Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Damn
A Peoples History of the United States is a damn good book. I've heard it said that it's one sided, but if you've ever been to a history class in your life, you're probably already super familiar with the accounts where everyone is a hero and things like Indian removal laws a class conflicts aren't mentioned.

"... In 1893 Supreme Court Justice David J. Brewer, addressing the New York State Bar Association, said:

It is the unvarying law that the wealth of the community will be in the hands of the few ... The great majority of men are unwilling to endure that long self-denial and saving which makes accumulations possible ... and hence it always has been, and until human nature is remodeled always will be true, that the wealth of a nation is in the hands of a few, while many subsist upon the proceeds of their daily toil.

Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is. And so, the schools, the churches, the popular literature taught that to be rich was a sign of superiority, to be poor a sign of personal failure, and that the only way upward for a poor person was to climb into the ranks of the rich by extraordinary effort and extraordinary luck."