It's Official:

George W. Bush is the most despised President in modern American history.

You're doing a heckuva job, Dubya!

Diluting the King

The Mainstream Media, then and now, obfuscate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s true message and his complete legacy. In America, we have an ingrained habit of grinding down the sharp edges of our history, making it far more palatable and "mainstream." Thus, the Founding Fathers have been recast from Revolutionaries to, somehow, conservatives, in spite of their actual radicalism in overthrowing the fundamental basis of government (the Divine Right of Kings) for the preceding 1,000 years. The Civil War was for decades, and to a lesser extent even today, stripped of any racial context, to the extent that many still claim that the war had "nothing to do with slavery," which is akin to saying WWII had nothing to do with fascism. So it is with MLK, Jr. Now that he has been brought into the "mainstream" with a National Holiday, his radicalism and his message of economic freedom is muffled by the same media that taunted and ignored him while he lived.

Stealing History

Pudgy Indian on the dubious history of the Kennewick Man "discovery" and the fraudulent, racist origins and often political agenda of white archaeology. Incidentally, in 2005, Senator John McCain authorized an unsuccessful amendment to NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) that would have definitively given custody of Kennewick Man's remains to local tribes for proper and reverent reburial.

Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007

A good friend of mine chatting with Lady Bird Johnson (who still dominated a room even from her wheelchair) at a fundraiser in Austin last year.

Happy Texas Independence Day!!

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence made by the Delegates of the People of Texas in General Convention at the town of Washington on the 2nd day of March 1836.

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.
When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.
When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.
The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.
In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.
It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general Congress a republican constitution, which was, without just cause, contemptuously rejected.
It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a state government.
It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.
It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.
It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power.
It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation.
It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution.
It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant ports for confiscation.
It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God.
It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.
It has invaded our country both by sea and by land, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination.
It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers.
It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical government.
These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.
The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.
We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations.

Richard Ellis, President of the Convention and Delegate from Red River.Charles B. StewartTho. BarnettJohn S. D. ByromFrancis RuisJ. Antonio NavarroJesse B. BadgettWm D. LacyWilliam MenifeeJn. FisherMatthew CaldwellWilliam MotleyLorenzo de ZavalaStephen H. EverettGeorge W. SmythElijah StappClaiborne WestWm. B. ScatesM. B. MenardA. B. HardinJ. W. BurtonThos. J. GazleyR. M. ColemanSterling C. RobertsonJames CollinsworthEdwin WallerAsa BrighamGeo. C. ChildressBailey HardemanRob. PotterThomas Jefferson RuskChas. S. TaylorJohn S. RobertsRobert HamiltonCollin McKinneyAlbert H. LatimerJames PowerSam HoustonDavid ThomasEdwd. Conrad Martin PalmerEdwin O. LegrandStephen W. BlountJms. GainesWm. Clark, Jr.Sydney O. PenningtonWm. Carrol CrawfordJno. TurnerBenj. Briggs GoodrichG. W. BarnettJames G. SwisherJesse GrimesS. Rhoads FisherJohn W. MooreJohn W. BowerSaml. A. Maverick (from Bejar)Sam P. CarsonA. BriscoeJ. B. WoodsH. S. Kimble, Secretary

Cherokee Around the Web, Part 2

My guest blog over at The Moderate Voice. I've been a little disappointed in some of the comments, which tend to follow the very predictable pattern of "Indians killed each other!" and "That was a long time ago!" After 500 years, you'd think white people could come up with better justifications for theft and genocide.

Book Review: "1491" by Charles C. Mann

An excellent new work by non-Native American, non-archaelogist Charles C. Mann. Aptly subtitled "New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus," 1491 is a compendium of new (and not so new but underreported) research on the history of the Western Hemisphere before the European Conquest. Among the more fascinating discoveries: human beings likely began arriving in the "New World" some 30,000 years ago; the population of the Americas before the Conquest was greater than that of Europe (making the Smallpox Holocaust all the more horrific; perhaps one out of every five human beings on the planet died in the century-and-a-half after Columbus); In 1500, Tentochtitlan (capital of the Triple Alliance or Aztec Empire) and Qosqo (capital of Tawantinsuyu, the Inkan Empire, the largest empire on Earth at the time) were larger, more advanced and more populous than any cities in Europe; pre-Conquest American history was a fascinating tapestry of empires that rose, achieved greatness and fell, only to be replaced by others; that Indians had a profound impact on their environment, from the genetic engineering of maize to the use of controlled burns to maintain and expand the Great Plains as a vast hunting preserve and to turn large areas of the Amazon Rainforest into orchards to support large population centers in the jungle. Along the way, Mann also discusses how racism and paternalism clouded archaelogical research on Native American culture and history, all presented in a brisk, enjoyable style. I highly recommend this work to anyone interested in history or Native American issues.

Review of "Hellfire Nation" by James A. Morone

Subtitled, "The Politics of Sin in American History," Morone's book describes the historical cycle in American history of moral crises driving politics, beginning with the Puritans. His thesis is that these crises follow a fairly predictable repeating pattern: moralizers denounce some social evil, the general public is rallied both by opposition to the evil and to the demonic "others" that profit by or are seduced by the evil (and this usually ties into patterns of racism and sexism), the authorities are compelled to take action and typically overreact with draconian and sometimes disastrous results. Morone begins with the Puritans themselves, who originally rallied "The City on the Hill" against evil Indians with their demonic ways and seduction of white women. Once the Indians were all killed or driven off, the Puritans turned on themselves with the famous witch trials. An interesting point I hadn't realized: Tituba, the slave woman who eventually became the focus of witch hysteria was not, as commonly portrayed, African; she was actually a Native American from the Caribbean, though still a slave.
The book then recounts numerous instances of this pattern of moral outrage repeating itself throughout American history, from the Abolitionist Movement and the Civil War, to the Suffragettes, to Prohibition, the War on Drugs and (briefly, since this book was only published in 2003), the War on Terror. The other theme involves the tension between Puritanism (with its focus on moral condemnation of sin) and another American meme, the Social Gospel (focusing on the causes of sin, rather than merely punishing the sinner). For Morone, the high water mark for the Social Gospel as a driving force in politics came in the brief period from 1933 (The New Deal) to 1973 (as the 'Sixties came crashing to an end, and Roe v. Wade transferred the force of moral persuasion in public life from the Left to the Right, where it firmly remains to today). One of my complaints, however, is that the author does not further develop the differences between the Social Gospel and classic liberalism, though to be fair, at 497 pages (not counting the extensive notes) this is already an exhaustively-researched work. Nevertheless, it is a surprisingly easy read for an academic work (Morone is a professor of political science at Brown University). I was frankly shocked (though I should have known better) by some of the grotesque detail on the truly venal and cruel nature of racism in America, from wars of genocide against Native Americans to the terrorist state of the post Civil War pre Civil Rights South. I don't like to constantly harp on the long and sad history of racism, but often the reality of how bad things really were is glossed-over with feel-good rhetoric, particularly at this time of year when white politicians dutifully trot out press releases praising Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when the vast majority of them would if he were still alive be bitterly denouncing the theories of economic justice he was exploring just before his assassination.
In short, I recommend "Hellfire Nation" if you are interested in political history and especially if you want to explore the origins of the Culture Wars that actually stretch back to the very beginning of America.