Source: Go Now
Barack Obama is the 44th U.S. president, which means there were countless presidents before him. So before we embark on this new four-year journey, which unbiased media reports tell me will be characterized by everyone’s dreams coming true and an end to all bad things, let’s look back at the presidents who came before Obama:
1: George Washington: He did not really chop down a cherry tree and tell his father the truth. This was a tale created by writer Mason Weems, who wrote a book that glorified the first president. The Bush administration is actively trying to hire him. Faulty intelligence led them to believe he is still alive.
2. John Adams: A key opponent to the Stamp Act who presided over the Alien and Sedition acts. He was also the cousin of Samuel Adams, who had a beer named after him. Guess which one more Americans admire.
3. Thomas Jefferson: The longtime bachelor once said “many and great are the comforts of the single state.” He did eventually marry, though, to a woman twice as rich as him. He’d have my vote.
4. James Madison: Napoleon Bonaparte was making short rulers all the rage. The U.S. followed suit by electing its own pocket-sized president. The shortest and smallest president was said to be the first to wear long pants rather than knee breeches. How do we know he wasn’t just wearing Jefferson’s oversized hand-me-downs?
5. James Monroe: When he ran for his second term, no one was named as an official candidate opposed to the popular Monroe. He received all but one electoral vote. That vote came from Florida, for Pat Buchanan.
6: John Quincy Adams: His election was unlike others because none of the candidates declared a party. He ran against independents Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, Henry Clay and Ralph Nader, who has run in every election since.
7: Andrew Jackson: He was a prisoner of war and killed a man in a duel. He’s like a combination of John McCain and Dirty Harry. The forceful leader vetoed more bills than anyone else, survived an assassination attempt, and his favorite hobby was cockfighting. If the presidents were in a yearbook, Jackson would be voted most likely to punch you in the face.
8: Martin Van Buren: The origin of the word “OK” is believed to come from Van Buren, who was nicknamed Old Kinderhook. He married Hannah Hoes, a relative of Van Buren’s mother — not OK, dude.
9. William Henry Harrison: Was more dead in the first 30 days than any other U.S. president, unless you count brain-dead.
10. John Tyler: Claimed to be the reason Texas became a state. But in an even greater achievement for a dude, he was 54 when he married his second first lady, a 24-year-old. This is the last time I’m going to tell you this, kids: BECOME PRESIDENT.
11. James Polk: The first “dark horse” president was remembered for keeping all of his campaign promises, at least according to Mason Weems.
12. Zachary Taylor: Once said, “It would be judicious to act with magnanimity toward a prostrate foe.” Which proves he had access to both the phrase “Don’t kick a man when he’s down” and a thesaurus.
13. Millard Fillmore: Inherited the presidency after Taylor’s death and ran for re-election with the Know-Nothing Party. He was predictably defeated by the candidate from the Nothing is Outside the Realm of Our Experience Party.
14. Franklin Pierce: I honestly forgot that this guy was president.
15. James Buchanan: His presidency featured economic recession and several states seceding from the union. Fact: On his way out, he said, “I at least meant well for my country.”
16. Abraham Lincoln: Loved the theater.
17. Andrew Johnson: The first president to be impeached didn’t feel too bad about it, considering the way the previous guy was removed from office.
18. Ulysses S. Grant: President when the 15th Amendment passed, saying no one could deny anyone the right to vote based on race. Sex, of course, but not race. He also created the first national park in 1872 — distant relatives of Rod Blagojevich immediately tried to close it.
19. Rutherford B. Hayes: His election opponent Samuel Tilden won the popular vote. Hayes, a Republican, needed only one electoral vote from three Republican-controlled states to win the presidency. If you know our electoral system well, you can probably guess that democracy prevailed and a fair election was able to proceed. I’m kidding, of course. Actually, many Democratic ballots were ruled invalid and Hayes entered the White House with the nickname “His Fraudulency.”
20. James A. Garfield: Was shot by Charles Guiteau in July 1881, but didn’t die until two months later. Doctors had the ability to save him, but his health plan at the time only covered bullets that didn’t come from an assassin.
21. Chester A. Arthur: Nicknamed “Elegant Arthur” because he was known to change his outfit several times a day. He had 15 personal groomers for his mustache alone.
22. Grover Cleveland: We’ll get to him later.
23. Benjamin Harrison: He was the first to have electricity in the White House and the first to have his voice recorded, a momentous occasion that he marked with his most notable quote, “Oh my God, is that what I really sound like?”
24. Grover Cleveland: See, here he is.
25. William McKinley: Passed the Gold Standard, which meant the dollar was backed by gold, versus what it is backed by today. (Hint: It’s worth about as much as what it’s backed by.)
26. Theodore Roosevelt: Survived an assassination attempt because he had a 50-page speech in his pocket that slowed the bullet down. For other examples of this phenomenon, see every Hollywood movie ever made where the main character is shot.
27. William Howard Taft: The fattest president in U.S. history once got stuck in the White House bathtub. His cabinet included Secretary of State Philander Knox, Ho Hos, Twinkies, cupcakes, Twizzlers ...
28. Woodrow Wilson: Made Mother’s Day a national holiday and was president when women were given the right to vote. And all I got my mother was a card. Way to set the bar too high.
29. Warren G. Harding: During prohibition, he served alcohol at weekly poker games. Was brought down by scandals from members of his administration famously saying, “I have no trouble with my enemies ... But my friends ... they’re the ones who keep me walking the floors at night.” So, let me get this straight, he was surprised that people who would drink and gamble — both of which were illegal — inside the White House also turned out to be untrustworthy?
30. Calvin Coolidge: Fact: A woman once bet “Silent Cal” she could get three words out of him. His response: “You lose.” His actual campaign motto “Keep Cool with Coolidge” was either written by an eighth-grade student council campaign manager or he really cared about global warming.
31. Herbert Hoover: The richest president during the nation’s poorest time. Hoover refused to accept his own salary, a move that all 535 members of Congress responded to immediately, and without hesitation, by asking if they could then give themselves raises.
32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: The press at the time agreed not to photograph FDR in his wheelchair. In a similar measure, the modern media has agreed only to photograph Obama while he’s walking on water.
33. Harry Truman: “Give ‘em hell Harry” is best known for dropping “little boy” and “fat man” on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, when Madison and Taft’s bodies had no effect, he decided to drop actual atomic bombs.
34. Dwight Eisenhower: He believed in the “domino theory” of communism, which meant that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, the others would follow in 30 minutes or less or their communism was free. How many years did this avid golfer serve as president? Foouuuuuuur! OK, actually, eight.
35. John F. Kennedy: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot and killed President Kennedy. You heard right, he only “acted” alone. Kennedy is responsible for the space race to the moon and the Civil Rights Act, which are separate, but equal, moments in history.
36. Lyndon B. Johnson: Led the nation through two wars: Vietnam and his own “war on poverty.” The latter of which was far more successful because none of them were armed.
37. Dick Nixon: Improved relations with the USSR and China, ended the military draft, established the Environmental Protection Agency, and signed the Clean Air Act and the Nuclear Weapon Non-Proliferation Treaty. But all this doesn’t overshadow his biggest mistake — making Columbus Day a national holiday. I mean, seriously, the guy found America by accident.
38. Gerald Ford: Pardoned Nixon, I assume for the Columbus Day thing.
39. Jimmy Carter: He spent his post-presidency building for homes for Habitat for Humanity. You’ll recognize those as the only homes that aren’t actively being foreclosed on.
40. Ronald Reagan: He was never actually president. He’s just that damn good an actor.
41. George H.W. Bush: Was known for three things: The phrase “read my lips, no new taxes,” his ventriloquism and raising taxes.
42. Bill Clinton: First Baby Boomer president and very likely responsible for his own personal baby boom.
43. George W. Bush: Brought global relief for AIDS victims, saving thousands of lives in Africa. Some said he was the greatest U.S. president for Africa and the fight against AIDS in history. (See, sometimes we can be nice.)
Sources: “U.S. Presidents Factbook,” “The Everything American President’s Book” and a bunch of lies I made up.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
On the Necessity of World War II
Victor Davis Hanson is a wonderful history mind. In this video clip he discusses, with Christopher Hitchens, Pat Buchanan's new book on World War II. Buchanan has as his central thesis the idea that World War II was an unecessary war. Both Hanson and Hitchens argue otherwise.
To check out the video go to: Victor Hanson/Chris Hitchens
Both thinkers also comment on Niall Ferguson's analysis of World War II and its causes as well.
To check out the video go to: Victor Hanson/Chris Hitchens
Both thinkers also comment on Niall Ferguson's analysis of World War II and its causes as well.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
On Jewish Survival
The following is the next installment in my Reply to John Ray of Dissecting Leftism fame.
On Jewish Survival
To John
It is certainly on the mark to argue that Jewish history has been cursed with a litany of horrors. It is also correct to note that the Judaism with a history over three thousand years ultimately survived these horrors. What is open for real questioning (as you duly infer) is whether this survival has been one of style and from a strategic standpoint could it have been more impressive in both number and in form. Your argument makes a good point in noting that the Jews, from a numerical perspective are a relatively small population. I agree less than fifteen million in a world closing in on seven billion souls is clearly small potatoes. Many a biologist would scoff at such notions of real survivability especially in a world where offspring numbers seem on the surface to be a clear indicator of success in nature.
However numbers, particularly in a biological framework, can mislead perhaps just as easily as they affirm. The Passenger pigeon for one dominated North American skies up until the 18th century, but today it is extinct. The same fate would likely have befallen the American Bison if it not for the brave work of conservationists. Biological history is suffused with other creatures whose numerical advantage proved to be of little ultimate value in the duration of the survival game. On the other hand the rare Coelecanth has survived from Ancient times outliving a plethora of other fish that once dwarfed it in abundancy. The same is true of that living fossil, the crocodile. (While it is true that crocodiles sit at the top of the food chain and therefore have no predators, as a top predators it is even more likely to face extinction as its energy requirements aren’t usually tolerant of a compromise in the trophic levels below them).
So what do these life science examples mean for the Jews? We know that temporally related number counts are not everything. The Great Empires of the past boasted large numbers but most lie on the scrap heap of history today. Each of the Akkadians, Hittites, Lydians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, Nazca, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas all fall into this category. Not to mention the Old Celtic and Harappan civilizations. All had their style once but now that style is more of a curiosity than anything else. One could say that some have survived under a different guise: The Zoroastrian Persians are now predominatly Shi’ite Muslims - an outsider cultural takeover if ever there was one - while the Ancient Egyptians have been assimilated into an Arab World that for all intent of purpose has regressed considerably from the Golden Age. I am therefore not convinced that this qualifies as survival at all. The Jews on the other hand stared down many of their adversaries (and pf course suffered for it at times), but the core of the culture, the very basis that certainly defines it has emerged largely intact despite the turbulence.
Yes Ashkenazic Jews do differ from Sepharidic Jews. In fact each of these categories have sub-categories within them (leave it to the Jews to find some minor points to squabble over) rendering such a classification system partly meaningless. However at its core (among Judaism’s adherents) lies a commonality which champions free will and the responsible philosophy of ethical monotheism. This is part of the Jewish survival strength. Not easily quantifiable but certainly background significant.
One additional point you mention that Christianity has expanded in number to the point where its followers number around a billion. However what you didn’t mention is that Christianity’s rapid expansion (a physicist may call this inflation) was largely due to its vigilant promotion by the Roman Emperor Constantine, following his defeat of his rival Maxentius at Milvian Bridge in 312AD. Constantine was a zealot in his stance. He actively worked to eradicate paganism and promoted Christian bishops to high positions in his court. There is some arguments as to why he adopted this pro-Christian stance. One school argues that it was for the sake of political unity (Rome was divided by a multitude of conflicting beliefs…Constantine may have been an original opponent of multi-culturalism…and needed a new glue to bind his subjects to a common cause). Others believe that his transformation was genuine and of spiritual significance. Regardless how one sees it, the end result was Christianity received the single greatest growth boost in its history.
A further milestone was reached when Theodosius, the Eastern Emperor and Gratian, his counterpart in the West, recognized Christianity as the official Religion of the East (380 AD) and Western portions of the Empire respectively. The religion’s dominance was now solidified. Judaism on the other hand would never be the recipient of such official sponsorship from such influential figures. European History is filled with further examples of local leaders first converting to Christianity (for one reason or another) and then bringing the bulk of their populace into the umbrella of the church in the follow-up.
I will not enter into the ‘people without a state argument’ as it has already been dealt with in earlier posts by others. However I will take up the ‘choice of allies argument that you put forth’. The Jews I believe have traditionally looked for allies…however where they have erred is that in doing so they often compromised their beliefs to fit in with the nuances of the so-called brothers in arms. This has almost always backfired. The Marxists/communists/socialists offered them lip service (behind a veneer of anti-semitism) in exchange for a divorce from their religious soul while a rush to join the ranks of capitalism has had the consequence of catalyzing a materialistic assimilation. In addition the Christian churches traditionally turned a cold shoulder to any advances.- preferring conversion to accommodation. In short where were the Jews to turn?
Now its true in contemporary times that Evangelical Christians (particularly in the US) have offered a hand of friendship, which I believe that Jews should take. Many have, especially those on the conservative real of Jewish politics (Israel itself has a multitude of programs that encourage Evangelical Christians to visit the Holy Land). The fact that some in the ADL chooses to see otherwise, in turning a blind eye to such assistance, is more of its leadership sinking into the sludge of anti-clerical secularism than anything else.
Cheers
Gavin Kanowitz
Worldoreason
A South African- born Jew in a Canadian court.
On Jewish Survival
To John
It is certainly on the mark to argue that Jewish history has been cursed with a litany of horrors. It is also correct to note that the Judaism with a history over three thousand years ultimately survived these horrors. What is open for real questioning (as you duly infer) is whether this survival has been one of style and from a strategic standpoint could it have been more impressive in both number and in form. Your argument makes a good point in noting that the Jews, from a numerical perspective are a relatively small population. I agree less than fifteen million in a world closing in on seven billion souls is clearly small potatoes. Many a biologist would scoff at such notions of real survivability especially in a world where offspring numbers seem on the surface to be a clear indicator of success in nature.
However numbers, particularly in a biological framework, can mislead perhaps just as easily as they affirm. The Passenger pigeon for one dominated North American skies up until the 18th century, but today it is extinct. The same fate would likely have befallen the American Bison if it not for the brave work of conservationists. Biological history is suffused with other creatures whose numerical advantage proved to be of little ultimate value in the duration of the survival game. On the other hand the rare Coelecanth has survived from Ancient times outliving a plethora of other fish that once dwarfed it in abundancy. The same is true of that living fossil, the crocodile. (While it is true that crocodiles sit at the top of the food chain and therefore have no predators, as a top predators it is even more likely to face extinction as its energy requirements aren’t usually tolerant of a compromise in the trophic levels below them).
So what do these life science examples mean for the Jews? We know that temporally related number counts are not everything. The Great Empires of the past boasted large numbers but most lie on the scrap heap of history today. Each of the Akkadians, Hittites, Lydians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, Nazca, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas all fall into this category. Not to mention the Old Celtic and Harappan civilizations. All had their style once but now that style is more of a curiosity than anything else. One could say that some have survived under a different guise: The Zoroastrian Persians are now predominatly Shi’ite Muslims - an outsider cultural takeover if ever there was one - while the Ancient Egyptians have been assimilated into an Arab World that for all intent of purpose has regressed considerably from the Golden Age. I am therefore not convinced that this qualifies as survival at all. The Jews on the other hand stared down many of their adversaries (and pf course suffered for it at times), but the core of the culture, the very basis that certainly defines it has emerged largely intact despite the turbulence.
Yes Ashkenazic Jews do differ from Sepharidic Jews. In fact each of these categories have sub-categories within them (leave it to the Jews to find some minor points to squabble over) rendering such a classification system partly meaningless. However at its core (among Judaism’s adherents) lies a commonality which champions free will and the responsible philosophy of ethical monotheism. This is part of the Jewish survival strength. Not easily quantifiable but certainly background significant.
One additional point you mention that Christianity has expanded in number to the point where its followers number around a billion. However what you didn’t mention is that Christianity’s rapid expansion (a physicist may call this inflation) was largely due to its vigilant promotion by the Roman Emperor Constantine, following his defeat of his rival Maxentius at Milvian Bridge in 312AD. Constantine was a zealot in his stance. He actively worked to eradicate paganism and promoted Christian bishops to high positions in his court. There is some arguments as to why he adopted this pro-Christian stance. One school argues that it was for the sake of political unity (Rome was divided by a multitude of conflicting beliefs…Constantine may have been an original opponent of multi-culturalism…and needed a new glue to bind his subjects to a common cause). Others believe that his transformation was genuine and of spiritual significance. Regardless how one sees it, the end result was Christianity received the single greatest growth boost in its history.
A further milestone was reached when Theodosius, the Eastern Emperor and Gratian, his counterpart in the West, recognized Christianity as the official Religion of the East (380 AD) and Western portions of the Empire respectively. The religion’s dominance was now solidified. Judaism on the other hand would never be the recipient of such official sponsorship from such influential figures. European History is filled with further examples of local leaders first converting to Christianity (for one reason or another) and then bringing the bulk of their populace into the umbrella of the church in the follow-up.
I will not enter into the ‘people without a state argument’ as it has already been dealt with in earlier posts by others. However I will take up the ‘choice of allies argument that you put forth’. The Jews I believe have traditionally looked for allies…however where they have erred is that in doing so they often compromised their beliefs to fit in with the nuances of the so-called brothers in arms. This has almost always backfired. The Marxists/communists/socialists offered them lip service (behind a veneer of anti-semitism) in exchange for a divorce from their religious soul while a rush to join the ranks of capitalism has had the consequence of catalyzing a materialistic assimilation. In addition the Christian churches traditionally turned a cold shoulder to any advances.- preferring conversion to accommodation. In short where were the Jews to turn?
Now its true in contemporary times that Evangelical Christians (particularly in the US) have offered a hand of friendship, which I believe that Jews should take. Many have, especially those on the conservative real of Jewish politics (Israel itself has a multitude of programs that encourage Evangelical Christians to visit the Holy Land). The fact that some in the ADL chooses to see otherwise, in turning a blind eye to such assistance, is more of its leadership sinking into the sludge of anti-clerical secularism than anything else.
Cheers
Gavin Kanowitz
Worldoreason
A South African- born Jew in a Canadian court.
Monday, December 29, 2008
On the English Survival with Style
John Ray, a strong friend of the State of Israel, runs the excellent Dissecting Leftism Blog that I requently read. Recently he published a series of articles on the fate of the Jews and the survival of the English...The articles can be found on http://tongue-tied2.blogspot.com/2008/12/fate-of-jews-some-of-things-i-have.html
Here is my reply - Part I
To John
I am a regular reader of your blog, as mentioned in earlier correspondence, and have much admiration for your way of thinking especially your strict adherence to logic and reason. While I don’t agree with you on some points (usually economics) I find your insight into history refreshing. It’s a shame that you have received some abuse (probably from a few of my co-religionists) with respect to the ‘Success of the Jews’ theme that you have been expanding on but cooler heads are too often a rarity these days.
Nevertheless I wish to add some objections to your core thesis that agues that the English have survived in style for the last millennium and a half. While on the surface this carries with it an apparent truism it overlooks the fact that English history, despite a popular misconception, has not been in and of itself peaceful. Looking at the period after 1066 (the time when England was last successfully invaded) Albion has witnessed on local soils rebellions by the Saxons against Norman Feudalism, the Baron Wars, Peasant Rebellions, the War of the Roses (which really spanned the era between Richard II and Henry VII), the English Civil War, the Jacobite War and the insurrection of Monmouth. If one adds in the American Revolution (which for all intent of purpose can be looked at as an internal struggle between English speaking people) it is evident that the English have had a long history of warring amongst themselves.
In addition if you add in the numerous English lives (mostly commoners) that have been lost in the pursuit of Empire on a global basis –not to mention those lives foregone in conflicts with Spain, the Netherlands, France, Scotland, Denmark, the United States etc – the idea of surviving with style, at least how it reflects down to the bulk of the populace, is found wanting.Now I will not deny the fact the English have been very successful in transmitting their culture on a worldwide basis. The dominance of the English language and systems of education and governance attest to this phenomenon but it has come at a price which I believe cannot be swept so easily under the proverbial rug.The English are a very admirable people (I have been somewhat of an anglophile for most of my life although my enthusiasm has waned as of late as British institutions which I once respected continue to shed ground to the Stealth Jihad) but the accident of geography that has afforded them island status clearly played a large role in their success (yes the Scots and Welsh could harass the English but by shear force of number were unlikely to ever win the upper hand….).
Winston Churchill was correct in arguing that the island situation was an advantage that could not last forever and that Britain would need to work on establishing alliances to ensure survival. This was not a novel idea at the Empire level (regional alliances with the Iroquois, the Basuto, the Sikhs were common) but in the more critical area of European politics it was particular loathsome to the English mindset. After the Napoleonic Wars and the obvious realization that the European Powers (Russia, Prussia and Austria) were intent on turning back the forces of liberalism and nationalism (via the Concert System) Britain retreated into a type of ‘splendid isolation’ where it focused on growing its Empire alone without outside interference. With the possible exception of the Crimean War this attitude characterized British geo-politically thinking up to the Second Anglo Boer War.
It was only after the South African conflict, where British resources were stretched to breaking point by the guerilla tactics of well organized militia that the need for global allies would become a necessity. In fact one can pinpoint this change in policy to the signing of the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of 1902, a framework that set the foundation for the Entente Cordiale with France and the Anglo-Russian Entente.However even in this regard the Brits were slow to the post, for one the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy was already well established. Germany also had cultivated an ally in the Ottoman Turks. One could even argue (with hindsight) that Britain’s decision to enter into a system of alliances and thereby join the trend was ultimately what caused the weakening of the Empire by forcing London to engage in a vortex of events leading to the disastrous Great War (although I suspect that you will argue otherwise using the pretext that the growing influence of German Naval Power made war inevitable).
I believe that the success of the English people resides with a combination of factors. They are a very resourceful people (their pragmatic creativity during the First Industrial Revolution and beyond bears this out) but so does a commitment to the free inquiry. The former has its structural origins in the English Reformation, but was further augmented by the battle against autocracy during the Civil War and the Hanoverian transfer of power during the reign of George I. These changes were not as forthcoming amongst Britain/England’s continental rivals who were forced to delay the coming of modernism to the Enlightenment Period.
However what has most served the English is their ability to adapt – to take the best from the outside and make it somehow English. They did this with the Roman system of laws, Grecian Rationalism, Judeo-Christian Ethics, Stoicism and Iberian naval proficiency. It is this same characteristic that the family branch of the English, the Americans, have utilized with remarkable success today (Another island nation the Japanese are similar to the English in this regard).
It is this adaptation that has created the illusion that the English have resisted invasion. While no army since William the Conqueror have overwhelmed the English on the home front since the 11th century (although the Hungarians humbled the English football team at Wembley in the 1950s) it is equally true that the English monarchy has resided in the hands of foreigners since then. The Normans were of a Franco/Norse stock, the House of Plantagenet, and its spin offs in Lancaster and York were all Gallic, the Tudors were Welsh, The Stuarts - Scottish and Hanover, Saxe-Coburg and Windsor were/are all German. Yes not since the ill-fated Harold Godwinson (aka Harold II) has England had a monarch of English ethnicity and before that power was invested for some time with Danish kings such as Canute and Hardicanute.
What is most remarkable though is that within a short period the English turned these foreigners into extensions of England itself…..so that their ethnicity is more a matter of historical detail than anything else.
However with each addition and influx of change a point of saturation is neared. Changes are rarely neutral with respect to key factors. The utility of adaptation carries with it a double-edged outcome. At what point in a series of changes is the system or the people no longer English?
British Internationalism, the overriding policy of adaptation, that dominates the nation in 2008 is a consequence of this underlying tendency, however in subjecting itself to the relativism of multiculturalism the Brits seem to have shot the bolt and traded away the base in one foul swoop. Could it be that the English will simply whither away? Over adapted themselves to death? …Maybe there is a grace in this style but I am at a loss to find it. I am working on the Jewish side of the argument and will send you a reply soon……….
Sincerely
Gavin Kanowitz
Worldoreason
Here is my reply - Part I
To John
I am a regular reader of your blog, as mentioned in earlier correspondence, and have much admiration for your way of thinking especially your strict adherence to logic and reason. While I don’t agree with you on some points (usually economics) I find your insight into history refreshing. It’s a shame that you have received some abuse (probably from a few of my co-religionists) with respect to the ‘Success of the Jews’ theme that you have been expanding on but cooler heads are too often a rarity these days.
Nevertheless I wish to add some objections to your core thesis that agues that the English have survived in style for the last millennium and a half. While on the surface this carries with it an apparent truism it overlooks the fact that English history, despite a popular misconception, has not been in and of itself peaceful. Looking at the period after 1066 (the time when England was last successfully invaded) Albion has witnessed on local soils rebellions by the Saxons against Norman Feudalism, the Baron Wars, Peasant Rebellions, the War of the Roses (which really spanned the era between Richard II and Henry VII), the English Civil War, the Jacobite War and the insurrection of Monmouth. If one adds in the American Revolution (which for all intent of purpose can be looked at as an internal struggle between English speaking people) it is evident that the English have had a long history of warring amongst themselves.
In addition if you add in the numerous English lives (mostly commoners) that have been lost in the pursuit of Empire on a global basis –not to mention those lives foregone in conflicts with Spain, the Netherlands, France, Scotland, Denmark, the United States etc – the idea of surviving with style, at least how it reflects down to the bulk of the populace, is found wanting.Now I will not deny the fact the English have been very successful in transmitting their culture on a worldwide basis. The dominance of the English language and systems of education and governance attest to this phenomenon but it has come at a price which I believe cannot be swept so easily under the proverbial rug.The English are a very admirable people (I have been somewhat of an anglophile for most of my life although my enthusiasm has waned as of late as British institutions which I once respected continue to shed ground to the Stealth Jihad) but the accident of geography that has afforded them island status clearly played a large role in their success (yes the Scots and Welsh could harass the English but by shear force of number were unlikely to ever win the upper hand….).
Winston Churchill was correct in arguing that the island situation was an advantage that could not last forever and that Britain would need to work on establishing alliances to ensure survival. This was not a novel idea at the Empire level (regional alliances with the Iroquois, the Basuto, the Sikhs were common) but in the more critical area of European politics it was particular loathsome to the English mindset. After the Napoleonic Wars and the obvious realization that the European Powers (Russia, Prussia and Austria) were intent on turning back the forces of liberalism and nationalism (via the Concert System) Britain retreated into a type of ‘splendid isolation’ where it focused on growing its Empire alone without outside interference. With the possible exception of the Crimean War this attitude characterized British geo-politically thinking up to the Second Anglo Boer War.
It was only after the South African conflict, where British resources were stretched to breaking point by the guerilla tactics of well organized militia that the need for global allies would become a necessity. In fact one can pinpoint this change in policy to the signing of the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of 1902, a framework that set the foundation for the Entente Cordiale with France and the Anglo-Russian Entente.However even in this regard the Brits were slow to the post, for one the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy was already well established. Germany also had cultivated an ally in the Ottoman Turks. One could even argue (with hindsight) that Britain’s decision to enter into a system of alliances and thereby join the trend was ultimately what caused the weakening of the Empire by forcing London to engage in a vortex of events leading to the disastrous Great War (although I suspect that you will argue otherwise using the pretext that the growing influence of German Naval Power made war inevitable).
I believe that the success of the English people resides with a combination of factors. They are a very resourceful people (their pragmatic creativity during the First Industrial Revolution and beyond bears this out) but so does a commitment to the free inquiry. The former has its structural origins in the English Reformation, but was further augmented by the battle against autocracy during the Civil War and the Hanoverian transfer of power during the reign of George I. These changes were not as forthcoming amongst Britain/England’s continental rivals who were forced to delay the coming of modernism to the Enlightenment Period.
However what has most served the English is their ability to adapt – to take the best from the outside and make it somehow English. They did this with the Roman system of laws, Grecian Rationalism, Judeo-Christian Ethics, Stoicism and Iberian naval proficiency. It is this same characteristic that the family branch of the English, the Americans, have utilized with remarkable success today (Another island nation the Japanese are similar to the English in this regard).
It is this adaptation that has created the illusion that the English have resisted invasion. While no army since William the Conqueror have overwhelmed the English on the home front since the 11th century (although the Hungarians humbled the English football team at Wembley in the 1950s) it is equally true that the English monarchy has resided in the hands of foreigners since then. The Normans were of a Franco/Norse stock, the House of Plantagenet, and its spin offs in Lancaster and York were all Gallic, the Tudors were Welsh, The Stuarts - Scottish and Hanover, Saxe-Coburg and Windsor were/are all German. Yes not since the ill-fated Harold Godwinson (aka Harold II) has England had a monarch of English ethnicity and before that power was invested for some time with Danish kings such as Canute and Hardicanute.
What is most remarkable though is that within a short period the English turned these foreigners into extensions of England itself…..so that their ethnicity is more a matter of historical detail than anything else.
However with each addition and influx of change a point of saturation is neared. Changes are rarely neutral with respect to key factors. The utility of adaptation carries with it a double-edged outcome. At what point in a series of changes is the system or the people no longer English?
British Internationalism, the overriding policy of adaptation, that dominates the nation in 2008 is a consequence of this underlying tendency, however in subjecting itself to the relativism of multiculturalism the Brits seem to have shot the bolt and traded away the base in one foul swoop. Could it be that the English will simply whither away? Over adapted themselves to death? …Maybe there is a grace in this style but I am at a loss to find it. I am working on the Jewish side of the argument and will send you a reply soon……….
Sincerely
Gavin Kanowitz
Worldoreason
Saturday, November 22, 2008
On a White President in South Africa
Source: http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sandilememela/2008/11/19/the-anc-may-not-be-ready-for-a-white-president-in-a-100-years/
Taken from Article by: Sandile Memela
The ANC’s commitment to non-racialism is unquestionable but it may need another 100 years to deliver a white president. This is not a problem of the organisation’s principles and ideals per se. Instead, it is the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
Of course, when it first started out in 1912, the ANC was an exclusive African liberation movement. Its primary purpose was the total liberation of African people. So, whoever joined the organisation later was required to put the interests of African people, first.
What that means is that if you were Indian, coloured or white who joined the ANC, you accepted that you were part of the family because you truly believed that Africans had a right to self-determination, especially the leadership of their own indigenous organisation.
Significantly, in the late 1950s, the ANC experienced an ideological split when Robert Sobukwe suspected that non-Africans exerted too much influence and thus were taking over the leadership of the ANC. According to him, this compromised the rights of Africans to fight for the return of their land and for political self-determination. As far as Sobukwe was concerned, this South Africa was, essentially, a black man’s country and whoever chose to live and die here would do so under the terms of African people.
In the 1950s the ANC would not budge from non-racialism and thus Sobukwe was allowed to leave with those who did not buy into the notion of non-racialism. Thus in 1959 the PAC was launched.
The ANC survived it first major split and grew stronger because of its unwavering commitment to non-racialism. In fact, it was African nationalists in the ANC who suggested that Indians, coloureds and whites should organise themselves (along racial lines,) first, to join what later became known as the Congress Alliance. But this was a partnership that would, primarily, work towards African liberation and political liberation.
For the rest go to the source
Taken from Article by: Sandile Memela
The ANC’s commitment to non-racialism is unquestionable but it may need another 100 years to deliver a white president. This is not a problem of the organisation’s principles and ideals per se. Instead, it is the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
Of course, when it first started out in 1912, the ANC was an exclusive African liberation movement. Its primary purpose was the total liberation of African people. So, whoever joined the organisation later was required to put the interests of African people, first.
What that means is that if you were Indian, coloured or white who joined the ANC, you accepted that you were part of the family because you truly believed that Africans had a right to self-determination, especially the leadership of their own indigenous organisation.
Significantly, in the late 1950s, the ANC experienced an ideological split when Robert Sobukwe suspected that non-Africans exerted too much influence and thus were taking over the leadership of the ANC. According to him, this compromised the rights of Africans to fight for the return of their land and for political self-determination. As far as Sobukwe was concerned, this South Africa was, essentially, a black man’s country and whoever chose to live and die here would do so under the terms of African people.
In the 1950s the ANC would not budge from non-racialism and thus Sobukwe was allowed to leave with those who did not buy into the notion of non-racialism. Thus in 1959 the PAC was launched.
The ANC survived it first major split and grew stronger because of its unwavering commitment to non-racialism. In fact, it was African nationalists in the ANC who suggested that Indians, coloureds and whites should organise themselves (along racial lines,) first, to join what later became known as the Congress Alliance. But this was a partnership that would, primarily, work towards African liberation and political liberation.
For the rest go to the source
Those almost Jewish Puritans
Source: http://www.jewishledger.com/articles/2008/11/21/news/on_the_cover/news01.txt
by Ted Roberts
Why is it important for us American Jews of 2008 to know that in 1649, a Puritan couple, asked for a repeal of Edward I's Act of Jewish banishment - in effect for 350 years?The key fact is their Puritanism - a form of Christianity - that accented the Old Testament and drove them to sympathy with Judaism. It was the core of the faith of those who founded our America.All this reminds me of the best theological secret of the past millennium - especially to Jews. It concerns those wandering, persecuted Puritans. Strange people. Revolutionary in their religious beliefs. They loved the Old Testament - our Humash - unanimously swear to it.Before you slice into your traditionally rare, half-done turkey, next Thanksgiving give a thought to those strange birds, the Pilgrims. What a rare breed they were - typical of the exotics who stand the world on its head. Hacking, sniffing, trembling with chills in the late New England Fall, they sat down to the first Thanksgiving. They gave thanks, as we do, before every meal. More prayerful than usual because it was their Seder equivalent. And so what if half of them had fluttered skyward that year? Those celestial beings were happier than the earthy survivors, since they were wrapped in warm clouds and dined to their full at heavenly tables. So, laugh and dance like the Chasids. You see, they believed in Heaven.The secret of their Jewish leanings is not widely known to most rabbis and their flock. These alienated folks left the 17th Century urbanity of London for the stone-cold wilderness of savage North America. The "New Zion", they called it - does that give you a clue? "The Puritans' mania for the Old Testament developed directly out of their experience of persecution by the established church." So says the renowned historian Barbara Tuchman in her 1957 book Bible and Sword.. She verifies my vague suspicions that our American forefathers were SO Jewish that you wonder why the old pictures don't show them in yarmulke and tiffilin.
According to Tuchman, fleeing persecution, the Puritans saw themselves as 16th Century Israelites; named their kids Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebecca. Did you know that the seal of Yale and Harvard is in Hebrew of all things. "They paid a respect to the Hebrew language that they refused to the language of their gospels...." Tuchman tells us. Even McCauley, the greatest of English historians, rants about their "Hebraic leanings". It was no secret - they flew the flag of Moses and metaphorically, culturally waged war with episcopal Christianity. Another historian, Cunningham, sums it up neatly: "The general tendency of Puritanism was to discard Christian morality and to substitute Jewish habits in its stead".
For the rest go to the source
by Ted Roberts
Why is it important for us American Jews of 2008 to know that in 1649, a Puritan couple, asked for a repeal of Edward I's Act of Jewish banishment - in effect for 350 years?The key fact is their Puritanism - a form of Christianity - that accented the Old Testament and drove them to sympathy with Judaism. It was the core of the faith of those who founded our America.All this reminds me of the best theological secret of the past millennium - especially to Jews. It concerns those wandering, persecuted Puritans. Strange people. Revolutionary in their religious beliefs. They loved the Old Testament - our Humash - unanimously swear to it.Before you slice into your traditionally rare, half-done turkey, next Thanksgiving give a thought to those strange birds, the Pilgrims. What a rare breed they were - typical of the exotics who stand the world on its head. Hacking, sniffing, trembling with chills in the late New England Fall, they sat down to the first Thanksgiving. They gave thanks, as we do, before every meal. More prayerful than usual because it was their Seder equivalent. And so what if half of them had fluttered skyward that year? Those celestial beings were happier than the earthy survivors, since they were wrapped in warm clouds and dined to their full at heavenly tables. So, laugh and dance like the Chasids. You see, they believed in Heaven.The secret of their Jewish leanings is not widely known to most rabbis and their flock. These alienated folks left the 17th Century urbanity of London for the stone-cold wilderness of savage North America. The "New Zion", they called it - does that give you a clue? "The Puritans' mania for the Old Testament developed directly out of their experience of persecution by the established church." So says the renowned historian Barbara Tuchman in her 1957 book Bible and Sword.. She verifies my vague suspicions that our American forefathers were SO Jewish that you wonder why the old pictures don't show them in yarmulke and tiffilin.
According to Tuchman, fleeing persecution, the Puritans saw themselves as 16th Century Israelites; named their kids Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebecca. Did you know that the seal of Yale and Harvard is in Hebrew of all things. "They paid a respect to the Hebrew language that they refused to the language of their gospels...." Tuchman tells us. Even McCauley, the greatest of English historians, rants about their "Hebraic leanings". It was no secret - they flew the flag of Moses and metaphorically, culturally waged war with episcopal Christianity. Another historian, Cunningham, sums it up neatly: "The general tendency of Puritanism was to discard Christian morality and to substitute Jewish habits in its stead".
For the rest go to the source
A Quick Look at Piracy
Taken from Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/22/piracy-somalia
Pirate is a forgiving word. Thanks to at least two centuries of British and American romanticism - Lord Byron to Johnny Depp - it implies a man (or in two famous instances, a woman) who is not wholly bad and many moral levels professionally above footpads, rapists and serial killers. For instance, is there an epoch known to historians as the Golden Age of Rape? No, but sometimes in books about buccaneers you will find the Golden Age of Piracy, which in British terms lasted from the 1650s till about 1725.
In some respects, the pirates of Somalia are behaving in the classic tradition. According to reports, they are spending millions of dollars of ransom money on imported food, alcohol, drugs and prostitutes, just as predecessors debauched and befuddled themselves whenever possible with tobacco, rum and whoring. In other ways, though, their behaviour (so far) matches the romantic ideal rather than the brutal reality.
More than 200 kidnapped sailors are being well looked after on a dozen hijacked ships that have been moored at the fishing port of Eyl; or, in the case of the Sirius Star, their biggest prize, a few hundred miles down the Somali coast at Harardheere. No harm has been done to them. What their captors want are dollars from the ships' owners, not the blood of their crews. With this in mind, a Somali pirate with historical leanings might scoff at the outrage of David Miliband and consider the case of Thomas Avery, whose old exploits in the present Somali hunting ground, the Gulf of Aden, make modern piracy look like peacetime manoeuvres by a marine branch of the Fabian Society.
According to the historian David Cordingly's account, in his book Life Among the Pirates, Avery was a typical British pirate - "of middle height, rather fat, with a dissolute appearance". He was born in Plymouth in 1653, served in the Royal Navy, and then seized command (the captain was drunk at the time) of an English privateer - a privately owned ship licensed by the government to attack the state's enemies. By 1695, he was prowling at the entrance to the Red Sea waiting for the pilgrim fleet that sailed every year from India to Mecca, filled with valuables, because pilgrimage was also an opportunity to trade, and protected by the heavily armed ships of the Great Mogul in Delhi. Avery got lucky. One of his cannonballs dismasted the Great Mogul's flagship, which was not only carrying piles of gold and silver but also many slave girls and, it was said, one of the Great Mogul's daughters. What Cordingly calls "an orgy of rape, torture and plunder" lasted days and Avery's crew got away with the equivalent of £1,000 each.
The English government was embarrassed - it needed to preserve the East India Company's relationship with the Mogul emperor - and eventually caught six of the pirates and had them hanged. Avery himself vanished; rumour suggests he died in poverty in Devon, rather like Ben Gunn at the end of Treasure Island who spent a thousand pounds in 19 days and was "back begging on the twentieth". Like most pirates, Avery was an amoral opportunist who switched easily among the blurred divisions between privateering, buccaneering and sailing as a navy or merchant seaman (by the end of the 17th century the average age of a pirate was 27 - roughly the same as Somalia's modern pirates - and almost all had begun their working lives in the Royal Navy or on cargo ships).
Still, his legacy was profound: you might even argue that he began the process that enabled the careers of Byron's Corsair, Long John Silver, Captain Hook and Errol Flynn, and has brought us to the recently announced Pirates of Caribbean, Part IV. A now obscure dramatist, Charles Johnson, took the story of Avery's barbarous raid in the Gulf of Aden and turned it into a play, The Successful Pyrate, in which all the horrid facts were left behind.
Avery, now King Arviragus of Madagascar, became the first of piracy's noble outlaws. A captured ship is brought to him. It contains the Mogul's granddaughter, the fair Zaida. Arviragus falls in love, but Zaida loves another: one of her fellow captives, the young Aranes. Disaster! Revelation! Aranes turns out to be Arviragus's long lost son.
The play opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1713, the first in a succession of pirate melodramas that went on being produced well into the 19th century, until Gilbert and Sullivan's satirical The Pirates of Penzance put an end to them. But where did writers do their research, supposing any were needed? The answer comes from the same period in a book by a Captain Johnson, who in 1724 published A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, which ran to several editions and was translated into French.
Nobody knows who Johnson was: a theory that Daniel Defoe was the author has now been discredited. But his book became the seminal text. Out of it came the public's first appreciation of Blackbeard and Captain Kidd and the two women pirates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Robert Louis Stevenson consulted it, when, in a Highland cottage during the wet and chill summer of 1881, he began to devise an entertainment for his stepson. Nobody in Johnson's book says "yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum" but there is a vivid description of "a fellow with a terrible pair of whiskers, and a wooden leg, being stuck around with pistols ... swearing and vapouring on the quarter deck".
By the time Stevenson invented John Silver, real pirates were at best a folk memory in the western world. A few might survive in the South China Sea, but efficient navies had destroyed them elsewhere. Motivation had also been reduced. Pirates often fenced their stolen cargoes to smugglers, but free trade had dramatically lowered import duties and smuggling died as an occupation.
The way was open for the pirate as an antihero, the rebel against society, or simply a comic character as in Captain Hook. As Pieter van der Merwe of the National Maritime Museum says: "Blackbeard was a terrible man - a psychopath - but piracy had been effectively wiped out in the 18th century. You forgot the fact that it was a curse.'
It became a hobby. Philip Gosse, the son of litterateur and memoirist Edmund Gosse, was a doctor who collected nearly 500 books on piracy and in 1932 published an authoritative history of the subject (his library is now the Gosse collection at the National Maritime). And next it became a study, with historians anxious to revise or enlarge our previously simple ideas. Some pirates were proto-feminists and others gay (Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition, 1983). In The Many-Headed Hydra, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker define pirate ships as "multinational, multicultural and multiracial" institutions - fine little democracies - that resisted the oppression of the capitalist merchant shipping industry. Pirates were "egalitarian, class-conscious and justice-seeking" and always shared their spoils.
For the rest gp to the source
Pirate is a forgiving word. Thanks to at least two centuries of British and American romanticism - Lord Byron to Johnny Depp - it implies a man (or in two famous instances, a woman) who is not wholly bad and many moral levels professionally above footpads, rapists and serial killers. For instance, is there an epoch known to historians as the Golden Age of Rape? No, but sometimes in books about buccaneers you will find the Golden Age of Piracy, which in British terms lasted from the 1650s till about 1725.
In some respects, the pirates of Somalia are behaving in the classic tradition. According to reports, they are spending millions of dollars of ransom money on imported food, alcohol, drugs and prostitutes, just as predecessors debauched and befuddled themselves whenever possible with tobacco, rum and whoring. In other ways, though, their behaviour (so far) matches the romantic ideal rather than the brutal reality.
More than 200 kidnapped sailors are being well looked after on a dozen hijacked ships that have been moored at the fishing port of Eyl; or, in the case of the Sirius Star, their biggest prize, a few hundred miles down the Somali coast at Harardheere. No harm has been done to them. What their captors want are dollars from the ships' owners, not the blood of their crews. With this in mind, a Somali pirate with historical leanings might scoff at the outrage of David Miliband and consider the case of Thomas Avery, whose old exploits in the present Somali hunting ground, the Gulf of Aden, make modern piracy look like peacetime manoeuvres by a marine branch of the Fabian Society.
According to the historian David Cordingly's account, in his book Life Among the Pirates, Avery was a typical British pirate - "of middle height, rather fat, with a dissolute appearance". He was born in Plymouth in 1653, served in the Royal Navy, and then seized command (the captain was drunk at the time) of an English privateer - a privately owned ship licensed by the government to attack the state's enemies. By 1695, he was prowling at the entrance to the Red Sea waiting for the pilgrim fleet that sailed every year from India to Mecca, filled with valuables, because pilgrimage was also an opportunity to trade, and protected by the heavily armed ships of the Great Mogul in Delhi. Avery got lucky. One of his cannonballs dismasted the Great Mogul's flagship, which was not only carrying piles of gold and silver but also many slave girls and, it was said, one of the Great Mogul's daughters. What Cordingly calls "an orgy of rape, torture and plunder" lasted days and Avery's crew got away with the equivalent of £1,000 each.
The English government was embarrassed - it needed to preserve the East India Company's relationship with the Mogul emperor - and eventually caught six of the pirates and had them hanged. Avery himself vanished; rumour suggests he died in poverty in Devon, rather like Ben Gunn at the end of Treasure Island who spent a thousand pounds in 19 days and was "back begging on the twentieth". Like most pirates, Avery was an amoral opportunist who switched easily among the blurred divisions between privateering, buccaneering and sailing as a navy or merchant seaman (by the end of the 17th century the average age of a pirate was 27 - roughly the same as Somalia's modern pirates - and almost all had begun their working lives in the Royal Navy or on cargo ships).
Still, his legacy was profound: you might even argue that he began the process that enabled the careers of Byron's Corsair, Long John Silver, Captain Hook and Errol Flynn, and has brought us to the recently announced Pirates of Caribbean, Part IV. A now obscure dramatist, Charles Johnson, took the story of Avery's barbarous raid in the Gulf of Aden and turned it into a play, The Successful Pyrate, in which all the horrid facts were left behind.
Avery, now King Arviragus of Madagascar, became the first of piracy's noble outlaws. A captured ship is brought to him. It contains the Mogul's granddaughter, the fair Zaida. Arviragus falls in love, but Zaida loves another: one of her fellow captives, the young Aranes. Disaster! Revelation! Aranes turns out to be Arviragus's long lost son.
The play opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1713, the first in a succession of pirate melodramas that went on being produced well into the 19th century, until Gilbert and Sullivan's satirical The Pirates of Penzance put an end to them. But where did writers do their research, supposing any were needed? The answer comes from the same period in a book by a Captain Johnson, who in 1724 published A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, which ran to several editions and was translated into French.
Nobody knows who Johnson was: a theory that Daniel Defoe was the author has now been discredited. But his book became the seminal text. Out of it came the public's first appreciation of Blackbeard and Captain Kidd and the two women pirates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Robert Louis Stevenson consulted it, when, in a Highland cottage during the wet and chill summer of 1881, he began to devise an entertainment for his stepson. Nobody in Johnson's book says "yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum" but there is a vivid description of "a fellow with a terrible pair of whiskers, and a wooden leg, being stuck around with pistols ... swearing and vapouring on the quarter deck".
By the time Stevenson invented John Silver, real pirates were at best a folk memory in the western world. A few might survive in the South China Sea, but efficient navies had destroyed them elsewhere. Motivation had also been reduced. Pirates often fenced their stolen cargoes to smugglers, but free trade had dramatically lowered import duties and smuggling died as an occupation.
The way was open for the pirate as an antihero, the rebel against society, or simply a comic character as in Captain Hook. As Pieter van der Merwe of the National Maritime Museum says: "Blackbeard was a terrible man - a psychopath - but piracy had been effectively wiped out in the 18th century. You forgot the fact that it was a curse.'
It became a hobby. Philip Gosse, the son of litterateur and memoirist Edmund Gosse, was a doctor who collected nearly 500 books on piracy and in 1932 published an authoritative history of the subject (his library is now the Gosse collection at the National Maritime). And next it became a study, with historians anxious to revise or enlarge our previously simple ideas. Some pirates were proto-feminists and others gay (Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition, 1983). In The Many-Headed Hydra, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker define pirate ships as "multinational, multicultural and multiracial" institutions - fine little democracies - that resisted the oppression of the capitalist merchant shipping industry. Pirates were "egalitarian, class-conscious and justice-seeking" and always shared their spoils.
For the rest gp to the source
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