Suburbanites and Reality TV Destroying America

The trends are clear but the logic tying the TeaParty to all of this is thin. A lack of empathy is DEFINATELY obvious as the GOP and TeaParty REFUSE to pay taxes for healthcare but DEMAND military spending to DEFEND OUR COUNTRY - at all costs!

Amplify’d from www.alternet.org

What Awful Reality TV and Suburban Living Have to Do With the Tea Party's Lack of Empathy

The Tea Parties are partly a product of the suburbs, where social isolation leaves communication about social mores to reality TV. Is it any wonder the movement lacks empathy?

September 20, 2011  |     Kim Kardashian Photo Credit: Congaman at Flickr.     LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest Tea Party and the Right headlines via email.       TAKE ACTION Change.org|Get Widget|Start an Online Petition �   If there’s any one defining feature of the Tea Party, it’s a lack of empathy for their fellow Americans. Republican candidates know this about their base: more than their supposed love of Jesus or the Founding Fathers, more than any coherent principled conservativism, more even than the strong streak of bigotry running through the Tea Party is this gleeful “screw you” attitude. Therefore, the Republican primary has become a contest to see who can heap the most abuse on Americans Tea Partiers don’t identify with. You have Herman Cain preening about making Muslims second-class citizens; Michele Bachmann attacking doctors and public health officials who would prevent cervical cancer in young women; Rick Perry crowing about his heavy execution rate (which includes a willingness to execute people who should have been acquitted or had mistrials); and Ron Paul drawing heavy applause from a debate audience for his belief that government should just let the uninsured die. Far from being concerned about misfortune befalling others, the Tea Party routinely supports the expansion of suffering.    To help explain this phenomena, we might remember another signifying characteristic of the Tea Party: despite the enthusiasm for country music, Tea Partiers proliferate in suburban and exurban districts. The most right-wing districts in the country are also some of its most suburban. Michele Bachmann serves the 6th District of Minnesota, which is composed of the suburban area surrounding the north of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Steve King, known for his competing hatreds of immigrants and sexually active women, serves the 5th District of Iowa, built from the suburban sprawl between Omaha and Des Moines. Anti-health-care fanatic Joe Walsh represents Illinois’s 8th District, composed of the northern suburbs of Chicago. Joe Barton, known for apologizing to BP for the White House post-oil spill investigation, serves the 6th District in Texas, which encompasses the suburban sprawl south of the Dallas/Ft. Worth areas.   There’s likely a connection between the lack of empathy and the suburban nature of the conservative base. Research shows people tend to be more bigoted toward gays and those of different races when they have no personal connection with those people. Suburbs are known for breeding social homogeneity that does shelter people from humanizing those who are a little different than them. Beyond that, suburbs make it harder to develop a well-connected social life altogether.  Without that, it’s difficult to keep your empathy muscles, aka your ability to look at others and feel a common humanity with them. If you don’t use empathy, you lose it.   In the past half century or so, Americans have flocked to suburbs, attracted to the promise of large houses, quiet, and privacy levels that simply can’t be achieved in small towns and dense big cities. But the price of all those conveniences was the loss of a sense of community, as people left interconnected urban enclaves or small towns to the impersonal streets of the suburbs.    While there’s a great deal of diversity of suburbs--some are iconoclastic and some are quite walkable--the average American suburb has been notable for decades for an isolating geography and culture. Your average suburban/exurban home is set away from its neighbors with no porch or sidewalks, and suburbanites enter and exit their homes in cars that are parked in garages, minimizing their exposure to anyone who might be walking by. Of course, walking is unlikely to begin with; unlike in small towns and dense big cities, there’s very little within walking distance, killing much reason for anyone but the occasional jogger to be out on the streets on foot.  Many people living in suburbs have long commutes to and from work, minimizing the amount of time for after-work socializing. Through law and custom, suburbs discourage the proliferation of public spaces where people can congregate easily, unlike urban centers where bars, libraries and coffee shops that are a brief drive or walk away. When you have to drive 20 or 30 minutes to get to the bar to hang out with your buddies, it starts to seem that much easier just to watch the game at home.   What public spaces do exist in suburbs tend to be less welcoming and intimate than the local businesses and more neighborhood-y areas of small towns and big, dense cities. Suburbs are the natural home of big box stores and chain stores, places you may go on occasion or even frequently to get out of the house, but not places conducive to creating tightly knit communities. Megachurches that litter suburbs struggle to create the community of smaller churches of old. If you live in a small town or a city full of activities for meeting people with whom you have interests in common, you’re not only that much more likely to get out of the house to make new friends and visit with the ones you already have, but the friends you do have are more likely to know each other, creating a web of connection. In the suburbs, people have less reason to get out, and the friends they do have are much less likely to know each other, creating more isolation and loneliness.   Don't take my word for it. A study at the University of California, Davis found that suburbanites were less happy with their neighborhoods than urbanites. The reason was that the cities provided more stimulation and interaction with other people, providing a sense of excitement and connection. The interactivity of the city was replaced in the suburbs with a culture that encourages staying at home to watch TV and building tall fences to minimize interaction with others. The result for suburbanites is isolation and difficulty making new friends.   The isolating aspects of suburbia are ironically part of their draw, because people see this isolation and feel it provides privacy. But there’s good reason to believe that all this isolation destroys people’s ability to look at their fellow citizens and feel empathy, not only because they simply know fewer people they can relate to, but also because they have fewer occasions to gossip. Gossip, i.e. the practice of people talking about others they know in common, has a bad reputation as being nothing but back-biting chatter, but sociologists see it in a much different light. In fact, gossip has two very important functions, building relationships and communicating social values. Gossip can be the passing along of negative information, sure, but it also is used to pass along positive information (who had a baby, who got a job), and to communicate value-neutral information that just happens to be interesting (who’s dating who). When you gossip, you not only bond with the person you’re gossiping with, but you are both solidifying your sense that the person you’re gossiping about is a part of your community. After all, they matter enough to be talked about.    Gossip is often used to shame and to judge, but it also keeps people interested in other people and can help build empathy. As someone who grew up in a small town, I can testify to its power to make you feel connected, even to people you aren’t otherwise close to. When we would congregate in the beauty salon in the afternoons and hear all the local gossip, we walked away feeling closer to the people that had been discussed, even the ones who were being judged. By hearing stories about hook-ups and divorces, teen pregnancy and romantic rivalries, we got to practice imagining what it’s like to be these other people. And because they were people we knew and had to deal with on a regular basis, we worked those empathy muscles harder. Yes, there was lots of scolding and lots of judging, but there was also lots of sympathizing and coming up with ideas to help people out of tight spots.   In place of gossip, suburbanites have turned toward tabloid magazines and reality TV to scratch that itch to gawk at other people’s personal lives. As noted urbanist Richard Florida explained to New York Magazine, reality TV signals understanding that it’s filling the gossip void in the lives of lonely suburbanites, by filling the set design with familiar aspects of suburban lives, but then populating it with the real people experiencing dramas that are shut off from suburban dwellers who don’t have enough interconnections to gossip about their own neighbors. Florida didn’t seem to think this was such a bad substitute, but looking at some of the effects of suburban culture on the body politic should give us reason for concern.    After all, unlike with regular gossip about your friends and neighbors, reality TV and tabloid stars aren’t people you have to deal with or empathize with. In fact, reality TV and tabloids go out of their way to make their stars seem like horrible, shallow people you can judge without any empathy at all. Enjoying reality TV is only somewhat like regular gossip, in that there’s the same judging and cataloguing of behavior. But unlike with real world gossip, there’s no empathetic side. It’s just all pointing and laughing, with very little sympathy and absolutely no value put on problem-solving. If the beauty salon in my small town had been nearly as vicious as your average reality TV show, everyone would have avoided it for fear of picking up a terminal case of bitchiness.   So this is how it is for much of suburban America: they’re being encouraged to demonize and sit in judgment without taking much time to actually get to know others and sympathize with their problems. Suburban isolation makes it harder to see other people as real, important and human. No wonder it’s increasingly easy for suburban conservatives to judge others with an unrelenting harshness that shows no indication they even realize their targets are fellow human beings. No wonder they can whoop with joy at the idea of someone dying for lack of health insurance or suggest that even married, monogamous women are dirty sluts who don’t deserve any sympathy for their health care concerns. The complex realities of living have become increasingly alien to large swaths of America. They have very little exposure to what real people’s lives are like, and it’s that much easier for them to treat other people like they’re simply toys that can be tossed out with the trash when they have no more use for them. Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. Read more at www.alternet.org

 

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The History of Palestine and Its Quest for Statehood

It seems that these two religious groups will hate each other until the destruction of the other.

Amplify’d from www.bloomberg.com

Goldberg: Palestine Won’t Be a State

The Palestinian national liberation movement has arguably been the least successful such movement of the past 100 years. The Arabs have tried on many occasions to defeat Israel militarily, and to break it through terrorism and boycotts, and have failed each time.

Even so, independence was within reach of the Palestinians at many different points in their history. The Jews in Palestine, early in the arc of political Zionism, sought simply to live as an autonomous minority within an Arab entity. The Arabs rejected the idea -- some violently -- and the Jews abandoned the notion.

The United Nations offered statehood to the Arabs in Palestine in 1947. The Arabs chose the path of war, and threatened the Jews with annihilation. Then they lost the war. Arab states controlled the West Bank and Gaza until 1967, but did nothing at all to advance the cause of Palestinian rights. After the Six Day War in June of that year, many Israelis hoped that Arab leaders would offer peace in exchange for occupied territory. That idea was rejected.

At Camp David, in 2000, Bill Clinton came closer than anyone to engineering the creation of a Palestinian state. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, turned his back on Clinton without even making a counteroffer. More recently, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert offered Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, a similar deal. Abbas rejected it.

UN Recognition

Now Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, plans to ask the UN to recognize an independent state of Palestine. The request, whether granted or not (the General Assembly will support the notion; success at the Security Council is unlikely), will only defer the goal of an independent Palestine.

The support of Togo and Bolivia and Yemen would surely give Abbas a warm and happy feeling, but it will be irrelevant to the Palestinian cause. Abbas says he seeks a state for his people on the West Bank and in Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem. If that’s true, then there are only two member states of the UN that can bring it about: Israel and the U.S. Neither supports this resolution. Most Israelis view it as an attempt to limit their options in future negotiations, or to deny to them the holiest sites of the Jewish people and delegitimize the idea of a Jewish state.

Symbolic and Counterproductive

The U.S. opposes Abbas’s resolution -- and will veto it if it reaches the Security Council -- but not because the U.S. rejects the idea of a Palestinian state. President Barack Obama has been sincere in his support of Palestinian independence. The U.S. opposes the resolution because it would represent yet another entirely symbolic and counterproductive gesture in the long history of Palestinian gesture-making.

“This is about shortcutting a process for which there are no shortcuts,” Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told me. “At the end of the day, there’s only one way to create two states for two peoples, and that is negotiations.”

Rice went on, “To have a drama that changes very little in the world vis-a-vis the actual conflict, and then to expect that while one party is taking this great victory lap the other party is going to run to the negotiating table, is not necessarily realistic.”

A Tragic Moment

The particular tragedy of this moment is that there is, for the first time, a pragmatic alternative to the fantasy-based approach to independence of Arafat and Abbas. During the past few years, the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad (ostensibly Abbas’s No. 2, though the men are said to detest each other), has quietly built a security force that has restored law and order on the West Bank and stopped terrorists from attacking Israelis. He has built the framework for transparent governance, and created an increasingly viable economy. He has expressed repeatedly his distaste for Abbas’s UN recognition campaign, understanding -- as Obama and Rice understand -- that it will hurt the cause it claims to help.

Fayyad has the potential to be the David Ben Gurion of the Palestinians -- a pragmatist, like Israel’s founding prime minister, who builds the structures of a state in advance of statehood, as a means of showing the world that Palestine will be a viable and constructive addition to the community of nations. But Abbas’s UN campaign threatens the entire project.

Another threat to Fayyad’s aspirations, to be sure, is the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his exceedingly right-wing coalition. Netanyahu has not done much to suggest to Palestinians that negotiations would bear fruit. But Abbas has been Netanyahu’s partner in paralysis. Two points have been obscured by the drama at the UN: Abbas, not Netanyahu, is the leader who has refused to enter negotiations without conditions. And Abbas is seeking something at the UN that was already offered to the Palestinians -- and rejected by them.

Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations has noted that Abbas is ostensibly seeking UN recognition because he prefers to negotiate as the leader of an independent state. But the Palestinians were offered independence with “provisional borders” in the now- forgotten 2003 peace talks known as the Roadmap. “The Palestinian leadership,” Danin wrote, “long rejected this option, fearing that establishing a state prior to resolving all outstanding final status issues with Israel would leave them unresolved in perpetuity.” Now Abbas is seeking an even more symbolic form of independence.

The True Goal

What, then, is Abbas’s true goal? It may be nothing more than an attempt to ensure his legacy, or to marginalize rivals like Fayyad. But he recently said something revealing: “We are going to complain that as Palestinians we have been under occupation for 63 years.”

The occupation, as it is generally understood, did not begin 63 years ago. Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza 44 years ago. Sixty-three years ago is when Israel itself was founded. If Abbas’s goal at the UN is the enfranchisement of his people, then he will not succeed. If his goal to demonize and delegitimize his enemy, then he very well might.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: Jeffrey Goldberg at goldberg.atlantic@gmail.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this article: Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net. Read more at www.bloomberg.com

 

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The Energy Crisis of the 1970's

What happened after Carter left office? What did the Reagan administration do that changed our course? This article looks pre-1980 at some of the causes of the oil crisis of the 1970's

Amplify’d from harwich.edu

Thesis: The energy crisis of the 1970’s was caused by our reliance on foreign oil and triggered a nationwide movement that advocated energy conservation and alternate energy sources.

Natural resources that our nation relies heavily upon such as oil, petroleum and natural gas are fossil fuels, which means that they will eventually cease to exist. This gives nations that have an abundance of these natural resources much economic and political power. The thought of this supply ending also causes a search for renewable resources that would never cease to exist. Petroleum or “black gold” provides the world with nearly half the energy used. (10, 330) 660 billion barrels or 67% of the world’s oil reserves are found in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia alone has 258 billion of these barrels which is one fourth of the world’s oil. One tenth of the world’s oil is found in Abu Dhabi, Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait. (10,332) Compared with this extensive supply, the U.S. and Canada have only 3% or 32 billion barrels of the world’s reserves. (10,333) Despite this, the U.S. and Canada consume more than four times the amount of petroleum than the Middle East. The Middle East produced 19.8 million barrels and only consumed 4.8 billion barrels according to 1994 figures. The U.S. and Canada produced only 8.5 million barrels and consumed a whopping 19.4 million barrels. (10,334) Today it is hard to imagine relying solely on ourselves, for our energy needs. The U.S. used to provide for themselves, but consumption grew too rapidly for the small supply it possessed. As the U.S. began to rely heavily on imported oil from other countries, power struggle emerged between the producers and consumers of this oil.     The increase of oil imports became the number one concern in America when Richard Nixon became president in 1969. A Cabinet Task Force on oil Import control was established and was led by George Shultz the Labor Secretary. (13, 589) He recommended doing away with quotas, having no minimum of oil that the U.S. has to buy from foreign producers, but Nixon strongly disagreed. Nixon believed that this would only increase imports and be a threat to domestic industry, and he decided to keep the quotas. (13, 589) This was obviously not in the interest of Middle Eastern countries and the Shah of Iran quickly wrote to President Nixon. He explained that only if the quotas were dropped could the stability of their country be ensured and they could sell larger volumes of oil to the U.S. Nixon however, did not agree to drop the quotas. (13,589) The problem with oil imports came to head during the 1969-1970 winter which was the coldest in 30 years and power was randomly turned off to preserve energy which caused brownouts along the Atlantic Coast. (13,590) Nixon put price controls on oil consumption and discouraged domestic oil in 1971. (13,590) These artificially low prices however could not keep up with the changing market. If prices were low, there was little incentive for conservation of energy or for new exploration for oil reserves. (13, 590) Money was not coming in and some drilling was even ended prematurely. This attempt at federal energy regulation was a failure. (3, 338)     To work on the energy crisis, Nixon assigned James Akins to the White House. He was the State Department chief oil expert and even before the crisis was at its worst in 1973 he suggested we reduce consumption, increase domestic production and only import from “secure sources”. In April 1973 Akins published some of his ideas in Foreign Affairs in an article entitled “The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf Is Here.” He was comparing the oil crisis with the Middle East to a ferocious wolf ready to attack. The wolf had certainly arrived and that same year Nixon did away with quotas because America’s demand for oil was too high for domestic production to keep up with it. For the first time, the U.S. was vulnerable and not able to supply it’s allies in the event of a crisis. (13, 591)     The wolf was at full attack in the fall of 1973 when the Yom Kippur War sent gasoline prices soaring in America. The same thing happened in 1979 when the Shah of Iran fell from power. (13, 512L) In the Middle East the Arab- Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 greatly affected the flow of oil throughout the world as they reduced or cut off their petroleum exports to Japan and western countries. (10, 349) Egyptian jets attacked the Israeli posts along the border of the Suez and in the Sinai on October 6, 1973. Also Syrian aircrafts attacked northern Israel. This was the fourth and most dreadful of the Arab-Israeli Wars. (13, 588) After Egypt launched this attack on Israel the Soviets threatened to intervene. Breshnev, who was the Soviet leader at the time believed that the Watergate scandal had weakened Nixon to such a degree that he would not react. The Soviets did back down, but the Arab world held the U.S. responsible for Egypt’s defeat by the Israelis. (2) On both sides, the U.S. and the Soviet Union supplied armaments. But despite all this machinery the strongest weapon in this war was oil in the form of an embargo, which is a cutback on production and exports. (13, 588) Many believe that there was actually a shortage of oil, but there was no shortage at all. The Middle East just decided they weren’t being paid enough for their problem. (9, 2) OPEC, or the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which was originally formed to keep the price of oil down, was too fragmented and competitive to help solve the crises or to be a successful cartel, which is a combination of businesses or countries in this case to limit competition. (11, 1) The economics and now the politics of oil were changing. Iraq, Algeria and Libya were pushing for a price agreement and they said if one was not made they would “exercise our rights on our own.” This meant that they would not cooperate with OPEC and would set their own prices, which would most likely be high, or in extremes would be in the form of an embargo. Exporting countries took steps for the government to take over oil companies because they did not want the growing gap between posted prices and market prices to go to the favor of the oil companies. (13, 592) They were using petroleum as a political weapon by using the dependence of other countries on their oil supply and cutting off exports to those countries. Petroleum gave them the power to ruin the economies of other nations by increasing prices. (10, 349) Henry Kissinger said of the embargo, it “altered irrevocably the world as it had grown up in the postwar period.” (13, 588) And as Nicholas Lemann stated, “it demonstrated that America could now be ‘pushed around’ by countries most of us had always thought of as minor powers.” (8, 1142) The Arab Oil Embargo demonstrated just how dangerous the United State’s dependence on foreign oil was becoming. (8, 1132) This embargo resulted in the price of gas per gallon to jump from 30 cents to over a dollar. Also a “windfall profits tax” was presented to domestic oil producers. (9, 2) In 1973, the Northeast suffered both from severe winter weather and the gas shortage, which temporarily closed schools and factories. (8, 1132) The falling cost of the dollar, expensive federal programs, and costly environmental regulations, were just some of the few things Americans blamed for the energy crisis. (8, 1134) As the federal government became more and more involved with solving the energy crisis, corruption became apparent. The Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the energy crisis during the week of June 2, 1973. Senator George D. Aiken of Vermont attended and noted the corruption of the meeting in his journal. Witnesses were going over what the energy would need to be used for in the U.S. and completely left out agriculture. This was ludicrous because the agricultural industry was the largest consumer of petroleum in the national economy at the time. (1, 84) A bill was reported to Congress in February 1974 that would give the president more authority over the distribution of oil products. A cutback in the price of oil produced in the U.S. was presented and senators from the oil states wanted to block this. To them it was more important for the oil companies to remain stable than the nation as a whole to be stable. (1, 85) As the energy crisis began striking close to home, citizens of the United States could see how huge of a problem energy had become. The 1970's had the highest unemployment rate since 1941 and the lowest industrial production since 1937. (8, 1140) By 1979 the inflation rate was all the way at 11.3% and rising. (8, 1135) This new inflation caused many Americans to doubt the “American dream” that their children would have a better life. Writer Nicholas Lemann wrote, “The nearly universal assumption in the post-World War II United States was that children would do better than their parents. Upward mobility wasn’t just a characteristic of the national culture; it was the defining characteristic.” (8, 1140) Insanely high prices throughout the 1970’s increased these concerns. In 1973 a barrel of crude oil cost $2.75 and in 1981 it went to 34 dollars. (10, 349) Crude oil prices quadrupled between October 1973 and March 1974. By 1981 the nation was consuming 20 trillion cubic feet of gas per year. Arab nations embargoed oil exports to the United States for a total of six months. Ironically, the production of natural gas in the United States was at its highest in 1973. But, this certainly did not counteract the embargo. (12, 5) Running out of usable oil, or supposedly running out was become a major concern of the nation. Senate reports in 1975 indicated that the U.S. would run out of usable oil before the year 2000. (6, 32) Although energy use is still a problem today in 2003, it obviously did not happen as quickly as predicted. Without a doubt the entire crisis sprung from our reliance on foreign oil. Fewer oil wells were drilled in the U.S. starting in 1955 because foreign oil was cheaper and more accessible. But after 1973, foreign oil was more expensive and less available. (12, 59) 30 billion barrels of oil was discovered in northern Alaska in the late 1960’s, but this large addition to the world reserves was counterbalanced by an increase in oil consumption. (10, 333) Imports were greatly increased in the years leading up to the crisis. In 1970, the U.S. imported 3.2 million barrels per day. In 1972, 4.5 million were imported, and in the summer of 1973, 6.2 million were being imported. (13, 591) America’s response to the crisis was interrupted because of Nixon’s resignation of office due to the Watergate scandal. Ford, who did not take any impacting steps to solve the energy crisis, carried out the remainder of his presidency. (13, 512M) Carter, who was the next president-elect, carried out many acts to encourage energy conservation. He practiced this conservation in his own home by keeping the White House at 55 degrees during the night and 65 degrees during the day, and wore long underwear to keep warm. His plan for the nation promoted increased fuel production in the U.S. and development of alternate energy sources. (8, 1133) Prior to Carter presenting his plan to Congress, he appeared on television to address the public stating, “The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly…. This difficult effort will be the ‘moral equivalent of war’, except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.” He proposed an Emergency Natural Gas Act to control the distribution of gas throughout the country. Within one week Congress passed the act. (8, 1132) In November 1978 the National Energy Act was signed into law. (8, 1133)     The “second oil shock” occurred in 1979 when OPEC held up oil production, which caused gas prices to rise by 50%. Motorists in the U.S. waited in line at gas stations for hours frantically buying gas before it ran out. Carter was blamed for this. (8, 1133) Carter said of this “second oil shock”, “It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America” (8, 1134) His television address did not include ways of dealing with the problem or looking to the future. Americans felt that Carter was not the man to lead them out of the crisis. His reelection campaign was made difficult because right before the election the Federal Reserve Board caused interest rates to soar when they put strong monetary controls to control inflation. (8, 1143) Also, making his reelection campaign difficult was the humiliation Americans felt as Iranian students took hostage sixty-three Americans in November 1979. (8, 1137) Ronald Reagan ended up winning the election to lead the U.S. into the 1980’s. Being a former actor, and holding strong conservative views, Reagan presented Americans with the strength that they desired for their weakening country. (8, 1143) Throughout the 1970’s many steps were taken to make energy conservation an important aspect of American life. On October 31, 1973 in New York the Public Service Commission looked into the possibility of closing schools and cutting off heat in the subways. (4, 1) The president could limit hours of operation for schools and businesses, could ban advertising or displays of Christmas lights, and could enforce a maximum temperature in office buildings all due to the broad “Emergency Actions to Reduce Energy Consumption”. As early as November 2, 1973, an emergency energy act was proposed to Congress to “to suspend all environmental standards, to tax fuels, prohibit pleasure driving, order early closing of schools and businesses, impose rationing and take other steps to curb energy consumption.” (5,1) The energy crisis affected all aspects of society, even the automobile market. In 1973, 30-cent gasoline was no more and so was the “big American car.” Models such as the Honda Civic became popular because of their fuel efficiency. (2) For two decades there was even a federally mandated speed limit of 55 miles per hour in order to save energy. Later it was done away with to keep the government from getting too involved in state and local matters. (9, 7) Some administration and Congress members wanted to add a 20 or 30 cent per gallon tax, but George P. Shultz, Secretary of the Treasury, knew this would only put more weight on the economy. The major problem with a large-scale conservation effort was getting Americans to conserve energy without causing more economic problems. (5, 26) Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act in 1975. These acts regulated domestic oil prices and set up standards for automobile use. (12, 5) The 800 mile long trans-Alaska Pipeline System built in 1977 brought 2 million barrels of oil a day from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. Due to this, imports from the Middle East were greatly reduced. (8, 1143) Many called the energy crisis an “energy shortage”. This term should not be used because gas and oil are not the only forms of energy. Energy will only cease to exist the day our sun disappears. (9, 7) John R. Quarles believed that coal should replace oil as a boiler fuel. He was the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. (5, 26) Eventually the electric utility industry will have to look to other sources, the best of which would be nuclear power. Other choices would be coal, ethanol, and solar power. (9, 6) Ethanol is what petroleum would most likely be replaced with. It is made from corn and other crops and therefore renewable. Use of ethanol would be extremely positive for the nation’s farmers and would be much safer for the environment. If a tanker spilled ethanol, it would just evaporate into the air. We do not use ethanol today because petroleum is cheaper. During the Arab embargo in the 1970’s, petroleum prices soared making ethanol look like a good deal. But the prices of petroleum were purposely kept below ethanol so it would not be replaced. (9, 4) Efforts to find new oil reserves were greatly reduced in the 1980's when oil prices fell. Oil and gas can also be made from bituminous sands, coal, and oil shale. Scientists are working on this, but it is extremely expensive. However, if oil prices continue to rise as they have done since the 1970’s, these forms of energy could become competitive in the worldwide market. (10, 349) Solar energy, wind energy and geothermal energy, which are all possibilities to replace oil, are all "diffuse" because they would not be useful in all areas of the world. (6, 42-43) Thomas E. Eastler said of finding alternate sources, "as a result of this unchecked exploitation, we are forced to consider the consequences of the end of the fossil fuel era. And, with the end of that era, I believe also, will come the end of America's fleeting love affair with petroleum." (6, 30) Most experts believe that the demand for petroleum and the dependence on Middle Eastern oil will only increase in the future. (10, 349) Even if petroleum is replaced, the crisis could continue because the major companies that control oil have already invested in gas, coal, uranium and new energy sources such as oil shale and tar sands. So, the major problem is that the energy industry is extremely monopolized. (7, 336) Today the energy crisis of the 1970's seems so familiar. Oil prices are rapidly increasing, and our relationships with some of the Middle Eastern countries are extremely shaky. As President George W. Bush forges on in his efforts for a war with Iraq, most people are concerned with disarming Iraq of their weapons of mass destruction. The one weapon of mass destruction that could never be taken away from them is oil. We import so much oil from the Middle East that a war could greatly influence oil prices and imports. The energy crisis of the 1970’s caused the United States to step up and begin conservation efforts and explore alternate energy sources. If oil prices continue their uphill climb, these alternate sources will without a doubt become economically and politically superior to oil. And perhaps one day, we will discover a resource that will supply the world with infinite energy. Works Cited 1. Aiken, George D. "The 'Down Years' 1972-74, A Senator's View" American Heritage.       Aug 1976. Vol. XXVII 5. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1976 2. America and the World Since World War II. Vol. III 1961-1975 From the Kennedy Era to the Final U.S. Withdrawal From Vietnam. ABC, 1986. 3. Bartlett, Dewey F. "The Energy Crisis" The Annals of America, Vol. 19 1969-1973.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1974. 4. Clines, Francis X. "Curfews Hinted In Oil Shortage" The New York Times. 1 Nov 1973: A1. 5. Cowan, Edward. "Drastic Emergency Steps To Save Energy Proposed" The New York Times. 2 Nov 1973: A1. 6. Hanley, Wayne and John Mitchell, eds. The Energy Book. Thomas E. Eastler: The End of the Fossil Fuel Era. Brattleboro: The Stephen Greene Press, 1980. 7. Harris, Fred R. "Oil- Capitalism Betrayed in It's Own Camp" The Annals of America. Vol. 19 1969-1973. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, inc., 1974. 8. McDonnell, Janet. America in the 20th Century: 1970-1979. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1995. 9. Palm, Kirby. The Energy Crisis: A Unique Perspective (online) http://www.nettally.com/palmk/nrg.html. 28 Feb 2003. 10. "Petroleum". The World Book Encyclopedia Vol. 15. Chicago: World Book, Inc., 1997. 11. The Energy Crisis Revisited (online) http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www.opec.html. 4 Feb 2003. 12. Weaver, Kenneth F. "America's Thirst For Imported Oil- Our Energy Predicament" Energy A National Geographic Special Report. Feb 1981. 13. Yergin, Daniel. The Prize- The Epic Quest For Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. Read more at harwich.edu

 

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Who Are Today's American Rebels and Radicals?

Did we learn anything from the civil war that destroyed this country. Maybe we learned the wrong lessons or forgot some important ones.



Abraham Lincoln was an american martyr. He literally died for his actions that lead to the end of slavery - an economic model that for 400 years forced African Americans, stolen from Africa, to work for free under punishment of death.



when, years after the 14th amendment was passed, giving blacks citizenship,



The Democrats and the Republicans literally switched sides of the political spectrum over this in the 1960's when blacks are finally given some sign of real support.



Again today we are stealing from Africa. Enslaving their people to our form of capital punishment called neo liberal American predatory capitalism.



Just as the NRA will argue that the gun is not evil, its the people that use them incorrectly, the same holds true for capitalism. If the system does not apply equal rules to everyone across every spectrum, then an elite minority will oppress others.



This is true within modern day America. Some no longer have black slavery necessary for them to lead the good life in their economic model of extreme prejudice. Now an elite few rape, pillage, and plunder the earth and lie to the rest of about who is doing what and whether or not it is even real.

Amplify’d from en.wikipedia.org

Radical Republicans

The Radical Republicans were a loose faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from about 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They called themselves "radicals" and were opposed during the war by moderates and conservative factions led by Abraham Lincoln and after the war by self-described "conservatives" (in the South) and "Liberals" (in the North). Radicals strongly opposed slavery during the war and after the war distrusted ex-Confederates, demanding harsh policies for Reconstruction.[1]

During the war, Radical Republicans often opposed Lincoln in terms of selection of generals (especially his choice of George B. McClellan for top command) and his efforts to bring states back into the Union. The Radicals passed their own Reconstruction plan through Congress in 1864, but Lincoln vetoed it and was putting his own policies in effect when he was assassinated in 1865.[2] Radicals pushed for the uncompensated abolition of slavery, while Lincoln wanted to pay loyal owners. After the war the Radicals demanded Civil rights for freedmen (the newly freed slaves), such as measures ensuring the suffrage (right to vote). They initiated the Reconstruction Acts, and limited political and voting rights for ex-Confederates. The Radicals were vigorously opposed by the Democratic Party and usually by moderate and Liberal Republicans as well.[3]

[edit] The Radical coalition

The term "radical" was not in common use in the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War, referring not to abolitionists but to Northern politicians strongly opposed to the Slave Power.[4] Many, perhaps a majority, had been Whigs, such as William Seward, a leading presidential contender in 1860 and Lincoln's Secretary of State, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, the leading radical newspaper. There was movement in both directions: some of the pre-war radicals (such as Seward) became more conservative during the war, while some prewar moderates became Radicals.

Some wartime radicals had been conservative Democrats before the war, often taking proslavery positions. They included John A. Logan of Illinois, Edwin Stanton of Ohio, Ben Butler of Massachusetts, Ulysses S. Grant of Illinois, and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee (Johnson broke with the Radicals after the war).

The Radicals were never formally organized, and there was movement in and out of the group. Their most successful and systematic leader was Congressman Thaddeus Stevens in the House of Representatives. The Democrats were strongly opposed to the Radicals, but they were generally a weak minority in politics until their successes in the 1874 congressional elections. The moderate and conservative Republican factions usually oppose the radicals, but they were not well organized. President Abraham Lincoln tried to build a multi-faction coalition, including radicals, conservatives, moderates, and War Democrats; while he was often opposed by the Radicals, he never ostracized them. Andrew Johnson was thought to be a Radical when he became president in 1865, but he soon became their leading opponent. Johnson, however, was so inept as a politician he was unable to form a cohesive support network. Finally in 1872, the Liberal Republicans, most of them ex-radicals, ran a presidential campaign, and won the support of the Democratic Party for their ticket. They argued that Grant and the Radicals were corrupt, and had imposed Reconstruction far too long on the South. They were overwhelmingly defeated and collapsed as a movement.

On issues not concerned with the Slave Power, the destruction of the Confederacy, the eradication of slavery and the rights of the Freedmen, Radicals took positions all over the political map. for example ex-Whigs generally supported high tariffs, and ex-Democrats generally oppose them. Some men were for hard money and no inflation, and others were for soft money and inflation. The argument, common in the 1930s, that the radicals were primarily motivated by a desire to selfishly promote Northeastern business interests, has been defunct for a half-century.[5] On foreign policy issues, the Radicals generally did not take a distinctive position.[6]

[edit] Wartime

After the 1860 elections, moderate Republicans dominated the Congress. Radical Republicans were often critical of Lincoln, who they believed was too slow in freeing slaves and supporting their legal equality. Lincoln put all factions in his cabinet, including Radicals like Salmon P. Chase (Secretary of the Treasury), whom he later appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, James Speed (Attorney General) and Edwin M. Stanton (Secretary of War). Lincoln appointed many Radical Republicans, such as journalist James Shepherd Pike, to key diplomatic positions. Angry with Lincoln, in 1864 some Radicals briefly formed a political party called the Radical Democracy Party[7] with John C. Frémont as their candidate for president, until Frémont withdrew.

An important Republican opponent of the Radical Republicans was Henry Jarvis Raymond. Raymond was both editor of the New York Times and also a chairman of the Republican National Committee. In Congress the most influential Radical Republicans were U.S. Senator Charles Sumner and U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens. They led the call for a war that would end slavery.[8]

[edit] Reconstruction policy

[edit] Opposing Lincoln

The Radical Republicans opposed Lincoln's terms for reuniting the United States during Reconstruction, which began in 1863, which they viewed as too lenient. They proposed an "ironclad oath" that would prevent anyone who supported the Confederacy from voting in Southern elections; Lincoln blocked it. Radicals passed the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864; Lincoln vetoed it. The Radicals demanded a more aggressive prosecution of the war, a faster end to slavery and total destruction of the Confederacy. After the war the Radicals controlled the Joint Committee on Reconstruction.

[edit] Opposing Johnson

After the assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson became president. Although he appeared at first to be a Radical,[9] he broke with them, and the Radicals and Johnson became embroiled in a bitter struggle. Johnson proved a poor politician and his allies lost heavily in the 1866 elections in the North. The Radicals now had full control of Congress and could over-ride Johnson's vetoes.

[edit] Control of Congress

After the 1866 elections, the Radicals generally controlled Congress. Johnson vetoed 21 bills passed by Congress during his term, but the Radicals overrode 15 of them, including the Reconstruction Acts and Force Acts, which rewrote the election laws for the South and allowed blacks to vote, while prohibiting most leading whites from holding office, if they had supported the Confederacy. As a result of 1867-68 elections, the newly empowered freedmen, in coalition with carpetbaggers (newcomers to the South) and Scalawags (white Southerners), set up Republican governments in 10 Southern states (all but Virginia). They were supported by the Radicals in Washington who sent in the Army to support the new state governments.

[edit] Impeachment

The Radical plan was to remove Johnson from office, but the first effort at impeachment went nowhere. After Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House of Representatives voted to impeach him; he escaped removal from office by the Senate by a single vote in 1868, but had lost most of his power.[10]

[edit] Supporting Grant

General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865-68 was in charge of the Army under President Johnson, but Grant generally enforced the Radical agenda. The leading Radicals in Congress were Thaddeus Stevens in the House, and Charles Sumner in the Senate. Grant was elected as a Republican in 1868; after the election he generally sided with the Radicals on Reconstruction policies and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 into law.[11]

The Republicans split in 1872 over Grant's reelection, with the "Liberal Republicans", including Sumner, opposing Grant with a new third party. The Liberals lost badly, but the economy went into a depression in 1873 and in 1874 the Democrats swept back into power and ended the reign of the Radicals.[3]

The Radicals tried to protect the new coalition, but one by one the Southern states voted the Republicans out of power until in 1876 only three were left (Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina), where the Army still protected them. The 1876 presidential election was so close it was decided in those three states, despite massive fraud and illegalities on both sides. The Compromise of 1877 called for the election of a Republican as president, and his withdrawal of the troops. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew the troops; the Republican state regimes immediately collapsed.[12]

[edit] Reconstruction of the South

During Reconstruction, Radical Republicans increasingly took control, led by Sumner and Stevens. They demanded harsher measures in the South, and more protection for the Freedmen, and more guarantees that the Confederate nationalism was totally eliminated. Following Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Andrew Johnson, a former War Democrat, became President.

The Radicals at first admired Johnson's hard-line talk. When they discovered his ambivalence on key issues by his veto of Civil Rights Act of 1866, they overrode his veto. This was the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 made African Americans United States citizens and forbade discrimination against them. It was to be enforced in Federal courts. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution of 1868, (with its Equal Protection Clause) was the work of a coalition formed of both moderate and Radical Republicans.[8]

By 1866 the Radical Republicans supported federal civil rights for Freedmen, which Johnson opposed. By 1867 they defined terms for suffrage for freed slaves and limited early suffrage for many ex-Confederates. While Johnson opposed the Radical Republicans on some issues, the decisive Congressional elections of 1866 gave the radicals enough votes to enact their legislation over Johnson's vetoes. Through elections in the South, ex-Confederate officeholders were gradually replaced with a coalition of Freedmen, southern whites (called Scalawags), and northerners who had resettled in the South (called Carpetbaggers). The Radical Republicans impeached Andrew Johnson in the House but failed by one vote in the Senate to remove him from office.[8]

The Radical Republicans led the Reconstruction of the South. All Republican factions supported Ulysses S. Grant for president in 1868. Once in office, Grant forced Sumner out of the party. Grant used Federal power to try to break up the Ku Klux Klan organization. Insurgents, however, and community riots continued harassment and violence against African Americans and their allies into the early 20th century. By 1872 the Liberal Republicans thought that Reconstruction had succeeded and should end. Many moderates joined their cause as well as Radical Republican leader Charles Sumner. They lost as Grant was easily reelected.[13]

In state after state in the south, the Redeemers movement seized control from the Republicans, until only three Republican states were left in 1876: South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. Republican Presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes announced that he favored restoring "home rule" in these states, provided they promised to respect the rights of the freedmen. When Hayes became president in 1877 he ordered the removal of federal troops and Redeemers took over in these states as well.

Liberal Republicans (in 1872) and Democrats argued the Radical Republicans were corrupt by the acts of accepting bribes (notably during the Grant Administration). These opponents of the Radicals demanded amnesty for all ex-Confederates, restoring their right to vote and hold public office. Foner's history of Reconstruction pointed out that sometimes the financial chicanery was as much a question of extortion as bribes. By 1872 the Radicals were increasingly splintered; in the Congressional elections of 1874 the anti-Radical Democrats took control of Congress. Many former radicals joined the "Stalwart" faction of the GOP, while many opponents joined the "Half-Breeds", but they differed primarily on patronage rather than policy.[14]

Grant's last outrage in Louisiana in Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper. With nation tired of Reconstruction, Grant remained the lone President protecting African American civil rights. January 23, 1875

[edit] Historiography

In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, new battles took place over the construction of memory and the meaning of historical events. The earliest historians to study Reconstruction and the Radical Republican participation in it were members of the Dunning School led by William Archibald Dunning and John W. Burgess.[15] The Dunning School, based at Columbia University in the early 20th century, saw the Radicals as motivated by a lust for power at the expense of national reconciliation and an irrational hatred of the Confederacy.[15] According to Dunning School historians, the Radical Republicans reversed the gains Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson had made in reintegrating the South, established corrupt shadow governments made up of Northern carpetbaggers and Southern scalawags in the former Confederate states, and, to increase their support base, foisted political rights on the freed slaves that they were unprepared or incapable of utilizing.[16] For the Dunning School, the Radical Republicans made Reconstruction a dark age that only ended when Southern whites rose up and reestablished a "home rule" free of Northern, Republican, and black influence.[17] Despite efforts by some historians such as W. E. B. Du Bois to provide the perspective of the freedmen, the Dunning School's negative view of Reconstruction and opposition to voting rights for African Americans was influential in textbooks for years.[18] In the 1930s, attempts by leftist historians to reevaluate the era in an economic light emphasized class conflict. They were also hostile towards the Radicals, casting them as economic opportunists who sought to dominate the South by thrusting northern capitalism upon it.[19]

The role of Radical Republicans in creating public school systems, charitable institutions and other social infrastructure in the South was downplayed by the Dunning School of historians. Since the 1950s the impact of the moral crusade of the Civil Rights movement, as well as the "Black Power" movement, led historians to reevaluate the role of Radical Republicans during Reconstruction. Their reputation improved.[20] These historians, sometimes referred to as neoabolitionist because they reflected and admired the values of the abolitionists of the 19th century, argued that the Radical Republicans' advancement of civil rights and suffrage for African Americans following emancipation was more significant than the financial corruption which took place. They also pointed to the African Americans' central, active roles in reaching toward education (both individually and by creating public school systems) and their desire to acquire land as a means of self-support.[21]

Historians have long puzzled over why most Republicans—even fire-eating abolitionists—gradually lost interest in the fate of the Freedmen after 1868. Richardson (2004) argues that Northern Republicans came to see most blacks as potentially dangerous to the economy because they might prove to be labor radicals in the tradition of the 1870 Paris Commune, or the labor radicals of the violent American strikes in the 1870s. Meanwhile it became clear to Northerners that the white South was not bent on revenge or the restoration of the Confederacy. Most of the Republicans who felt this way became opponents of Grant and entered the Liberal Republican camp in 1872.[22]

[edit] Leading Radical Republicans

John C. Frémont: the 1864 U.S. presidential candidate of the Radical Republicans. John Bingham: U.S. Representative from Ohio and principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. William Gannaway Brownlow: publisher of the Knoxville Whig; Tennessee Governor; U.S. Senator Benjamin Butler: Massachusetts politician-soldier; hated by rebels for restoring control in New Orleans. Zachariah Chandler: U.S. Senator from Michigan and Secretary of the Interior under Ulysses S. Grant. Salmon P. Chase: U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Lincoln; Supreme Court chief justice; sought 1868 Democratic nomination as moderate. Henry Winter Davis: U.S. Representative from Maryland. James A. Garfield: U.S. House of Representatives leader; less radical than others; U.S. President 1881. Hannibal Hamlin: Maine politician; Vice President during Lincoln's first term. William D. Kelley: U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania. James H. Lane: U.S. Senator from Kansas, leader of the Jayhawkers abolitionist movement. Thaddeus Stevens: Radical leader in the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Charles Sumner: U.S. Senator from Massachusetts; dominant Radical leader in Senate; specialist in foreign affairs; broke with Grant in 1872 Benjamin Wade: U.S. Senator from Ohio; he was next in line to become President if Johnson was removed Henry Wilson: Massachusetts leader; Vice President under Grant Ulysses S. Grant: President of the United States, signed Enforcement Acts and Civil Rights Act of 1875; General of the Army of the United States, supported Radical Reconstruction and civil rights for African Americans. Read more at en.wikipedia.org

 

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