The spirit of revolt--100 years ago

 JAMA (which is the journal of the American Medical Association) has an interesting feature called "JAMA Revisited," reprinting articles from the past.  In the October 12, 2021 issue it reprinted an article titled "The Spirit of Revolt" from October 8, 1921, 100 years ago.

"Psychologists today are more concerned with the changing spirit of mankind than with any other psychologic problem.  The literature on the spirit of revolt, of restlessness, of lawlessness and of radicalism is daily becoming greater.  The subject is engaging the attention of our greatest minds.  Thus James M. Beck, Solicitor-General of the United States, devoted the presidential address before the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, held recently at Cincinnati, to this subject. There is throughout the world today, he pointed out, a revolt against the spirit of authority.  Pending criminal indictments in federal courts have increased from 10,000 in 1912 to more than 70,000 in 1921.  The losses from burglaries repaid by casualty companies have grown in amount from $886,000 in 1914 to over $10,000,000 in 1920. [purchasing power of about $138,974,000 today]"   

After quoting some murder statistics from New York City and Chicago, Mr. Beck goes on to report the problem is worldwide.  He attributes it to the rise of individualism which began in the 18th century and which had steadily grown with the advance of democratic institutions, and also the growth of technology saying that man had become the tender of machines rather than a constructive thinker.  "The increase in potential of human power has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the potential of human character."

The article goes on to say that despite the current (following WWI) peace commissions and conferences,  "Radicals are advocating methods of government that are the expressions of primitive emotional and mental processes. . .  Prejudices, fixed ideas, suspiciousness, sentimentality and outbursts of passion are making more difficult the task of establishing law and order. . . The craze for speed dominates everything, speed in transportation, speed in thinking, speed in living and, as revealed in the war, speed in killing. . . mob spirit governs and the urge is uncontrolled." 

Well, that certainly sounds familiar, sort of like the evening news.  Much of the collapse and the coarsening of the general populace that the writer of the JAMA article describes can certainly be blamed on the "Great War" (estimates of 22 million deaths) which had killed so many in Europe and more civilians than military, and the worldwide pandemic of 1918. However, in the U.S. we had the most socialistic president, Woodrow Wilson, until Barack Obama claimed the honor in 2008. The eighteenth century was a period of "enlightenment" and the degrading of a Christian society and disrespect for Biblical authority. Then the nineteenth century gave the world Marx and Nietzsche.  Yes, we were well on the way to the Antifa and BLM riots of 2020, and the acceptance of them has been building for 100 years.

Who killed the Constitution?

I wrote that I read the Constitution while I was on my blogging vacation. So I checked the public library for some recent material. There wasn't much. I recommended a book I'd seen at a conservative think tank, and my request was denied--I was told not many public libraries had that book so I should try Ohio State's Law School library. Too bad we're such a low level, low achieving community here in Upper Arlington reading only fiction, cook books and travel books. Anyway, I did find two interesting books at UAPL (most are actually on the amendments). "Who killed the constitution?" by Thomas E. Woods Jr. & Keven R.C. Gutzman, and "America's Constitution, a biography" by Akhil Reed Amar. Notice at the Amazon site the review by Scott Turow of the second title. This paragraph in his review is quite telling--at least it explains what most lawyers in Congress, the courts and the White House have been taught:

"In college, I was taught that the Constitution was essentially a reactionary document, a view that had become standard in the wake of the historian Charles A. Beard's epochal 1913 study, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Beard had contended that the Declaration of Independence contained a broadly idealistic vision of American democracy premised on John Locke's notion that "all men are created equal." The Constitution, on the other hand, was meant to serve the interests of the wealthy; it subverted democratic ideals, especially with its odious compromise providing that each slave be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of determining the population upon which congressional districts would be based."

Who killed the Constitution? tells us on the first page that both the right and the left killed the Constitution, and then provides 12 interesting cases from the last century, some well known, others overlooked, that show having the federal government take over health care is nothing new (in actions). I'm only in the first chapter--Woodrow Wilson and Freedom of Speech, and given all the czars and plots afoot now feared by the right, and how unhappy the left was about the Patriot Act, it's really a wonderful way to begin.

Some of the hysteria against Germans in WWI is very instructive, especially in light of the very mild prejudice against Muslims today. There was terrible stereotyping--even though probably a third of Americans were of German ancestry at that time. My family lived in a community after WWII where many people still spoke German, and I remember the suspicion and prejudice that still existed well after the war. During WWI (remember, at first Wilson pledged to keep the U.S. out of war) sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage"--sort of makes you think of "freedom fries" a few years back when sentiment against the French was running high. Germans lost their jobs, changed their names, and some were beaten and killed. In Iowa and South Dakota using German in public was forbidden except at funerals. There were volunteer enforcement organizations and neighbors were encouraged to snitch (remember Obama's request in the summer?) A movie called "The Spirit of '76" got its makers a 10 year prison sentence for portraying the British in an unflattering light (they were our allies in WWI). The authors said they could write a book just on the outrageous suppression of free speech during that period.

So it was that climate that gave us the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act in 1917 and 1918. The first involved promoting the success of our enemies (if Bush had had that most Democrats in Congress would have gone to jail) and the second gave the postmaster enormous powers to remove things from the mails that he decided would hamper the war effort. Of course, "intent" as in hate speech, was one deciding factor. These acts didn't come under court scrutiny until 1919, after the war was over when the Supreme Court heard 3 cases.

One of those cases was Debs v. United States. Eugene V. Debs delivered a provocative speech in which he claimed, among other things, that the capitalists were responsible for the war fever, and that as usual the common man had never had a chance to express his own preference for peace or war. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Justice Holmes upheld his sentence. Warren G. Harding who followed Wilson, finally freed him in 1921, saying "I want him to eat Christmas dinner with his wife." It's useful to remember Holmes was a liberal, Wilson a progressive and Debs a Socialist.

Obviously, the first amendment (Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,) can be trampled today just like 1917 and 1918. Politicians haven't changed in 100 years.

Obama just wants the world

"If there were ever a question about Barack Obama’s dedication to the concept of global governance, it has now been answered fully. His track record to date points toward his commitment to global governance; his speech to the United Nations removes all doubt." Canada Free Press To be fair, a world government that was NOT representative of any peoples or voters, but propped up by rules and regulations thought up by government officials, was not Obama's idea--it was our own President Woodrow Wilson and then embraced and tweaked by FDR.