Post: #1

In the past, people were ignorant, heartless, and hateful.

Throughout the centuries, the forces of light, truth, justice, liberty, equality have fought and won battles that have brought us out of the dark ages and into the modern era.

The enlightenment brought us democracy, individual liberty, and freedom from the yolk of religious thought.

Slavery was abolished, voting rights were extended universally regardless of sex, class, or race.

As time goes on, the forces of the past continue to try to hold on to their backwards ways. They do not accept rights for sexual minorities, though slowly but surely their rights are also being secured with our effort. As history marches forward, this inevitable arc of progress will continue to shine light onto the darkness of the human experience, bringing equality, justice, and freedom to the globe.

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This, in a nutshell, is the Whig theory of history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history

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The term "Whig" is basically a term for liberal.

In school this is how we are taught History basically. You learn about a time period and some injustice that characterized it. You then learn about how that injustice was overcome by the forces of good, bringing us closer to the light and further out of darkness.

I recall being in middle school thinking as much, learning about civil rights movements, thinking "Hm, it seems the liberals basically always win".

Barack Obama invokes this theory without naming it often, when he says that his political opponents are on the "Wrong Side of History".

In fact, he basically does seem right. In the western world there has hardly been a liberal cause that hasn't been gaining ground over the long term.

Look at any time period in the past and find the debates between liberals and conservatives, and see if the present doesn't look more like what the Whigs/liberals wanted at the time.

This is a very American attitude in general, it is hard to find someone who doesn't think that some far-off part of the world that is worse off than the USA is simply "behind" us in some way, and if given the right opportunity, will "catch up" and follow the same path of evolution that the USA has had, basically towards liberal democracy etc. No doubt we help them along the way with copious amounts of influence on foreign countries via westernization, be it via direct Washington influence or U.S. cultural influence.

I have only recently been made aware that this term exists, but it explains a lot of my thinking which was 100% hardwired into my head throughout my whole education, and only became undone after traveling. Seeing different parts of the world where people truly have different values makes me doubt that the whole world is in fact on the same route as the U.S. is, and heading towards the same endpoint, only perhaps a bit faster or slower than we are.

It's often difficult to convince westerners, especially liberals/whigs that some other societies might NOT evolve towards the exact same values we have. I just thought it would be interesting to talk about this, learning about this is just one more part of unplugging from your programming and seeing it for what it is.

Post: #2

Good post. What you speak of is classical liberalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

Societies absolutely do not move forward in a linear fashion. There's always stumbling blocks, and the forces of the past can, and often do, rear their heads with ferocity.

Currently I'm reading The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret McMillan, and it's incredible how quickly the most advanced and industrialized continent on the planet regressed into 30 years of brutal savagery, genocide, fascism, communism, and economic instability.

Then there's the US. In the 1880s, there were more black senators, congressman, politicians, and landowners than there are today. By the 1920s, through a well co-ordinated campaign of domestic terrorism, land expropriation, rollback of political rights and more often than not outright trampling of the US constitution itself, blacks had completely lost all their rights. It wasn't until the 1960s that civil rights had to be re-written to actually stick. Again, there's people to this day that consider civil rights an abomination and want to roll them back.

Socially, the west has moved to the left, but economically it has moved to the right. Globally, the whole world, apart from the middle east has followed suit. Classical liberalism, with its leftwing social ideology, and rightwing economic policy has spread far beyond the theories of John Locke and Adam Smith, and has taken root in almost all parts of the world in some way or another.

Take a look at Sub-Saharan Africa for example, historically it has been very conservative, tribal, and feudal. In the past 20 years, dictators have been toppled left right and centre, essentially ending an order that has existed for thousand years. Colonialism was a blip, for most of Africa's history the continent has been feudal. Two weeks ago Nigeria had free and fair elections and the incumbent lost. Kenya re-wrote it's consitution so it cannot be abused by power hungry despots. There are massive riots in Burundi as we speak, the president is trying to run for a 3rd term, and the people are having none of it.

In Latin America, this happened quietly, dictators stepped down, and most of the nations there hold free and fair elections. Universal suffrage has gained traction globally in almost all societies apart from China, and the middle east.

The whigs didn't just win America, they won the world.

The USA sold democracy/republicanism/liberalism to world. It wasn't inevitable, the ideology was pushed thoroughly, sometimes imposed (as it was on Germany, Japan, Chile), but often-times there was pull from the citizenry themselves. Being able to have a say in the way the society you live in is governed is not a hard concept to sell. And oftentimes it's easy to paint the neo-reactionaries as the bad guys when they attempt to concentrate power and decision making in the hands of a distant few.

It's actually much harder to keep a lid on liberalism and individual liberty today than at any point in history. China spends billions to censor the internet, and bans books that it deems a threat to the ruling party's iron grip.

These things don't progress in a linear fashion as outlined by the examples above. And more often than not many people want to keep power concentrated for themselves, they hate others, think of them as inferior and childlike and believe they should be told how to live. But as history has shown, liberalism (in the classic sense), is an easy sell.

Post: #3

(04-27-2015 05:29 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  In school this is how we are taught History basically. You learn about a time period and some injustice that characterized it. You then learn about how that injustice was overcome by the forces of good, bringing us closer to the light and further out of darkness.

I don't doubt it. It wasn't until a few years ago that I realised that anyone under 25 or 30 had been taught to see history and man's heritage of thought, literature and art only through the lens of its evil racism and sexism.

I'm grateful to have received my education in an earlier era.

Post: #4

^ I'm in my 20s.

I did learn the whole "evil white man" thing.

I also was taught in a way that led me to revere our founding fathers and other great thinkers of history.

They were basically presented as the "good guys" of their era. They fought for democracy against monarchy.

But they had their flaws, racism and sexism.

Later generations took care of that, but they had their flaws... and so on

Post: #5

Jefferson and Locke were perhaps the two greatest servants of enlightened liberalism in terms of word and deed. Yet they managed to rationalise slavery.

Post: #6

Liberal democracy was tried by China in 1911 and the newly created Russian Federation in 1991. Both were resounding failures that jaded their citizens to the weaknesses evident in imposing a political system that in other countries occured organically with the right social and economic preconditions. More liberty can sometimes mean weakness in the international system particularly in very multi-national countries like Russia and China. It remains to be seen what model will prove most successful in the long-run. The paradox of 19th century Europe was the two most successful states (Great Britain and Prussia/Germany) represented diametrically opposite models (democracy vs autocracy). The 21st century will be a contest for dominance between the USA and China (again both offer different models). What is certain is that capitalism has triumphed . No alternative belief system has emerged to challenge it since the collapse of Soviet Communism.

Post: #7

(04-27-2015 07:12 PM)DjembaDjemba Wrote:  Then there's the US. In the 1880s, there were more black senators, congressman, politicians, and landowners than there are today.

This caught my eye. Is this true? Can you offer further explanation or a source on this?

Post: #8

Heavy I am guessing you are not American, right?

The U.S. Civil War ended in 1865 and following it was a period called Reconstruction. During that time former slaves were given the right to vote and Union soldiers occupied the rebel states and ensured that blacks were indeed allowed to vote. As a result they elected many black politicians.

After reconstruction ended and Union troops left the South, many measures were put in place to exclude blacks from exercising their right to vote.

In many southern states at the time, blacks were in the range of 50% of the total population. In some locales they formed overwhelming majorities.