(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Why college should be free for everyone - to prevent another Confederacy [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-08-26

So, the (anti)Republicans are trying to gin up outrage over the “freebie” of forgiving college loans.

In his 2017 book, From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction, (Columbia, Mo., University of Missouri Press, 2017), Forrest A. Nabors, quotes from a number of Civil War era leaders of the Republican Party, who had to grapple with the tasks of defining who the Confederate enemy was, and then replacing that enemy's system of government after that enemy had been defeated by force of arms.

Nabors writes that one committee of the Virginia secession convention presented a report that explicitly attacked democratic republicanism and majority rule as “the despotism of numbers” that inevitably led to “misappropriation of others’ property under democratic forms of government.” Remember Paul Ryan and other of today’s (anti)Republicans spluttering about the “takers” constantly mooching off the “makers”? Well, the report of this committee of the Virginia secession convention argued that in the North, this “misappropriation of others’ property” “may be seen in the system of free schools, by which children of the poor are educated at the expense of the rich.”

Nabors continues a couple pages later:

"Knowledge," Thaddeus Stevens said in 1835, "is the only foundation on which republics can stand." This theory and its opposite, that ignorance is the only foundation on which oligarchy can stand, runs through the Republicans' criticism of the slave states' abstention from establishing a healthy common school system. They argued that the slave-state rulers deliberately prevented the development of common schools because popular ignorance was their policy goal. The arrangement of educational institutions in the slave states secured this goal and supported oligarchic rule…. ….in 1858, Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan quoted from the annual message of South Carolina governor Whitemarsh Seabrook: "Education has been provided by the Legislature but for one class of the citizens of the State, which is the wealthy class. For the middle and poorer classes of society it has done nothing, since no organized system has been adopted for that purpose….” In 1861… Waltman Willey [who was elected from the western mountains around Morganton to go to the secession convention, where he stubbornly voted against secession over and over again, then served in the U.S. Senate representing the Restored Government of Virginia, then served as one of the first two Senators from the new state of West Virginia] directly explained why the oligarchy opposed free schools: "Sir, great astonishment has been expressed at the hostility of southern statesmen to popular education. But, sir, we ought not to be surprised at it. Knowledge is power; and to keep the masses in ignorance is a necessary precaution to keep them in subjection. To maintain the oligarchy of the few owning the capital, it is necessary to bind down with the slavish chains of ignorance the many who perform the labor. . . . Sir, the true reason of this hostility to popular education is hostility to democratic institutions.” In 1862 Willey's colleague from western Virginia Representative Kellian Whaley similarly denounced the policy of the slaveholding aristocrats in eastern Virginia and imputed to them the same motive. The eastern Virginian aristocracy jealously guarded their power over the state… "One of the greatest injuries sustained by our western people has been an organized opposition to a system of free schools and popular education, by which the bright but untutored minds of our mountain ranges and humbler classes have not been developed, while colleges and seminaries for the rich have been fostered by eastern legislation. To keep the people in ignorance is a part of the policy of their masters, the forty thousand slave-owners of East Virginia."

Obviously, this sort of political thinking — which I call civic republicanism — has been in short supply for a long time. And it’s why I think it’s far more honest to call our opponents the (anti)Republican Party. Damn sad this is what the Party of Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens has come to….

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/26/2119133/-Why-college-should-be-free-for-everyone-to-prevent-another-Confederacy

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.