Letters From the April 2025 Issue

Come gather, people, people

Thank you for the thoughtful review of Daniel Inaire Noama Homski and Nathan Robinson Myth about American idealism (“Critic of the empire“February 2025). The main criticism of Inner is not analytical, but strategic:” The left should spend less time, breaking people myths, they no longer believe or organize mass protests that do not go anywhere. Instead, we need to formulate a more effective strategy for the state behavior. “

The announcement of mass action is ineffective for empirical reasons, it seems that Homsk and Robinson claimed something like: “If there is x Number of demonstrations with y Number of people during the period z Month, purposeful policy will change. “Of course, it would be inappropriate, and of course no one ever offered such an empirical test. Their argument is that in the capitalist society all the institutions of government, the formation of opinions and economic regulation are controlled by people who serve as a single set of goals: formation and breeding. Institutions work effectively and do not allow a significant opposition from within a large-scale, constant popular opposition.

Is it premature to write off mass actions as a dead end? Abolitionists, populists, socialists, early unions, suffragists and civil rights were hardly unskilled failures. It is clear that it could be tempted to abandon mass action as soon as the masses allowed to vote for Charlatan. But ultimately there is no alternative to continue trying to persuade people. There is simply no other counter -power.

George Scialabba
Cambridge, mass
 

I agree with the majority of reading of the insomnia, including his conclusion that Pace Homski and Robinson, “marches and advertising campaigns just do not turn over (numerous revengers in America) of the institution; only political – that is, the state can.” However, I am very pessimistic about such an alternative strategy for March.

To Me The Defining Lesson of the 2024 us election is that even though both of the duopoly parties’ Candidates pleased to continue Came, in NEWER Than 2 Percent of Voters Had Attempted to Register Eveny Moral Protest By Voting For Any of the Anti-Zionist, Pro-Peace Third-Party candidates. The magnitude of such cowardice among the American public from the abolition of both regional ones, is unlikely to “smaller” parties, made it clear that no intellectual criticism that has mass demonstrations, and not even institutional struggles within the state had any chances to challenge in the US for as long as 98 percent.

WZele D. FUSFIELD
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 

Daniel Uzsner claims that the Vietnam War Movement “had a slight influence on politics.” On the contrary, numerous studies such as recent Carolyn Woods Eiseenberg Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger and Wars in Southeast AsiaIn detail as the Nixon administration constantly took into account the movement when making the main decisions on the war. One example: Nixon confessed to his memoirs that he had refused to threaten a serious escalation in Northern Vietnam, including the possible use of nuclear weapons from the moratorium and mobilization in the fall of 1969. This story is told in the PBS documentary in the PBS documentary Movement and “crazy”.

Grevealing Lveterring
San Francisco, California
A writer is an executive producer Movement and “crazy”.
 

Constitutional fraud

I was glad to read this Nation He called on the Electoral College in the 1870s (“People’s opinion”December 2024). In his article, Richard Croight complains that we have not been able to destroy the “led part of the constitutional technology”, known as the election college, citing the presidential election that he became confused since the end of the civil war. However, the role of this institution was even more moody before the war. The concept and design of the electoral college, created in the Constitution of 1787, directly responsible for the filling of all three branches of the new central government with the planter/slave representation. The Constitution created and mixed two forms of government, constitutional republicanism and constitutional slavery, the latter of which used the instruments of representative republicanism to protect and expand property.

MIelael Sestate
Platsburgh, New York
 

Removing Executive

Eric Fonner examines many precedents in US history for rationalized removal, claiming that “none have ended” (“(” (“America made a mass deportation earlier“Thenation.com, November 25, 2024). Its example is the report on the schemes of Abraham Lincoln on the expatriation of African Americans, in particular in Central America and the Caribbean. Foner contends that the opposition of Slave Owners and Black Leaders Epiphany on African Americans’ Value as Soldiers, Instilled “A Dramatic Change in His Outlook” Had arranged with a shady Businessman to send hundreds of freedpeople to a Haitian Island, the scheme it would revive in April.

Thus, the hedge coone that Lincoln made a “key step to recognizing” black people as American citizens, and “(began) imagining that the United States as a Biosa Society is equal.” Since clumsy suddenly, but the gradual transformation hinted at Lincoln the Fun, the White House did not actually stop trying to relocate African Americans, even when black people dressed in blue. Lincoln agreed with British diplomats until 1863 to send African Americans to what Belize and Guyan now fought for the preservation of the Black Emigration Commissioner, despite the fact that Congress canceled the financing of the latter.

The historian is not required to assume that Lincoln removal schemes have failed, and no Korrov to predict that Trump would suffer from the same fate. But the funner would have backed his business by avoiding the story of the “evolution” of the 16th president on the race, and, as he emphasized the obstacles that Lincoln faced: resistance not only future emigrants, but also legislators and lawyers, sponsors and functionaries, as well as neutrals. A hundred sixty years later, it sounds so familiar.

Sebastian Page
Oxford, UK
 

The backone replies

During the first two years of the Civil War, Lincoln promoted a plan for the pattern of views on his political idol Henry Clay, for his connection with the slavery with monetary compensation of the slave, the gradual way to the release and voluntary colonization of the released robbs outside the United States. This plan was intended in part to receive support for the release.

After he issued a statement of release, the plan became controversial. The announcement was immediate, not gradual; Nothing is said about colonization (it is really believed that black people will remain in a country where they “work good for a reasonable salary”); And he did not provide for payment to the owners to compensate them to the loss of human property. Lincoln mentioned the colonization once later in the war, but not publicly, because it was no longer part of the release plan. The statement about the release, without colonization, compensation and graduality, was now his plan to lose the country of slavery.

ЕRick Fresult
New York