America, Built on Liberty, Grew in Imperialism, Dying through Capitalism.

[TheMaroon]

America, while always having it's little own special problems, such as slavery and gay rights, has always been a safe place for those with lack of home. If you didn't have freedom of speech you came here, couldn't choose your own religion, you came here. Immigrants through out history came to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. But with the 2013 economic crisis closing in on the new year as well, Americans maybe the ones fleeing. While under threat of enemy invasion, or under threat of economic distress/collapse the president of the united states of America, has the right to an executive order that could bring the end of any Liberties in America. Basic rights such as the right to own a weapon, the right to free press/speech, and even privacy in your home is subject to government suspension. Your rights are not as secure as you may think they are. The executive branch can and more than likely will suspend congress, as it can at any time. With that said, any Americans who read this, would you organize you own militia group, would stand up against tyranny? How would you help America once again become a land of the free and the home of the brave.

Or would you create a militia, climb to the top, and install your own tyrannical regime? If you did do that how would you rule America?

[Hit The North]

Built on liberty? That's a strange way of describing one of the most barbarous projects of ethnic cleansing in history.

And, in any case, the USA was built materially on the basis of capitalism; it's not like capitalism is some alien infestation in American culture or something.

[Leftsolidarity]

This sounds a lot more like right-wing libertarian non-sense than something from a communist. We were never any of those things and it's not Obama that we should be afraid of. That bullshit of "How would you help America once again become a land of the free and the home of the brave." is trash. Have fun with your silly little militias like all the other racist right-wing turds running around out there.

[Comrade Jacob]

Don't stop knocking the Americanism out of your head. It wasn't built on liberty it always planned on being capitalist.

[tachosomoza]

America, built on liberty? For who? The bourgeoisie? This country was founded as a colony that routinely engaged in genocide of native Americans and was built by slaves right down to the Capitol building and White House. The constitution under which we still live was written by bourgeois property owners, merchants and clergymen, who were exclusively white males. African descendants, women, and landless folks of all colors and creeds were written out of the constitution. A large chunk of our population was not able to vote without fear of brutal, shocking violence until the mid-1960s.

This sounds like typical right wing libertarian rhetoric and I think you've stumbled onto the wrong forum.

[Marxaveli]

Land of the free home of the brave? You mean the same America that is guilty of the actions described in the above posts, and the same America that has the highest incarceration rate in world history (consisting mostly of minorities on top of that)? Take your nationalism and shove it. Fuck America.

[TheMaroon]

This sounds a lot more like right-wing libertarian non-sense than something from a communist. We were never any of those things and it's not Obama that we should be afraid of. That bullshit of "How would you help America once again become a land of the free and the home of the brave." is trash. Have fun with your silly little militias like all the other racist right-wing turds running around out there.
I'm not scared of Obama. I'm not saying a left wing president would be the only one to do, in fact I think it more likely a right wing guy would do it. It is just a what if situation. As to what we were founded on, Liberty is what I was taught.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

It's time to bring back the good old days when only white male landowners could make decisions. Everyone else back to your filthy hovels! USA USA USA

[Alexios]

Liberty is and always has been a bourgeois construct, there is nothing communist about it

[Marxaveli]

I'm not scared of Obama. I'm not saying a left wing president would be the only one to do, in fact I think it more likely a right wing guy would do it. It is just a what if situation. As to what we were founded on, Liberty is what I was taught.

But what you were taught and what actually is or happened are two different things. "Liberty" is just a slogan thrown around based on the idealism of the Enlightenment, but it has little meaning in the material world since indeed, America was founded upon genocide/ethnic cleansing, slavery, exploitation and social stratification, private property, and privilege. These are undeniable, empirical facts, regardless of what your high school history classes may have taught you.

[ВАЛТЕР]

Liberty? Maybe bourgeois liberty. The word itself means nothing. Lenin's quote comes to mind: "Freedom for who to do what?"

[Flying Purple People Eater]

That's strange - I was unaware that mass genocide, mass slavery, land accumulation and invasion were considered to be aspects of liberty.

Then again, the european colonialists had a knack for claiming the exact opposite of what they were actually doing to the civilisations they destroyed. One example is Cortez and co. making a speech about saving people and the power of Christ to the Aztec troops who had chased them into a temple after Spanish troops had just randomly started massacring thousands of people for no apparent reason in the main square of Tenochtitlan.

One disbelief riddled Aztec's recorded outcry during this incident, serves as a fitting reaction to this barbaric walking contradiction: "What is he saying, this whore of the Spaniards!?" I think a similar outcry, minus the sexism, would be fairly appropriate if someone called the smoldering ruins of native American civilisations, the millions of people from Western Africa who were enslaved and trodden on for cheap labour, and the systematic genocide of native americans a symbol of 'liberty'.

[tachosomoza]

Anyone else find it hilarious how right wing libertarians have the gall to advocate for turning the clock back to the 1920s in the name of "liberty"?

[Leftsolidarity]

I'm not scared of Obama. I'm not saying a left wing president would be the only one to do, in fact I think it more likely a right wing guy would do it. It is just a what if situation. As to what we were founded on, Liberty is what I was taught.

1) Obama is no where near "left wing". He is an imperialist through-and-through. This should be common knowledge.

2) How is this a "what if?" situation? We're already under attack by the ruling class. Ex; union-busting in Wisconsin/Michigan/elsewhere, more deportations than ever, stripping of democratic rights in oppressed cities such as Detroit through "Emergency Management" and voting laws in NC and other places, state repression of Occupy and others who are organizing (Rasmea Yousef Odeh was arrested in Chicago 2 days ago), police terror against communities of color, the list goes on. So what executive order am I afraid of? I organize with groups that push for politicians such as Obama to issue executive orders of Moratoriums on Foleclosures/Plant closings/etc. It's not always a negative thing to pressure bourgeois politicians into concessions for the workers.

3) You were taught capitalist white supremacist patriarchal history. Fuck what you were taught.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Read A Peoples History Of The United States (http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/dp/0060838655) and get back to us.

[Rafiq]

Liberalism was the ideology of the American bourgeoisie. Liberty is nothing more than ideological dribble.

[goalkeeper]

Oh look, a chance for people to flex their Howard Zinn People's History knowledge

[goalkeeper]

But what you were taught and what actually is or happened are two different things. "Liberty" is just a slogan thrown around based on the idealism of the Enlightenment, but it has little meaning in the material world since indeed, America was founded upon genocide/ethnic cleansing, slavery, exploitation and social stratification, private property, and privilege. These are undeniable, empirical facts, regardless of what your high school history classes may have taught you.

I mean, the murderous history of the American state is all well and true but only a complete philistine could completely denigrate the Enlightenment ideas of liberty, as if those concepts such as rights of man and citizenship were no different than other political forms that preceded it. As if the change from being a serf to citizen meant nothing. Inadequate; yes, unduly restricted to a certain strata; yes. But of course when these ideas were taken to their conclusion and applied beyond the closed group of white (often propertied) males by, for instance, the slaves of Haiti, they were utterly revolutionary. Of course the emergence of the proletarian class has consigned all of this stuff to a bygone era now.

[Popular Front of Judea]

I mean, the murderous history of the American state is all well and true but only a complete philistine could completely denigrate the Enlightenment ideas of liberty, as if those concepts such as rights of man and citizenship were no different than other political forms that preceded it. As if the change from being a serf to citizen meant nothing. Inadequate; yes, unduly restricted to a certain strata; yes. But of course when these ideas were taken to their conclusion and applied beyond the closed group of white (often propertied) males by, for instance, the slaves of Haiti, they were utterly revolutionary. Of course the emergence of the proletarian class has consigned all of this stuff to a bygone era now.

I actually don't disagree with you on this. I also believe that would be revolutionaries need to be able to talk to Americans in terms they understand. It just was rather obvious that the OP had a sketchy knowledge of American history.

[Leftsolidarity]

I mean, the murderous history of the American state is all well and true but only a complete philistine could completely denigrate the Enlightenment ideas of liberty, as if those concepts such as rights of man and citizenship were no different than other political forms that preceded it. As if the change from being a serf to citizen meant nothing. Inadequate; yes, unduly restricted to a certain strata; yes. But of course when these ideas were taken to their conclusion and applied beyond the closed group of white (often propertied) males by, for instance, the slaves of Haiti, they were utterly revolutionary. Of course the emergence of the proletarian class has consigned all of this stuff to a bygone era now.

The bourgeois revolutions brought different laws and values other than past ruling classes and did grant some advances for the oppressed and exploited masses but it certainly never brought them liberty. It simply brought liberty to a few white men and constrained the masses to their bourgeois democratic rights (which most were even denied until recently). So, it might have been progressive in a sense back in the day but it doesn't mean that it ever brought liberty to the masses.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Don't feed the troll.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

The problem with the Enlightenment as I see it that it didn't go far enough. Rights and liberties are a huge advancement compared to feudal obligations but not enough people truly enjoy them even today.

As for the US being "built on liberty", that was really funny. That was a joke, right?

[synthesis]

I think the best thing about the American Revolution was that at the time the rest of the world took its profession of Enlightenment values seriously and decided they could do it too, and thus it directly inspired the French Revolution and other bourgeois (but progressive at the time) victories over feudalism. The problem is that people have continued to take those proclamations seriously long after it became apparent that they shouldn't. Even Ho Chi Minh originally appealed to the American government for help overthrowing French colonialism because he thought they would recognize the similarity between the Vietnamese struggle and that of the 18th-century revolutionaries. (The American government's belief that he would instigate a Soviet-oriented civil war then became a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Oh look, a chance for people to flex their Howard Zinn People's History knowledge

Who exactly is Howard Zinn? :confused:

I've only seen a single person mention 'people's history' this whole thread.

[Leftsolidarity]

Warning to Zealot for picture/troll post.

Come on.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The problem with the Enlightenment as I see it that it didn't go far enough. Rights and liberties are a huge advancement compared to feudal obligations but not enough people truly enjoy them even today.

As for the US being "built on liberty", that was really funny. That was a joke, right?

Natural rights are imaginary and of no use to Communists though.

[Zealot]

I thought he/she was a troll to be honest, in one thread they asked if nationalism was progressive and in another if industries should be privatised after a nationalisation scheme to save capitalist economic relations. Well as a serious answer, the US has never really had these liberties to the extent that you've exaggerated them. However, the state has indeed become increasingly authoritarian. Taking away liberties under the guise of "threats" to the nation happened in the Cold War and has continued under the War on Terror. The rights that you're afraid of losing have already been lost for decades for groups that have been an actual threat to the system.

[Sharia Lawn]

The American Revolution and early American history are a bit weird in that they have sort of a dual character historically. I think it represents an interesting singular monument to liberalism in general in magnifiying its enslaving reality in contrast with its emancipatory backdrop.


On the one hand it demonstrated the bourgeoisie's right to victory in the sense that it was the first tangible manifestation of Enlightenment ideas, the creation of the first sustained bourgeois republic, and the first step out of absolutism, and it furthermore went on to inspire other movements in Europe that carried out the bourgeois revolution through toppling the old feudal aristocracies, notably in France.


However, the American identity as it his historically developed is inseparable from the genocide of the indigineous population, settler-colonial type expansionism, and the massive enslavement of Africans.


Ideologically this dynamic has had a very lasting effect, obviously, and has permeated into the social consciousness of American society. You have Americans that profess an adherence to the ideals promoted by the American Revolution, and also at the same time very racist, nationalist, and culturally chauvinist values which reflect the unspeakably barbaric atrocities carried out against the indigineous population and African slaves, the social relations that developed subsequently and as a result of that, and also the role that race as a social construct has played in general in justifying past abuses and barbarities as well as continuing the existence of racial oppression.


The thing is, often you will see liberals (never hesitant to show how impressed they are with themselves) triumphantly point out the inconsistency in simultaneously upholding the views of American Revolution, Enlightenment, and founding fathers while also harboring the aforementioned socially backward sentiments - when in actuality it is entirely consistent with the historical realities of the American experiment.

[goalkeeper]

Who exactly is Howard Zinn? :confused:

I've only seen a single person mention 'people's history' this whole thread.

He was a leftist writer/historian who wrote a quite famous book about American history which is a fairly awful book but enjoyed massive popularity, especially among the left because it wasn't the crude "fuck yeah, America!" type of history.

[Popular Front of Judea]

He was a leftist writer/historian who wrote a quite famous book about American history which is a fairly awful book but enjoyed massive popularity, especially among the left because it wasn't the crude "fuck yeah, America!" type of history.

Peoples History definitely has its faults. So what is your suggestion for the OP to read in its place?

[Rational Radical]

Lol damn I fairly enjoyed A People's History not because "fukkk AmeriKKKa" but that it focused on the struggles of Native Americans,Blacks,women,the poor and working class as a whole,honestly I would like to see why it's so "horrible"

[synthesis]

I can understand if people thought it was a little dry or too textbook-y for non-academic reading, but otherwise I really don't see how you could say such a thoroughly researched work of historical scholarship is "fairly awful."

[Nakidana]

I can understand if people thought it was a little dry or too textbook-y for non-academic reading, but otherwise I really don't see how you could say such a thoroughly researched work of historical scholarship is "fairly awful."

I've never read it, so when goalkeeper first made his comment I was thinking he referred to the opposite of what you just stated, i.e. that the book was not well enough researched.

Let's hear it then goalkeeper, why is the book shitty?