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Life Improving Dramatically; Protests Expanding (EP.53)
Summary
Life is getting better along almost all fronts. The overall rates of violence and gun deaths have been falling for decades. The poverty percentages are falling, and even the poorest in the US live at about the international median. Institutional racism and sexism are all but gone, and individual wrongs in both areas continue to decline even as the definition of what constitutes a wrong expand. With those things being true, what explains the continuing increase in both the number and rigorousness of protests?
Links and References
Activists Don’t Want Peace
Crab Mentality
Young, Poor and Angry
Contact
Please do reach out with comments or questions. You can email me at [email protected], or connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
And you can subscribe to the podcast on your favorite device through Apple Podcasts, Google, or Stitcher.
Transcript
Life is getting better along almost all fronts. The overall rates of violence and gun deaths have been falling for decades. The poverty percentages are falling, and even the poorest in the US live at about the international median; 50% of the people in the world are worse off than our poorest. Institutional racism and sexism are all but gone, and individual wrongs in both areas continue to decline even as the definition of what constitutes a wrong expands. With those things being true, what explains the continuing increase in both the number and intensity of protests?
Let’s isolate the race issue as an example. America was founded on an astonishing principle; all men were created equal: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The most astonishing part is that this principled stand was indeed astonishing in 1776. The Declaration of Independence was an international game changer, written at a time that hereditary monarchs and dictators ruled most of the world, and concepts such as private property for all and rights given to people by a Creator were almost unthinkable. In the process, the Founders created the world’s oldest democracy; yes, that’s us--the world’s oldest democracy. The Constitution did allow slaves, and women were not allowed to vote. In 1789, only white, land-owning males were allowed to vote in most states. Had the abolitionists held out for no slavery from the beginning, there would have been no union, no America; the US would have been stillborn. But the Declaration was an all-important statement of direction. A direction we have been committed to and have been following ever since 1776.
Even prior to the Civil War (the ultimate oxymoron), the struggle between the North and South was fierce and continuing, with the South wanting more states to be slave states, and the North wanting to cap the number of slave-holding states. Over 600,000 Americans died in the war that liberated the slaves. That’s more deaths than in all of our other wars combined, including defeating the Nazis and Imperial Japan in WWII. Post the Civil War, the struggle continued as the South instituted the Black Codes as way of continuing to use blacks for free or near-free labor. It was not until 1948 that the US military was integrated. And it took until the mid-60s for black civil rights to rise to the top of the nation’s attention and be addressed.
The point not to be missed here is that 242 years ago, our nation set a new course, unique in the world at the time, a course toward civil and economic freedoms for all, and we have stayed with it. Through wars, through economic downturns, through a civil conflict that almost tore our nation apart, through evils like the KKK and the deep-seated thinking that made black children attending previously all-white schools so...
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By Will LudenSummary
Life is getting better along almost all fronts. The overall rates of violence and gun deaths have been falling for decades. The poverty percentages are falling, and even the poorest in the US live at about the international median. Institutional racism and sexism are all but gone, and individual wrongs in both areas continue to decline even as the definition of what constitutes a wrong expand. With those things being true, what explains the continuing increase in both the number and rigorousness of protests?
Links and References
Activists Don’t Want Peace
Crab Mentality
Young, Poor and Angry
Contact
Please do reach out with comments or questions. You can email me at [email protected], or connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
And you can subscribe to the podcast on your favorite device through Apple Podcasts, Google, or Stitcher.
Transcript
Life is getting better along almost all fronts. The overall rates of violence and gun deaths have been falling for decades. The poverty percentages are falling, and even the poorest in the US live at about the international median; 50% of the people in the world are worse off than our poorest. Institutional racism and sexism are all but gone, and individual wrongs in both areas continue to decline even as the definition of what constitutes a wrong expands. With those things being true, what explains the continuing increase in both the number and intensity of protests?
Let’s isolate the race issue as an example. America was founded on an astonishing principle; all men were created equal: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The most astonishing part is that this principled stand was indeed astonishing in 1776. The Declaration of Independence was an international game changer, written at a time that hereditary monarchs and dictators ruled most of the world, and concepts such as private property for all and rights given to people by a Creator were almost unthinkable. In the process, the Founders created the world’s oldest democracy; yes, that’s us--the world’s oldest democracy. The Constitution did allow slaves, and women were not allowed to vote. In 1789, only white, land-owning males were allowed to vote in most states. Had the abolitionists held out for no slavery from the beginning, there would have been no union, no America; the US would have been stillborn. But the Declaration was an all-important statement of direction. A direction we have been committed to and have been following ever since 1776.
Even prior to the Civil War (the ultimate oxymoron), the struggle between the North and South was fierce and continuing, with the South wanting more states to be slave states, and the North wanting to cap the number of slave-holding states. Over 600,000 Americans died in the war that liberated the slaves. That’s more deaths than in all of our other wars combined, including defeating the Nazis and Imperial Japan in WWII. Post the Civil War, the struggle continued as the South instituted the Black Codes as way of continuing to use blacks for free or near-free labor. It was not until 1948 that the US military was integrated. And it took until the mid-60s for black civil rights to rise to the top of the nation’s attention and be addressed.
The point not to be missed here is that 242 years ago, our nation set a new course, unique in the world at the time, a course toward civil and economic freedoms for all, and we have stayed with it. Through wars, through economic downturns, through a civil conflict that almost tore our nation apart, through evils like the KKK and the deep-seated thinking that made black children attending previously all-white schools so...