From Mark Twain (1835-1910), American humorist, novelist, writer, and lecturer, New York Herald, 10/15/1900:
It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people [the Filipinos] free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
If only…
My son-in-law is Filipino and the entire side of that family is headed to the islands mid-June – I have tried to tell them of the dangers but they are not listening.
I agree with Twain. Seems like China would also.
Lisa,
See comment directed to you and Dave below.
The last quarter of the 19th century in America, represents the greatest irony in history.
On the one hand, the vast panoply of discoveries, inventions, and commercial enterprise that was the glorious result of America’s founding ideals of individual rights and autonomy, propelled mankind from the mud toward the stars as never before.
On the other, the morality undermining said political ideals began, in earnest, to gather momentum and to be manifested in our politics. The rise of “Progressivism,” with its arrogant claim(s) of “knowing whats best” for everyone, and imposing it on you “for your own good,” rose from the smoldering ashes of morally-unchallenged collectivism. Secular and religious moral crusaders began to effectively destroy individual liberty, and its social leitmotif, “minding one’s own business.”
Twain, among others, was one of those individuals who first saw it in the smoldering ashes. The rest, as they say, is history.
Dave
Lisa and Dave,
One of the reasons I wrote The Golden Pinnacle was to capture the crosscurrents of that time: the undermining of the approach to the pinnacle of liberty via the income tax, central bank, and the expansion of American empire. The precedents were set by Lincoln in the War Between the States. You cannot understand America today without understanding the period from 1861 to 1913, as you well know. Yet, aside from the thousands of books about the war and the thousands of Lincoln hagiographies, almost nothing about that period has been written and it is rarely studied. Not 1 in 10,000 Americans know anything about the US slaughter of an estimated 200,000 Filipinos and the subjugation of the Philippines. That’s where the US Empire really got down to business and it is why I put it in a tragic episode in The Golden Pinnacle.
I am getting your book – I have wanted to for a long time! Thank you Robert for taking the time to share and enlighten!
Thank you. Be sure to let me know what you think of it.
Yes Robert. I was inspired by “Daniel” and the larger adventure unfolding in which he was crafted to be a part! I think Rand was the first author who made me aware of the intellectual bias and “blackout” with which that era in our history has been obscured and distorted.
I have mentioned that aspect to the two people to whom I have given copies of “”Daniels” adventure.
Thank you.
Dave
Thank you. The word spreads slowly, but it does spread. If Rand were trying to publish now, she’d have to self-publish.