Tag Archives: AMERICAN HISTORY

LIBERTIES, FREEDOMS AND RIGHTS

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American liberties, freedoms and rights are not to be confused. Their interrelations and differences have not always been understood, especially in the Ante-bellum South. Since the Civil War and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, Americans have used the Court to define actions and impose restrictions. However, today these guardians of the Constitution, the justices of the Supreme Court, are losing the game of this Republic, Nine to Zero.

Liberty is the general state a human being is in when standing on Earth, alone. It is an unmonitored state of existence where anyone can do whatever is pleasing. Liberty in the human mind means that everything in the imagination is 100 percent real. Move, talk, gesture – does anyone hear or see? It is liberty, and it is absolutely embedded in the hearts and minds of Americans. The government and other Americans usually don’t interfere with expressions of pure liberty. (see a short discussion in T.H. Breen, The Will of the People, (2019).

Freedoms originate in society, and impose restraints on liberty with rules: Freedom of Speech/ Press, Avoid libel, slander, incitement and privacy laws; Freedom of Religion, Limit extreme cult practices; Freedom of Assembly, No mob activity; Freedom to Petition the Government – No threats to life or property. Human beings claiming to exercise liberty have taken expansive views of freedoms, beyond restraints, laws and customs.

Americans have always had citizens ignoring limitations provided by freedoms. Individuals and groups moved into the Frontier to avoid the restraints. Within our lifetimes the “cultural” movements of the 1960s attacked and brought forward behaviors and challenges, changing what was tolerated and accepted. Some people were libertarians; other were libertines; individuals claimed the mantle of anarchy: “Do his own thing.” Left and Right movements today scream for freedoms, the protection of society. They say little about liberty. This is a moving area of law: To protect itself and the free society, restraints against liberty founded in freedoms are usually accepted, well known and frequently enforced.

During this Country’s founding, citizens knew such claims were wrong and perilous, full of “rebel spirits more dangerous and difficult to reduce.” One can not be licentious, “acting under sensual passions,” departures from civil norms. (See T.H. Breen, The Will of the People, last chapter.) Reason is necessary. Why? It is in the Constitution.

The Ninth Amendment reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Rights cannot be founded on individual passions, emotions and urges. Rights need objective criteria. One unenumerated right widely recognized by Americans, is the right to privacy, a work in progress. Circumstances arise, some being emotional and personal, and others are founded on bedrock principles of society. Yet all Americans claim this right and some want it extended. This Country, assessing and considering facts daily in piecemeal fashion, arrives at what is permissible.

An issue of interpretation arises. What is a Right? Madison in his Report of 1800 observed “technical phrases” from the common law could be used to define current usage, especially for persons seeking original views or original meanings of the Constitution. A Right goes beyond a license. It was in that category of endowments akin to privileges and immunities. They have been in Western society since the Middle Ages. Monopolies were rights once given to certain entities or individuals: The East India Company of the Boston Tea Party was such a monopoly. Rights can be modified and changed, as circumstances change. In Great Britain the monarchy had that power. In the United States the people are sovereign and should use processes and procedures set forth in the Constitution., whether legislatively, by amendment and frequently by the courts.

Originally, a right gave liberty to act exclusively within a specific area of land or commerce. It is not a freedom, but it was specific to the person(s) identified with the right. Concepts of Rights have broadened since 1789, but Rights do not always produce identifiable behaviors and circumstances which society can withstand. Rights are identified in the Constitution: Right against Self-Incrimination. (Fifth Amendment); Right to Bear Arms, (It is not, Freedom to Bear Arms.) (Second Amendment), which may not be as expansive a right as is proposed today. Society might be able to restrict and limit activities associated with rights – which are not freedoms – more broadly.

An American problem today is talking through one another, using the same words with such force and certainty to assert “plain meanings” which conflict and contradict: “I have my rights!” “I have freedoms!” Many of those Americans are claiming liberties. It is widely accepted that words and terms do not have fixed meanings, yet words and terms are becoming toys, playthings to toss around to keep opponents off balance. They are losing their significance. The Courts, including the Supremes, must act and decide according to which facts before them give rise to Liberties, Freedoms or Rights.

NEW MARTHA MITCHELL

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Remember the old Martha Mitchell, wife of Attorney General John Mitchell? She not related to Margaret or to Andrea. She was nicknamed, Mouth of the South, and forcibly sedated by a shrink. While intoxicated on something himself, Nixon said she had a drinking problem. 

The new Martha Mitchell is Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court. 

Ginni believes she can scold persons who she disagrees with using Twitter-like words. It is Twitter when the writer writes “u” rather than “you,” and uses words that comprise incomplete sentences.

Ginni wrote: “To all the kids that walked out of school to protest guns. Those are the shoes of Jews that gave up their firearms to Hitler. They were led into gas chambers, murdered and buried in mass graves. Pick up a history book and you’ll realize what happens when u give up freedoms and why we have them.” (From The Hill website.)

Also from The Hill website Ginni rants, “I want the old regular America back,…MINUS left’s awful tactics.”

First Issue: Is this how Clarence Thomas wants to be represented? It detracts from the dignity and the serenity of the Supreme Court. It suggests on any Second Amendment issue, Clarence Thomas has already made up his mind and is forcibly influenced by an intimate voice. He should disqualify himself from those deliberations and any Court opinion. It supports the inference that if Clarence Thomas does not recuse himself, he has not fulfilled his oath of office: He is not servicing “in good behavior.”

Second Issue: Americans can expect anyone writing about Constitutional issues and politics to discuss the issues using rational means, unlike an angry Don Trump tweet. Perhaps Ginni Thomas knows her audience and apparently like herself, she knows the full extent of the attention span: State what is needed in 25 words or less. Framers of the Constitution, except Luther Martin, had longer attention spans than 25 words. No one arguing about the Bill of Rights in Congress in August, 1789, would listen to Ginni. 

Third Issue: Ginni urges gun protestors to read and learn history. That is commendable. But what of her history?

Ginni is ignorant. No one in Europe except the Swiss, had customs and statutory policies [not Constitutional Rules],  about owning and using firearms. Neither Jews nor anyone else had access to firearms. No one gave up firearms and next were marched into concentration camps. Where most of the Jewish victims of the camps came from – Central and Eastern Europe – there were no rights to bear arms.

Would the Holocaust have happened in a state where everyone could obtain firearms is a consideration which is off-point. It the German “left” had arms, would they have begun a Civil War to stave off Hitler? That’s a “what if” question. Note in Iraq Saddam Hussein let Iraqis bear arms, yet they lived under a “brutal” dictatorship.

What is the history in the old regular America of the 1960s. Eldridge Cleaver called for responses from “armed mad N—–s.” I don’t know how Ginni balances things because Cleaver was on the “left,” but he favored using firearms.

Also in the history of the old regular America were the right to bear arms and using them to kill political persons, “the left.” For instance within the life of Clarence Thomas, the Civil Rights Movement lost two notable figures Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King along with others trying to gain rights under the United States Constitution.   

Is is unfair to infer that the rant from Ginni Thomas suggests, Guys with guns have a right to kill everyone on “the left?” 

It is unlikely Ginni Thomas wants to leave that impression, but who knows? Her powers of communication must amplify beyond the 25 words-or-less audience.

Go back to Jim Crow days, does the old regular America include the times when some African Americans used guns to threaten whites and the KKK? Books have been written, but apparently unread and not considered.

“I want the old regular America back…MINUS the left’s awful tactics.” Does that support the America favored by Roy Moore, who believed everything in America was good and fine, when America had slavery, before the Thirteenth Amendment?

Fourth Issue: There is vehemence and hate in Ginni Thomas’s statements. During Bob Dole’s concession speech after the 1996 election results became public, he was interrupted by someone in the audience calling Bill Clinton “an enemy.” Dole corrected that voice: Bill Clinton was my opponent, not my enemy. Curiously, one can write derogatorily and humorously about an opponent, but that writing is very difficult against an enemy.

I grew up in a Conservative community and most of the people were ignorant and dull. I next went to Berkeley where the students and residents were ignorant, excitable and drugged. I learned along the way the all Americans must learn how to express themselves and support social and political positions beyond slogans, advertising or otherwise. (See Mein Kampf for political usefulness of slogans.) Americans are beyond Hitler and beyond the old regular America, unless they resort to homilies, slogans, chants, cheers, bromides, mottos and shibboleths. 

As Americans we must do better. Don’t wait for your opponents to steal a base or get a leg up. Do better now!   

WINCHELL

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Neal Gabler

Winchell was an entertainer, and primarily uninteresting. During the 1920s he came up in the newspaper world (columnist) and made most of his money and notoriety (not fame) in radio. Winchell never had the substance, education and discipline of an Edward R. Murrow or a William L. Shirer.

What Winchell had was gossip, “making smart chat,” initially about persons involved in Broadway plays and shows extending to Hollywood, New York City, crime, and into politics. A fact is found this biography telling about Winchell’s wife, June:
“She read novels, saw movies, listened to records and radio
programs for Walter and delivered her opinions, which then
became his opinions.” (p. 357)
Apparently Winchell great observer, critic and commentator did none of those things. He collected and organized gossip, having a string of runners whom he usually did not pay. Much of the slang he developed and used then does not live today.

Winchell had no background for what he was doing. He was an empty suit. At the end of his life he wrote an overlong autobiography (in manuscript) pulling no punches, punching down, kicking shins and elsewhere else. It is hinted, though, that therein Winchell told the truth.

The author quotes a member of the Smart Set: “If all the Armenians were to be killed tomorrow” that would help establish the decade’s tenor, “and if half of Russia were to starve to death the day after, it would not matter in the least. What concerns me alone is myself and the interest of a few close friends. For all I care the rest of the world may go to hell at today’s sunset.”(p. 47) This book tells the relationships and activities of Walter Winchell and a few close associates and colleagues who lived in New York City and Washington D.C.

At the end of life Winchell was defeated and bitter. His family’s life had collapsed: A daughter had died when young; his wife (somewhat estranged) saw him a week or two a year; she died before him. A daughter with grandkids was unhappy and not productive. A son had committed suicide. For the final fifteen (15) years of life (60-75 years) his health was no good. All the while his professional career of gossip was disappearing. His was a name many knew, but he was from a profession and a time that no longer existed. He was a hanger-on, has-been, once-was.

From gossip around New York City in the 1920s, Winchell moved toward circles in Washington D.C. New York City might tolerate the fluff, insults and revelations. Almost everyone would not hold grudges. However, Winchell held grudges for years or decades to the point of being vile and evil. I had to rethink Ed. Sullivan who adamantly opposed Winchell for a quarter century. Sullivan was not intimidated. Unlike the person most Americans remember, Sullivan was very athletic when young. Winchell did not want to tangle with him.

The Washington D.C. world pegged Winchell, and held him to his words. He was initially anti-Nazi and against racial discrimination. He was on “the New Deal” team and opposed to conservative forces in the Democratic Party. He was B.F. F. with J. Eager Hoover – died two months apart in 1972.

Those persons and organizations presented forces and influences on Winchell that he could not handle and did not have the ability to dismiss. Personally, he was a raving lunatic when it came to his column; He mostly had the blessings of his sponsors of his radio broadcasters, but not his employers. Everyone liked the expanse of exposure and advertising Winchell provided, but there were no controls, no discipline, no education and no restraints on Walter Winchell. He was a master and manipulator of his world, gossip.

His failure to recognize and abide by limits, to observe times were achanging, and to be introspective brought failure. Josephine Baker entertained in New York City and dined at the Stork Club, owned by a good Oklahoma friend of Winchell. The unstated policy at the Club was no riffraff and no minorities; the place was for white snobs only. In the early 1950s Winchell was in the restaurant when Baker and her guests were served drinks but left for a movie premiere. Baker later was not served the dinner she ordered. Everyone wondered what Winchell thought. He did not explain the facts as he knew them and next say he was awaiting the results of the Civil Rights investigation. Instead, Winchell treated the incident like it was part of his column, an item of gossip where he did not have to take responsibility for missing or added facts. He tried to protect the Oklahoma friend and the Stork Club, although he disagreed with the policy. As the sides hardened, Winchell attacked Baker for several years. It is wrong to say Winchell was a racist, but it is right to say he was an idiot bordering on imbecility.

Winchell was anti-Communist, and once again he got caught up on the extremes of Washington D.C. and a national issue. Winchell backed Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn (whom he introduced to the Senator). The grand finale which Winchell did not perceive coming or realized while it happened on television, was followed by Winchell trying to protect McCarthy and slamming organizations and individuals as communist-oriented, leaning left and pink. In the 1960s Winchell still called John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy communists.

Would anyone ever believe Walter Winchell could be so uneducated, ignorant and thick? He never understood, When the horse is dead, get off. He had to opportunity (like Ed Sullivan) to make the transition to Television, but did not fully understand the medium. [This thinking came from a guy who was in vaudeville for a dozen years and never forgot stage work.] Apparently, his life was so perfect – none of it was – that he was incapable of change. A New York celebrity dined with Winchell at the Stork Club, and opined in his diary, “Winchell was a bore, a vanity of all vanities.”(p. 257) Late in life he got a press pass and observed the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention street riots. Like most reporters Winchell did not and could not know the full story, but he chose anyway.

The strength of this biography tells the life and times of the man, how he fit in and his methods of surviving. The surprising fact is that Winchell did not change. In the end he sought television exposure, a further failure of business opportunities accompanying bad health and a disintegrating family. The times of Walter Winchell are not as complete as they can be because primary sources are likely not yet opened or available.

If the biography has problems they are absence by inference. Winchell’s shortcomings. It is a New York City behavior revisited on the American people every week now. He was usually nonsensical and unmeritorious on the attack, always blundering through trivia; the points made were off-point, scattered and offensive. That was Winchell’s doing in his column and on the radio. And now Americans have to hear that sort of tripe, petty, crybaby stuff everyday.

Winchell was not a celebrity. He received no respect and no love during his lifetime and afterward. He did not deserve it. Winchell preyed upon people’s fears until the last decades of life when opponents began beating Winchell up with their words. Winchell was notorious, an outlaw to entertainment and to society, one of the sorts of figures today who get arrested before a concert tour as part of a publicity campaign.

A final point: The Burt Lancaster movie, Sweet Smell of Success, (1957) was representative of Winchell’s career and life. Winchell was the target. It is an ugly, dark movie and a classic. But His Girl Friday is also about Winchell. Gary Grant, editor, plays Winchell. The character and the target share a first name, Walter.

AMERICAN INSURGENTS, AMERICAN PATRIOTS

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While reading particulars of the American Revolution, I never thought much about the consciousness of ordinary Americans. The story of named Americans has been well told, but the men, families and small communities have been silent or neglected. Yet, today Americans can learn that revolutionary ardor and fervor was as strong, steadfast and certain in small places than that shown by Franklin, Adams and Jefferson.

These revelations come in T.H. Breen, American Insurgents, American Patriots, Hill and Wang, NY, 2010. Accompanying that history is an earlier one by Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution, Oxford, NY, 2001. The second book describes the economic forces Americans used against British merchants, and the organizations from 1765 to the start of the War. Insurgents drops to a personal level telling how people used social, political and economic pressure to support the accepted policy. Tories resisted but not for long; families and communities could be tainted by favoring British products, ways or ideas. By 1776 after the shooting began and before independence Americans had rid themselves of unwanted British ways. Indeed, in New Hampshire the British were forced to leave by January, 1775.

The idea of revolution supported by an outside oppressive force used a promise of future liberty, and an incorruptible government causing Americans to act or to rebel. It was not spontaneous or impulsive. It took ten years of work before 1775. The outside force never departed and insisted upon more coercive measures.

Seldom in American history have people gone to war with a single, simple goal: Britain should change the way it governs us. A year later the British had not acted, and the Americans change the way they were to be governed. Americans would have their own country.

Great movements in American history have not been as efficient or used war as the primary means to achieve all its tasks: Abolition (1830 – 1865); Prohibition (@1870-1934); Women’s Vote (1869-1919); Civil Rights (1946-1969). These prolonged issues over decades did not remain constant in goals or methods. Many of these movements had elements of impulse and spontaneity where individuals tried to capture the public’s attention. Many of them made small piles of money but contributed little to the final effort.

On the other hand, Breen has shown American revolutionaries proceeded methodically, taking each step as it came and rarely jumping ahead. The logical approach is required by proponents and supporters while they are taking abuse. Occasionally, named leaders found themselves a step behind the crowds and organizations at home. They quickly made the step. The steps are a logical progression without which Independence would have failed.