Primary Documents
- 01. Declaration of Independence
- 02. Constitution of the United States
- 03. Dred Scott Decision (Abridged)
- 04. Dred Scott Decision (Full Text)
- 05. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
- 06. William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" Speech
- 07. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Speech
- 08. Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society Speech"
- 09. Barack Obama's "We the People" Speech
- 10. Declaration of the Rights of Man (France,1789)
- 11. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Author Archives: richardbaldwin
IT CAN HAPPEN HERE U.S. politics today are not democratic politics. Economic power is political power, and in the United States many of the holders of economic power have ceased to engage in democratic politics. Raw economic power has transformed … Continue reading
Enough Talk about Race
Enough Talk about Race Chief Justice Roger Taney’s 1857 decision in the Dred Scott case shifted the national discussion from slavery to race, and we’ve been talking about race ever since. Group therapy to deal with our personal discriminations … Continue reading
Posted in Dignity, Economy, Equality
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Trump Is Truth about America
I peered into the abyss last night and saw that Trump is the Truth. By that I mean that he is the personification of the collapse of the constitutional invention of 1787. To answer Lincoln’s implicit question, a government “conceived … Continue reading
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Gerald Horne’s “The Counter-Revolution of 1776”
Gerald Horne’s basic thesis is implicit in his title: the real revolution of the 1770s was the British turn against slavery represented by the Somerset case of 1772, and the rebellion in the North American colonies was a counter-revolutionary reaction … Continue reading
RACIAL CONFLICT AND OUR NATIONAL NARRATIVE
Our discussion of the shooting of black men by white police can be enlightened by considering why the non-violent techniques of Martin Luther King succeeded in the 1950s and 1960s. To understand those successes, we need history of deep culture, … Continue reading
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AT LAST: A REALLY NEW ECONOMY
For years now, people have been casting about in search of a “new economy” to replace capitalism as we have known it. For the most part the suggestions advanced have been one form or another of something called “a shared … Continue reading
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The Declaration, the Constitution, and Equality
“With respect to equality one should not understand the word to mean that the degrees of power and wealth are absolutely identical . . . but that no citizen should be rich enough to buy another and none so poor … Continue reading
The Road to Serfdom: The Tea Party
As a lifelong liberal, I have belatedly undertaken an effort to understand the thinking of libertarians. An early project was the reading of F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, in spite of the … Continue reading
Posted in Book Review, Economy, Effective Government, Free Market Ideology
Tagged Freedom, Hayek, Tea Party
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“We Have Met the Enemy . . . “
“We Have Met the Enemy . . .” I have long puzzled over the difficulty we have had talking about the causes of increased inequality. Those in favor of current distributions have managed to control the terms of discussion. Their … Continue reading
Milton Friedman and the Anarchic Unicorn
Milton Friedman, through his 1980 PBS TV series and subsequent book entitled Free to Choose, did much to make free market ideology attractive to many Americans. The TV series remains available online and on DVD, and the book remains in … Continue reading
Perfecting Our Union 