How to Get Fooled Again

In the late eighteenth century and halfway through the nineteenth, southern preferences took precedence over that of the majority of American people. While not sympathetic to the rights of enslaved Africans, most still thought of the institution as an evil unnatural practice, and in varying degrees wished it to be banished from our shores. Their opinion mattered not a bit, because Southerners and Southern principles held sway. Nine of the first twelve Presidents were Southerners, and slave owners.

Though the South had far fewer people, including people eligible to vote, than the Northern section of the country, Congress allowed them to treat slaves as three fifths of a white person, for purposes of representation. This gave them an outsized influence in determining the course of the country, despite the fact that more people, more industry, more railroads, more schools, more libraries, and more personal freedom, existed in the North. Laws were passed which made it impossible even to hear an antislavery discussion in Congress. The ruling class in the South became violently opposed to any accommodation in the sphere of slavery, even though their predecessors in the generation that sought freedom from Britain had hoped and expected that the peculiar institution would somehow fade away by the time of their grandchildren.

This privileged class, the aristocratic planters, shunned higher education (there were almost no legitimate universities in the Southern states), and held to a take-no-prisoners approach to any attempt, however indirect, to remedy the plight of the enslaved. Rather than face an unthinkable civil war, the North again and again gave in to the demands of the South, shamefully surrendering at the expense of the helpless, rather than chance that the rich planters would go through with their threats. In retrospect, it seems crazy that they remained so inflexible in the face of basic humanity.

Last week an amendment was rammed through as a last-minute dingleberry to the Healthcare reform bill of the House, denying coverage for voluntary abortions. They have told us that it is the same thing as the Hyde amendment, in place since the 70’s. That is a lie. It is a significant step backward for women’s reproductive rights, and will mean that many of the situations now covered by insurance companies will be outlawed going forward. It is a sneaky Trojan horse and no one should be fooled by it.

In their eagerness to reach accommodation and avoid an internecine fight, Democrats went long with this execrable amendment. Some have said that the Senate would not allow the bill to go forward with the amendment intact. Let us hope that they are right, rather than endure another surrender in the face of reaction, a surrender that would have to be paid for once again by the powerless.