Group items tagged

ble and clearly defined in the spirit of that declaration which rests the right to govern on the consent of the governed, but because I foresaw that the wickedness of the North would precipitate a war upon us. Those who supposed that the exercise of this right of separation could not produce war, have had cause to be convinced that they had credited their recent associates of the North with a moderation, a sagacity, a morality they did not possess. You have been involved in a war waged for the gratification of the lust of power and of aggrandizement, for your conquest and your subjugation, with a malignant ferocity and with a disregard and a contempt of the usages of civilization, entirely unequalled in history. Such, I have ever warned you, were the characteristics of the Northern people--of those with whom our ancestors entered into a Union of consent, and with whom they formed a constitutional compact. And yet, such was the attachment of our people for that Union, such their devotion to it, that those who desired preparation to be made for the inevitable conflict, were denounced as men who only wished to destroy the Union. After what has happened during the last two years, my only wonder is that we consented to live for so long a time in association with such miscreants, and have loved so much a government rotten to the core. Were it ever to be proposed again to enter into a Union with such a people, I could no more consent to do it than to trust myself in a den of thieves.

The issue then being: will you be slaves; will you consent to be robbed of your property; to be reduced to provincial dependence; will you renounce the exercise of those rights with which you were born and which were transmitted to you by your fathers?

That no Act, Imposition, Law or Ordinance, be made or imposed upon us, at present or to come; but such as shall be made or imposed by consent of the Body of Freemen or Associates, or their Representatives legally assembled:

the 2015 subsidies were part of a much larger, must-pass budget bill. So was the 2018 tax credit for burying emissions. But with Republicans in full control of Congress, you can bet those measures would not have gotten through unless senior people in the party had wanted it to happen.

he looked me in the eye.“We know this problem is real,” he said, or words to that effect. “We know we are going to have to do a deal with the Democrats. We are waiting for the fever to cool.”

He meant the fever in the Republican base, then in full foaming-at-the-mouth, Tea Party mode. Denial of climate change was an article of faith in the Tea Party, and lots of Republican officeholders who had been willing to discuss the problem and possible solutions just a few years earlier had gone into hiding

In November 1630, John Baker was “whipped for shooteing att fowle on the Sabboth day”; and in June 1631, it was ordered that Phillip Ratliffe should be whipped, have his ears cut off, and be banished “for vttering mallitious and scandulous speeches against the goumt. & the church of Salem.

The inattention paid in the official record to women or indigenous land compels us to force open gaps and bring alternative narratives to light. Without this work, John Winthrop’s will be the only story told in textbooks about this country’s colonial history.

The Puritan freemen may have the loudest voices in the archive, but theirs are not the only narratives being told.

However high the bar, Trump falls immeasurably short of the standard set by Sanders herself, which is that when people make honest mistakes, they should “own up” to them. Trump simply doesn’t do that. Media organizations look like a model of biblical rectitude vis-a-vis that guy.

For instance, a post-election study by the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University showed that 60 percent of Trump voters between the ages of 18 and 29 believe racism is a “somewhat or very serious issue,” compared to 52 percent of Trump voters above 45 years old. Similar gaps emerged when young Trump voters were asked about the importance of climate change (52 percent said they were “concerned” versus 40 percent of older Trump voters) and their self-proclaimed identity (61 percent identify as conservative versus 74 percent of older Trump voters).