A Liberal Dose columns by Troy D. Smith

 

Here is an updated list of my "A Liberal Dose" columns. Of course, you can backtrack on my blog page and find them in the archives, but this way is easier.

A LIBERAL DOSE Feb. 25, 2021 "History is the Key to Everything"

A Liberal Dose, March 4, 2021 "Understanding the Many Types of Privilege"

A Liberal Dose, March 11, 2021: "Republicanism, George Washington, and Cowboys"

A Liberal Dose, March 18, 2021: "The Social Contract and the Role of Government"

A Liberal Dose, March 25, 2021 "The Difference Between Liberal and Conservative"

A Liberal Dose, April 1, 2021 "Flags, Mascots, and Outrage: Empathy Is the Key"

A Liberal Dose April 8, 2021 "Thomas Paine, Lincoln, and the Meaning of America"

A Liberal Dose, April 15, 2021 "Defining Terms: What Is Fascism?"

A Liberal Dose, April 22, 2021: "Defining Terms: What Is Socialism?"

A Liberal Dose, April 29, 2021 "May Day, Labor, and the Reason We Need Unions"

A Liberal Dose, May 6, 2021 "The Legacy of Haymarket Square"

A Liberal Dose, May 13, 2021 "What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Are Some People Scared of It?"

A Liberal Dose, May 20, 2021 "Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias: What Are They? Part 1"

A Liberal Dose, May 27, 2021 "Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias: What Are They? Part 2"

A Liberal Dose, June 3, 2021 "Civil War and Slavery: Past Is Prologue"

A Liberal Dose, June 10, 2021 "What Is Lost Cause Ideology?"

A Liberal Dose, June 17, 2021 "Orwell Said It Best: The New Lost Cause Ideology"

A Liberal Dose, June 24, 2021 "Why Do So Many Southerners Not Trust Science?"

A Liberal Dose, July 1, 2021 "The Gradual Conservative Slide from Reality- Part 1"

A Liberal Dose, July 8, 2021 "Slide from Reality, Part 2: Climate Change"

A Liberal Dose, July 15, 2021 "Slide from Reality, Part 3: Fear and Truthiness"

A Liberal Dose, July 22, 2021 "When White County Was Blue, part 1"

A Liberal Dose, July 29, 2021 "When White County Was Blue, Part 2"

A Liberal Dose, Aug 5, 2021 "When White County Was Blue, part 3"

A Liberal Dose, Aug. 12, 2021 "What Do You Hope to Accomplish?"

A Liberal Dose, Aug. 26, 2021 "To Vax or Not to Vax?"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 2, 2021 "Labor History in White County, Part 1"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 9, 2021 "Labor History in White County, Part 2"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 16, 2021 "Labor History in White County, Part 3"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 23, 2021 "Labor History in White County, Part 4"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 30, 2021 "The Duties of a Historian Explained"

A Liberal Dose, Oct. 7, 2021 "What Is So Bad about Columbus?"

A Liberal Dose, Oct. 14, 2021 "Witch Hunts in America"

A Liberal Dose, Oct. 21, 2021 "What's So Important about Tenure?"

A Liberal Dose, Oct. 28, 2021 "Sparta's Black Union Troops Deserve Honor"

A Liberal Dose, Nov. 4, 2021 "The History of Voting in America, Part 1

A Liberal Dose, November 11, 2021 "The History of Voting in America, Part 2: Poor white and free black voters"

A Liberal Dose, November 18, 2021 "History of Voting Part 3: Women's Suffrage"

A Liberal Dose, November 25, 2021 "History of Voting Part 4: Native Americans"

A Liberal Dose, December 2, 2021 "History of Voting 5: Reconstruction"

A Liberal Dose, December 9, 2021 "History of Voting 6: The Jim Crow South"

A Liberal Dose, December 16, 2021 "History of Voting 7: The Civil Rights Era"

A Liberal Dose, December 23, 2021 "What's the Big Deal about Voter ID?"

A Liberal Dose, December 30, 2021 "The Present Attack on Voting in America"

A Liberal Dose, January 6, 2022 "The Biggest Attack on Elections in American History"

A Liberal Dose, January 13, 2022 "The Return of the Paxton Boys"

A Liberal Dose, January 20, 2022 "Seditious Insurrectionists' Need to Understand What Treason Is"

A Liberal Dose, February 3, 2022 "A Graphic Novel, A School Board, and Confronting History"

A Liberal Dose, February 10, 2022 "Why Taking Maus Out of Middle School Does Matter"

A Liberal Dose, February 17, 2022 "History Is Still the Key to Everything -Don't Lose It"

A Liberal Dose, February 24, 2022 "Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court"

A Liberal Dose, March 3, 2022 "Russia's Aggression and Journey to Fascism"

A Liberal Dose, March 17, 2022 "It Feels Like the Entire World Has Gone Crazy"

A Liberal Dose, Mach 24, 2022 "World Gone Mad: What Can We Do About It?"

A Liberal Dose, April 7, 2022 "You Can't Teach History Without Being Honest"

A Liberal Dose, April 14, 2022 "This Land Was Made for You and Me"

A Liberal Dose, April 21, 2022 "A History of Upper Cumberland Violence and Its Effects"

A Liberal Dose, April 28, 2022 "Down and Out in the Upper Cumberland"

A Liberal Dose, May 12, 2022 "The Roots of Upper Cumberland Poverty"

A Liberal Dose, May 22, 2022 "The Real Purpose of the Hillbilly Stereotype"

A Liberal Dose, May 29, 2022 "Poverty in the Upper Cumberland: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?"

A Liberal Dose, June 2, 2022 "Fake Conspiracy Theories Can Lead to Very Real Dangers"

A Liberal Dose, June 9, 2022 "Why Is It So Hard to Pass Gun Laws?"

A Liberal Dose, June 16, 2022 "Someone Tried to Steal the Election, All Right"

A Liberal Dose, June 23, 2022 "Trump Knew His Election Fraud Claims Were Untrue"

A Liberal Dose, June 30, 2022 "This Insurrection Was Carefully Planned, and Cold-Blooded"

A Liberal Dose, July 7, 2022 "What Will Be the Legacy of Donald Trump?"

A Liberal Dose, July 14, 2022 "A Republic, If We Can Keep It: Democracy in the Balance"

A Liberal Dose, July 21, 2022 "Stop Treating Our Teachers Like Dirt"

A Liberal Dose, July 28, 2022 "A Very Brief History of Public Education in America"

A Liberal Dose, August 4, 2022 "Leave Teachers Alone and Let Them Do Their Jobs"

A Liberal Dose, August 11, 2022 "Why I Am Not a Christian Nationalist"

A Liberal Dose, August 18, 2022 "The Faith of the Founding Fathers"

A Liberal Dose, August 25, 2022 "The Role of Faith in the Early Republic"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 1, 2022 "What's So Bad About Nationalism, Anyway?"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 8, 2022 "The Monsters Are Coming to Maple Street"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 15, 2022 "Don't Let Fear Be Our Downfall: A Reflection on 9/11"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 22, 2022 "Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'The American Scholar,' and the Dangers of Fear"

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 29, 2022 "The Good of the Many or the One: Why Not Both?"

A Liberal Dose, October 6, 2022 "What Are You For? What Matters Most to You?"

A Liberal Dose, October 13, 2022 "We as a Society Need to Put on the Brakes"

A Liberal Dose, October 20, 2022 "Vote to Support Our Schools, Our Teachers, and Our Kids"

A Liberal Dose, Oct. 27, 2022 "Allow Me to (Re)Introduce Myself"

A Liberal Dose, Nov. 3, 2022 "Political Violence Continues On, Unabated"

A Liberal Dose, Nov. 10, 2022 "Have We Reached Our Preston Brooks Moment?"

A Liberal Dose, Nov. 17, 2022 "Taking a Deep Breath After the Midterms"

A Liberal Dose, Nov. 24, 2022 "Let's Be Thankful to Native Americans"

A Liberal Dose, Dec. 1, 2022 "Heartfelt Convictions Over Party Lines"

A Liberal Dose, Dec. 8, 2022 "What Is Hegemony? Understanding the Modern World"

A Liberal Dose, Dec. 15, 2022 "WWII and the Rise of American Hegemony"

A Liberal Dose, Dec. 22, 2022 "How American Became the Global Policeman"

A Liberal Dose, Dec. 29, 2022 "9/11 and the Unraveling of Hegemony"

A Liberal Dose, Jan. 5, 2023 "January 6- A Day That Will Live Forever in Infamy"

A Liberal Dose, Jan. 12, 2023 "Today's News or Yesterday's History, Learn to Read Between the Lines"

A Liberal Dose, Jan. 19, 2023 "In America the King Is Not Law, the Law Is King"

A Liberal Dose, Jan. 26, 2023 "A Few Words About Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."

A Liberal Dose, Feb. 2, 2023 "Protesting with Nazis Is an Alliance with Nazis"

A Liberal Dose, Feb. 9, 2023 "Rubbing Shoulders with Nazis: On a Slippery Slope Wearing Skates

A Liberal Dose, Feb 26, 2023 "Thinking About Issues That Concern Native Americans"

A Liberal Dose, March 4, 2023 "Two Years After Trump- Where Are We Now?"

A Liberal Dose, March 12, 2023 "Let's All Find the Better Angels of Our Nature"

A Liberal Dose, March 20, 2023 "What Is Behind the Rage Against Drag Shows?"

A Liberal Dose, March 23 2023 "Perceptions of Reality Are Defined By Your Perspective- So Widen It"

A Liberal Dose, March 30, 2023 "Needed: Your Memories About Weather in the Upper Cumberland"

A Liberal Dose, April 6, 2023 "Falling Down: What a Thirty-Year-Old Movie Tells Us About Today"

A Liberal Dose, April 13, 2023: The Tennessee State Legislature Has Shot Itself in the Foot"

A Liberal Dose, April 20, 2023 "Breaking Bad and the Receding American Dream"

A Liberal Dose, April 27, 2023 "Shot for Getting the Wrong Address- What Is Happening?"

A Liberal Dose, May 4, 2023 "Frustration, Rage, and Searching for the American Dream"

A Liberal Dose, May 11, 2023 "A Final Word (For Now) on Perception"

A Liberal Dose, May 18, 2023 "The Difference Between a Column and a Classroom"

A Liberal Dose, May 25, 2023 "Tear Down the Walls of Division"

A Liberal Dose, June 8, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 1- How It Started"

A Liberal Dose, June 15, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 2- Building Fences"

A Liberal Dose, June 22, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 3- Into the New World"

A Liberal Dose, June 29, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 4- Let Them Eat Less Cake"

A Liberal Dose, July 6, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 5- Breaking Appalachia"

A Liberal Dose, July 13, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 6- The Legacy of Slavery and Race"

A Liberal Dose, July 20, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 7- Divided Means Conquered"

A Liberal Dose, July 27, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 8- The Commons Are Not Tragic"

A Liberal Dose, August 3, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 9- Tying It All Together"

A Liberal Dose, August 10, 2023 "Waving Goodbye to Waving Hello?"

A Liberal Dose, August 17, 2023 "Learn from the Cycles of History"

A Liberal Dose, August 24, 2023 "Politicians, Libraries, and Schools: Learning from the Power of Knowledge"

A Liberal Dose, August 31, 2023 "What Is History, and Why Does It Matter?"

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author website: www.troyduanesmith.com

A Liberal Dose, April 29, 2021 "May Day, Labor, and the Reason We Need Unions"

 

A Liberal Dose, April 29, 2021

"May Day, Labor, and the Reason We Need Unions"

Troy D. Smith

Since it is almost May Day, I thought I would spend a couple of columns talking about the importance of labor, the labor movement, and unions. Some of you may wonder what that has to do with the first day of May. May 1 is recognized as Labor Day or International Workers Day by 103 countries around the world. Another half-dozen or so countries celebrate on the first Monday in May. The United States, of course, celebrates Labor Day in September –I think Canada is the only other country to go that route. This is ironic, since the events that led to May 1 being associated with the labor movement happened in the U.S. Next week I will tell you the story of what those events were, and why we celebrate the day in September here instead of May. This week I just want to introduce the topic by discussing why the labor movement was and still is so important.

First let’s talk a little bit about factories – a topic many of you out there are very familiar with. There used to be a lot of factories of various kinds in White County and throughout the Upper Cumberland. Most of them are gone, but several still remain and many of you –or your parents or grandparents- have worked in them. Factories as we know them became a thing in the U.S. during the Industrial Revolution, starting in the 1790s and lasting until roughly 1840. A second wave of factories –and huge changes in how they were run –occurred during the Second Industrial Revolution (roughly the end of the American Civil War in 1865 until the beginning of WWI in 1914).

During the first period, factory workers tended to fall into three categories: master craftsmen, journeymen, and apprentices (or beginners). A master craftsman knew from start to finish how to manufacture a given item and was an expert; journeymen were experienced hands, and apprentices were beginners. Workers labored in teams, called “gangs,” with the master as the “gang boss.” Each gang would build the item in question from scratch, the intermediate and beginner hands gradually learning the whole process. That started to change during the second period with the arrival of a guy named Frederick Winslow Taylor, the first modern “management consultant,” who introduced the concept of “scientific management.”

If your factory got “taylorized,” consultants would figure out exactly how long each step in production should take, and set production quotas. They also moved away from the “work gang” and “gang boss” model. Instead of a handful of workers having thorough knowledge of the process, each worker was trained how to do only one small step (which would lead to Henry Ford’s assembly line process). A master craftsman commanded a good wage, because he was irreplaceable –with scientific management, everyone became easily replaceable and their wages were depressed. The knowledge, and thus the power, rested with management instead of workers. That situation, plus the complete lack of government regulation, led to the period from 1870 to the early 1890s becoming known as “The Gilded Age,” implying that everything was not as shiny and good as it seemed on the surface. Income inequality got worse than ever. The poor kept growing poorer, and the rich richer, at a much faster clip than before. This led to the growth of the labor movement, which helped fuel the Populist Movement (when workers allied with farmers), which led to the Progressive Era. This was the age of “robber barons,” wealthy entrepreneurs who were regarded by many as deeply unscrupulous.  It was during this period -1870s/1880s –that bank and train robbers became romanticized folk heroes, because they were “sticking it to the man.” The same thing would happen during the Great Depression, with John Dillinger replacing Jesse James.

I demonstrate all that in class with the following activity. I announce that the classroom is a paper airplane factory, and I am the owner. I ask who knows how to make a paper airplane (it’s always less than half). I tell those students they are masters or journeymen and make $100 per day. The others are apprentices and earn $60. I then announce a contest: I will give a $500 bonus to whomever can make an airplane and successfully launch it the fastest. To ensure no one is cheating, I have management helpers closely monitor everyone –then I give the word, and they scramble to work. On the average, it takes about 11 seconds before the first airplane whizzes through the air. I congratulate the winner, tell him his check is in the mail, then inform him he is fired. So are all the $100 a day people –because we watched closely and saw, step-by-step, exactly how they made those airplanes. Now we have the knowledge, so they are expendable. In fact, they are dangerous. The other people –who don’t yet know how to make the airplanes –have their salaries reduced from $60 to $50. If they don’t like it they can quit. They will be easy to replace. Further, I now know that a paper airplane can be made in 11 seconds –so I expect each worker to produce one every 11 seconds, all day long, or I will dock their pay further.

I ask the students, if they had known me well enough to know I wasn’t trustworthy, what could they have done to change the outcome? Someone always figures out that all the workers could have made the planes slower, and/or launched them at the same time. “But how would you know to do that?”

The light comes on for them. They would have to organize. They would need a union.

You might need to go on strike, I tell them, so you would need a strike fund to live on in that eventuality. “How many of you, if you made $50 a day, would be willing to give $5 of it to your union as dues?” Out of 30 students, maybe 3 or 4 raise their hands. “This is why your union will fail,” I tell them, “and you will always lose.”

I inform them than in some states you are required to join, or at least contribute to, a union if your workplace has one. Other states (since 1948) are “right-to-work” states where you don’t have to join a union in order to work. Unions are mostly toothless in those states. I then show them a map of the states that have been right-to-work since the 40s. Then I show them a map of the states with the lowest wages and standard of living; the highest divorce rates, the lowest life expectancy; the most people on welfare and food stamps; the most people without insurance. It is pretty much the same map. After the economy collapsed in 2008, several Midwestern states joined the “right-to-work” club. Their wages and standards of living have gone down.

As President Obama put it, the term really means “right to work for less money.” And those other maps show the consequences over time, thereby demonstrating the importance of the labor movement.

Next time we will look more closely at its history.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A list of all previous columns can be found HERE

www.troyduanesmith.com

A Liberal Dose, April 22, 2021: "Defining Terms: What Is Socialism?"

 

A Liberal Dose, April 22, 2021:

“Defining Terms: What Is Socialism?”

Troy D. Smith

 

About four years or so ago I was curious about something, so I decided to test it out in my modern U.S. history classes. I had three sections of the class at that time, so around 150 students. Before we discussed the Cold War, I asked this question: during that Cold War, whose side do you think Denmark and Norway were on, the Soviet Union or the United States? Half the students had no idea and were afraid to guess. Of the ones who were willing to raise their hands, three or four said the U.S. and all the rest said the Soviet Union. Then I asked the same question about France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain… and almost as many students guessed the Soviet Union for them, as well. There was genuine surprise, even shock, when I told the room that all those countries were on the same side as the United States.

That experiment verified my fears. There had been so much rhetoric on the media for the past decade about the insidious dangers of “European-style socialism” that, as I suspected, young people were growing up believing that the liberal governments of western and northern Europe were exactly the same as communist Russia. Any hint of the words “socialism” or even “the left” had come to personify evil incarnate to many Americans. This is because most Americans do not really know what socialism means, or that there are major differences between socialism, communism, and Democratic Socialism as practiced to some degree by many (if not most) of our longstanding European allies.

Defining these things is more challenging than defining fascism, as I did last week, because there are nuances involved… but I’m going to give it a shot. As I have a word limit, I can only give very basic definitions and will no doubt miss a lot, but here goes.

“Socialism” essentially means social control of the means of production. How this looks varies depending on the type of socialism. Democratic Socialism, also called the Nordic Model (as in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, & Finland), is compatible with (and dependent on) democracy and liberty. The government is put in place by fair elections, and there are multiple political parties (not just the far left). Britain, France, and Germany are very similar. All these countries have a “mixed market” or “hybrid” economic system that is still capitalism. In such countries, the government controls vital goods and services (electricity, water, healthcare, transportation, etc.), whereas consumer goods are still sold on a free market basis. All those services (free to everybody) are financed by high taxes. You can still get rich in such countries. Doctors still make much more money than cafeteria workers –but doctors are not as wealthy, nor cafeteria workers as poor, as in the U.S. This actually describes most countries in the world- not just in Europe, but to varying degrees also Japan, Australia, and Canada. None of which are communist. That sort of socialism in not pure socialism, it is a mixture of socialism and capitalism… one might say, a halfway point between capitalism and communism.

Revolutionary Socialism, on the other hand, posits that you can’t have true socialism unless you get rid of capitalism completely. When a revolution like that happens, you end up with a Communist government that almost always is authoritarian and controls everything. This does not mean, however, that all communists are authoritarian (though all fascists are). There are other types, as well: Libertarian Socialism (remove capitalism and people will naturally become more cooperative), Market Socialism (workers’ co-ops and public ownership of goods and resources), and more. None of which are Communism. Did you know that the Green Bay Packers is a publicly owned non-profit organization, and that you can only buy a limited amount of stock, which only gives you voting rights on major decisions? Did you know that if you live in Alaska you receive an annual dividend (last year it was $1600) from oil sales? Did you know that these are forms of socialism?

“Social net” programs like social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, etc., may not officially be socialism but they are definitely socialism-adjacent. And they were all introduced by liberal Democratic administrations, and were all opposed by conservatives who called them “communism.” This has been a conservative tactic for 100 years, and has resulted in Americans thinking anything left-of-center, or benefiting labor, or promoting the general welfare, is communism and therefore sinister and anti-American.

I keep referring back to the Progressive Era (1900-1920), so I probably need to devote a whole column to it soon. I mention it because during that era Progressives –which included Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, and Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive (or “Bull Moose”) Party – called for an end to unfettered, unregulated, Gilded Age, robber baron capitalism. In most cases, what they wanted instead was capitalism with a human heart, regulated by the government. The Socialist Party of America had a surprising amount of support: Eugene Debs received almost a million votes for president in 1912 (6% of the popular vote) and the party won two senate seats, several governorships, and something like a hundred state legislative seats in the 1910s. Socialists at that time tended to be either labor organizers, populist farmers, or progressive reformers who called for things like an 8-hour workday, child labor laws, workplace safety laws, direct election of U.S. Senators, and a graduated income tax. All of which eventually came to pass.

The popularity of that party changed by the end of the 1910s. This was partly because the Socialists opposed U.S. involvement in WWI and were considered unpatriotic by many –but an even bigger factor was the Russian Revolution. A major world player was brought down and replaced with a communist government, which led to global paranoia about anything that smacked of “the left.” Fascists in Germany, Italy, and fascistic elements in Japan took advantage of citizens’ fear of the left to sweep into power via promises to fight socialism. That has been a far right strategy ever since.

Allow me to reiterate. Not everything on the political left is automatically socialism, and even socialism is not automatically communism. There is a spectrum. We have problems as a country when everyone on the right says anyone left of center is a socialist or a communist, and everyone on the left says anyone right of center is a fascist. Fascists and Communists are only the radical extreme of each wing. Of course, if that radical extreme gets political control it can be disastrous. It is worth repeating, though, that not all communists are authoritarian, whereas fascists almost always are.

There is nothing wrong with people having different philosophies or different approaches to our common problems. It is okay to come down more on one side than the other. So let’s stop demonizing each other. Let’s all pull together –this country can do great things when we do.

That sounds like a leftist thing to say. And it is. But the people on the other side of the aisle can say it, too. Don’t we all equally love It’s a Wonderful Life? Let’s try that awhile instead of The Hunger Games.

  

--Troy D. Smith, an Upper Cumberland native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

 A  Liberal Dose, April 15, 2021 "Defining Terms: What Is Fascism?"

Troy D. Smith

I have been using the first several columns in this series to define terms, and I am going to continue that today with a word that is seriously misunderstood and frequently misused: fascist.

Fascist, like socialist, communist, and terrorist, has devolved among the general public into an insult to use on whoever you don’t like, without understanding the meaning of the word. It is usually linked to brutality and suppression, which is accurate, but has basically become a synonym for “meanie.” That simplistic understanding is dangerous on several levels. For one thing, a government (or a person) can use brutality and suppression without being fascist; the brutality and suppression are tools, it is the ideology those tools enforce that makes someone fascist or not. Merriam-Webster says that fascism “exalts nation and often race above the individual,” and that’s a good place to start unpacking.

People sometimes call those they disagree with fascist communists. That’s where the problem comes in. Fascists and Communists are opposites, you can’t be both at once. Fascism is the extreme far right, Communism is the extreme far left. Taken to their ultimate extremes, both can be authoritarian and use similar tactics to control their citizens. I like to say that if you go all the way to the left or all the way to the right, you circle around and they start to look like the same thing. The majority of citizens in fascist countries did not make a conscious decision to be fascist- it sneaks up on them, usually because they don’t understand what it is or how to identify it, and they fall for its propaganda (this is another way in which not understanding the meaning of fascism is dangerous.)

I am now going to give you the detailed explanation of fascism that I have been giving in class for 15 years. Starting in 2017, I sometimes got angry looks from students as I gave this definition. I know it was because they thought I was picking on Donald Trump, and twisting things to make it seem like they applied to him. But again, in reality, it was the same definition I had been giving for years.

We get the term fascist from the Fascist Party that formed in Italy in the 1920s and was led by Mussolini, who eventually ruled the whole country. This was closely followed by the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. Control of the Japanese government at that time was seized by the military, and –while they may not have espoused the exact same views as Italy and Germany –they qualified as fascistic.

Fascists are far-right. Fascism equals hyper-nationalism –our country and our way is the best and all others are inferior. Fascists will say that other countries have taken advantage of theirs, because their leaders have been too weak to stand up for themselves. This weakness, they say, is a form of betrayal. The country and its leaders must be strong as steel. Fascists call for authoritarian leaders who will restore their country to the glory it had in the past. Fascists strongly emphasize their country’s mythology, especially the idealized, mythologized stories about how and why it was founded (it was always founded in perfection). Perhaps most importantly, in a fascist state everyone must conform to the norm. People whose ideas differ, or whose ethnicity, race, religion, etc. differ from the majority, are not to be tolerated. Their very existence threatens the unity and strength of the whole. This is a perfect description of Hitler, Mussolini, and the militarized rulers of Japan in WWII. And, I don’t know, maybe some other people.

The Italian term “fascist” comes from the Latin word fasces, which literally means “bundles.” You can google the word and see a picture of fasces, but I will describe it for you here as well. It was made from a dozen or more slender wooden rods tied up in a bundle, with one rod longer than the others holding an axe head that protrudes out of the top. It was a symbol of governmental authority in Republican Rome. The idea was that each slender rod could easily be broken on its own –but when placed in a bundle, they were invulnerable. Add an axe head to them, and they were dangerous. On its own, this is not a bad image. It demonstrates strength in unity. 150 years before Mussolini, fasces were used in the iconography of the new U.S. government, appearing on various official seals. U Pluribus Unum, after all –out of many, one. United we stand, divided we fall.

But it meant much more to the hyper-nationalist government of Mussolini, who dreamed of creating a new Roman Empire. Think of that image in terms of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The whole is more important than the individual –except that one individual, the leader (or Duce, or Fuhrer), the rod with the axe, around which everything is built. All the other rods must be uniform, exactly the same. If you have some one length and some another, or different widths or shapes, the bundle will be uneven and weakened. Think of this in context of Nazis. Everyone in Nazi society had to be “Aryans” of Germanic descent, conform to dominant social mores, be healthy and productive, and submit to Nazi ideology. Anyone who did not “fit the bundle” was pruned out of it. This included “inferior races,” foreigners, LGBT people, members of certain religions, people with disabilities, and people who did not conform to Nazism: socialists, communists, intellectuals, and political protesters. This is the essence of fascism. There is one way, the national way, and dissidents and outsiders must be purged in order to strengthen the nation.

Nowadays, I hear many people insisting that Nazis were left-wing, and were in fact socialists. On one hand, it’s easy to understand the confusion, due to the Nazi Party’s official name: the Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. Or, in English, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. It sounds socialist, and even has the word right in there. On the other hand, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is not democratic nor is it really a people’s republic, so titles don’t always mean anything. The fact is –and, let me stress, this is a historical fact –socialists and communists were the arch-enemies of Nazis, and were among the first groups (along with labor unions) that they went after. If you know your history, you know that four weeks after Hitler took office a fire was set at the Parliament building (Reichstag) in Berlin, which Hitler blamed on the communists and used as an excuse to suspend their civil rights and give himself emergency powers. The key word in the party’s name was Nationalist, not Socialist (Nazi is short for Nazional).

So if you hear someone blame the nation’s woes on foreigners or lazy, shiftless racial minorities, or on academics and intellectuals, or on the weakness of more liberal leaders, or on our own allies who stabbed us in the back, or on socialism, and that only they are strong enough to save us and make the nation great again… it’s been said before.

And again, more recently.

 

--Troy D. Smith, an Upper Cumberland native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

A Liberal Dose April 8, 2021 "Thomas Paine, Lincoln, and the Meaning of America"

 

Liberal Dose #007 

April 8, 2021

Troy D. Smith

"Thomas Paine, Lincoln, and the Meaning of America"

For a long time now –since the Nixon administration, essentially, though there were traces before then –the American right has heralded itself as the only true patriotic philosophy. Liberals, they have been saying for half-a-century or more, are not only insufficiently patriotic but they literally hate America, and are traitors. I see that view presented in countless conservative editorials and I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too. This goes back to our earlier discussion about the differences between conservatives and liberals: conservatives want to keep things the same (or change them to how they used to be), while liberals/progressives want to see things improved. To many conservatives, the very suggestion that America could be improved is unpatriotic –love America as it is, they say, or leave it. Liberals, however, tend to subscribe to a vision of America –not as it is, or as it ever was –but as it was meant to be, as it always should have been. They are engaged in an effort to fully reflect the principles on which the country was founded, but which have been imperfectly carried out. As Bobby Kennedy famously said, “Some men look at the world as it is and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.”

In order to work toward an America as it was envisioned to be, it is necessary to understand accurately just what that vision was. In my opinion, two of the people who have summed it up best were Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln.

Thomas Paine was different from the other “founding fathers” in many ways. He never became a powerful political leader in the U.S. He did not come from a privileged background like the plantation owners, merchants, and successful lawyers who made up most of that group. In fact, when the American Revolution started he was only a recent emigrant to the colonies from his native England. He was working as a journal editor after a string of failed businesses.

In 1776 Paine published his famous pamphlet “Common Sense”, in which he outlined his arguments as to why America should declare independence from Great Britain, and what the new government should look like. Among other things, he said that a monarchy is a terrible way to run a government, that a government across the ocean would never look after, or even understand, the needs of distant colonies, and that as long as America was part of Great Britain we would continually be getting caught up in wars that are none of our business. All those things, as the title implied, are just common sense.

But Thomas Paine went further than that. In fact, he went further than any of the other Patriot leaders had gone up to that point. Instead of complaining about oppressive tax laws or making legalistic arguments about citizenship rights, he painted a utopian picture of what civic republicanism should be. And he took it beyond the borders of the thirteen colonies.

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,” he wrote. “O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.” 

This, then, was to be the mission of America. To be a beacon of freedom. All around the world, people oppressed by tyranny could look across the ocean to America and see a democratic republic in action. Everywhere else, Paine wrote, the King is the law –but in America, the Law is the king. The oppressed can be inspired and endeavor to throw off their own chains –and if their efforts do not work, he was saying, they can come to America –an asylum for mankind – and join with us in our own great experiment. And an experiment it was, to prove once and for all that such a form of government could and would work.

Paine’s words inspired the American public in 1776 in a way that previous –more tedious –writings by patriot leaders had not. Paine’s vision gave them not only something to fight for, but something to live for, something to die for, that was worth the living and dying. It lit a spark, without which that generation might not have had the ability to persevere in their great struggle.

Flash forward fourscore and seven years –to 1863. July of 1863, to be specific, and the Battle of Gettysburg –which most historians believe to have been the turning point of the Civil War. You all know about the speech President Lincoln gave on that battlefield, and can probably quote the first line or two from it. But unless you are familiar with the arguments of Thomas Paine in 1776, you’ve never gotten the full import of that brief speech.

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. ..It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced… that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Shall not have died in vain. This is why Abraham Lincoln, and millions of other Unionists (including one-third of white Tennesseans), could not let the Republic be fractured into two parts, which could then lead to being fractured into smaller parts still. If that happened, the experiment set forth by Thomas Paine and his peers would have failed. The whole world would see that a democratic republic could not endure longer than a couple of generations. Abraham Lincoln believed in Thomas Paine’s vision, and –like Paine –wanted to see it extend to as many people as possible.

I believe in that vision, too, with all my heart. When I talk about Paine and Lincoln, I get misty-eyed every time because I believe in it so much.

And I am a liberal.

I do not believe that vision was perfected in 1776, or in 1787 with the Constitutional Convention. For one thing, there was still slavery, Native Americans were being slaughtered and cheated, women couldn’t vote, and even poor white men couldn’t vote yet.

Nor do I believe it is perfected in 2021. Not because I hate America –but because I love it.

To quote Paine one more time: "We have it in our power to begin the world again."

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

www.troyduanesmith.com

Thoughts on Mascots

 

Troy D. Smith

Below is the text of a statement I made recently on the official Facebook page of Putnam County Commissioner Andrew Donadio, in response to his announcement that the education board had declined to form a committee to reconsider the Algood Red****s mascot.

I graduated from White County High School in Sparta. Our mascot has always been the Warriors… as in Sparta Warriors, as in classical Greece. Recently someone over there –I think it was the principal –decided to move the large Greek warrior statue from the front entrance to a less visible part of the school, and to paint over the large Warrior painting in the gym that was paid for by the class of 1970 and has been there ever since –as I understand it, because some people who had not gone to that school believed it was dirty and tacky. Now several generations of alumni are hopping mad over it, because their sense of history has been callously swept away. I am among their number. I think that was a stupid decision to make and a wrong one. I am furious.

All that was to say that, even though I am not from Algood, I understand your attachment to a school mascot. It is an integral part of a community, and becomes a part of your identity. It is also to say that –especially as a professional historian –I share your love and respect of history.

But let me explain what is different about these two cases. The Sparta Warriors is a mascot that represents, historically, a group that 2500-3000 years ago helped make up the fabric of Greco-Roman civilization, thus European civilization, thus western civilization. There is a lot to admire about Spartan culture (and a lot not to)… but they are not, and never have been since the founding of this country, a marginalized group. There are not descendants of ancient Spartans living in our community who view The Warrior as appropriating their culture or as insulting them –and if there were they would have a very weak argument.

On the other hand, there are Native American people –in this community and around the country –who are offended by their culture being used as mascots and particularly incensed at this particular word, which has been considered an insult since at least the 1800s and which is tied up with historical oppression of Native people.

And here is something that I don’t think has been brought into this discussion yet. The Algood mascot is portrayed as wearing a feathered war bonnet. That is historically inaccurate, as only tribes from the Great Plains use such a headdress, it has no connection to Tennessee whatsoever. Among those tribes who used it, that headgear is considered –still –as sacred, with huge spiritual and political importance. Only certain leaders are given the right to wear it. The feathers represent acts of courage or service to the community. Using it on a mascot is very similar to having a mascot who wears a Papal mitre (the Pope’s hat) festooned with purple heart medals. Such a mascot would be offensive (understandably) to many Catholics as well as to many who consider purple hearts to be items that should be treated with respect because of what they represent.

Some people, including me, have pointed out that it’s a safe bet the majority of people in Putnam County opposed desegregation. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been done. Now, I’m not saying that the people who love this mascot are the sort of people who would be in favor of segregation. I’m not saying that at all. I am saying they do not really understand what it means and how it feels to others who are not in the majority. I am saying, right here in this venue, that I DO understand what it means and how it feels to you, and I am asking you to do the same for others.

Sometimes, once you learn about certain things that make up your identity and your past, you realize you have to let them go in order to grow. It is hard. It should not be done, as it was in Sparta, because some outsider just thinks it is tacky. But if it has real effects on real people whom you know and respect, and if it holds your community back, you need to do it.

www.troyduanesmith.com

A Liberal Dose, April 1, 2021 "Flags, Mascots, and Outrage: Empathy Is the Key"

 

Flags, Mascots, and Outrage: Empathy Is the Key

Troy D. Smith

I talked in this column before about the differences between liberal and conservative approaches. Liberals, I pointed out, are usually focused on changing things –from their perspective, for the better and moving toward the future. Conservatives, on the other hand, want to keep things the same or change them back to how they used to be –in effect, to “conserve” the status quo. This makes conservatives real strong on maintaining tradition. Liberals are also real big on trying to be more “tolerant, accepting of different cultures, and willing to accept new ideas and new ways of doing things.” (Yes, I just quoted myself.) There is also the difference in how the two groups think the government should spend money, but we are not going to focus on that part much this time. Instead, we are going to take a couple of examples that are in the news right now, both nationally and in the Upper Cumberland, and see how liberals and conservatives approach them and what that tells us. Spoiler alert: the key is empathy.

Recent studies indicate that the more empathetic you are, the more likely you are to lean left. Now, bear in mind, empathy is not the same thing as compassion. Conservative people can be extremely compassionate when it comes to helping people in need. Empathy has more to do with understanding how those other people feel. This comes down to the previous definition of terms. Conservatives want to preserve the status quo, and believe everyone else needs to get with that program. Liberals are more likely to value several perspectives on things rather than a straight this-is-good, that-is-bad, nothing in-between approach. One frequent by-product of this is that, as a result, Democrats have usually been more easily divided than Republicans. This is what led Will Rogers, a century ago, to say things like “Of course Democrats don’t agree with each other, if they agreed with each other they’d be Republicans” and “I am not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”

Let’s get to our examples. The first one: athletes kneeling in protest during the National Anthem. Many conservatives go crazy over this one. I know senior citizens who are lifelong football fans who refuse to watch an NFL game because athletes are allowed to protest in this manner and still have jobs. More specifically, when black athletes and their non-black allies protest the pervasive police killings of unarmed black men. To many conservatives, this is such a profound flouting of tradition –and lack of respect for that tradition –that it is unjustifiable. They tend to see it simply as “hating America,” and not –as liberals tend to do –as a peaceful, even respectful, gesture protesting the fact that, in that specific area, America needs to be better. People incensed by kneeling have probably never read the stirring words of Frederick Douglass’s (I hear he’s doing great things) 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” They may have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that the great (and Republican) baseball star Jackie Robinson said, in 1972, “I cannot stand and sing the anthem; I cannot salute the flag. I know I am a black man in a white world.” Never having experienced what it is like to be treated as a second-or-third-class citizen in one’s own country, white conservatives rarely seem to imagine how they would feel and how they might want to attract attention for their cause. Or, perhaps even more telling, when white conservatives feel their absolute right to exercise power and say what they want with no social consequences is being impinged, they cry to the heavens about how persecuted they are –without ever seeming to realize that other groups have suffered and are suffering far worse indignities than they are.

There were white people just as incensed, and saying many of the same things, about African Americans peacefully sitting in protest at lunch counters in the sixties. Many today are primarily angered at the “disrespect” and violation of tradition in this form of protest (kneeling). Now, we have to admit, there are a large number of white Americans today who would be incensed at any form of black protest, peaceful or not, and who are enraged at any mention of the Black Lives Matter movement. And we also have to admit to ourselves, white American neighbors, that a lot of people who have chanted “Blue Lives Matter” were among the seditious mob who tried to beat cops to death with fire extinguishers and flagpoles a couple of months ago, so there is more going on there. By more, of course, I mean blatant racism. But I know that is not true of all conservatives. So let’s look at my other example, and then tie them together.

Protesting Native American sports mascots is not a new thing, as many people seem to think. Lakota activist and future American Indian Movement spokesman Russell Means was leading protests in Cleveland against their baseball team’s name and mascot in the 1960s. Other major league sports teams were being regularly criticized by Native American organizations by the early 1970s. While many people argue that American Indian-themed school mascots are meant to honor indigenous people, most Native Americans find them to be offensive on several levels- appropriating and trivializing Native culture and identity, reinforcing insulting stereotypes, and profaning things that many Native people hold as sacred. For example –and you probably didn’t know this –the ceremonial long feathered headdresses worn by Plains tribes, and appearing on many school mascots, have a very specific meaning. It is both spiritual and social. Only certain people in a tribe earn the right to wear them, and each feather represents an act of courage or service to the community. Dancing around in one without earning it is kind of like dressing as the Pope but covered with Purple Heart medals. Which many conservative Americans would find extremely offensive.

Nothing, though, is as insulting to indigenous people than the mascot used until recently by the Washington NFL team and still used by public schools around the country. That particular word has never been considered an “honor”- dictionaries literally define it as insulting and offensive. It is a racial epithet of the sort that used to be publicly applied to various minority groups but which now get bleeped out on television (appropriately). And yet when Native individuals protest such mascots –even “the R-word” –they are frequently harassed, intimidated, and even targeted with death threats (I’ve seen it happen).

Empathy would teach you that Native Americans’ feelings on this matter are very similar to your own feelings when your treasured cultural traditions are treated in a way you find insulting. But too many people only see how things affect them or their group, without trying to imagine the feelings of the other side. I wish everyone would try an experiment for a week or so- every time you want to say “political correctness” substitute the phrase “human kindness and decency” and see how your sentences sound.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

www.troyduanesmith.com