Procrustes Stretched
Dante's Manifesto
Great article. I'm willing to bet this is a new look back for most people. The Wide Awakes - 19th century Woke Culture(?). I like to see factually honest mentions of slavery, in discussions of the ideas and arguments of the people in the USA, leading up to the American Civil War. Wish I could get everybody passed the pay wall for a full look, but that's just a brief peek into the type of mindless urge that sometimes creeps in: to go along with people who always seem to demand "a free lunch."
www.nytimes.com
George Kimball was ready for war as soon as the first brick hit his head.
The 20-year-old printer was listening to an abolitionist lecture in Boston’s Bowdoin Square during the 1860 presidential campaign, when a pro-slavery throng tried to shut it down. Kimball was prepared, present as part of a torch-bearing, black-clad bodyguard called the Wide Awakes, who beat the brick-throwers back using their torches as clubs.
As Kimball walked home, blood in his eyes, he wanted “war declared at once.” Years later, having fought his way through from Bull Run to Gettysburg to Petersburg, he still considered that Boston brickbat, “as much a casus belli as was the firing upon Fort Sumter.” For him, it was the embattled right to publicly protest slavery that sparked the conflict — a fight over free speech brought on the war.
Today, our starkest political debates often turn on similar questions of public speech and public violence...Though framed as a legal question concerning the First Amendment, more often it’s a conundrum for our political culture.
In a democracy, how far is too far?
Opinion | The 19th-Century Club You’ve Never Heard of That Changed the World
In a democracy, how far is too far?
George Kimball was ready for war as soon as the first brick hit his head.
The 20-year-old printer was listening to an abolitionist lecture in Boston’s Bowdoin Square during the 1860 presidential campaign, when a pro-slavery throng tried to shut it down. Kimball was prepared, present as part of a torch-bearing, black-clad bodyguard called the Wide Awakes, who beat the brick-throwers back using their torches as clubs.
As Kimball walked home, blood in his eyes, he wanted “war declared at once.” Years later, having fought his way through from Bull Run to Gettysburg to Petersburg, he still considered that Boston brickbat, “as much a casus belli as was the firing upon Fort Sumter.” For him, it was the embattled right to publicly protest slavery that sparked the conflict — a fight over free speech brought on the war.
Today, our starkest political debates often turn on similar questions of public speech and public violence...Though framed as a legal question concerning the First Amendment, more often it’s a conundrum for our political culture.
In a democracy, how far is too far?
