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The Civil War

Julia Ward Howe composed her "Battle Hymn of the Republic" to the tune of "John Brown's Body," which the Union soldiers sang in the Civil War. John Brown had been a controversial figure -- and one whose sanity was questioned by men like Herman Melville in his anthology of Civil War poetry, which included a composition called "Weird John Brown." Henry David Thoreau on the other hand praised and extolled the virtues of the radical abolitionist, whose extremism essentially led to his execution. While Melville saw Brown as a symptom of the times, Thoreau saw him as a revolutionary guide -- and that same sense of revolution is what inspired "Civil Disobedience."

Problems with the Constitution are what led to the outbreak of the Civil War. The South believed States Rights were protected by the Constitution, and the Union held that Federal Law trumped States Rights. So it is no wonder that Lysander Spooner would call the U.S. Constitution unfit to exist in 1870. Thomas Jefferson was finding it problematic at the end of the 18th century with the Alien and Sedition Acst. Even in George Washington's day, the Constitution was being confronted by questions, for example, of war-making (Lofgren 672). Madison and Hamilton (both involved in the framing of the Constitution) argued whether the right to declare war should be of the executive or of the legislative branch. The problem, as Spooner intimated, is one -- if not inherent in the Constitution itself -- then at least in its interpretation.

During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, which prohibits imprisonment without evidence of crime. Lincoln, of course, would also go on to free the slaves of the South to help turn the tide against the Confederates. But that did not mean that the freed slaves were now on an equal footing with whites: One political issue African-Americans faced during this time was how to secure for themselves the freedoms and rights that had now supposedly been granted them with the abolition of slavery. Emancipation did not do much to advance blacks -- it was for the most part a way for Lincoln to undermine the infrastructure of the South and thus cripple it in the War.

Western Ideals

The Ottoman, Russian, Qing, and Tokugawa states in the nineteenth century had not seen the kind of rapid industrial revolution that the West and America in particular had seen in the nineteenth century. Obviously the Industrial Revolution put America and the West in position of power, ushering in a new era of geo-politics and Western Imperialism. The Ottoman, Russian, Qing, and Tokugawa societies, however, maintained cultures that were dynamic and less vulnerable to political-corporate takeover, which is essentially what happened in the West.

Obviously the four Eastern states were both attracted to and repulsed by the new opulence and machinery of the West. The wealth that America promised as a result of Industrialization and "liberty" had its ability to draw the East into adopting the social and political philosophies of the West. Yet, at the same time, the East could readily see a kind of moral decay and corruption in the greedy thirst for capital that was the Industrial Revolution. The ruination of towns, of that same dynamism that made the Eastern strives thrive in their own way, was forever destroyed as a result of the rise of Industry in America. More and more people went to work in the cities, thus creating one of the modern horror settings -- the suburb.

While Western ideals and European and American knowledge certainly influenced the Eastern states, the influence should mostly be seen as negative. American forces were invading the East as early as the nineteenth century, bringing with them all sorts of elements of corruption and making possible the global drug trade. Eventually, the East would modernize just like the West wanted it to.

Legacies of 19th Century Imperialism

America defined its new Imperialism with the notion of "manifest destiny," which by the end of the 19th century was expanded beyond the American frontier to encompass the whole globe.

The new Imperialism of America (and other leading/competing nations in Europe) was, of course, a product of Industrialization. But American Imperialism was an especially devious kind. While America was theoretically isolationist, in practice it was anything but. New Expansionism and Republican ideology (which was kept, fundamentally, in the back pocket of Wall Street) paved the way to World War I -- which saw the final annihilation of Catholic Austria.

America's Imperialistic role was directly related to its wars: The Spanish-American War in 1898, propagated by the yellow journalism of Hearst and Pulitzer who blamed the sinking of the Maine on Spain (a blame that had no truth to it whatsoever), turned public sentiment in favor of war. That war allowed America to go all the way to the Philippines to fight and anchor, in response to which men like Mark Twain helped form the Anti-Imperialist League -- the anti-colonial sentiment in America that wanted to see an end to Imperialist practices. However, the League would draw little political weight as a Republican Washington would serve as the handmaiden of Wall Street -- and corporate America was the new King. 1917 would be the death of the old world -- and the sinking of the Lusitania would help effect it. America's entrance into WWI (through another shady tragedy -- a common theme in American war entry) would present Woodrow Wilson with his chance to promote his pet project, the League of Nations.

Women in WWI

Many women acted as nurses in World War I, following in the footsteps of Florence Nightingale. With men off to fight and die, women took to the workforce to both support their men and Uncle Sam's war effort. WWI helped destroy an entire generation of men in the senseless slaughter that took so many lives in the foreign theater. It also had a destabilizing effect on the domestic social structure. Women's suffrage soon became an issue after the War and so did women's independence. In many ways, WWI changed the face of modern living: it dispensed with the old world ways once and for all and ushered in an era of independence for both genders. Women were used more and more in advertising: sex appeal was used by advertisers to hawk to their goods. While women were made to look and sound more professional, in reality they were being used as tools of the corporations to sell items like cigarettes and pulp magazines.

Women assisted in the war effort by acting in nurses corps and serving as telephone operators. They also helped in the distribution of TNT, which also had negative effects on the women's health.

Because women could now be seen as part of the war, no part of society was safe from war. The idea of total war began to emerge: this was the concept that civilians could be attacked like any other soldiery in the war. This idea would become a part of WWII, of course, with the fire bombing of Dresden and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression was preceded by the Lawless Twenties. The 20s did not just roar -- they broke every law in the book (and then made up new ones just so those could be broken too). Grifters abounded and so did threats (which were made real, and which quickly translated into high-hysteria): the Wall Street Bomb Disaster perfectly exampled the reason for Red fever (Bolsheviks had taken over Russia, and revolution frightened the U.S. -- a nation, ironically, built by revolutionaries). Socialists like Eugene Debs were less than welcome by big government (despite being elected).

William Jennings Bryan, leader of the Populist Party, and supposed spokesman of the common man, would cause a split in the Democratic Party with his "cross of gold" speech, and the Republicans would go on to carry the White House all the way to the Great Depression at the end of the 20s -- not before, however, instituting the income tax and the Federal Reserve. The Agrarian Revolt, then, was the last ditch effort of the American Midwest to stop corporate America from taking over the economy by placing the White House in its back pocket. The Agrarian Revolt failed to stop it. Truly, nothing could -- except for the consequences of its own underhanded schemes, witnessed with the collapse of the economy in 1929.

Charles Ponzi was another low point: this grifter was a model for what Wall Street bankers would become. His attempt at the first "Ponzi" scheme ended with a stint in prison. The rest of Wall Street got to go free -- until the collapse in '29, of course. It was Ponzi and people like him -- and banks like Goldman Sachs and their subsidiaries -- that caused the Great Depression in just the same way that they have caused the one we have today.

The U.S. responded to the Great Depression by electing FDR, who brought out his Alphabet Programs which were supposed to put the nation back to work with public works projects. When that failed to restore the economy, the world elected to start with a new war: WWII. Germany had been buried by the Western powers following WWI -- and now the country threatened to assert itself once more. Russia was in the middle of its own revolution: Stalin was liquidating the kulaks and rounding others up and shipping them off to the Gulag. That did not help Russia's economy any more than FDR's Alphabet program -- but it did not matter: war was on the horizon. Japan was being strangled by Western powers: the American military-industrial-congressional complex essentially forced Japan to attack -- and then sat back and let it happen when Japan finally decided to bomb Pearl Harbor. Thus, America got its excuse to enter the war and align itself with the new world order that would be the outcome.

Latin-American Nationalism

Neocolonialism sprang up as a result of Western Imperialism. America in particular was now re-colonizing Latin America -- but it was doing so primarily through the corporate infrastructure. Latin-America was to made into a drone for American self-interest: it was to be exploited; its raw materials were to be used; its people were to be experimented upon; and its culture (especially if it was Catholic) was to be destroyed.

The indigenous peoples of Latin-America were also prey to a new kind of spirituality that was being brought into their culture by way of a Marxist interpretation of Scripture. This was being done by the new Liberation Theologians, who helped lead a number of social revolutions in Latin-America supposedly on behalf of the people and their cry for economic reform.

Like the Marxist philosophy that underscores Liberation Theology, Gustavo Gutierrez's theology placed primary importance upon "praxis," asserting that Christian corporal works of mercy must necessarily be "worked." A re-interpretation of theology is what underlined the praxis: for example, "sin" took a less personal connotation and was imbued with a more "social and economic perspective. Gutierrez's theology is, essentially, a reaction against capitalistic relationships; in which supply and demand govern men's behavior with one another.

Latin-America, however, came to identify this new struggle between spiritual, cultural, and economic spheres in a literary genre that became known as magical realism. Magical realists, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez depicted a world that was cut off from the old world values of the past, yet distrustful of the advances of the present. This idea of blending cultural traditions can be seen in any of Marquez's narratives. "An Old Man with Enormous Wings," for instance, can represent the supernatural order of the Old World spirituality, which would have been part of the religion of the conquistadors of Latin America, which was adopted by the natives. At the same time, the Old Man can be seen as a symbol of the modern loss of faith -- or the abandonment of those Old World ideals: he is not seen as an angel but as a kind of sideshow attraction: tickets are sold to see him; he gets bugs; people look to him for entertainment, nothing more; and finally he flies away. All that is associated with him is a kind of materialistic gain -- which in a sense is concomitant with New World ideologies, or rather with the ideals that flowered following the destruction of Christendom and the emergence of Enlightenment doctrine.

The Banana Wars also played a part in neocolonialism. As America continued to flex its muscle around the world, it steadily invaded into Latin America and began exploiting the land the people for its own corporate interest. The Latin-American national identity was now at odds to make itself known. Converted by the Spanish in the 16th century, Latin-America was now being overrun by corporatists, socialists, and capitalists. Its old world spirituality was in decline, and a new world order was pushing it to the brink of extinction.

Cold War

The fact that the means of production had essentially changed overnight plunged the international community into a new Imperialism and force fed the world the idea that no one was safe. Just as America preferred (in theory) an isolationist perspective in the early 20th century, the truth was that such a stance was unprofitable: capitalism demanded more, and industry expanded (through war) all the way into Asia. Two World Wars followed -- and then the Cold War, which, based on the ideologies of the two leading world powers of the time, was simply unavoidable.

The ideology of the West, specifically America, was militaristic and technological. It had no more to do with free markets or capitalism than the Soviet ideology had to do with Marxism: both were bent on totalitarian control through whatever means were available. Both societies were materialistic to the core and both represented godlessness and atheism in their respective governments, thus paving the way for man-made solutions that were hardly ever really solutions at all (as we can see today).

The Soviet ideology was one that the West simply could not trust (even if Roosevelt wanted to believe that Stalin was truly a good guy at Yalta). Here was a prime example of why the Cold War had to come to pass: it was a matter of greed on the part of Stalin, personality on the part of Truman (a far cry from Roosevelt, Truman fanned the flames of the Cold War because he simply did not want to be diplomatic any longer with the Soviets), and ambition on the part of all -- including Churchill. Churchill identified the "iron curtain" and virtually drew the line in the sand between "us" and "them."