I thought this week I might discuss some possible connections between the rise of anti-democracy sentiment in the USA, bad economics in the conservative style, racism, bad religion, slavery, and the US Civil War. Why? Some things just never get old.
Those educated anywhere except perhaps some of the southern US states of the old CSA may understand the important role slavery played in the economy of colonial North America and the early USA. Kidnapped Africans were once a very important category of private property in the USA. Laws supporting slavery were originally created by the quasi-democratic or democratic governments of the colonial powers of old Europe, later the USA itself. They expressed the views of the voters on one aspect of the ethics of economic power: the definition of economic power. The ethics of the definition of economic power is about who should legally own what and why. It subsumes property “rights,” although that formulation is famously prone to equivocation between the notion of legal “rights” and ethical “rights,” two very different things. Many voters influenced by pseudo-scientific European racism, bad religion, and one supposes a healthy dose of greed, supported the institution of slavery for the first hundred years or so of the existence of the USA as a sovereign nation. However, in the mid-nineteenth century large numbers of voters in the USA began to turn against the ethics of economic power expressed in the institution of slavery and vote against it, leading to severe social and political tensions culminating in the US Civil War.
One may say the US Civil War was fought largely over the ethics of economic power and, in particular, the perceived relationship between democratic government and laws generated by democratic government defining that economic power, that is, legal property “rights.” In a sense, there were (at least) two levels of intellectual controversy going on (and you know how much I love level issues): One concerned the ethics of slavery, the merits of racism, religious issues. One concerned the role of democratic government, liberty, freedom, rights. In the view of many southern slaveholders and hangers on whose fortunes or livelihoods depended on slavery, voters via democratic government had no ethical right to pass laws changing the definition of economic power, coming for what they saw as their private property. In the minds of the old Confederates, the war was about tyrannical democratic government trying to take away their liberty or freedom to own others as their slaves, trampling upon their property “rights,” stealing from them, picking their pockets, and so on. Indeed, a common take among southern conservatives even now is that the US Civil War was about “states’ rights,” in particular, states’ rights to decide the issue of slavery, rather than the federal government, as opposed to the ethical and legal issues of slavery, per se. Why states’ rights, in particular? Presumably because they felt they had the votes at the state level to get what they wanted. If not, one assumes the issue would have been local rights, and if not local then individual rights. The man issue was rights superseding democracy.
Of course, not all southern conservatives were on the same page on that. Some supposed the main issue was indeed the ethics of slavery and became vociferous proponents of racism, insisting slavery was ethically proper given the proposed differences between the “races.” Some of those racists developed a hatred for the science, education that called their racism into question, later extending it to science, education calling into question other random dodgy theories as on economics, religion, human sexuality and gender, climate change, and so on. Obviously, the supporters of “race” based slavery developed an underlying hatred for multi-“racial” democracy, which did not respect the proposed science of racism, and involved what they saw as the wrong sort of people having voting rights.
Yet other southern conservatives busied themselves with an obnoxious, ostentatious, belligerent form of Christianity meant to establish, broadcast their own supposed religious, moral superiority as an antidote to the notion support for slavery implied a deficiency in that area. The religiously oriented expressed a natural hatred for democracy as well, as voters might pass laws inconsistent with their theological findings, including about slavery, and especially for democracy espousing separation of church (religion) and state, as in the US Constitution.
The heirs to the conservatives of the old CSA found a natural home in anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style and its sequelae, which obscure the ethics of economic power and the role of voters, democratic government, in establishing laws in that area. One can’t help but detect some geographical difference in the acceptance and promotion of bad economics in the conservative style, related fake anarchism / “libertarianism,” and even utopian real anarchism, all of which seem especially strong among southern conservatives. Similarly, one can’t help but detect a geographic difference in attitudes toward racism, religion, science, education, democracy, the US Constitution, the law, our national government, although views typical of the old CSA are now typical in rural areas, small towns throughout. It wouldn’t be unusual today to drive though a rural or country area in the northern USA, once the land of proud yankees fighting for democracy, the US Constitution, law, the USA, against slavery, only to find the stars and bars of the old CSA wafting in the wind. Thus, as others have noted, it is tempting to see the struggle against anti-democracy sentiment based in bad economics in the conservative style, bad religion that lusts after worldly power, and racism, as simply a continuation of the US Civil War by other means. The cultural themes of the old slave-based south may indeed have risen again, giving sense to the renewed quest for a “national divorce” by the likes of Rep. Greene (Republican - Georgia). One wonders, will pro-democracy culture, the old northern yankee spirit, rise as well? And how does this all too American framing of our current brush with anti-democracy sentiment align with European style fascism, so popular in so much of the USA just now? Quite well indeed, but I suppose that must be an issue for another day, quite a long post already.
What’s my point? Other than that history is interesting, may help one understand the present? Simply, we’re dealing with serious, significant intellectual themes and conflicts just now. Complacency, indifference to the underlying issues seems singularly unwise.
