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Sparks! by Ian Boothby and Nina Matsumoto
Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook by...Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? k.

Both were good!

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on the Origins and Basis of Inequality Among Men. Man in a state of nature was good, and society corrupted him. The more the state grew, the more entrenched power concentrated in the hands of a few until it resulted in a class of hereditary elite. Rousseau did not believe we should return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but believed that there needed to be a reset button each generation so that people were distinguished based off what they accomplish in life, rather than who their parents were. Today we know more than Rousseau did about hunter-gatherers: he had to rely on traveler accounts, so his passages do not take into account class distinctions within those societies (e.g. wealthier traders or slaves).

Rousseau argued for two main points of natural law: self-preservation and the dislike of seeing another living thing in pain. Primitive man would therefore only tend to kill out of self-defense. Rousseau sets himself against Locke in arguing the state of nature is not chaos, and man is more compassionate by instinct, not aggressive and brutish as Hobbes thought. Rousseau believed many ills of society were self-created - the savage was more noble in his simplicity. He did not overthink things or worry himself to suicide. He simply acted. Modern life leads to institutional inequality, due to the diversity of upbringing and styles of life in a civilization. As civilized man's "reason" grew, he also learned how to be more wicked. The golden era was the in-between, when people lived in small groups and shared among themselves. Problems came when people developed property, looked for a ruler for security but ended up with a state that became the means for the rich to get richer and lord over everyone else. Although he never used the phrase "equality of opportunity," Rousseau's goal was along these lines.

Upton Sinclair: The Jungle. Spurred Teddy Roosevelt into reforms and what would become the FDA. Sinclair used the money he got to start a socialist utopian group. Lost 3 elections in a row running in California as a socialist.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago. "In the blaze of publicity that came with the Nuremberg Trials after (WWII), the full horror of Nazi atrocities was revealed. Stalinist Russia, in contrast, seemed like a much more forgiving regime, and many on the left in the West still thought that communism was the future. Yet behind the showreels of happy peasants on collective farms and joyous factory workers was the reality of mass displacement, starvation, and injustice on a scale that not even Hitler could have engineered." Solzhenitsyn began writing this book after living eight years in a gulag. By the time it was smuggled out and published in the early 70s, Solzhenitsyn had been been expelled from the USSR and was living in the US. Commentators noted that the Gulag Archipelago exposed communism and contributed to its fall. Solzhenitsyn did not expect to see the book even published within his lifetime, let alone become a bestseller and Nobel winner, but he was prepared to write it since he knew if each generation didn't learn from the horrors of regimes like Stalin's, they would be doomed to repeat them.

Solzhenitsyn referred to the gulags as an archipelago as they could be spread thousands of miles apart, yet the people within them were united psychologically, ruthlessly cut off from Russia within their separate islands. Lenin established the gulags starting in 1918 with declarations such as "lock up all the doubtful ones" and "secure the Soviet Republic from its class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps." Under communism the gulags would continue to expand exponentially, becoming a system of slave labor for building infrastructure projects. The White Sea-Baltic Canal, for example, was dug without any modern machinery through the use of slave labor, with roughly 250,000 casualties. The philosophy was "correction through labor," but it was understood to mean "destruction through labor" - essentially squeeze as much work out of a prisoner before they died of exhaustion, hunger, illness or exposure to often-freezing environments. Prisoners would often be left to eat rotting dead horses, lubricating grease or tree moss just to have something in their stomachs.

Solzhenitsyn himself got an eight year punishment because as a captain in the Soviet army, he had written a letter to a friend that included veiled criticism of Stalin. They labeled it "anti-Soviet propaganda," sending him off with no trial or chance of appeal. The rule of law had disappeared to be replaced by a wafer-thin legal rationalization for crimes committed by the state itself. With charges like "Praise of American Technology," "Praise of American Democracy" or "Toadyism Toward the West," the criminal code of 1926 allowed for any thought or action to be punished as anti-Soviet, and there was no maximum penalty. One man was sent to the gulag for 10 years because he was the first to sit down during a ten-minute standing ovation to Stalin (everyone else was too afraid to sit down first). The state often used these methods to find out "who the independent people were." Interrogations were not meant to find out what a person may or may not have done, but to wear down and browbeat the defendant until they would sign anything and get it to end at any cost. Forced "confessions" were gathered through up to a week of sleeplessness standing in a vertical cell where it was impossible to lie down, hunger and thirst, being forced to drink salt water, filling the cell with cold or hot air, straitjackets and sodomizing with hot rods, beatings and isolation. Before 1938 the interrogators needed formal documentation for torture, but soon it became so commonplace, and the amount of those arrested continued to grow, that interrogators were given free rein to torture all they wanted in order to meet their quotas. With the motto "Just give us a person - and we'll create the case!" interrogators knew the charges were bogus, but were rewarded handsomely by the communist party for their cruelty. The most effective torturers would have their methods copied.

Solzhenitsyn pointed out that despite the propaganda, the serfdom under communism was much worse. Under the tsars people could at least expect to work (at most) only from sunrise to sunset, and have Sundays off. Mass starvation did not happen, let alone become the norm that it was under communism. Capital punishment was possible for several crimes under the tsars, and yet the annual average was only 17. Yet within 16 months from 1918-19, Lenin murdered 16,000. By 1937-38 the state was up to 500,000 killings that year - of political prisoners alone - and another 500,000 "habitual thieves" shot on sight before they became prisoners. Solzhenitsyn estimated that the communists shot 200 people a day within their Moscow headquarters alone, and yet the truth turned out to be even worse. Declassified Soviet archives later revealed 1.5 million detained that year and 680,000 of them shot. Solzhenitsyn placed the pictures of 6 of these victims in his book, and suggested making a book containing the pictures of all those who had been murdered by the Soviets. Solzhenitsyn warns that people should not be duped into thinking it can't happen here: "all the evil of the twentieth century is possible anywhere on earth."

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Sun Yat-Sen: Three Principles of the People. Grew up in Hawaii and Hong Kong, a convert to Christianity. Sought to overthrow the Qing dynasty in 1895, raised funds in the west after his forced exile. Early nationalist who became leader of the 1st republic of China after a successful 1911 revolution. He would later be exiled again by a general but return to lead a southern China that was divided along north-south lines. Chiang Kai-shek would carry on nationalism, reunite China along Sun's three principles. Also known as the San Min doctrine: nationalism, democracy and livelihood. Sun argued that China needed to awaken along nationalist lines to reclaim its place among other civilizations. The Chinese people usually focused pride on the family or clan. "Cosmopolitanism" (what we would call globalization today) took over as foreigners carved out interests for themselves. In fact, China was so weak the only reason other countries didn't conquer it outright (which they could do in a matter of days or weeks, depending on the country), is because they were held in check against each other through sphere of influence agreements. At the very least, China needed its own banks and its own industries. Only through nationalism could China be for the Chinese.

Sun said the trend of civilization is to move from theocracy or monocracy into democracy. Contrary to beliefs that China could not ever be a republic like America, Sun pointed out the cultural influence of Confucius and Mencius, who were democratic in their outlook or at least required the sovereign to be accountable to the people ("The people are the most important element of the state, the territory comes next, and the king last"). Sun said that the imperial system was also unacceptable because it only led to civil wars, as one ruler would fight for control with another, which is much harder to do in a republic where the sovereignty is with the people. Sun's proposal included 5 branches of government: the executive, legislative and judicial systems of the west, but also two to include traditional Chinese elements: a Cultural Yuan to supervise and keep branches of government accountable, and an Examination Yuan for the civil service tests. Though influenced by Marx on the labor issue, Sun did not see society as defined by class struggle, pointing out that American and European workers had enjoyed major improvements in both their social conditions and living standards. Class warfare is not necessary for progress, but is best understood as a social disease that happens when workers feel their lives are not improving. Sun points to Ford as an example where everyone wins - there was no "exploitation" of the workers, who saw fewer working hours, higher wages and reduced prices.

Although not a communist, Sun is a rare figure that is respected in both mainland China and Taiwan. China today claims to be following in his steps of a socialist/capitalist mix (which is weird considering they overthrew the nationalists).

Margaret Thatcher's autobiography. "Once the state plays fast and loose with economic freedom, political freedom risks being the next casualty." In the 1970s, Britain was viewed as the sick man of Europe. Overtaxed, stifling enterprise, inflation, a war on profits and a state that continued growing while the rest of the country stagnated. Thatcher rose to lead the Conservatives in this environment, attacking the progressives and socialists who had brought the country down to this point. She also spoke out frankly about the imbalance between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces, as the Russians armed up faster than the US. "Famously existing on four or five hours of sleep a night, she constantly flummoxed opposition politicians, her own ministers, and foreign leaders by being better briefed."

Thatcher writes on her father, Alfred Roberts and his influence on her. A Grantham grocer that did well enough for himself, the family recognized nonetheless that there was not much of a safety net in this period (1930s-40s). The community got along through civil and religious institutions, and the industry of its people. Nobody looked to the government to be helped. Her father's statement, "Never do things just because other people do them," set her up well. Roberts would become mayor of Grantham. In the interwar years when pacifism and appeasement were preferred, the Roberts family went against the trend and were deeply suspicious of Hitler's motives in Munich, holding the "then unfashionable" view that fascism and communism were just two sides of the same coin. Margaret was influenced by Hayek's Road to Serfdom in her college years. Eventually moving on to politics, she spent a brief time in America and found it refreshing compared to an overtaxed and overburdened Britain. When the Conservatives won in 1970, Thatcher got her first position as Education Secretary. She argued that the education system at the time "largely existed for the benefit of those who ran it, rather than those who received it." Thatcher would seek out a different path, pushing for choice instead of central planning.

Thatcher soon became disillusioned with Heath, his policy U-turns and poor performance with the economy. While Heath brought Britain into the EEC, he was unable to stand up against the unions who wanted to keep an iron grip on wage and price controls. British industry could not compete as a result, being inefficient and overmanned. Thatcher was convinced that a radical change would be necessary. In 1978 the Conservatives ran on the campaign "Labour Isn't Working" with long dole lines, 1.5 million unemployed and a "Winter of Discontent" where union strikes meant garbage went uncollected, drivers nowhere to be found and even bodies left out unburied. Thatcher could not have asked for a better real-world demonstration of the logical outcome of socialism. Thatcher proposed ending strikes for essential services, requiring secret postal ballots before strikes were held, and an end to the "closed shop" regs that required people in industries to be part of the union. The voters responded by handing the Conservatives a mandate larger than anyone had imagined. No more economic or military decline for Britain. Thatcher would continue working to privatize and shrink the government - inflation would be the next problem to solve, and she set about putting a stop to the government spending that spurred it. Thatcher would gain international respect by standing up for the Falklands, showing her country and the world that Britain's perceived military decline was over. The international community floated an "interim government" between the junta and the British, but Thatcher rejected this idea - and Reagan would come to agree that the only option was military force. Thatcher wrote "That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister."

When the heavily-Marxist Scargill took over the National Union of Miners, Thatcher knew there would be a strike. She quietly began to build up stocks of coal to outlast any industrial strike. The coal industry would have actually been on firm footing, if not for union demands to keep unproductive mines open. Scargill's attempts at a national strike failed as many pits kept operating - but his union men harassed and abused these workers. It would also emerge that Scargill was getting paid by the Libyan dictator Gaddhafi, as well as receiving assistance from Soviet miners. The yearlong strike effort finally ended when ordinary trade union members themselves rejected Scargill's use of a strike as a political weapon, and his useless attempts to keep unproductive pits open when they had no future. Thatcher held the line and the strike problem dropped miraculously - from 29 million collective work days lost when she entered office, down to 2 million. Inflation was cut by more than half, elevating the status of Hayek and Friedman into the mainstream by showing that their policies worked. Top tax rate was cut from 83 percent down to 40.

Thatcher was also a solid critic of Soviet communism and found Carter to be weak in the face of the dictators, and his malaise mentality to go against everything America stood for. She welcomed Reagan's rise as finding a kindred spirit - at a time when the political establishment and the pundits wanted detente and peaceful association with the communists, Thatcher wanted to go on offense against tyranny. Not just talking about how to contain, balance or accommodate - but to actively work to thwart a regime that kept a large portion of the world's population in chains. When Gorbachev was brought out by the communist party as the reformer, Thatcher pointed out that the Soviets had not changed their policy of funding communist conflicts, from Ethiopia to Nicaragua - and in addition continued to clamp down against freedom of speech and movement within the USSR. The economic failure and collapse of communism would end up happening quicker than a lot of people thought.

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Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience. "All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable." "Any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already." "There will never really be a free and independent state until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power." Transcendentalists placed a high value on individual conscience and argued that established interests were liable to corrupt the individual. Thoreau went to jail overnight for refusing to pay a poll tax, in protest of the government's slavery policies and the Mexican-American war. In Civil Disobedience he argued that citizens have a right to withhold support from an immoral government. Morality and ethics > legal statutes, even if enacted by a popular majority - the "higher law" must be followed. Thoreau points to the American Revolution itself as an example, and stated that if rebellion over excessive taxation was compelling, how much more should the people rebel against the oppression of a slaver state? Not just at the ballot box but with everything at our disposal. "We should be men first, and subjects afterwards." He took issue with William Paley, English philosopher who argued that people should obey government out of expediency. Expediency is not the foundation for a just society.

Thoreau believed in the adage "That government is best which governs least." Government "never of itself furthered any enterprise," and usually got in the way. It was up to the people to "bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way." Thoreau would've preferred no government at all, but at the very least would settle for a better government - one that did not draft men to fight a battle they didn't believe in, all to expand the territory and power of the pro-slavery south. Neither is a democratic country the perfect answer: majority rule's weight of numbers can crush individual conscience. The term "civil disobedience" was actually applied to Thoreau's essay after his death - it wasn't a term he wrote.

Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America. "In Europe, we are wont to look upon a restless disposition, unbounded desire for riches, and an excessive love of independence, as propensities very dangerous to society. Yet these are the very elements which insure a long and peaceful future to the republics of America." de Tocqueville's account of American life in the 1830s was detailed and reflective: what America lacked in aristocratic "tranquility" it made up for in freedom and justice. He also noted that the stability of the nobility is itself largely an illusion, since the longer the people are oppressed, the more fragile and revolution-prone a regime inevitably becomes. In America, there was no possibility for landowning aristocracy, not from a philosophical standpoint and also due to economic realities. Landholding was thus split up among small farmers to work for themselves - the American people embraced self-reliant individualism and not serfdom. In the North, Puritans were neither rich nor poor. They had come to America not for financial gain, but for religious freedom. Deeply obedient to religion and distrusting of political authority. This is where the bedrock of American politics took place: a consuming love of religious freedom, and an openness to any ideas of political organization that would preserve this freedom. America also abolished English inheritance law after the revolution. While people were free to work and attain wealth for themselves, each passing generation was a blank slate. Pre-revolution, Britain was centralized and far-off, so Americans got used to governing themselves at the local and grassroots level.

The strength of the American people rested on the fact that they did not expect the government to solve everything. If there was a problem, they did not automatically look to the government and hope somebody else there did it. Instead, Americans get it done themselves through civil associations and a myriad of other groups. "the sum of these private undertakings far exceeds all that the government could have done." The constitution did not promise happiness via government, but merely set a framework - it's up to you as the individual to pursue happiness, unencumbered by an oppressive state. de Tocqueville also noted the media differences: in Europe you'd see mostly big event news stories and a couple ads. In the US, 3/4ths of the pages have ads and the remainder is political news or anecdotes. Another big difference was how the press was concentrated - in France it was the big city news dominated by Paris, held within the hands of a few. In the US there was no true metropolis, making news more local and decentralized. Anyone could set up their own paper and say what they liked. "The more I consider the independence of the press...the more I am convinced that, in the modern world, it is the chief, and, so to speak, the constitutive element of liberty. A nation which is determined to remain free is therefore right in demanding, at any price, the exercise of this independence."

In America, national elections are only the tip of the iceberg. American women went to political speeches as a form of recreation, and debating clubs were a substitute for the theater. The freedom to speak one's mind is key to being an American citizen. While de Tocqueville was wary of the "tyranny of the majority," he noted the diversity of social groups blunted this, and the judicial system's ability to strike down a majority-passed law as unconstitutional was "one of the most powerful barriers which has ever been devised against the tyranny of political assemblies." In Europe, only a select few had access to advanced learning and science (your social station determined what you would know). In the US, everyone sees it as their right to engage in study, discussion and general self-improvement. Also in the US, people are always looking for ways to increase their productivity and make their jobs easier - an incentive that simply did not exist in Europe, since peasants had no financial incentives and no reason to be more productive, since they didn't earn anything in addition by doing so. Though Europe had its great individuals, America had a level playing field, leading de Tocqueville to admit despite his skepticism, God himself also viewed all men as equal and "what appears to me to be man's decline is, to His eye, advancement." He also pointed out the downsides to the great men and nobility model of Europe: "It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men." Democratic societies may not be as refined as noble Europe, but more than make up for it by being more just. He would return to French politics and hold a number of positions during this tumultuous period in its own revolutionary history, advocating decentralization and an independent judiciary.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett: The Spirit Level. I don't agree with their positions, and I also don't find them distinguishable from the liberal lines everyone already knows. They even argue that inequality causes obesity (stressed poor people eat more to cope). Brings to mind the adage that America is the only country where the "poor" people are fat. Another piece of gleaned info: whenever you hear those talking points that America isn't #1 because it placed down here on some liberal test or statistic...just like the gun/violence stats, this isn't equally distributed across the US, not by geography or group. Just like the liberal cities drag us down on the violence issue (you're in the safest place in the world if you avoid failed left cities like Detroit), test scores are actually the best. It's the public union failed schools in the lib places that drag the average down.

Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Read by Abigail Adams and passed on to her husband. Education for women was the way to advancement.

Fareed Zakaria: The Post-American World. (Not through our decline, but the rise of everyone else). Published in the 2008 recession. I doubt this will be seen as a "classic." Less controversial than its title, he points out the continuing strengths of the US and the areas we will remain in the lead on. He's still a big globalist shill despite this.

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So on that note, it's been like a year of reading this off-and-on. Book, I BANISH YOU FROM MY PILE!

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As the Crow Flies. Picture this: a black, female(?) unsure of the world is dropped into the most dangerous environment ever - a summer camp of mostly straight white girls. WILL SHE SURVIVE!?

Drawn by Hairdye McNosering, this has obviously won some awards. The racist threat is unveiled the instant the hero realizes there are white chicks, which poses an existential crisis to her well-being. Trying to get out of it with her parents, the white dad doesn't get it but the black mom does. She finally decides to brave it anyway. The old lady counselor of Feminist Camp immediately falls into the Microaggressive Evil category, as she jokes that she was gonna send the dogs after her, and that her group is in the back of the room. I was also offended that they named the groups after native tribes, which amounts to cultural appropriation. We then learn that this Feminist Camp is all about praisin' God through the strength of its founders: strong, independent womyn who struck out for themselves to leave their evil male husbands behind and create a 19th century female safezone out in the wilderness. But our hero surely must wonder: if she is secretly a dude on the inside, is she not welcome in the female exclusive zone? The simmering battle between feminist and LGBT is afoot.

During the hike out to the female shrine, periods happen. The old counselor also refers to the trip as a whitening of souls (gasp!) a truly awful racist implication. Our hero awkwardly tries to tell this stuff to the counselor, and she's relieved that it's just period stuff and not anything like "I'm a demon-worshipper or a man." Dun dun duuuun. During further talks about the founding womyn and their valiant "threat to male dominance," we learn the deep dark secret: when the females left the family, the kids kept being fed. That's right. The house slaves stuck behind and had to do all the work. Meanwhile the males were so pissed they walked off their jobs, even if it meant the threat of poverty/starvation, because they had to assert male power and bring the renegade womyn back. Truly a troubled time. Our hero and now a second closeted trans hero conclude that the camp is "exclusionary" for rich white ladies only. Why did God tell her to come here? Our hero asks. Maybe he didn't. (Is it a he? Does heshe even exist?) Personally I think if he did want her to come here, maybe it was in the interest of tolerance and diversity and, you know, not being a f***ing moron who gets triggered over f***ing moronic things and thinks white people are always up to no good. Just a thought.

Anyway, after a conversation about what had to be the female-ness of God (do you remember talking about this all the time at camp when you were a kid? The go-to hot topic, I know) the trans heroes consider ways to sabotage the ceremony, such as "fake speak in tongues and trash the founders" or "replace all the rocks in the rock circle with rocks that look like butts." We will never actually see this ceremony, but in the end we do get an out. In the campfire talk that night before heading up to the shrine, the counselor briefly mentions the personal lives of the brave womyn and how some of them were "very close friends" with each other. You know where this is going. I can read between the lines here. Now that we have some potential pioneer lesbian action goin' on here, the unspoken understanding is that maybe these womyn weren't such evil slaveownin' straight folk after all. The uneasy truce between the feminist-LGBT axis carries us to the credits.

I give it a 2/10 solely for entertainment value. Unlike The Awakening, which remains down there on my worst books of all time list, I didn't want to chuck this one out the window. I wanted to know what happened next! I was amused at what'd happen, compared to monkeys in a room writing gibberish aiming at Shakespeare, what would happen if you put a retard in a room with some pencils. Actually now that I've brought up The Awakening, maybe it's the same reason I hated The Last of Us. The independent womyn kills herself, and the so-called hero shoots up people working on the only potential cure for an infection. You just rendered all the stuff before that worthless! What was the point? Why did you make this? If you want to tell a story, something should actually happen! There needs to be some progress here. Don't make the whole effort useless via unlikeable characters who just do themselves in at the end. You waste everyone's time.

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Recent reads:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Runaways volume 3
Big Bratty Book of Bart Simpson
The Tick: The Naked City
And a computer joke book from the 80s with Steve Wozniak as the co-author. Woz's past experience was with a dial-a-joke program. I wanted to see its outdatedness, which was there, but it's also just a lot of sex jokes where they changed the setting to a tech office or conference.

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Here's some old Boys Life quotes from the first issue:

"In the old days the missionaries were the scouts of America, and their rules were very much the same as the scout law which we have now. We are descendants, and we ought to keep up their good name and follow in their steps."

"If every boy works hard at scouting and really learns all that it teaches him, he will, at the end of it, have some claim to call himself a real man, and will find, if he ever goes on service, or to a colony, that he will have no difficulty in looking after himself and in being really useful to his country."

"Has it ever occurred to you how much greater the unseen powers of the world are than those which are seen? How small is the power of a steam engine when compared with the unseen power of gravitation...Now, the power which you need for your life is to be found in yourself. No self-development will produce it. That power is away in God, but it can be obtained by you through faith in Him, through Jesus Christ."

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A few essays from this book...T.S. Eliot's critique of humanism (or at least, the form of it put forth by some at the time). Eliot came in as supportive but critical of the ideology's weaknesses, which are to be seen below. He didn't see humanism as in opposition to religion.

The Humanism of Irving Babbitt (1927)

"It is proverbially easier to destroy than to construct; and as a corollary of this proverb, it is easier for readers to apprehend the destructive than the constructive side of an author's thought."

"Mr. Babbitt is a stout upholder of tradition and continuity, and he knows...that the Christian religion is an essential part of the history of our race. Humanism and religion are thus, as historical facts, by no means parallel; humanism has been sporadic, but Christianity continuous. It is quite irrelevant to conjecture the possible development of the European races without Christianity - to imagine, that is, a tradition of humanism equivalent to the actual tradition of Christianity...we must use our heredity, instead of denying it. The religious habits of the race are still very strong, in all places, at all times, and for all people. There is no humanistic habit: humanism is, I think, merely the state of mind of a few persons in a few places at a few times. To exist at all, it is dependent upon some other attitude, for it is essentially critical - I would even say parasitical."

"Humanism is either an alternative to religion, or is ancillary to it. To my mind, it always flourishes most when religion has been strong; and if you find examples of humanism which are anti-religious, or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time, then such humanism is purely destructive, for it has never found anything to replace what is destroyed. Any religion, of course, is for ever in danger of petrification into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion. It is only renewed and refreshed by an awakening of feeling and fresh devotion, or by the critical reason. The latter may be the part of the humanist. But if so, then the function of humanism, though necessary, is secondary. You cannot make humanism itself into a religion."

"we may be allowed to inquire whither all this modernity and experimenting is going to lead...What is the higher will to will, if there is nothing either 'anterior, exterior, or superior' to the individual? If this will is to have anything on which to operate, it must be in relation to external objects and to objective values."

"And unless by civilization you mean material progress, cleanliness, etc...if you mean spiritual and intellectual coordination on a high level, then it is doubtful whether civilization can endure without religion, and religion without a church."

Second Thoughts on Humanism (1929)

"My objection is that the humanist makes use, in his separation of the 'human' from the 'natural,' of that 'supernatural' which he denies. For I am convinced that if this 'supernatural' is suppressed...the dualism of man and nature collapses at once. Man is man because he can recognize supernatural realities, not because he can invent them. Either everything in man can be traced as a development from below, or something must come from above. There is no avoiding that dilemma: you must be either a naturalist or a supernaturalist. If you remove from the word 'human' all that the belief in the supernatural has given to man, you can view him finally as no more than an extremely clever, adaptable, and mischievous little animal."

"The teaching of philosophy to young men who have no background in humanistic education, the teaching of Plato and Aristotle to youths who know no Greek and are completely ignorant of ancient history, is one of the tragic farces of American education. We reap the whirlwind of pragmatists, behaviorists, etc."

"Mr. Foerster is what I call a Heretic: that is, a person who seizes upon a truth and pushes it to the point at which it becomes a falsehood. In his hands, Humanism becomes something else, something more dangerous...I wish to distinguish the functions of true Humanism from those imposed upon it by zealots."

"Humanism is (a) by itself, in the 'pure humanist,' who will not set up humanism as a substitute for philosophy and religion, and (b) as a mediative and corrective ingredient in a positive civilization founded on definite belief."

"Most people suppose that some people, because they enjoy the luxury of Christian sentiments and the excitement of Christian ritual, swallow or pretend to swallow incredible dogma. For some the process is exactly opposite...intellectual freedom is earlier and easier than complete spiritual freedom."

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Frederick Douglass: America's Prophet by D.H. Dilbeck.

The book deals with Douglass's faith life and religious arguments against slavery. Douglass did not support any institution, churches included, that remained silent on slavery or didn't take a stand against it for fear of offending slaveowners. Douglass came from the school of divine retribution here: the US could not afford to sit back and wait for gradual reform as slaves suffered, it could not prolong and perpetuate slavery, or it invited judgment upon itself.

SPOILER: Click to show

"He thundered words of judgment to a nation blithely traversing a wicked path. 'The hypocrisy of a nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced."

"A spirit of scorn and hope equally defined the sort of prophetic religion that Douglass embraced. He derided Americans for their stubborn wickedness and warned of imminent judgment, but he also affirmed God's grace for those who repented...Ancient Hebrew prophets like Isaiah stood apart from institutions of political and religious power and called them to account for their hypocrisy and oppression...in his fight against slavery and racial discrimination and inequality, Douglass endeavored to fulfill precisely this sort of prophetic calling in America."

Family values: "Douglass drew on his theology to condemn slavery for destroying slave families...slavery tried to smother those natural feelings of affection and destroy the ties that normally united families. Frederick had never seen his siblings before he arrived at Wye house as a six-year old. 'Brothers and sisters we were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers'...his mother, like so many enslaved women, 'had many children, but no family!'...In this way, slavery stood grossly contrary to the natural order established by God's will...Douglass would employ many arguments against slavery. But the one that moved him most deeply was the cruel fact that slavery disregarded 'all just ideas of the sacredness of the family, as an institution."

The murder of Denby the "unmanageable slave," along with the murders of other slaves that went unpunished, demonstrated to Douglass that slavery as an institution rested on "the reckless disregard of human life."

"Why were so many people trapped in bondage? 'It was not color, but crime, not God, but man, that afforded the true definition of the existence of slavery,' Frederick reckoned. He blamed this enslavement not on an indifferent or malicious God but on human beings freely acting in greedy, oppressive, evil ways...God had not ordained these Africans to be slaves from birth. They were born free, and only later - due to the avarice of other men - were they enslaved."

On the flip side of this: "'What man can make, man can unmake.' If slavery was not part of God's inescapable will, but a mere human invention, then perhaps it could be abolished. Just as evil men had made slavery, so too might righteous men abolish it."

Douglass also believed that Providence had brought him out of the Lloyd plantation and to Baltimore: "'a special interposition of divine Providence' the first of many indications that God had 'marked my life with so many favors.'" Ten years later in My Bondage and My Freedom, he repeated "there was something more intelligent than chance, and something more certain than luck" or as Hamlet said "There is divinity that shapes our ends / Rough hew them how we will." Douglass remarked "This good spirit was from God...and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise."

It was here that Frederick was inspired to read by the Bible - having heard the suffering of Job. "Why do the righteous suffer and the evil prosper?" Wishing to learn more, Frederick asked Sophia Auld (a prominent Methodist) to teach him how to read. But when Hugh found out, he demanded that the lessons end immediately: "'If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell,' so it was best simply to teach him only the will of his master. 'Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world,' Hugh continued, because slaves who knew how to read, especially the Bible, became 'disconsolate and unhappy.' They would inevitably try to run away." Frederick concluded that this was the way for him to escape slavery.

Frederick would continue to spell using a stick in the dirt in the Auld shipyard, and would keep hidden copies of Webster's spelling book and Methodist hymnals. Anything he could gather from scraps and fragments. "Frederick came to believe that the Bible, like literacy, contained immense power to set a slave free. The Aulds taught Frederick this lesson by doing all they could to keep him illiterate...(But) nothing could keep Frederick from the Bible and from learning to read." Frederick regarded it as the height of hypocrisy to show up at church on Sunday, but oppress slaves the rest of the week - and deny them access to sacred scripture.

Next to the Bible, the second big influence on Frederick's early life was the Columbian Orator: a common textbook at the time which, importantly, contained lengthy excerpts on liberty and democracy. "Collectively, they offered Frederick an answer to the great question of his childhood: Why am I a slave? They corroborated answer Frederick had first reached at the Lloyd plantation: God ordained no one to slavery. Human oppression and wickedness alone created and sustained the institution."

The big chapter for Frederick was "Dialogue Between a Master and Slave," in which a runaway slave is caught and prodded by his master to explain himself. The slave ends up shooting down the master's arguments for slavery one by one, and is so effective that the master decides to free him. As if to confirm to Frederick that the wicked rationalized their evil deeds by claiming this was how the world worked - "It is in the order of Providence that one man should become subservient to another" (an argument Frederick had heard before in his life) - the slave's response was "The robber who puts a pistol to your breast may make just the same plea." Slavery was not an institution set up by God. It was set up and enforced by wicked men against the natural will that all men are born free.

Frederick officially converted to Christianity at 13. "Frederick found liberating truth in the Christian gospel, as a sinner and a slave...for he discerned in its precepts, when rightly understood, a powerful witness against slavery, hypocrisy, and oppression." Frederick never forgot the message he had heard from a minister named Hanson: "He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God...that they were, by nature, rebels against His government; and that they must repent or their sins, and be reconciled to God, through Christ." What appealed to Frederick was the sort of radical equality of this message: slaveholders were not more correct or authoritative than their slaves.

At this time Frederick continued searching the gutters of Baltimore for anything he could get, meticulously cleaning any passages from the Bible that he found in order to gain "a word or two of wisdom." Frederick also forged a close friendship with another member of the church, Charles Lawson, who Douglass would refer to as his "spiritual father." Lawson, the most devout man Frederick saw in his life, would pray without ceasing. "His life was a life of prayer, and his words...were about a better world," Douglass wrote. Frederick would spend many hours with him on Sundays, "singing, praying and glorifying God." When the Aulds found out what Frederick was doing, Hugh told him to stop making visits to Lawson under threat of whippings - but Frederick continued anyway.

It was Lawson who told Frederick that he was destined for more in life than slavery - and that "the Lord had planned for the boy to accomplish a great work." Therefore "He must be ready to preach the true gospel to a people that needed to hear it...which meant Frederick should continue to diligently study the Bible." When Frederick lamented that he felt the situation was hopeless and he would remain a slave for life, Lawson told him "'The Lord can make you free.' If you want liberty, Lawson said, 'ask the Lord for it, in faith,' and he will provide." Douglass would later note that Lawson had changed his entire "character and destiny."

Frederick would go on to help start a Sabbath school, which was almost immediately stormed by slaveowners in its second meeting. A white mob rushed the house where the group had met, demanding that no further lessons take place. Frederick could not believe how this mob included supposedly respected members of the community, and could not understand why they so angrily reacted to the idea of "simply teaching a few colored children how to read the gospel of the son of God." Douglass wrote that slavemasters actually preferred their slaves "to drink whiskey, to wrestle, to fight and to do other unseemly things" rather than read the word of God. It was at this point that Frederick was whipped and eventually sent away to be "broken" by Edward Covey. Covey claimed he could put an end to "troublesome" slaves, and owners sent their slaves to him in an arrangement that meant cheap labor for his own farm.

On top of Covey's cruelty, Frederick could not comprehend the man's immorality in other areas. Covey owned one slave, as "a breeder" - prompting Frederick to question how Covey could shamelessly promote "undisguised and unmitigated fornication, as a means of increasing his human stock." Covey further convinced Frederick through his actions that slavery was a wicked institution that thoroughly corrupted a man's moral sensibilities. Covey failed to "break" Frederick, who fought back (and could have been executed for it), and Douglass would later speculate that the only reason he was kept alive was because Covey didn't want to admit he had failed - which would've ended his reputation as a "negro breaker."

Back in Baltimore, Frederick would join up with some free black caulkers to form the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, a debate club. He would also stop attending the Bethel African Methodist Church after an open letter from their leadership that denounced abolitionists - claiming William Lloyd Garrison and others were "hot-headed zealots" who threatened to "plunge the country into anarchy and discord." The African Methodists had released this statement out of fear that if they did not, slavers would attack them in the same way they had already attacked abolitionists. It was an act of survival, but it was something Frederick could not accept - slavery's grip so toxic that it could corrupt and undermine even African American churches.

Frederick would later attend a camp revival meeting 12 miles outside of Baltimore and remained an extra night, meaning his weekly payment to the Aulds would be later than normal. This decision brought further punishment from the Aulds and meant the end of what little autonomy Frederick had gained from hiring himself out. It was at this point that Frederick decided to run away. After a harrowing escape to New York City via Philadelphia, Frederick remarked "The chain was severed; God and right stood vindicated."

Just as Douglass had become disappointed with churches that failed to stand against slavery, he found similar problems even within the north (and in England, later on). The Methodists blocked Douglass and other blacks from sitting in the main floor - they were segregated in the balcony. They told Douglass that they needed to do this because if a not-yet-converted white person came in and saw integrated seating, he might get "offended" and leave the church. Douglass tolerated this for a time, but then saw that even during communion and special events - when only church members were present - blacks were still segregated to their corner. Only after whites were done, the minister would say condescendingly "Come forward, colored friends!-come forward! You, too, have an interest in the blood of Christ. God is no respecter of persons." Douglass left and never returned.

Also at this time, Douglass made a subscription to The Liberator and it immediately "took its place with me next to the bible." Douglass "came to believe that the abolitionist movement embodied all that was best about the Christian faith, rightly understood. He hoped that by somehow joining the abolitionist cause he might truly live out the faith he proclaimed."

William Lloyd Garrison had his own brand of abolitionism: the abolitionist movement, of course, was made up of its own factions, who debated with each other the best course of action: political action, rhetoric, violence, or some combination of the three. Garrison was of the "moral suasion" camp - it was only by appealing to morality that hearts and minds would be won over to abolitionism - a great moral awakening against the barbarism of slavery. Garrison famously referred to the constitution as a "pact with hell" that abolitionists had to reject outright, meaning any sort of political action within the existing system would not be productive - for it meant compromising your principles to run within a political order where slavery was the established rule.

Douglass admitted The Liberator as "a paper after my own heart" in its demands for immediate abolition of slavery. Like the Columbian Orator, it was another source of moral arguments against slavery. To Garrison, Douglass wrote, "Not only was Sunday a Sabbath, but all days were Sabbaths, and to be kept holy." At the AME Zion church in New Bedford, Douglass began speaking publicly against racism and slavery. Douglass later recalled that he believed the antislavery cause would triumph due to the "God of Israel," and "the Almighty Disposer of the hearts of men" who would guide mankind to emancipation.

In support of Garrison's moral suasion arguments, Douglass would often ask the crowd to name a single thing that the state government has ever done "that has caused you to recognize my humanity." Not only had the political establishment failed to act, even if it HAD acted, enforcement is another thing entirely (we will see this later on after slavery when the north backs off, and Jim Crow returns to the south). It is only though the moral efforts of abolitionists like Douglass that minds were changed on an individual level. No piece of legislation could do this. It was only possible through "a great moral and religious movement." Abolitionists must continue "the simple proclamation of the word of Truth, and in faith believing that the God of truth will give it success."

Douglass also joined in with Garrison in denouncing the constitution as a covenant with death. "God says thou shalt not oppress: the Constitution says oppress: which will you serve, God or man?" Douglass also drew from the Bible, comparing slaveholders to "the ancient scribes and Pharisees." As Christ said in the gospel of Matthew, "They bind heavy burdens...and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." Douglass refused to accept that abolitionists were heretics while the hypocrites were orthodox - it was the other way around. For Christ "poured all his blood on Cavalry, cared for my rights - cared for me equally with any white master." All one needed to know to condemn slavery was the Golden Rule. "I love that religion which is from above, without partiality or hypocrisy - that religion based upon that broad, that world-embracing principle, 'That whatever you would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." The answer to the slavery problem was "salvation and purification," starting within the church itself. "If Christianity were allowed to have a full and fair hearing, slavery would be abolished for ever."

"I have been asked if I supposed the slavery of the United States would ever be abolished. It might as well be asked of me if God sat on his throne in heaven. So sure as truth is stronger than error, so sure as right is better than wrong, so sure as religion is better than infidelity, so sure must slavery of every form in every land become extinct." But it would not be acceptable for men to just sit by and wait - they must honor God by joining in and endorsing abolition. Douglass also told an audience in England that "I do not believe that a slave owner can be a Christian."

Once Douglass began his own paper, the North Star, he was surprised to find that Garrison and other members of the American Anti-Slavery Society opposed the move. Not only did they wish to keep him on in their Society's fold as a lecturer, the moral suasion faction opposed Douglass's growing support for political action (he would soon go on to attend meetings of what became the Free-Soil party). Douglass was soon relieved of his position within the Society as a lecturer. Douglass also began to accept that violence was an option, and that the constitution was not the "pact with hell" that Garrison claimed it was. Douglass would go on to support the right to vote (Garrison had said don't bother), and believed that the constitution, though containing compromises with slave-owning states, was not a pro-slavery document. In fact, "Douglass came closer to embracing an interpretation of the Constitution as antislavery once he accepted that the foundational principles of the document - ever-present in its text - stood utterly contrary to slavery."

Just as Douglass viewed the Bible as "faith, hope, and charity sparked on every page, all of which deal death to slavery," he came around to viewing the constitution in the same light. Not only did he print these arguments in the North Star, he caused a scandal by making them at an annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The same year, the Society wanted to pass a resolution withdrawing its endorsement from any paper that argued the constitution was anything but a pro-slavery document. Douglass pointed out to stunned attendees that this would mean the Society would have to drop its endorsement of his own paper. The resolution passed anyway with Garrison's backing, and his argument against Douglass that "there is roguery somewhere," as if some outside interest had gotten to Douglass and he hadn't taken this stance on his own, further damaged Douglass's relationship with Garrisonian abolitionists.

Where Douglass had once told a crowd "I am not a man of war...I would not hurt a hair of a slaveholder's head," his position against violence began to change after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Anyone in the US, slave or free state, any citizen or US Marshal was now required to assist in hunting down fugitives - with large fines or prison for those who refused. This Act, Douglass noted, was the nationalism of slavery, as it meant "all the powers of the American government" would be brought against the people. Douglass saw no other way than violent resistance against the law. "I am a peace man" but under these extraordinary circumstances, the response should be "bodily harm if they come here, and attempt to carry men off into bondage." Douglass predicted that "two or three dead slaveholders will make this law a dead letter."

"Douglass further contended that (violent) resistance to an unjust law was a truly moral action, a way of 'doing God's service.' He also unapologetically concluded that the 'slaveholder has no right to live.'" After an escaped slave from Georgia named Thomas Sims was captured and sent back into slavery by a Boston court, Douglass argued "In these troubled times no colored man should be without arms in his house, if not upon his person."

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Frederick Douglass: America's Prophet part 2

SPOILER: Click to show

"A law that cannot be executed but by exposing the officers authorized to execute it to deadly peril, cannot long stand."

Douglass became involved in resisting the Fugitive Slave laws during the Christiana incident: William Parker, a former slave and farmer near Christiana, PA, brought in several fugitive slaves who escaped from Maryland. The slavemaster and several US marshals descended on the farm. Parker refused to turn the fugitives over and told his wife to get help from the neighbors. In the fight that ensued the slavemaster was shot, Parker escaped with two fugitive slaves, and made his way north until he arrived at Douglass's home - where he gave Douglass the gun he had used to kill the slavemaster.

Douglass soon after defended the incident as self-defense against those who would deprive another man of his liberty. "The man who rushes out of the orbit of his own rights, to strike down the rights of another...does, by that act, divest himself of the right to live; if he be shot down, his punishment is just." Douglass wrote that if Parker was wrong to act the way he did, "the whole structure of the world's theory of right and wrong is a lie." By violently breaking the man-made Fugitive Slave law, Douglass upheld the higher natural law, instituted by God. "I believe that the lines of eternal justice are sometimes so obliterated by a course of long continued oppression that it is necessary to revive them by deepening their traces with the blood of a tyrant."

"Douglass considered the Fugitive Slave act a dire threat to religious liberty in America because it effectively made it illegal to truly live like Christ...the law criminalized any true attempt 'to carry out the principles of Christianity,' Douglass said..." Christ called for his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for the stranger, but the slavers had made "it penal to obey Christ." The law outlawed "the fundamental principles of Christianity" and no believer could submit to this act. "I do not believe that human enactments are to be obeyed when they are point blank against the laws of the living God."

Douglass quoted from Scripture during his Fourth of July speech: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." Douglass felt as if his performance was being viewed the same way, and that the time for his philosophical/moral arguments against slavery were over. It was time to trade the argumentation of a philosopher with the condemnation of a prophet: "At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument is needed...For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. The Fugitive Slave act were "fiendish and shocking," unprecedented "in he annals of tyrannical legislation." The act "nationalized" slavery and robbed men everywhere of liberty. Any so-called Christian leader who did not see this by now was either "stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent." Ending on a note of hope, Douglass stated "I do not despair of this country" as there were "forces in operation, which must inevitably work in the downfall of slavery." These included the "great principles" of the Declaration of Independence, the moral movement against slavery, and divine providence.

By 1853, Douglass remarked he was both hopeful and fearful for the future. With the Fugitive Slave act, slaveholders seemed to be making slavery into a permanent - even respectable - institution. The state, the press, even churches were either under the control of slavers, or intimidated into silence. Douglass remained confident, however, that slavery would fall. When civil war broke out, he wrote "however timid men at this junction may alternate between hope and fear, one thing is certain - slavery is a doomed institution." The slaveholders were sealing their fate after their secession. But before the day of slavery's end, "the land may yet be drenched in human blood." God would use the conflict to bring about slavery's demise. "Douglass also considered it his duty...to call the loyal citizenry to atone for slavery and take part in its destruction. If America failed to do so, Douglass warned, a wrathful God would surely bring upon the nation apocalyptic judgment and destruction." Douglass previously wrote "all the truths in the whole universe of God are allied to our cause." Every human, created in God's image, had a right to liberty. "I recognize an arm stronger than any human arm, and an intelligence higher than any human intelligence, guarding and guiding this Anti-Slavery cause, through all the dangers and perils that beset it."

The time had come for northerners to stand uncompromisingly against slavery, insisting that it had no moral or constitutional basis. "Slavery, like rape, robbery, piracy or murder, has no right to exist in any part of the world." Likewise, the Fugitive Slave act was "against the plainest dictates of the Christian religion." A choice had to be made: "The banner of God and liberty, and the bloody flag of slavery and chains shall then swing from our respective battlements and rally under them our respective armies, and let the inquiry go forth now, as of old, Who is on the Lord's side?"

"Truth is eternal. Like the great God from whose throne it emanates, it is from everlasting unto everlasting, and can never pass away...the wisdom of that great God, who has promised to overrule the wickedness of men for His own glory - to confound the wisdom of the crafty and bring to naught the counsels of the ungodly." Douglass had on his mind the activist Supreme Court and the Dred Scott case, in which Taney not only denied standing, rights and citizenship to the man before him, but also went further and decided to strike down the Missouri Compromise, saying that the expansion of slavery could not be blocked anywhere. This was a direct attempt to undercut the Republican party on one of its foundational principles. Douglass again turned to Scripture: "David, you know, looked small and insignificant when going to meet Goliath...but looked larger when he had slain his foe." Slavery had the politicians and the judges, but abolitionists had the Lord on their side. Therefore "My hopes were never brighter than now" Douglass declared. "The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world. It is very great, but the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater...(Taney) cannot reverse the decision of the Most High. He cannot change the essential nature of things - making evil good, and good evil." Douglass referred to the court's decision as "an open rebellion against God's government" and by rejecting the liberty of humans created in the image and likeness of God, the court attempted to "undo what God has done." God would not allow the decision to stand. "All that is merciful and just, on earth and in Heaven, will execrate and despise this edict of Taney." Regardless of the court, "slavery is a doomed system."

Douglass and John Brown: the two first met in 1847 and Douglass remarked "Certainly I never felt myself in the presence of a stronger religious influence than while in this man's house." After Brown's hanging in 1859, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Brown would "make the gallows glorious like the cross." Douglass also praised him as a "noble, heroic, and Christian martyr" who followed the Golden Rule. Brown "translated into heroic deeds the love of liberty and hatred of tyrants." By this time Douglass had come closer to Brown's point of view: "Moral considerations have long been exhausted on slaveholders" and slavery "shields itself behind might, rather than right." Brown realized that slavery "must be met with its own weapons" and "attacked slaver with the weapons precisely adapted to bring it to the death." Since slaveholders "have neither ears nor hearts for the appeals of justice and humanity" only the fear of death would bring about emancipation. Despite his opposition to the dissolution of the Union, Douglass had no tears to shed when civil war broke out. Instead his reply was "God be praised!"

Despite this, the Union was still not committed to emancipation - but "events mightier than the Government (are) bringing about that result." Emancipation had gone from a national duty to a national necessity. Woe to the nation if it did not adopt emancipation, for if the state hardened its heart "it needs no prophet to foretell our doom." The Civil War was the latest in the eternal, cosmic struggle between "right and wrong, good and evil, liberty and slavery, truth and falsehood, the glorious light of love, and the appalling darkness of human selfishness and sin." The Union must trample slavery and avoid repeating the errors of a "long list of ruined nationalities and Empire, which have forgotten that righteousness alone exalteth a nation, and that violated justice will surely bring destruction." The Union could only succeed by attacking slavery, "the primal cause of that war."

But even at the start of the Civil War, Douglass argued that Americans had collectively "plunged our souls into new and unfathomed depths of sin, to conciliate the favor and secure the loyalty of the slaveholding class." Even now when war broke out, there were conciliatory forces at work. But even if the Union did not pursue emancipation at the start, "the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end." God almighty would "defend the right" and bring about slavery's downfall. "Providence will bring freedom to the slave out of this Civil War."

When Douglass visited Maryland after its emancipation, he pushed further for the right of black men to vote and hold elective office. In eradicating slavery, Maryland placed itself "in harmony with the eternal laws of the moral universe." But by denying the vote, former slave states could fall out of harmony again. "One of the great evils of our country (is) to limit eternal and universal principles," falling short of our Creator's will and the sentiments for the rights of all men found within our own founding documents.

After victory and emancipation, the American Anti-Slavery Society met to formally abolish the group, as its mission had been accomplished. Wendell Philips, president and and the meeting's first speaker, advised those in attendance to "thank God, and throw their strengths into other channels." Members prayed and sang hymns, passing additional resolutions. "One of the resolutions expressly thanked God for bringing to completion the work of emancipation." In fact the gathering was so fervent in their beliefs that when Douglass spoke, they thought he didn't thank God enough: "I like to thank men. I like to thank the people I see...I want to express my love of God and gratitude to God, by thanking those faithful men and women, who have devoted the great energies of their souls to the welfare of mankind. It is only through such men and women that I can get any glimpses of God anywhere." While many praised Douglass, some thought he had stepped in it. A group of AME clergy and laity in Philadelphia responded, "While we love Frederick Douglass, we love the truth more. We admire Frederick Douglass, but we love God more." At issue to them was Douglass's decision to focus his remarks on the men and women in attendance, who he seemed to be thanking more than God. But this was not Douglass's intention. 20 years later, Douglass put it better: "While I believe there are eternal forces in motion, carrying on the course of truth and justice in the world, still, when I am looking around to give thanks, I recognize a two-fold duty, to express gratitude to God and to good men - who are God in the flesh."

Later on, Douglass would be the only man at the Seneca Falls convention to speak in favor of womens suffrage, and helped secure its narrow formal approval by the convention. Douglass continued to speak out against injustice, and condemned the courts yet again when the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875: "defeating the manifest purpose of the Constitution, nullifying the Fourteenth Amendment, and placing itself on the side of prejudice, proscription, and persecution."

Reflecting on Jim Crow in 1890: "I have seen dark hours in my life, and I have seen the darkness gradually disappearing and the light gradually increasing...And I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that whatever delays, whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty, and humanity will ultimately prevail." On lynching: It's evidence is either an evidence of governmental depravity, or of a demoralized state of society." Douglass also refused to accept the label of "the Negro problem" as the politicians and press referred to it. "There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own Constitution."

"At the heart of Douglass's condemnation of the racial violence of the Jim Crow era was a simple but searing point: People who routinely lynched fellow human beings were not Christians." To the lynch mobs, The sacredness of life which ordinary men feel does not touch them anywhere."

However, Douglass remained optimistic. In one of his later speeches he rejected the notion by others that the world remained in a fixed struggle balanced between good and evil, or even worse, that it gave in to evil over time. Douglass said that known facts, experience, and "the essential nature of man" proved this was not so: mankind moved on an upward trajectory. "The moral government of the universe is on our side...and cooperates, with all honest efforts, to lift up the down-trodden and oppressed in all lands, whether the oppressed be white or black."

On the self-made man: "men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position," succeeding despite "open and derisive defiance of all the efforts of society." Often self-educated, to the scorn of elites and gatekeepers in the establishment. "If they have travelled far, they have made the road on which they travelled. If they have ascended high, they have built their own ladder...We may explain success by one word, and that word is WORK!" And in a remark familiar to my own Catholic heart: "faith, in the absence of work, seems to be worth little, if anything." For example, a preacher does not pray for knowledge - he works to attain it.

Douglass said that he wrote his autobiographies not only to speak for his fellow former slaves, but to inspire them. Now free of the slaver institution that sought to keep them ignorant and impoverished, they could make something of themselves in this world, and it was up to black Americans to stand up for themselves: "Neither institutions nor friends can make a race to stand unless it has strength in its own legs." Douglass was essentially telling black men to become self-made. "Races, like individuals, must stand or fall by their own merits." And despite the continued lynchings and other efforts to keep human beings down, he remained optimistic: I am consoled with the thought that God reigns in eternity - and that deliverance will finally come."

Douglass spent the last day of his life at the National Council of Women, formed by many veterans of the womens rights movement and dedicated "to the overthrow of all forms of ignorance and injustice, and the application of the Golden Rule to society, custom and law." Douglass collapsed later that day. Eulogies: Jeremiah Rankin. "a great-hearted, generous, forgiving natured soul, which feared not the face of man and believed in the living God," a man "whose foundations of truth and righteousness were established in God," and deeply marked by "the spirit of God's kingdom." Jenifer (former slave): Freedom to Mr. Douglass meant not only freedom of the person. He believed in and was a brilliant champion for the vast liberty of the soul."

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Venomnibus has arrived. Aww yeah!

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So our symbiote children did way worse than Separation Anxiety. Here they kinda lump together and get pwned by a degenerative laser all at once. Venom goes on to have bad luck in Funeral Pyre, though not as bad as the other guy.

James Bond: Scorpius and Super Mario Adventures

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Whoever was drawing for Daredevil during this time, was not good at it. Neither was the writing.

Venom vs. Iron Man? Better!

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The Heathen Handbook

*opens to a random page*

"The Pros and Cons of Caring About Other People"

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Jurassic Park and the Lost World - better than the movies, and they contain some great passages on the errors, limitations and ultimate folly of modern science.