The Second Virginia Convention named Thomas Jefferson as an alternate delegate to the Second Continental Congress, replacing Peyton Randolph, who was then presiding over the Virginia House of Burgesses.
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Showing posts with label Virginia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virginia. Show all posts
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Monday, March 24, 2025
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Thursday, March 23, 1775. Give me liberty. . .
Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech in favor of independence at the Second Virginian Convention. He stated:
No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
This stands in stark contrast, of course, with Edmund Burke's speech delivered in parliament the day prior.
Of note, Donald Trump has proclaimed this day "as a day in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s speech to the Second Virginia Convention", and many of his supporters naively believe that they stand for the same propositions those who took the American Colonies into Revolution do, when in fact, they stand for the opposite. You can find just such an example on the Campus issues blog that we link in here. Today's MAGA populists are direct heirs to Cromwell's Roundheads of the English Civil War, right down to following a radical Calvinist ideology, and even adopted the color, red, worn by what evolved out of the New Model Army.
Not that this is surprising. Retrograde reactionary forces in American public life have long attempted to claim the Revolution as their own, from the Southern traitors of 1860 to 1865, to modern Dixiecrats.
Last edition:
Wednesday, March 22, 1775. Speech on Conciliation with America
Monday, March 3, 2025
Friday, March 3, 1775. A British ship.
The Virginia Gazette alerted the citizens of James City County, Virginia that an armed British ship was at the ferry landing at Kingsmill.
And, by the way, Lent had already started in 1775, so those few Catholics in the country, and those Anglicans observing Lent, were in the Lenten season.
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Thursday, March 2, 1775. Raising a stench.
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Wednesday, February 22, 1775. The Augusta Resolves.
The Augusta Resolves were passed by the representatives of August County, Colony of Virginia, expressing support for the resistance to the Intolerable Acts.
Last edition:
Wednesday, February 1, 1775. Memorandum on Chatham’s Plan of Conciliation, [on or after 1 February 1775]
Monday, January 20, 2025
Friday, January 20, 1775. The Fincastle Resolutions.
The Fincastle Resolutions were adopted by the fifteen elected representatives of Fincastle County, Virginia, which was on the frontier at that time.
Fincastle, Jan. 20, 1775
In obedience to the resolves of the Continental Congress, a meeting of the freeholders of this county was held this day, who, after approving of the association framed by that august body in behalf of all the colonies, and subscribing thereto, proceeded to the election of a committee, to see the same carried punctually into execution, when the following Gentlemen were nominated: Reverend Charles Cummings, Colonel William Preston, Colonel William Christian, Captain Stephen Trigg, Major Arthur Camp-bell, Major William Inglis, Captain Walter Crockett, Captain John Mont-gomery, Captain James McGavock, Captain William Campbell, Captain Thomas Madison, Captain Daniel Smith, Captain William Russell, Cap-tain Evan Shelby and Lieutenant William Edmondson. After the election the committee made choice of Colonel WILLIAM CHRISTIAN for their chairman, and appointed Mr. David Campbell to be clerk. The following address was then unanimously agreed to by the people of the county, and is as follows.
To the Honorable Peyton Randolph, Esq; Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, junior, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton, Esquires, the Delegates from this colony who at-tended the Continental Congress held at Philadelphia: Gentlemen, Had it not been for our remote situation, and the Indian war which we were lately engaged in, to chastise those cruel and savage people for the many murders and depredations they have committed against us (now happily terminated, under the auspices of our present worthy Governour, his Excellency the Right Honourable the Earl of Dunmore) we should before this time have made known to you our thankfulness for the very important services you have rendered to your country, in conjunction with the worthy Delegates from the other provinces. Your noble efforts for reconciling the Mother Country and the Colonies, on rational and constitutional principles, and your pacifick, steady, and uniform conduct in that arduous work, entitle you to the esteem of all British America, and will immortalize you in the annals of your country. We heartily concur in your resolutions, and shall, in every instance, strictly and invariably adhere thereto.
We assure you, Gentlemen, and all our countrymen, that we are a people whose hearts overflow with love and duty to our lawful sovereign George III, whose illustrious house, for several successive reigns, have been the guardians of the civil and religious rights and liberties of British sub-jects, as settled at the glorious Revolution; that we are willing to risk our lives in the service of his Majesty, for the support of the Protestant religion, and the rights and liberties of his subjects, as they have been established by the compact, law, and ancient charters.
We are heartily grieved at the differences which now subsist between the parent state and the colonies, and most ardently wish to see harmony restored, on an equitable basis, and by the most lenient measures that can be devised by the heart of man.
Many of us, and our forefathers, left our native land, considering it as a kingdom subjected to inordinate power, and greatly abridged of its liberties. We crossed the Atlantick, and explored this then uncultivated wilderness, bordering on many nations of savages, and surrounded by mountains almost inaccessible to any but those very savages, who have incessantly been committing barbarities and depredations on us since our first seating the country. These fatigue and dangers we patiently encountered, supported by the pleasing hope of enjoying those rights and liberties which had been granted to Virginians and were denied us in our native country, and of transmitting them inviolate to our posterity. But even to these remote regions the hand of unlimited and unconstitutional power hath pursued us, to strip us of that liberty and property with which God, nature, and the rights of humanity, have vested us. We are ready and willing to contribute all in our power for the support of his Majesty's government, if applied to constitutionally, and when the grants are made by our own representatives; but cannot think of submitting our liberty or property to the power of a venal British parliament, or to the will of a corrupt Ministry.
We by no means desire to shake off our duty or allegiance to our lawful sovereign, but on the contrary shall ever glory in being loyal subjects of a Protestant prince, descended from such illustrious progenitors, so long as we can enjoy the free exercise of our religion, as Protestants, and our liberties and properties, as British subjects.
But if no pacifick measures shall be proposed or adopted by Great Britain, and our enemies will attempt to dragoon us out of these inestimable privileges which we are entitled to as subjects, and to reduce us to a state of slavery, we declare, that we are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender them to any power upon earth, but at the expense of our lives.
These are our real, though unpolished sentiments, of liberty and loyalty, and in them we are resolved to live and die.
We are, Gentlemen, with the most perfect esteem and regard, your most obedient servant.
The resolutions interestingly expressed love for the Crown, while obviously drafted in the spirt of defiance against it.
Last edition:
Tuesday, January 17, 1775. Diligent attention in the use of arms.
Thursday, November 7, 2024
Monday, November 7, 1774. The Yorktown Tea Party
You get the drill. Residents of Yorktown boarded the British ship Virginia and dumped two half-chests of tea into the York River.
Last edition:
Thursday, November 3, 1774. Charleston Tea Party.
Friday, November 1, 2024
Tuesday, November 1, 1774. The Virginia boycott.
A boycott of British goods went into effect in Virginia.
Last edition:
Wednesday, October 26, 1774. The First Continental Congress concluded.
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Monday, October 10, 1774. The Battle of Point Pleasant
The Battle of Point Pleasant (Battle of Kanawha, Battle of Great Kanawha) was fought between Virginian militia and Shawnee and Mingo warriors in what is now West Virginia.
It was the only major battle of Lord Dunmore's War.
Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, prevailed and took his forces into the Ohio Valley.
The action effectively concluded the war in favor of Virginia and the Crown.
Last edition:
Friday, October 7, 1774. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress.
Friday, July 26, 2024
Tuesday, July 26, 1774. First armed move in Lord Dunmore's War.
British/Virginian forces under Angus McDonald crossed the Ohio River to attack the Shawnee villages of Wakatomika.
Angus McDonald, former Jacobite, present commander of British forces, and later American revolutionary. He'd die in 1778 from an overdose of Antimony potassium tartrate.
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Sunday, July 23, 1774. A meeting in Savannah.
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Wednesday, July 20, 1774. A vote.
Patrick Henry. While he famously said "Give me liberty, or give me death", his death in 1799 was due to a severe bowel condition that afflicted him at age 57.
On this day in 1774 those eligible to vote in Hanover County, Virginia, which was far from everyone, met at the courthouse to elect representatives for the upcoming First Virginia Convention at Williamsburg.
Patrick Henry and his half brother John Syme were chosen, and presented with resolutions to carry to the assembly. Syme was as close friend of Henry's and older than he was. He'd outlive him and die in 1805 at age 76.
Last edition:
Wednesday, June 22, 1774. The Quebec Act gains royal assent.
Monday, July 1, 2024
Monday, May 27, 2024
Friday, May 27, 1774. Heading towards revolution.
The Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, dismissed Virginia's House of Burgesses due to a resolution, prepared by Thomas Jefferson, calling for a Day of Fasting and Prayer being passed. The cause for Virginia's concern over British reaction to the Boston Tea Party, and it came on the same day that the British Navy planned to blockade Boston's harbor in punishment for the same.
The heavy-handed British reaction was propelling things in the very direction that the British did not want it to go.
The members of the House did not go right home, but instead convened as an Association, at the Raleigh Tavern, where they called for a Continental Congress.
Juan Bautista de Anza completed his overland expedition from Tubac, Mexico to San Gabriel Mission, in modern Los Angeles, California.
The Reverend Robert Newburgh was accused by a private British soldier of the 18th Regiment of Foot, stationed in the Colonies, of beggary. He would be acquitted in a trial in June. The story was bizarre as he had invited the charge in the first instance, and coached the private on how to make it, seemingly in an effort to overall clear his name as he became increasingly unpopular. He'd seen three soldiers tried for gossiping.
The plan would fail, and he'd ultimately be arrested after his acquittal for being disruptive, although his being accused of an "unnatural crime", the one he'd been just acquitted of, was mentioned at the time.
To the extent that this story is illustrative of anything, it's partially illustrative of the harsh discipline in the British Army of the period, as well as the somewhat junior high atmosphere that existed in 18th and 19th Century armies. Additionally, however, it's interesting as neither the terms "heterosexual" or "homosexual" existed at the time, those being modern constructs, the latter of which did not originally apply to those who might commit beggary.
Last prior edition:
Saturday, April 5, 1774. A growing rift.
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Thursday, March 20, 1924. Barbarity Codified.
Virginia's Racial Integrity Act and Eugenical Sterilization Act went into effect, seeing two vile trains of thought combine into legislation on a single day.
The former barred that if a person had a great-grandparent who was black, they were black, and were barred from marrying outside of that racial category. The Pocahontas Clause" provided an exception for Native American heritage, sort of, in that if a person had 15/16th European heritage, they would be deemed white.
An emergency existing, this act shall be enforced from its passage.
Chap. 394. - An ACT to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain cases. [S B 281]
Approved March 20, 1924.
Whereas, both the health of the individual patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives under careful safeguard and by competent and conscientious authority, and
Whereas, such sterilization may be effected in males by the operation of vasectomy and in females by the operation of salpingectomy, both of which said operations may be performed without serious pain or substantial danger to the life of the patient, and
Whereas, the Commonwealth has in custodial care and is supporting in various State institutions many defective persons who if now discharged or paroled would likely become by the propagation of their kind a menace to society but who if incapable of procreating might properly and safely be discharged or paroled and become self-supporting with benefit both to themselves and to society, and
Whereas, human experience has demonstrated that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of sanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime, now, therefore
1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That whenever the superintendent of the Western State Hospital, or of the Eastern State Hospital, or of the Southwestern State Hospital, or of the Central State Hospital, or the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, shall be of opinion that it is for the best interests of the patients and of society that any inmate of the institution under his care should be sexually sterilized, such superintendent is hereby authorized to perform, or cause to be performed by some capable physicians or surgeon, the operation of sterilization on any such patient confined in such institution afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy; provided that such superintendent shall have first complied with the requirements of this act.
2. Such superintendent shall first present to the special board of directors of his hospital or colony a petition stating the facts of the case and the grounds of his opinion, verified by his affidavit to the best of his knowledge and belief, and praying that an order may be entered by said board requiring him to perform or have performed by some competent physician to be designated by him in his said petition or by said board in its order, upon the inmate of his institution named in such petition, the operation of vasectomy if upon a male and of salpingectomy if upon a female.
A copy of said petition must be served upon the inmate together with a notice in writing designating the time and place in the said institution, not less than thirty days before the presentation of such petition to said special board of directors when and where said board may hear and act upon such petition [10]
—Virginia General Assembly, March 20, 1924
Finnair commenced commercial flights.
Thursday, November 9, 2023
The 2023 "Off Year" Election.
October 2, 2023.
And some of them will have interesting topics on their ballots. We start with this one, a Texas right to farm act, that will be on the ballot in Texas.
Texans to Vote on Right to Farm Constitutional Amendment November 7
November 8, 2023
Following the trend of voting to make Americans even more intoxicated and dim than they already are, Ohio voted to legalize recreational marijuana. It also voted in favor of opening up abortion, unfortunately.
Houston is going to have a mayoral runoff.
cont:
Democrats gained control of both houses of the Virginia legislature.
Republicans only barely held the House of Delegates before this, but this can legitimately be regarded as another example of the Trump GOP losing power in an election.
Democrats took the Governor's race in Kentucky.
None of this may be dramatic, but the GOP has a demographic problem, and Trump isn't helping it. Therefore, ironically, there's a fairly good chance that he'll be elected as the next President, but the House and the Senate will go Democratic.
cont:
Democrats won big in New Jersey.
For some reason, apparently it was thought they would not, which is odd.
November 9, 2023
Regarding ballot initiatives in Maine; Maine passed a resolution prohibiting election funding by foreign governments, including entities with partial foreign government ownership or control.
The Pine Tree Power Company initiative decisively failed.
A right to repair initiative requiring vehicle manufacturers to provide access to vehicle on board diagnostic systems to owners and repair facilities passed.
An attempt to allow out of states to gather initiative signatures failed.
Texas, not too surprisingly, had a bunch of initiatives on its ballot. Some of interest here:
A right to farm, ranch, harvest timber, practice horticulture and engage in wildlife management was added to the State Constitution. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor.
Voters authorized an ad valorem tax exemption on medical and biomedical equipment.
An effort to raise judicial retirement age from 75 to 79 (what the heck?) failed, thank goodness.
A resolution to prohibit a tax on net wealth passed.
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Wednesday, February 22, 1922. Remembering Washington.
It was Washington's birthday.
Or, more properly, it is Washington's birthday. He was born on this date in 1732 to Johan and Mary (nee Ball) Washington.
Pro and anti factions of Sinn Fein signed a truce regarding cooperation with the Irish Free State and agreed to revisit the topic in three months.
WOR in New York began regular broadcasting with a mix of music and news.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Lex Anteinternet: The 2021 Election Post Mortem. The Mortem and Sel...
Lex Anteinternet: The 2021 Election Post Mortem. The Mortem and Sel...: Okay, I wasn't going to comment on the 2021 off year election, but the combined impact of pundit bloviating and mutual left wing crying ...
Somehow missed in all the yapping about what the election meant was the Virginia election of Winsome Sears to Lt. Governor.
Sears is a Jamaican immigrant, a Marine Corps veteran, and black. She's also a member of the Republican Party.
That probably tells us more about undercurrents in the election than all the discussion of the Governor's race might.
Saturday, November 6, 2021
The 2021 Election Post Mortem. The Mortem and Self Interest Addition.
Okay, I wasn't going to comment on the 2021 off year election, but the combined impact of pundit bloviating and mutual left wing crying and gnashing of tofu encrusted teeth has caused me to reverse course on this.
Whitaker Chambers, 1948.
First, something to consider.
Virginia,in it's off year election, has only once elected a person from the same party as the sitting President. So the results of its election are probably completely meaningless. Why Virginians think that the interest of their state automatically lie with whomever is not in the Oval Office is an open question, but they probably do.
Or at least those who show up do, which is important to consider.
For some incredably odd reason, people tend to get really mad at the sitting President really quickly. There's no real way that most Presidents can make any real difference in things in less than at least three years, but the public seems to think that if they haven't made the world perfect in about six months, they're a failure. That explains part of the typical mid term election shift, and it probably applies to early off year elections as well.
And in an off year election, moreover, only the really motivated show up. It's been noted that Republicans in general tend to show up, while Democrats do not unless they're in passionate love with a candidate.
Things like that, I'd note, are a consideration in things like bond issues. Some strategists put bond issues in off year elections thinking that the motivated will show up and nobody else. Trouble is, the most motivated are those who vote "no", which is why that's not a good strategy. When the general public shows up at a general election, those things tend to pass.
Anyhow, if we're really going to try to put some meaning into the Virginia election, and we probably ought not to, that's about it. If we go a tad further, and we ought not to, it might be that the GOP candidate pretty much tried to run without anyone mentioning Trump.
There may be a real lesson in that.
If we go a tad further than that, and some Democratic punditry certainly is, a potential lesson of the 2021 midterms in general is that the American public didn't suddenly take down their Reagan posters from the secret recesses of their homes and put up AoC posters. People turn out to be middle of the road conservatives, just as they have been since, well, 1492, at least on a lot of things.
None of which has kept liberals from screaming out into the street decrying the benighted public as ignorant dolts who should never be allowed to vote.
And this is no surprise. The left doesn't really like democracy very much.
The wailing is particularly noticable in regard to the supposed case of "white women", who we recently read were abandoning the GOP in droves and supporting the Democrats, which made the same Democrats at the time chortle. Now that it turns out that "white women" are voting more conservatively, like white men. . . and like Hispanic men and women. . .and also like black men and women in some places, which means in the view of progressives they're ignorant fools who need to be sent to the Gulag. The general trend isn't mentioned, however, just the "white women" part of it right now. Similar stories on "white men" must have run their course. And progressives engage in the preverbial whistling past the grave yard when the growing conservatism of Hispanics and some African American demographis are mentioned.
Part of this is based on a left wing view of what's in people's "best interest". And in the view of liberals, allowing abortion on demand is pretty much in women's best interest. Witness the following:
57% of white women in Virginia voted for a Republican *the day after* Republicans spent an entire day in court trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, and *actual professionals* in charge of Democratic messaging are going to blame it on Beloved.
And consider the following:
Nobody votes against their best interests like white women.
This latter one caused some wag to amusingly note:
Why is the left calling them, "white women"? I thought they called them "white birthing persons who chest feed"?
While that last item was in jest, there's actually more than a little truth to it. Part of the reason that "white women", Hispanic women and black women, among others, are voting more conservatively is that they are women and want that recognized. Progressives have entered an era in which biology doesn't exist. It actually does, and people don't like pretending otherwise.
Much of the liberal angst here, of course, is about abortion. Abortion is about killing a fetus so that it's not born. There's no two ways about it, and anyone honest with themselves and with reality has to admit it. Basically, we're more comfortable with killing people we don't see, and as we haven't seen the baby yet, we're okay with that to a surprising extent. It's the same reason we're okay with drone strikes in remote regions of the globe. We don't see the people we're offing, even though they're just as dead as if we went out and hit them in the head with an axe.
Of course, killing people is generally an uncomfortable topic for most people, so we camouflage it, and in the case of abortion the left likes to call it "reproductive rights" now days. That's just goofy. It's actually "anti reproductive rights" if we are going to use the word "reproductive", which at least is some progress in acknowledging reality. It's almost a societal admission that abortion in the United States is mostly about birth control, rather than rape or incest. Of note in the area of progress also, recently pro abortion advocates have been encouraging women to speak about their own abortions, which at least is honest, and in doing so they're drawing the inevitable "I just didn't want to have a baby" admissions. Having a baby is serious to be sure, but that admission is referring is pretty much the same as simply admitting that when a person presents you with a serious life difficulty, you ought to be allowed to off them, or should be able to at least if they're helpless. And again, the speakers haven't tended to be "I was attacked" so much as women in their 20s admitting that sex causes people, and they didn't want to be burdened with a person, so they killed it. It was convenient.
Not that society at large doesn't engage in this. The "no abortions except. . . " line of logic, which is very common, feeds into this as well. If a person is a person since conception, and science at this point says it is, a person is still a person no matter how horrific the circumstances of their conception may be.
Of course all of this is rarely in mind, which is why the recent debate style changes in the pro abortion camp have made some in that camp nervous. People grew pretty acclimated to a combined clinical speech pattern in which the humanity of a fetus was never addressed as well as the talking point that all those getting an abortion are 13 year old incest victims. Turns out this isn't true and a surprising number of women who receive an abortion really knew what they were doing. That debate is more honest, but it may backfire as well.
Indeed, it might already be backfiring.
Anyhow, "white women", like perhaps most women everywhere, might simply feel that that's just too much. I.e, they might not be buying into the liberal logic that a fetus isn't a person, or is't a person we need to pay attention to, or put another way, they may have the view that science and politics aren't frozen in the year 1973. That doesn't mean that they're voting against their own interest. They're voting for it. If they feel that their interest is preserving life, and women have always held that more closely than men, they're voting for their interests.
And it's a big assumption that this is a "white women" think, as this post from a black woman noted:
Lol
Democrats are blaming white women for Glenn Youngkin's victory. These people are insane. Your guy lost. Get over it
Well exactly.
Most voters aren't single issue voters anyhow, and there's no real reason to believe that somehow white women, if they'd been aware of this, which is assuming that they would not have been, would have voted for the Democrat. It just doesn't seem to be the case. I.e., the liberal logic that its de facto in women's best interest to allow for wide-ranging abortions is an assumption without support. Why would that be in their best interests? The answer would have to be that they might get pregnant, and if that occurred they'd need to have an abortion. They may have instead included that if they get pregnant they'll choose life over death.
It's also assuming a lot to assume they were not aware of their self-interest. Indeed, the single biggest problem in American politics today might be people over identifying with their self-interest. People do, in fact, vote against their long term best interest, but typically in doing so they vote for their short term self-interest. I.e, "I make money doing 'X', therefore the 'X' industry is good for business/the economy/the nation/the environment/ etc., and (believe it or not) somehow authorized by God". You see this all the time.
On the topic of abortion, proponents who are voting on best interest or self interests are usually voting for hypothetical short term self-interest, which isn't at all the same as long term best interests. So here, when "white women", or brown women, or black women, vote against abortion, they're actually weighing personal belief and long term societal best interests.
When liberals, however, decry this as not voting in "best interests", what they really mean is not voting to ratify the liberal, or progressive, ideal, which pretty much regards children, and even people, in a theoretical rather than real way. Indeed, it appears the overwhelming majority of Americans are not now, and never have been, for the liberal ideal. Abortion was very much part of that.
Back in the 60s and 70s liberals promulgated a world view based on what they thought an ideal world looked like, and the feminism of the period was very much part of it. Feminist of the period imagined that men lived in an industrial workplace paradise and that if only women could break into it, their lives would be as prefect as men's were. In that world that they imagined gender practically didn't exist, except in terms of having sex.
Sex by feminist of the period had oddly enough adopted the same view of sex that Hugh Hefner had adopted earlier, with slight variations in the view. Hefner had advanced the idea that women, all of whom had big boobs in his world, were available for sex on demand and they were all sterile. Feminists weren't as fascinated by huge mammaries, but they glommed onto the concept of sex as existing for nothing other than entertainment. Unlike Hefner's sterile chesty dimwits, however, they took it a step further and assumed that sex doomed women to second class citizenship as they knew it could cause children. Pharmaceuticals and abortion, however, took care of that.
This mattered to them as they tended to have a sort of quasi Marxist view of sex. There's been a lot of ink spilled on "critical race theory" recently, but it might be better to spill it on Marxism in the bedroom. Marx was an enemy of marriage and normal child rearing and early Communists really picked that up. Up until the the October Revolution Communists were aggressive in separating sex from reproduction and had a view of it nearly identical to 1970s feminists, something that's rarely noted. When they came into power they interesting pretty quickly became prudes, but even well into the 20s and 30s there were communists outside the USSR, including women, who were aggressively anti marrage and aggressively libertines in this area. Whitaker Chambers, who was a bisexual until his rejection of Communism, goes into this a little bit in Witness, noting that the decision of he and his wife to have children was contrary to the American Communist world view at the time which universally favored abortion.
Feminist regarded children as the enemy and took the view that sex couldn't result in children, however, as women always got stuck raising them, which kept women from financial independence and workplace fulfillment, which is where all fulfillment was. Separate sex from marriage and children from sex was all part of the goal, and then women could join men in the boardroom in marital-less, equality, everybody could make loads of cash, and full equality of every type would bloom forth.
Pharmaceutical sterilization and abortion would help to achieve that, they reasoned.
Problem was, it was all based on a big lie.
And that lie was that men lived in paradise. They didn't. They never had, but they particularly hadn't after industrialization.
We've dealt with that elsewhere, but what was forgotten is that industrialization took men out of their homes and away from their families to serve industry basically by economic force. Marx was full of bs about "wage slave" but failed to realize that the economy he was advocating for the "worker" was even more in the nature of bondage. People, as COVID 19 has shown, just don't naturally decide to spend most of tehir days in cublcles way from their family and kin. They don't. Indeed, as feminist knew, but failed to appreciate, men seperated for hours every day from their spouse begin, in some instances, to replicate that relationship with available women at work, with predictable disasterous consequences. Feminists saw this as a male power play, which in some ways it actually was.
We've dealt with that elsewhere, but what was forgotten is that industrialization took men out of their homes and away from their families to serve industry basically by economic force. Marx was full of BS about "wage slave" but failed to realize that the economy he was advocating for the "worker" was even more in the nature of bondage. People, as COVID 19 has shown, just don't naturally decide to spend most of their days in cubicles way from their family and kin. They don't. Indeed, as feminist knew, but failed to appreciate, men separated for hours every day from their spouses begin, in some instances, to replicate that relationship with available women at work, with predictable disastrous consequences. Feminists saw this as a male power play, which in some ways it actually was. Prior to the 80s some of it was absolute hypocrisy and power in action, no doubt. But some of it was biology combined with our fallen natures as well.
The fact, however, that such dalliances occurred says something about the overall satisfaction people have with their work. At least in part people who are married aren't going to spend time chasing skirts if their work brings fulfillment. And they aren't going to turn to other vices either. Indeed, people somehow managed to not really note what average work actually was like for men. Sure, they worked 8 to 5, as a rule, for their families, but the "work place camaraderie" was more likely built in a bar after work than at work itself. People's work bonds, if they had any, tended to be outside of work, not in it.
The big reveal from the big feminist success of the 1970s and 80s was to expose "work fulfillment" as a lie to a lot of women. A lot of men already knew it was a lie. The lie is still being told, and its part of the pablum of professional schools and organizations. Lots of pros, from attorneys to accountants, to business workers, to physicians, etc., are fed lines that happiness lives in work in and of itself If they fail to achieve it, it's due to some problem, probably in them. Only recently have some of the professions started to look at the profession itself, and wonder if it's them.
The famous quote is that you can't fool all of the people all the time, and that certainly applies to things that are deeply ingrained in nature. Whereas Cosmopolitan may have imagined a world in which every woman in the office was a libertine who was on her away to a super happy desk job career it turned out that most women, and men, continue to see the world pretty much the way they always have, so regular life including children and marriage kept happening. What did change, however, was the workplace, which now had not only been opened up to women, but which had now evolved to where their availability was now expected and mandatory. This has made the lives of some women all the rougher, which takes us back to the liberal impulse. If women won't abort their children, well then society must find a way to coax women away from children back to the workplace, and universal child care would be that. With that, women will be allowed back in the workplace soon after giving birth, which is to say that they'll have no excuse not to be there and therefore will have to be. Nobody of the Bernie Sanders ilk is going to say that, as they aren't thinking of it that way, but that's the reality of it. Universal child care is a child care subsidy for industry so that the female part of the work force has no good reason not to be back at work. This too represents "their best interests".
Finally, there's the gross overuse of everything being race related. This really came out in a NPR Politics episode when Nena Totenburg had a melt down when a lifelong Democrat in Virginia expressed his discontent with the Democrats making everything about race. Totenburg was practically spewing her coffee through the Iphone to maintain that only the Republicans do this.
Now, in the Virginia race there were no doubt differences in how various demographics voted. But note that the GOP nearly won in New Jersey as well, and not for the first time. And while hardly anyone seems to have noticed it, in spite of everything, the Republican Party's popularity has been going up with some black voters and generally with Hispanic voters.
Totenburg had a fit over the interviewed Democrat noting that the Democrats routinely reduce things to race at the present time, and not only do that, but that they basically demonize "white voters". A person can question how to even really define "white" voter as that's merely the sort of color of a person's skin and not everyone agrees who is "white". "White" doesn't really mean anything in and of itself, and the ability to define "white' is increasingly problematic. Lebanese Americans have long been regarded as white, for example, so why wouldn't recent immigrants from Syria? They're the same ethnicity, separated by their religions.
Some Hispanics consider themselves white and lots of "white" American consider Hispanics without accents to be white. Like Italians of earlier generations, at some point they'll all be considered "white" and that some point is probably very soon. As the predictions of the decline of "whites as a majority" is based in large part on the increase in the Hispanic demographic, such predictions are actually completely meaningless. And they should be, if we're speaking of general European culture, as Hispanics are just as much the heirs of general European culture as people of English ancestry.
Which in reality means that when the press and Democrats speak of a person being "white", what they really mean is what used to be called a WASP, or White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. And when progressive WASPs decry the election in Virginia, that's what they mean. It's an internecine spat between the nation's oldest European demographic, paler members of other demographics need not apply.
This spat has been going on forever. It's always been the case that urban WASP elites have looked down on rural WASP groups. Entire regions look down on others, but even WASP in the cities look down on their cousins in the sticks, and have for about 200 years.
Now some of this does have a real racial and racist expression. The Southern hinterlands have never been friendly towards African Americans and following the election of Barack Obama old hatreds came back out. And not just out there, but amazingly out everywhere. Trump made them worse as he fanned those flames for nearly inexplicable reasons. Praising any group in which the Confederate battle flag shows up is sending some sort of racist message and at a bare minimum people ought to know that.
Nonetheless, the GOP increase in some African American demographics and some Hispanic demographics continued anyway. A conservatism based on traditional values and traditionalism also existed which isn't really "white" and which isn't racist. Indeed, church going African Americans and church going white Southerners are at least partially motivated by the same values. Hispanic culture, as we've noted here before, is actually deeply conservative and much of the liberal social agenda is an anathema to it.
It's those values that that progressives keep slamming, and people voting to preserve them doesn't mean they are voting against their self interests. The Democratic dissing of these values has made them fully fair game for Republicans, the much more conservative party anyway, and that is why conservatives of all stripes and ethnicities have leaned into the GOP. People who hold traditional views on marriage, sex and even simply biology feel they are being assaulted by a Democratic Party which holds all of those things in absolute contempt. That doesn't make those voters racist and when they vote Republican, they are voting in their own self-interest.
This doesn't mean that there aren't really dark elements in the GOP. There are. Genuine racists and bigots of all sorts have crept into it since the 1980s, and this increased during the Obama Administration and Trump took advantage of this. This has tainted the populist movement no end and the Democrats have made hay with it. But at this point, they've overplayed their hands. It's one thing to call people flying the Confederate battle flag racists, as that's a racist symbol for which there is no excuse in 2021. It's another to hurl the invective "white" at somebody as they feel marriage is only between a couple of the opposite gender or because modern American televised culture reflects a moral sewer. If you keep doing that, eventually Democrats who were in that party as they sought a socially active country will leave, seeing that their moral values are not wanted, or even under assault.
And that may be one of the lessons of the 2021 election.
It's also dangerous, we'll note, to reduce a person's ethnicity or color to a joke. Racists did this for decades with blacks and indeed American culture did. But at some point within the last 20 or so years progressive WASPs started to do it as well and now it's extremely common. To call something "white" or somebody the "whitest" is not only inaccurate, but is meant as a type of racial slur. If that's done long enough people get pissed off about it.
Indeed, one of the Twitter comments that I didn't post was by a very white woman with bright pink hair complaining about "white women". The irony of this is that this is about as upper class WASPish as a person can be. When WASPs complaint about WASPs, they ought to look in the mirror.
As for the off year elections, most people might not be voting for Trump with their votes. But rather, their votes may instead mean that they don't want their nation to be a large-scale soy vegan variant of downtown Amsterdam.
And people get tired of continually being told that their personal views are rubbish and they themselves aren't much better. Whatever a person thinks of Trump, forty years of that from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party put him in the Oval Office and might again. The GOP has to deal with that right now, but the Democrats might have to as well if their only response to losing is to have a bunch of white liberals complain that they lost due to white women.
That's certainly not true.
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