Taking Over the World.

Albert Beveridge's 1898 speech "The March of the Flag" is nothing short of terrifying. In this address, Beveridge became the ultimate American stereotype, the kind of American whose existence we all would like to deny. "The March of the Flag" could easily serve as a master list of the evils of imperialism, yet it was written and meant to be read as a glowing admiration. Beveridge campaigns for slavery, he establishes Americans as people with "the most masterful blood in history," and he names God as the reason behind his advocacy for militaristic imperialism. If I were to close my eyes while listening to the speech, my mind could not help itself from conjuring up an image of a loud, moustached man with an arm band, gesturing angrily into a crowd of thousands; in this speech, Beveridge turned himself into Hitler and a young America into the Third Reich.

Part of the absurdity of the speech comes from the fact that it was a campaign speech: this is what Beveridge spewed out to the public in hopes of proving that he is ready to serve. The fact that he was elected, and served as Senator of Indiana from 1899-1911, is a sad testament to the mindset of his peers. To be patriotic is one thing; to refer to America as "His chosen people" is another. To support economic growth is one thing; to claim that our people must be "revitalized by the virile, manproducing workingfolk of all earth" is another. To share knowledge across the globe is one thing; to assert that most parts of the globe are not "capable of self-government" is another.

The Platform of the American Anti-Imperialism, published in 1899, points out the irony of our nation's obsession with Imperialism. Had a mere century of freedom made Americans forget why we fought for independence in the first place? When did stop becoming the child who was oppressed by its parent and start claiming our superiority over the entire globe? As pointed out in an ancient American document called The Declaration of Independence, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. Just as England tried to rule the American Colonies without consent, Albert Beveridge is suggesting that we take control of independent countries across the globe. The irony of the whole thing is, Beveridge still had the audacity to refer to America as "the sovereign factor of the peace of the world."

Declaration of [White, male, land-owning] Independence

"To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony." -Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass' speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" made me think back to elementary school when I first studied the Declaration of Independence, memorizing the preamble set to music and even learning a choreographed dance to "I'm Just a Bill." I remember how excited we were made to feel about the document, how impressed we were supposed to be with the persistence of American colonists in an epic battle against the evil and formidable King George. When I thought of our independence, I thought of fireworks and freedom, barbeques and the national anthem. Frederick Douglass' words bring to mind the truth about our nation's birth: that it was founded upon hypocrisy.

I just read an article called "The Afrocentric Idea in Education" by Molefi Kete Asante for my African Diaspora class which has a lot to say about this hypocrisy. Asante speaks out against our Eurocentric educational system, pointing out American students grow up learning half-truths about the country in which they live. We spend months commending the brave frontiersmen who headed west and risked their lives to improve our country, but we tend to stear away from too intense of a focus on the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans who our government killed along the way. We are quick to applaud the spine and ingenuity of our founding fathers, but we never discuss the fact that most of them owned slaves. Students in the United States are taught that this government was born after freeing itself from a tyrant, but they are not taught that our government was, itself, a tyrant. I am not saying that our educational system does not touch upon slavery or injustice, but I am saying that the study of these ideas in comparison to the more attractive aspects of our history is extremely disproportionate.

J.S. Mill: A Hardcore Liberal

"Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." -John Stuart Mill

Reading J.S. Mill was refreshing because he focused so heavily on an idea that is often forgotten in ideologies: the individual. In On Liberty, he lays out the groundwork for any society that wishes to be truly free and he starts and ends with individual sovereignty. Mill debunks any formerly accepted notion of the derivation of an authority's right to rule: it does not come from some unearthly force or superior intellect or bloodline--the only justification for holding power over others is to protect them. This is a strange and radical idea, and my first thoughts were of concern about how authoritarians could use it to their advantage. Who decides if a people needs protection? Who decides how best to go about protecting them? A religious leader might think he is offering God's protection by mandating an acceptance of Christianity, but would the Muslims agree? Hitler used propaganda to give off the message that he had the best interests of humanity at heart--would we not all be safer and happier in a world inhabited solely by a superior race? Offering a people protection involves something of a judgment call; it involves identifying one group as the helpless, and the other as the helper. In fact, Mill goes so far as the say that "despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians." I was turned off by this statement because it seemed as though Mill was falling into the idealist's trap of dictating the path to Eutopia while simultaneously mandating the destruction of all those who think differently. In actuality, Mill goes on to define a barbarian society as one in which "mankind have become [incapable] of being improved by free and equal discussion." This statement seemed amost impossibly liberal; instead of perscribing the name 'barbarian' to any society that has not seen the light of the Only Religion or any society that has not embraced the power of Technology, Mill's 'barbarian' is a society in which people do not have the right to disagree.

While he discusses the policies of punishment for those who impede the rights and freedom of others, I was most interested in the fact that Mill does not write about any regulations of non-disruptive individualism. He establishes the "region of human liberty" as the "absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment" (with which he includes "the liberty of expressing and publishing opinions"), "liberty of tastes and pursuits," and the "freedom to unite." As an American, these concepts strike a familiar tone: Mill has just outlined the concept of the natural rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and shared in the sentiment of freedom of speech. "No society," he says, "in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free."