Our fathers asserted that great principle--the right of the people to choose the government for themselves--that government rested upon the consent of the governed. In every form of expression it uttered the same idea, community independence, and the dependence of the government upon the community over which it existed. It was an American principle, the great spirit which animated our country then, and it were well if more inspired us now.
Introducing these two videos with the words of Jefferson Davis may seem counter-intuitive, but hear me out. In an earlier life, an anarchist comrade told me that the most basic right we have is the right to secede. Davis, as President of the Confederate States of America, fully embraced that principle, though he's generally credited with doing so for all the wrong reasons. The fact that creation of the CSA immediately lead to a long, bloody war, and that the Confederacy was lead by slave-owning elites whose slave-holding friends footed the bill for their rebellion, has and will forever color the "wrongness/rightness" of secession itself. In Oregon and California 80 years later, four counties banded together to create the State of Jefferson; curiously, researching this subject we find that the movement is again afoot. "We have nothing in common with you people down south. Nothing," said Randy Bashaw, manager of the Jefferson State Forest Products lumber mill in the Trinity County [CA] hamlet of Hayfork. "The sooner we're done with all you people, the better." Interesting, but i digress.
On my grande finale american road trip, i drove down to the Gulf of Mexico and stopped to visit Jefferson Davis' post-bellum home in Biloxi, Mississippi. The artifacts room there has a number of his early writings on display, many from the 1830s-40s when he was waxing Jeffersonian-like about liberty, democracy, and the rule of law as foundation for all civilized men. i confessed to having been impressed; in that era, people wrote about these things with an eloquence and passion which few today are able to match. When finally the southern states decided there wasn't any point in continuing the slavery debate, Davis wrote just as eloquently for that cause. Make no mistake about it, slaves were property and for him there was no disconnect between government for and by the people, and his right to maintain his personal possessions free of all threat and harassment. We should likewise remember that 90% of the southern whites did not own slaves, but as with many northerners, the very idea that africans and (by then) afro-americans were human beings equal to themselves and deserving all the same rights was, quite simply, a travesty in the eyes of all things right and christian. The elimination of slavery was not synonymous with equality in the minds of many, many people. Sadly, there are some among us who still lag far behind the program, and i'm not sure i'd challenge President Obama if he decided they needed to be separated from the general population to spend some time in re-education camps. Or, let them secede. i'm sure Bono and friends wouldn't hesitate to update their anti-apartheid boycott tracks.
Checking out responses to Diddy's election vlogs, i'm really struck by how deeply they (the responders) are moved by Obama's campaign - his very presence. It's easy to say the election isn't about race, but that's only looking at one ridiculous angle: will white people vote for a black man? (Ridiculous because anyone who bases their vote on race or ethnicity is just politically immature, period.) Obama's pending victory is a major milestone in the amazing continuum of afro-americans' role in shaping the ever-evolving (devolving? let us hope not for much longer) US. This rant of Diddy's is a brilliant testimony to that history and what one should have learned from it. Ironically, this doesn't necessarily fall so far from what Jefferson Davis said 150 years ago: government rests on the consent of the governed. Caring and responsibility are implicit in that, but so too is empowerment. As Nelson Mandela famously wrote, only free men can negotiate. The spirit of President Davis is probably still pondering that concept, while the freedom train marches on and hopefully the best man wins.
Checking out responses to Diddy's election vlogs, i'm really struck by how deeply they (the responders) are moved by Obama's campaign - his very presence. It's easy to say the election isn't about race, but that's only looking at one ridiculous angle: will white people vote for a black man? (Ridiculous because anyone who bases their vote on race or ethnicity is just politically immature, period.) Obama's pending victory is a major milestone in the amazing continuum of afro-americans' role in shaping the ever-evolving (devolving? let us hope not for much longer) US. This rant of Diddy's is a brilliant testimony to that history and what one should have learned from it. Ironically, this doesn't necessarily fall so far from what Jefferson Davis said 150 years ago: government rests on the consent of the governed. Caring and responsibility are implicit in that, but so too is empowerment. As Nelson Mandela famously wrote, only free men can negotiate. The spirit of President Davis is probably still pondering that concept, while the freedom train marches on and hopefully the best man wins.
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