Mason and Dixon

[Doug Millison]

At 9:21 AM -0400 10/20/99, davemarc wrote, re Dixon's intervention:
>As a koan-like puzzler, perhaps it'd be
>something like "Can one set slaves free when they are bound to be enslaved
>again?"

That's a rhetorical question often posed in a leftist critique of the
so-called "freeing of the slaves" in the U.S. Civil War -- Howard Zinn, for
example, makes a strong case  (in _People's History of the U.S._), that the
emancipation was short-lived as best, that what the Constitution gave the
Supreme Court took away, and federal, state, and local governments took
care of the rest, while business and social forces worked on as before to
keep blacks on the margins. The hegemony of corporate interests acting
through government officials and manipulating society (through the
mythmaking capabilities of the media), to the disadvantage of those at the
margins, seems a fundamental part of larger political picture of the U.S.
that emerges in M&D, especially when read together with Vineland, GR,
COL49, and V.

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
http://www.dougmillison.com
http://www.online-journalist.com