[Vision2020] Teabaggers

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Friday 12 March 2010 09:56:42 lfalen wrote:
> You are quite right. The Founding Fathers should be evaluated in
> the context of their times not ours.  There were however
> southerners at that time who were oposed to slavery. George Wythe
> not only disapproved of slavery, but brought colored people into
> his home and educated them.. Roger

George Wythe has quite a famous name, being Thomas Jefferson's law 
teacher and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He 
likely was not unique in educating blacks simply because an educated 
person is a more valuable worker than an uneducated one -- a fact not 
lost on some slave owners. That Wythe freed his slaves, as others did 
too, may indicate their acceptance of their humanity and personhood, 
but did not eradicate in the remaining majority the combination of 
racial superiority and property ownership of the means of production 
to maintain and sustain agricultural production within slave states.

As advanced as Wythe's and a few others' attitudes were in their time, 
it is saddening to realize that vestiges of the old attitudes remain 
today. Even setting aside racial considerations, which is no minor or 
mean feat, there still exist today classist remnants of ownership 
superiority over worker classes. Some of these attitudes still have 
the force of law in right-to-work laws, the at-will employee status, 
and the on-going efforts to limit and to undermine labor union rights 
and activities, and thus their successes on behalf of workers.

(Parenthetically, Idaho Senate Bills 1386 and 1387 continue the 
ongoing efforts to restrict labor unions in public contracting.)

Leaving Constitution Hall on the last day of its sessions, Benjamin 
Franklin was asked "Well, Doctor, what have you given us, a monarchy 
or a republic?" Franklin answered "A republic, if you can keep it."

One might well consider that workers have not done as well as they 
might have with respect to keeping a republic favorable to their own 
rewards for the labors they have invested in the products and profits 
of their employers. Especially after the industrial revolution, and 
notably during the last two-thirds of a century, owners and managers 
of the means of production have done well in retarding the margin of 
success they have shared with the workers who enabled their various 
profitabilities. The phrase "wage slave" inheres a combination of 
irony and truth that is, unfortunately, lost on too many American 
workers, regardless of their collar color.


Ken