Tag Archives: American Civil War

“The final prayer heralds a new beginning: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…to achieve lasting peace among all nations.””

24 Nov

I’m usually not particularly moved by Thanksgiving, but Roger Cohen‘s piece in yesterday’s Times was great: “America: the Redeemer Nation“.

Screen Shot 2017-11-24 at 1.57.41 PMAbraham Lincoln, February 1865. Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress, via Getty Images

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Comment: nikobakos@gmail.com

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“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”

22 Sep

“…and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

  • Are Catalan nationalists like Carles Puigdemont Founding Fathers or Confederate separatists?
  • I’m not convinced by the “causes which impel” Catalans to separation.  Are you?
  • I’m hoping Catalans don’t goad Madrid and Rajoy into doing something stupid.
  • Read Puigdemont‘s irritating “Spain’s attempt to block Catalonia’s referendum is a violation of our basic rights“ in the Guardian.  But especially scroll through the comments; the scariest ones that should give you more pause and where the dangers of Catalan separatism become clearest should jump out at you.  There you’ll see the racist self-righteousness of “little nation” nationalism in all its smug, bourgeois glory.
  • Whenever a Catalan uses or writes “Castille” that means reactionary, Catholic, Black Legend Spain where — as one comment gallingly states — “things haven’t changed much since Franco.”  Andalucía is cool and Moorish.  The Basque Country is wealthy, enterprising and progressive like us, even if they’re a little too Catholic for our tastes.  Galicia is the sweet, melancholy home of Celtic troubadours.  It’s Castille and Aragon — oh, and Asturias, which gave birth to the ugly ideology of the Reconquista — the kingdoms of the barbarous “Reyes Católicos”, that are oppressing us.
  • Substitute “Serbia” for “Castille” and you’ll get an amazing repro of Croatian gripes.  We’re European and forward-looking — even if kinna the kings of post-Hapsburg noxious fascism; don’t leave us to the mercy of obscurantist, Orthodox, Serb savages.
  • Read Vasily Grossman in “…the nationalism of little nations“ on Armenians and what the nationalist is really about.
  • Read Vargas Llosa about how “…Nationalism effaces the individual…“.
  • Where’s Almodóvar, the face of the Madrileña “movida” from La Mancha, where “nothing has changed much since Franco” to give us his opinion?  I’m sure he has one.

Catalan independence protestor

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