11 Freedoms that Drunks, Slackers, Prostitutes & Pirates Pioneered and The Founding Fathers Opposed

[marmar]

via AlterNet:




Huffington Post and Free Press/Simon & Schuster / By Thaddeus Russell

11 Freedoms that Drunks, Slackers, Prostitutes and Pirates Pioneered and The Founding Fathers Opposed
What the Founding Fathers called corruption, depravity, venality and vice, many of us would call freedom.

October 16, 2010 |


During the War of Independence a culture of pleasure and freedom blossomed in American cities. Non-marital sex, including adultery and relations between whites and blacks, was ubiquitous and rarely punished. Because divorce was unregulated, it was easily and frequently obtained, often by women. Brothels were legal and abundant and prostitutes were rarely prosecuted. Black slaves, Irish indentured servants, Native Americans, and free whites of all classes commingled extensively in saloons and in the streets. Pirates who settled in the port cities brought with them a way of life that embraced both general revelry and homosexuality. On nearly every block in every 18th-century American city, there was a public place where one could drink, sing, dance, have sex, argue politics, gamble, play games, or generally carouse with men, women, children, whites, blacks, Indians, the rich, the poor, and the middling. Rarely have Americans had more fun. And never have America's leaders been less pleased by it.

To the Founding Fathers the culture of personal liberty was a more serious threat to their project of creating an independent republic than the British Army.

"Indeed, there is one enemy, who is more formidable than famine, pestilence and the sword," John Adams wrote. "I mean the corruption which is prevalent in so many American hearts, a depravity that is more inconsistent with our republican governments than light is with darkness."

The Founding Fathers hoped that self-rule would cure Americans of their love of frivolities. A government of the people, John Adams argued, would make the people disciplined, stern, hard-working, and joyless -- the qualities he most admired. It would "produce Strength, Hardiness Activity, Courage, Fortitude and Enterprise; the manly noble and Sublime Qualities in human Nature, in Abundance." Adams understood that democracy forced the people to shed their pleasures and surrender their personal freedom, because they alone would shoulder the responsibility of managing society.

"Under a well regulated Commonwealth, the People must be wise, virtuous and cannot be otherwise. Under a Monarchy they may be as vicious and foolish as they please, nay, they cannot but be vicious and foolish. ... Virtue and Simplicity of Manners are indispensably necessary in a Republic among all orders and Degrees of Men. But there is so much Rascallity, so much Venality and Corruption, so much Avarice and Ambition such a Rage for Profit and Commerce among all Ranks and Degrees of Men even in America, that I sometimes doubt whether there is public Virtue enough to Support a Republic."

.............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/media/148518/11_freedoms_that_drunks%2C_slackers%2C_prostitutes_and_pirates_pioneered_and_the_founding_fathers_opposed_/

[Demeter]

1. Puritans Still Trying to Win

but the Americans keep resisting.

[xchrom]

2. so we were all San Franciscans?

while i admire the founders on the one hand -- like anybody else -- they wanted to get up in the peoples business.

[marmar]

3. Probably......

...... I think I saw a few of them hanging out at O'Farrell and Jones St. the last time I was there. :)

[xchrom]

4. you probably saw me!!!

it's really interesting that real proponents of the Enlightenment had this idealistic puritan streak in them.

i've always seen them as brilliant and deeply conflicted people. -- which for me -- makes them more interesting.

[Wednesdays]

5. Same deal with the "progressive" movement of the late 19th century

I won't knock most of the progressive movement's ideals, such as child labor laws, but there were puritanical elements as well--Prohibition, for example, was a child of the progressive movement. With the Temperance movement came a push to stamp out all types of "vice"--smoking, gambling, "sexual misbehavior" and drugs. The earliest drug laws came at the peak of the Progressive Era, just before the outbreak of World War I.

[xchrom]

6. that's true isn't it? -- the late 19th century did indulge

in that kind of over reaching.