of defined circumstances, where states should be deferred the sole authority when it comes to issues of civil liberties - the Tenth Amendment, according to my readings, appears to be intended only to limit Federal intrusions when the National Government is in the process of curtailing rights. However, in instances, such as hate crimes, the Federal Government is not inhibiting individuals from practicing types of social actions that fall under the extension of their own negative rights. Contrarily, the Federal Government is merely extending civil liberties by protecting the rights of vulnerable segments of society, who all too often are the deliberate and persistent targets of crimes, which impede the minorities from enjoying their own personal liberties, motivated out hate for the social minorities and the characteristics, which they embody, that make them socially different and identifiable as social outsiders.

This is not to say that the Tenth Amendment should not take on any significance and it should not be appealed to in instances where the Federal Government is in the process of extending its authority in a modality that is an affront to civil liberties. However, conversely, the Tenth Amendment should not be used as a juridical-politico artifice for what amounts to curtailing civil liberties by deferring the responsibility for protecting individual rights to the judgments of states and their provincial practices, in which the manifestation of racism and hate related crimes might be afoot, leading to the legalization of practices that only serve to curtail the rights of minorities. I think that most would agree that the Golden Rule - although not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution - nevertheless, serves as a guiding post for the formation of our best conclusions regarding what social conduct is permissible versus actions on the part of individuals and groups that should be interdicted. Those who act upon others in a manner that prevents the enjoyment of liberties by those upon whom the actions are committed should expect no better by other agencies who might act upon them. I cannot put it any more succinctly.
Returning to the case in Jena, I cannot think of a more compelling example of why the Federal Government must sometimes be permitted to intervene in order to prevent the most egregious instances of the persecuting of disliked minorities. To reiterate, Ron Paul needs to go back to the drawing board, and thoroughly recalculate his position on Federal hate crimes as well as the rights of sexual minorities.
Russell Cole

Tags: bill of rights, constitution, decentralization, democracy, education, government, National, politics, power, Russell Coles Blog, social responsibility, society, sociology
Categories: Commentary, National, Society, Democracy, constitution, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Decentralization, Education, Power, Politics, Sociology, social responsibility
6 Comments »

Rep. Ron Paul has taking the most unfortunate stance in response to the legislation under consideration, which would extend Federal Hate Crime statutes to instances of hate motivated crimes that are perpetrated against gays and cross-gendered. Reverting to the less intellectually endowed Republican rhetoric - deviating from his more interesting and, often, more reasonable Libertarian slant - he contends that provisioning Federal authority for purposes ensuring the Constitutional Liberties of these historically persecuted groups - in fact - discriminates against those who wish
to discriminate - to extremes where crimes are committed - against these vulnerable identities in our society. Additionally, in the tradition of Liberalism, he contends that laws can only reference individuated agents in society; a monadic conception of of the composite of agents and agencies constituting humanity; a premise upon which Liberal juridical-politico discourse is built.

Link to Paul’s letter:

http://www.populistamerica.com/unconstitutional_legislation_threatens_freedoms

Nevertheless, Liberal individualism conceals the effects of hegemonies, that enforce their own cultural dispositions upon other subcultures as behaviorally demonstrable requisites for participating in the institutions embedded in the social fabric. The form of individualism promoted by Liberalism is not the natural, appropriate state of humanity; rather, it is the product of an historically situated cultural condition that has been naturalized into the ontology by the members of the preemptive discourse in American society, who, in turn, identify those who fail to conform as social deviants, who are the justified targets of the bigotry; the hatred; the exclusion; and, worse, the objects of attack that are committed persistently in order to reinforce the alienated and inferior status of these marginalized groups.

The consideration that makes this legislation so abundantly necessary stems from the failure of states and municipalities to protect these social identities, so they - the sexual minorities who are perceived as deviant - can exercise the freedoms enjoyed by all other members of society.

Nevertheless, I do not want to appear callous toward the plight of bigots who are afraid of losing their privileges to practice bigotry against the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. However, we must consider from historical insight the following: If not for Federal intervention, the schools in the South appeared to possess little chance of entering into a state of desegregation. The crucial matter that justifies this legislation revolves around the necessity of expanding the Federal Government’s jurisdiction, allowing for Federal law enforcement to intercede where states and municipalities
turn tail. Remember, in order for Southern schools to abandon the institutional arrangements of Jim Crow South, Eisenhower was compelled to use the Air Force.

The simple fact of the matter is we are not all treated with the same dignity and expectations of negative rights, as if we were only individuals; not latent with any group identifications, such as African American or gay. Consequently, to bring closure to this rather parsimonious analysis, we are left with the task of determining what assumes greater saliency: The rights of bigots to practice their hate against the vulnerable? Or, the rights of minorities to enjoy a life free from fright, humiliation, and negations of social and personal respect?

I, for one, am partial to the latter.

Russell Cole

Tags: bill of rights, constitution, government, history,