Some Friday Links

5 Replies to “Some Friday Links”

1. And from my perspective in Colorado, I continue to be frustrated by these lists. While I’m sure D’Evelyn High School in Denver is doing a great job for an urban system, there is no way to argue it’s the top school in Colorado, compared to suburban schools. Given a choice, no parent would reasonably choose D’Evelyn over Cherry Creek or Douglas County. Rankings like this are so deceptive.

2. Lincoln, The False God

   It is Lincoln that should be exposed in national memory. Calling the calamity that accounted for 620,000 deaths, still America’s worst struggle, a “Civil War”, is a tragic lie.

   The South was not fighting for control of the North or the country. Rather, the South was purely secessionist. Lincoln, a corporate lawyer representing Northern industrial interests, knew that the mercantilist welfare to railroad conglomerates etc. depended on keeping the South paying protectionist tariffs, which made up the balance of fed revenue at that time.

   Neither was Lincoln terribly interested in ending slavery. Lincoln even proposed a Constitutional amendment to protect slavery in the places it already existed. Even the Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in states controlled by the Union. He also supported colonization for negroes. Lincoln said that there is an inherent and irresolvable social inequality between blacks and whites.

   Lincoln also jailed journalists and shut down many newspapers critical of his regime and introduced conscription. Lincoln essentially destroyed habeus corpus, like George Bush.

   Worshippers of Lincoln, the people that write most of the books that are used to teach Lincoln in public schools, also like to play down or omit the fact that many northern states had severe penalties against blacks moving there. Most northerners did not mind sending escaped slaves back to their masters as well. Many northerners were invested in the slave trade anyway. The abolitionist movement, so celebrated today, was just a minority political force- like today’s Ron Paul campaign for example.

   The real price of worshipping Lincoln is the destruction of the republican form of federalism that ostensibly existed prior to 1861. This forced union, the USA, having bloodily erased any chance of escape from central power, has led to Empire- in the worst sense of the word. Now, America is a place where corporations get special payouts for ‘internal improvements’, where no state can nullify the central government’s dictates (a key check on power), and where killing in the name of central authority is considered justice.

   USA’s involvement in the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and even Israel’s current slaughter of Palestinians are outcomes of the Lincolnian heritage. Israel, to note, would not exist without the US subsidy forced out of the powerless taxpayer. Is it any wonder that historians who are not statist sycophants tend to compare Lincoln with Bismarck?

   Kids, sadly, are taught Lincoln’s nationalist democracy as civic religion. It is time that this mythology is debunked and the trend toward Lincolnization is stopped.

3. Ah, Reason! Isn’t that what we do with history, whether it’s education history or this? We take it and interpret the story in ways that support what we think or want to believe., reducing complexity that’s always there. Just look at the history of progressive education, whatever that is. Reason, like history, is tricky. Here’s a poem for you…..

   Reason
   Said, Pull her up a bit will you, Mac, I want to unload there.
   Said, Pull her up my rear end, first come first served.
   Said, give her the gun, Bud, he needs a taste of his own bumper.
   Then the usher came out and got into the act:

   Said, Pull her up, pull her up a bit, we need this space, sir.
   Said, For God’s sake, is this still a free country or what?
   You go back and take care of Gary Cooper’s horse
   And leave me handle my own car.
   Saw them unloading the lame old lady,
   Ducked out under the wheel and gave her an elbow.
   Said, All you needed to do was just explain;
   Reason, Reason is my middle name.

   Josephine Miles

4. Mr. Mazenko,

   What D’Evelyn are you referring to? The one at the top of the Great Schools list is not in DPS, it’s in JeffCo (read, the suburbs), and it’s composed overwhelmingly of upper-middle class white students. And I can’t ignore the elitist undertones of the statement that no self-respecting parent would send their kid to an URBAN school, if given a choice to attend Cherry Creek. I live in Douglas County and attended Cherry Creek Schools, and I’d still gladly send my kid to a high-performing DPS school if it offers a program that’s a good fit.

5. JSP,

   You just took it to another level! Josephine Miles, “Talk” style poetry…
   I confess I had to wiki her.

   What makes Lincoln difficult is that he is enshrined in statist lore. Is his monument a violation of separation of church and state? Rather, it is that the state is a religion. The nationalist version of Lincoln history supports the state’s agenda.

   What is the real truth about Lincoln? the state?

   You said it, alright. “Isn’t that what we do with history, whether it’s education history or this? We take it and interpret the story in ways that support what we think or want to believe., reducing complexity that’s always there.”