The End of the Academy

You may be aware that Plato's Academy in Athens, closed c. AD 529, some 900 years after its establishment c. 387 BC.  The end came after the emperor Justinian issued an edict "permit[ting] only those who are of the orthodox faith to teach and accept a public stipend." (In fact, there is some uncertainty as to the scope and meaning of Justinian's decree and whether it forced the closure of the Academy.  See the article here, which is also the source of the translation of the decree quoted above.)

But what happened to the Academy's last members? What became of them, and were they able to reconstitute the institution in another form and continue their studies and teaching? The sources suggest that there may have been a postscript, in the East.

The historian Agathias (c. 530 - c. 581) tells a delightful story in his Histories in which the last members of the Academy traveled to the Persian court of Chosroes I in search of a "philosopher king," much as Plato himself had voyaged a millenium before to the court of the Syracusan tyrant Dionysius the Younger (see Plato's famous Seventh Letter):

Not long before Damascius of Syria, Simplicius of Cilicia, Eulamius of Phrygia, Priscian of Lydia, Hermes and Diogenes of Phoenicia and Isidore of Gaza, all of them, to use a poetic turn of phrase, the quintessential flower of the philosophers of our age, had come to the conclusion, since the official religion of the Roman empire was not to their liking, that the Persian state was much superior. So they gave a ready hearing to the stories in general circulation according to which Persia was the land of "Plato's philosopher king" in which justice reigned supreme.

Apparently the subjects too were models of decency and good behaviour and there was no such thing as theft, brigandage or any other sort of crime. Even if some valuable object were left in no matter how remote a spot nobody who came across it would make off with it, but it would stay put and, without any one's guarding it, would be virtually kept safe for whoever left it until such time as he should return.

Elated therefore by these reports which they accepted as true, and also because they were forbidden by law to take part in public life with impunity owing to the fact that they did not conform to the established religion, they left immediately and set off for a strange land whose ways were completely foreign to their own, determined to make their homes there.

But in the first place they discovered that those in authority were overbearing and vainglorious and so had nothing but disgust and opprobrium for them. In the second place they realized that there were large numbers of housebreakers and robbers, some of whom were apprehended while others escaped detection, and that every form of crime was committed. The powerful in fact ill-treated the weak outrageously and displayed considerable cruelty and inhumanity in their dealings with one another. But the most extraordinary thing of all was that even though a man could and did have any number of wives people still had the effrontery to commit adultery. The philosophers were disgusted by all these things and blamed themselves for ever having made the move.

The opportunity of conversing with the king proved a further disappointment. It was the monarch's proud boast that he was a student of philosophy but his knowledge of the subject was utterly superficial. There was no common ground either in matters of religion since he observed the practices I have already described. Finally the vicious promiscuity which characterized Persian society was more than the philosophers could stand.

All these factors, then, combined to send them hurrying back home as fast as they could go. So despite the king's affection for them and despite the fact that he invited them to stay they felt that merely to set foot on Roman territory, even if it meant instant death, was preferable to a life of distinction in Persia. Accordingly they resolved to see the last of barbarian hospitality and all returned home.

"Sober Intoxication"

At his most inspired, Philo of Alexandria, also known as Philo Judaeus (c. 10 BCE - c. 50 CE), a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who merged the Septuagint with Platonism, paints an ecstatic mystical vision of unsurpassed beauty.  Here the human mind, molded in the image of God, aspires with "sober intoxication" to approach the Divine Intellect:

And again, being raised up on wings, and so surveying and contemplating the air, and all the commotions to which it is subject, [the mind that exists in each individual] is borne upwards to the higher firmament, and to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies.  And also being itself involved in the revolutions of the planets and fixed stars according to the perfect laws of music, and being led on by love, which is the guide of wisdom, it proceeds onwards till, having surmounted all essence intelligible by the external senses, it comes to aspire to such as is perceptible only by the intellect: and perceiving in that, the original models and ideas of those things intelligible by the external senses which it saw here full of surpassing beauty, it becomes seized with a sort of sober intoxication like the zealots engaged in the Corybantian festivals, and yields to enthusiasm, becoming filled with another desire, and a more excellent longing, by which it is conducted onwards to the very summit of such things as are perceptible only to the intellect, till it appears to be reaching the great King himself. And while it is eagerly longing to behold him pure and unmingled, rays of divine light are poured forth upon it like a torrent, so as to bewilder the eyes of its intelligence by their splendour.

It's Caturday!

Let's talk turkey (foot).

It's Caturday!

Get up and take a peek outside.

The Deaths of Crispus and Fausta

The emperor Constantine famously had both his eldest son Crispus and his wife Fausta killed in 326.  Mystery has surrounded the events ever since.  There are no contemporary accounts, and the earliest surviving recitations of events are overlaid with polemic.

The most frequently-told story is based upon the version recounted some 175 years later by the pagan Byzantine historian Zosimus (floruit 490s - 510s), who in his New History tied the two deaths together. Constantine had Crispus, the son of his first wife Minervina, killed when he heard allegations that Crispus had assaulted his (Constantine's) second and then current wife Fausta. Constantine then had Fausta killed when he heard the allegation against Crispus had been false, or perhaps simply out of remorse:

Now that the whole empire had fallen into the hands of Constantine, he no longer concealed his evil disposition and vicious inclinations, but acted as he pleased, without controul.  He indeed used the ancient worship of his country; though not so much out of honour or veneration as of necessity. Therefore he believed the soothsayers, who were expert in their art, as men who predicted the truth concerning all the great actions which he ever performed.

But when he came to Rome, he was filled with pride and arrogance. He resolved to begin his impious actions at home. For he put to death his son Crispus, stiled (as I mentioned) Caesar, on suspicion of debauching his [step-mother] Fausta, without any regard to the ties of nature.  And when [Constantine's] own mother Helena expressed much sorrow for this atrocity, lamenting the young man's death with great bitterness, Constantine under pretence of comforting her, applied a remedy worse than the disease.  For causing a bath to be heated to an extraordinary degree, he shut up Fausta in it, and a short time after took her out dead.  Of which his conscience accusing him, as also of violating his oath, he went to the [pagan] priests to be purified from his crimes. But they told him, that there was no kind of lustration that was sufficient to clear him of such enormities.

A Spaniard, named Aegyptius, very familiar with the court-ladies, being at Rome, happened to fall into converse with Constantine, and assured him, that the Christian doctrine would teach him how to cleanse himself from all his offences, and that they who received it were immediately absolved from all their sins.  Constantine had no sooner heard this than he easily believed what was told him, and forsaking the rites of his country, received those which Aegyptius offered him . . ..

Most modern historians point out that the story is unreliable, appearing to have been invented to explain Constantine's conversion to Christianity, but then wind up settling for some version of it, for want of any better alternative.  Discussion then usually turns to speculation about details.  Did Crispus actually "debauch" his step-mother or merely attempt to do so?  Or did Fausta, a la Phaedra or Potiphar's wife, attempt to seduce her step-son and then, when he rejected her blandishments, run to Constantine and accuse Crispus of being the aggressor?  Was it Helena who in fact convinced Constantine of Crispus' innocence and Fausta's guilt (and if so how did she know?), or did she perhaps accuse Fausta of an unrelated crime, such as adultery?

The great historian of the later Roman Empire, Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, presents an alternate hypothesis in his book Constantine and the Conversion of Europe.  Prof. Jones concedes that we can never be sure as to what happened:

All we know for certain is that the Caesar Crispus, Constantine's brilliant eldest son, who had recently distinguished himself in the campaign against Licinius, was without warning, as he was accompanying his father to the Vicennalia celebrations at Rome, executed at Pola, and that shortly afterwards the Empress Fausta, recently proclaimed Augusta, was mysteriously put to death - rumour said by suffocation in the hot chamber of her bath.

However, Prof. Jones concludes that "it would seem unlikely that the melodramatic story recounted by later writers is true" and the two deaths "were unconnected, despite their coincidence in time."  He believes that "a clue to Crispus' offense is perhaps to be found in an extraordinary edict which Constantine issued from Aquileia on" on April 1, 326 entitled "On the Abduction of Virgins or Unmarried Women" (De raptu virginum vel viduarum, found at Theodosian Code IX.24.1 et seq.). In it Constantine

imposes "most savage penalties" (they are not on record, having been reduced later to capital punishment) on abduction, and this whether the girl was willing or unwilling; in the former case she is to suffer the same penalty as her paramour, in the latter she is still to be penalized by the loss of her rights of inheritance, because she could have roused the neighbors by her cries.  The girl's parents, if they condone the offence, are to be deported.  Servants who acted as go-betweens are to have their mouths closed with molten lead.

The timing of the edict "and its violent, almost hysterical, tone, strongly suggest," Prof. Jones believes, "that it was provoked by Crispus' case."  If so, "Crispus' offence cannot have been that alleged by later popular report."  Instead, Prof. Jones suggests that Crispus may have

abducted some unknown girl, and that she had acquiesced and the parents had been willing to compromise the case.  Crispus' offense was the graver, in that he was already married to a certain Helena [not Constantine's mother, obviously], and had a child by her - born in 322.  He can thus have offered satisfaction to the unknown girl only by making her his concubine; and that this what he had done is suggested by another law, issued about this time and perhaps forming part of the edict on abduction, prohibiting married men from keeping concubines.

What then of Fausta?  If her death was unrelated to that of Crispus, why was she killed?  Prof. Jones finds a hint in another law promulgated by Constantine at Nicomedia on April 25, 326 as an amendment to Lex Iulia concerning adultery (Ad legem Iuliam de adulteriis, Theodosian Code IX.7.2):

Although adultery is considered a public crime, the accusation for which is granted to everyone alike, without any limitation of law, still, in order that marriages may not be disgraced at pleasure, only the nearest relatives shall have the right to bring such accusation, that is to say, father, brother, paternal and maternal uncle, who are incited to do so by reason of true grief.

1. But we give permission to these persons to dismiss the accusation, if they wish.

2. The husband, above all, should be the avenger of the marriage bed, who may indeed accuse his wife on suspicion, though he may keep her with him if he only suspects her.  And the emperors of the past consented that he should not incur the peril (frequently) arising from filing a written information, since he may accuse under his right as husband.

3. We direct that outsiders shall be kept from making any accusation; for although the necessity of a written complaint exists in every kind of accusation, some persons nevertheless make such complaints rashly, and seek to cast disgrace on marriages by false slander.

4. Violators of marriage-chastity should be punished by the sword.

Prof. Jones believes that the promulgation of this law suggests that Fausta was accused of adultery:

That Fausta was charged with adultery is suggested by a constitution, posted at Nicomedia on 25th April, 326.  In this Constantine limits the right of accusation in case of adultery to the near relatives of the erring wife, and in the first place to her husband - in Roman law adultery was a crime, and a common informer had hitherto been able to accuse.

And what was Helena's involvement, if any?

It may be, too, that Helena played some part in [Fausta's] fall.  It is, at any rate, odd that Helena was proclaimed Augusta - thus emerging from an eclipse of over thirty years - only a year or two before Fausta's death, and it is perhaps significant that immediately after she made a pilgrimage to Palestine - she had been converted to Christianity by her son, Eusebius tells us - where she contributed lavishly to the new churches at the Holy Places.  She died not long after in the odour of sanctity.

For what it's worth, I find the connection between Fausta's alleged offense and the adultery law less convincing.  The emendation of the law promulgated by Constantine limited the categories of persons who could bring charges of adultery.  But why would this amendment have been relevant to Fausta's case, where the complainant was presumably Constantine himself?  Perhaps Prof. Jones means to find relevance in the fact that the amendment appears also to eliminate the requirement of a "written information," legalizing Constantine's precipitous action.  But if so he does not say.

The arguments concerning Helena are even less persuasive, I think.  I simply don't understand why it is relevant that Helena was proclaimed Augusta several years earlier, or that she subsequently visited Palestine.  As to the former, it is inconceivable that Constantine received information from Helena years before he acted on it.  And as to the latter, is Prof. Jones suggesting that she was atoning because her information led to Fausta's execution?  Or was she doing penance on behalf of a remorseful Constantine?  Again, Prof. Jones does not exactly say.

The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson

It looks like Thomas Jefferson is about to take a well-deserved beating over slavery.  A new article at Smithsonian.com, The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson, previews a book by Henry Wiencek scheduled for release on October 16th entitled Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves.  I haven't read the book and don't know the reputation of Mr. Wiencek, but if his conclusions are accurate they are pretty devastating.

And if the article and book are accurate, Jefferson isn't going to be alone in the woodshed.  At least one historian allegedly omitted the ugly details when editing Jefferson's writings, and others then credulously relied on the sanitized results to paint Jefferson in rosy hues:

It was during the 1950s, when historian Edwin Betts was editing one of Colonel [Thomas Mann] Randolph’s plantation reports for Jefferson’s Farm Book, that he confronted a taboo subject and made his fateful deletion. Randolph reported to Jefferson that the nailery was functioning very well because “the small ones” were being whipped. The youngsters did not take willingly to being forced to show up in the icy midwinter hour before dawn at the master’s nail forge. And so the overseer, Gabriel Lilly, was whipping them “for truancy.”

Betts decided that the image of children being beaten at Monticello had to be suppressed, omitting this document from his edition. He had an entirely different image in his head; the introduction to the book declared, “Jefferson came close to creating on his own plantations the ideal rural community.” Betts couldn’t do anything about the original letter, but no one would see it, tucked away in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The full text did not emerge in print until 2005.

Betts’ omission was important in shaping the scholarly consensus that Jefferson managed his plantations with a lenient hand. Relying on Betts’ editing, the historian Jack McLaughlin noted that Lilly “resorted to the whip during Jefferson’s absence, but Jefferson put a stop to it.”

“Slavery was an evil he had to live with,” historian Merrill Peterson wrote, “and he managed it with what little dosings of humanity a diabolical system permitted.” Peterson echoed Jefferson’s complaints about the work force, alluding to “the slackness of slave labor,” and emphasized Jefferson’s benevolence: “In the management of his slaves Jefferson encouraged diligence but was instinctively too lenient to demand it. By all accounts he was a kind and generous master. His conviction of the injustice of the institution strengthened his sense of obligation toward its victims.”

Joseph Ellis observed that only “on rare occasions, and as a last resort, he ordered overseers to use the lash.” Dumas Malone stated, “Jefferson was kind to his servants to the point of indulgence, and within the framework of an institution he disliked he saw that they were well provided for. His ‘people’ were devoted to him.”

H/T Boing Boing: Thomas Jefferson, enthusiastic, brutal slaver

Never Forget

I will not forget that day, or who our enemies are.

The Bible Is Very Weird

I've never read the Hebrew Bible before.  It's very weird.  By way of example, a quiz:

On successive nights, this elderly widower's two unmarried daughters, who were then living in a cave with him, got him drunk on wine, slept with him while he was passed out ("he did not know when she lay down or when she rose"), became pregnant, and later gave birth to sons who became the eponymous ancestors of the Moabites and the Ammonites.  Name him.

No fair clicking on the picture, which will reveal the answer.

The Biblical Anti-Fugitive Slave Act

Some southerners before the Civil War famously cited the Bible’s apparent acceptance of the institution of slavery to support their contention that the peculiar institution was morally acceptable.

I was interested, therefore, to stumble across the following passage from Deuteronomy prohibiting the return of fugitive slaves:

You shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master. He shall live with you in any place he may choose among the settlements in your midst, wherever he pleases; you must not ill-treat him.

Deuteronomy 23:16-17.

The commentary to the passage in The Jewish Study Bible (OUP 2004) emphasizes how extraordinary the Biblical prohibition was at that time and place:

The law rejects the almost universal stipulation within ancient Near Eastern law that escaped slaves must be returned to their owner, usually under penalty of death, and that rewards bounty hunters for their return (Laws of Hammurabi secs. 16-20; Hittite Laws secs. 22-24). . . . The extraordinary fivefold repetition of phrases designating the location of residence emphasizes that the entire community must be open to them.

I have never heard that northerners cited or quoted this passage, in or out of Congress, in connection with the debates over the Fugitive Slave Act.  Does anyone have different information?

The Hebrew Scriptures in Judaism and Christianity

As I've mentioned before, I drive most days and spend much of that time listening to history-related podcasts and similar materials.  I've posted recommendations several times before, and I'm writing to add one now.

Harvard Prof Shaye Cohen's The Hebrew Scriptures in Judaism and Christianity is an entertaining educational delight. Since I'm sure I would have flunked the course if I'd taken it, I won't venture to try to summarize it myself, contenting myself rather with quoting the prepackaged course description:

In 70CE the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Second Temple Judaism, whose worship consisted of animal sacrifice permitted by biblical command only at the Temple, would have to reinvent itself as Rabbinic Judaism. Contemporaneously, the authors of the New Testament Gospels were writing about the Jewish apocalyptic prophet whom they believed was the awaited messiah. For both the rabbis and the gospel writers, for both ancient Jews and ancient Christians, the central authoritative text was the Torah and the other books we now call the Hebrew Scriptures. This course surveys how the interpretation (and reinterpretation) of these books spawned two rival cultural systems, Judaism and Christianity. The issues addressed are: 1) What are the truth claims of Judaism and Christianity? 2) In the first centuries of our era, how did Jewish biblical interpretation differ from Christian? 3) What differences resulted in "the parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity? 4) How does each culture deal with the biblical passages concerning: circumcision, the food laws, the Sabbath, Passover, the manifestations of the deity (e.g., Logos), the messiah, atonement/redemption, and the concept of Israel as the chosen of God?

Parts history of the Israelites, the Torah (make that "tor-AH"), the Jews, Jesus, the Romans, the New Testament, early Christians and their interpretative methods and arguments, with Maimonides as a bonus, the course amounts to a fascinating and thought-provoking discussion.  Although I've inked the Academic Earth cite, the course is also available on iTunes, from which I downloaded it from. 

Having praised the course to the skies, I have only two gripes and an observation (or is it one gripe and two observations?):

1.  Poor Prof. Cohen needs to get some new shirts that weren't previously worn by Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack.

2.  Has anyone told Prof. Cohen that he sometimes sounds like Lenny Bruce (the delivery! not the vocabulary!)?

3.  Harvard still SUCKS!  Boola Boola.

Kathleen's Wake

Kathleen's wake is today, and I can't resist adding a few more photos.

With all her siblings:

And last but not least, a cheesecake shot!

Kathleen McGrath (1927-2012)

Kathleen McGrath (nee Brennan), born 1927 in Wexford, Ireland, died on July 5th at home peacefully surrounded by her loving family and friends. She is survived by her beloved daughter Catherine and son-in-law and a large extended family.

A longtime parishioner of St. Paul the Apostle Church in Manhattan, Kathleen was one of the first volunteers of Momentum, in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, ministering to those living with AIDS and educating the community on the illness. She devoted herself to the poor and the homeless with dedication and compassion in her work coordinating the weekly soup kitchen, in her tireless volunteering at the Homeless Banquet and by devoting herself to many, many nights in the homeless shelter.

A daily participant at Mass, she served for many years as a Eucharistic Minister and as a sponsor in the parish’s RCIA program. She was well-known for her commitment to the preaching ministry of Fr. Jack Collins, CSP, collating his materials for the “next trip on the road.” She also was one of the first members of the St. Paul the Apostle Senior Ministry, under the direction of Paul Canestro, which worked inter-generationally with the Youth Ministry.

Kathleen loved classical music, American history and all things Irish. She was well-read, never lacked a pointed opinion or a good story, and was a strong advocate of women’s rights.

Kathleen’s wake will be held at Barrett’s Funeral Home, 424 West 51st Street, NY, NY, on Saturday July 7 from 2 to 5 pm and 7 to 9 pm, with a Memorial Mass to follow at St. Paul the Apostle, at Ninth Avenue and 59th Street, on Thursday July 12 at 7:00 p.m. Burial will be private. Donations should be made to the Paulist Fathers, Very Rev. Michael McGarry, CSP, 86-11 Midland Parkway, Jamaica Estates, NY 11432. 

And she was the world's greatest mother-in-law.  Rest in peace, my dear Kathleen.  Love you lots.

"O what we ben! and what we come to!"

Having re-read Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker last week, I can only shake my head in awe.

The photograph at the top of the post is of a wall painting at Canterbury Cathedral depicting the legend of St. Eustace.  The photo may be found at the Flickr photostream of chrisjohnbeckett.

The Life of St. Eustace from the Golden Legend provides more information.

It's Caturday!

And Maxwell says, I love the taste of butt in the morning.

"The taxing power of the federal government, my dear"

Between work and family commitments, I've barely been on the interweb since the Supremes' decision on Obamacare was handed down, so maybe someone else has made this connection.  For all I know, Chief Justice Roberts may have cited it as a precedent in his opinion.

I'm in the middle of Amity Shlaes' superb - and heartbreaking - The Forgotten Man, and just ran across this eerily relevant passage:

[Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins] and [Paul] Douglas had their plans for unemployment insurance and pensions for senior citizens.  At a tea at his house [in 1934?], Perkins had sat beside Justice Harlan Stone, and he gave her a tip.  She had confided her fears that any great social insurance system would be rejected by his court.  Not so, he said, and whispered back the solution: "The taxing power of the federal government, my dear; the taxing power is sufficient for everything you want and need."  If the Social Security Act was formulated as a tax, and not a government insurance, it could get through.

Lewis Cass

I can't say I find Lewis Cass a tremendously attractive figure, but I can't help linking to this post on Cass by Paul Mirengoff of the Powerline team.

Did Muhammad Exist: The Doctrina Jacobi

In Did Muhammad Exist: An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins, Robert Spencer quotes from the Doctrina Jacobi, which contains "[o]ne of the earliest apparent mentions of Muhammad." "Probably written by a Christian in Palestine between 634 and 640 - that is, at the time of the earliest Arabian conquests and just after Muhammad's reported death in 632 - [the Doctrina Jacobi] is written in Greek from the perspective of a Jew who is coming to believe that the Messiah of the Christians is the true one and who hears about another prophet risen in Arabia."  I have added paragraph breaks:

When the candidatus [that is, a member of the Byzantine imperial guard] was killed by the Saracens [Sarakenoi], I was at Caesarea and I set off by boat to Sykamina. People were saying "the candidatus has been killed," and we Jews were overjoyed. And they were saying that the prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens, and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come.

I, having arrived at Sykamina, stopped by a certain old man well-versed in scriptures, and I said to him: "What can you tell me about the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens?" He replied, groaning deeply: "He is false, for the prophets do not come armed with a sword. Truly they are works of anarchy being committed today and I fear that the first Christ to come, whom the Christians worship, was the one sent by God and we instead are preparing to receive the Antichrist. Indeed, Isaiah said that the Jews would retain a perverted and hardened heart until all the earth should be devastated. But you go, master Abraham, and find out about the prophet who has appeared."

So I, Abraham, inquired and heard from those who had met him that there was no truth to be found in the so-called prophet, only the shedding of men's blood. He says also that he has the keys of paradise, which is incredible [i.e., not credible].

 Spencer spells out the implications:

One thing that can be established from this is that the Arabian invaders who conquered Palestine in 635 (the "Saracens") came bearing news of a new prophet, one who was "armed with a sword."  But in the Doctrina Jacobi this unnamed prophet is still alive, traveling with his armies, whereas Muhammad is supposed to have died in 632.  What's more, this Saracen prophet, rather than proclaiming that he was Allah's last prophet . . ., was "proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come."  This was a reference to an expected Jewish Messiah, not to the Jesus Christ of Christianity (Christ means "anointed one" or "Messiah" in Greek).

Orestes Brownson: Occupier or Tea Partier?

Orestes Brownson was leading member of the radical, locofoco wing of the Democratic Party back in the 1830s.  I was reading his essay Prospects of the Democracy yesterday and was struck by the irony of how the Democratic Party has changed and not changed over the past one hundred seventy years.

The essay originally appeared in the January 1839 issue of the Boston Quarterly Review, during the Panic of 1837.  It begins with an appeal to class warfare that would do Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Moore, Bill Ayers and the Occupy Movement proud.  Brownson inveighs against the "aristocratic" "Stationary Party", the "party of privilege," which seeks "to retain things as they are, or to recall the order that is passing away," in order "to secure or increase the special advantage of the One Percent few over the Ninety-Nine Percent many."  It wars against the "Movement Party," which advocates "change" and "Equality" on behalf of "the many" "who suffer the evils of things as they are."

In all countries where there is life, where thought is active, and has scope to manifest itself in some degree, the community is divided into two parties more or less equal in numbers and strength. One party may be termed the Stationary Party, the party whose object is to retain things as they are, or to recall the order that is passing away; the other party-may be termed the Movement Party, the party whose leading object is always to develop and improve the existing order, or to introduce a new, and, as it hopes, a better order. The members of the first named party are usually that portion of the community whom the existing order, whatever it may be, most favors, or who hope the most from things as they are; and consequently of those who have, or fancy they have, the most to lose by a change: the members of the last named party are, in general, those on whom the burden of the existing order chiefly falls; who suffer the evils of things as they are, and of course, of those who have the most room to hope that a change will better their condition.

They whom the existing order of things most favors are in most countries the few; they whom it favors the least are the many. The interest, then, sought to be promoted by the stationary party, is necessarily the interest of the few in contradistinction to that of the many. Its object is always to secure or increase the special advantages of the few over the many. It is therefore always the party of privilege, the aristocratic party. The movement party is the opposite of the stationary party. Its object is to diminish the privileges enjoyed by the few, and to introduce as great a degree of equality as is practicable among all the members of the community. It is therefore the party of equality, and consequently, the democratic party. The war which is ever carried on between these two parties, whatever the name it may bear, or the forms it may assume, is always, at bottom, a war of Equality against Privilege.

These two parties may be found in every country in Christendom ; and in every country in Christendom does the war of Equality against Privilege rage with more or less fierceness, and with prospects of an issue more or less favorable to the movement or democratic party. Here, as well as in all other Christian countries, does this fearful war rage; and perhaps never with more fierceness than at this present moment. But Equality is stronger here than elsewhere; it has gained here more than any where else, has achieved more brilliant and decisive victories, and conquered a larger extent of territory. It therefore comes to the battle with high hopes, and with great confidence in its own strength, and the terror its name inspires.

Nevertheless it can count on no easy victory. Privilege exists here, has existed here from the origin of our government, and will exist much longer. Its forces are numerous, well disciplined, well furnished, and liberally paid; and they promise to do effectual service in its cause.

Reading this, our Occupier is ecstatic.  A fellow warrior in the battle for Change and Equality against the forces of oppression!  But then he discovers to his horror that something is terribly wrong.  Brownson is no kindred spirit after all, but in many respects a Tea Partier in disguise, advocating weak government and condemning government debt and bailouts:

These two parties have always existed here, and they showed themselves very distinctly in the Convention which framed the Federal Constitution. The party of Privilege, the aristocratic party, feeling themselves in the position to wield the power of the government, and of course to wield it in their own favor, asked for a strong government, one capable of holding the people in awe, in check, in submission. The party of Equality, the democratic party, on the other hand, distrustful of governments, in consequence of having suffered from their abuses, demanded a weak government and a strong people; so that the few, by seizing its reins, should not be able to make the government trample on the rights and the interests of the many. The party of Equality triumphed, so far as the organization to be given to the Federal government was concerned.

. . .

. . . Governments cannot operate without funds; consequently, they who can control its funds, or the sources whence it obtains them, can control its action. By connecting the fiscal concerns of government intimately with the business operations of the country, they who have the control of those operations, necessarily control the government.

Consequently, the first effort of the aristocratic party, after their defeat in the [Constitutional] Convention, was to bring about this connexion. This they did, first, by funding the national debt, and making thereby a portion of the capitalists the creditors of the government; and secondly, by chartering a National Bank, and making it the depository of the government funds, which were to be used as the basis of loans to business men. The party of Privilege became, as a matter of course, the purchasers of government stock, and the owners of the Bank; they became, therefore, the creditors of the government, and through the bank, sustained by government funds, the creditors of the whole trading community, and through the trading community, of nearly the whole population; and therefore able to exercise over both government and people the all but absolute control, which the creditor exercises over the debtor.

It's Caturday!

And Salome's chillin'.

Millard Pro and Con

I have discussed previously the ingenious history class in which Williams College students were asked to produce presidential campaign video ads for and/or against candidates in pre-Civil War races.

As you may expect, I awaited with particular interest any videos focusing on my main man, Millard Fillmore.  It was not a sure thing, since he didn't even get the Whig nomination in 1852, and his most serious run was as a third-party candidate of the American Party in 1856.

But, I'm delighted to report, students managed to produce two Fillmore videos, one pro, the other con, both of which are quite good.  The pro-Millard video is at the top.  The anti is below:

You can find all the videos from the class on YouTube here.