Self-Evident Truths

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Class Voting ◽  
Synthetic Work ◽  
The Ideal

How did Americans in the generations following the Declaration of Independence translate its lofty ideals into practice? In this broadly synthetic work, distinguished historian Richard Brown shows that despite its founding statement that “all men are created equal,” the early Republic struggled with every form of social inequality. While people paid homage to the ideal of equal rights, this ideal came up against entrenched social and political practices and beliefs. Brown illustrates how the ideal was tested in struggles over race and ethnicity, religious freedom, gender and social class, voting rights and citizenship. It shows how high principles fared in criminal trials and divorce cases when minorities, women, and people from different social classes faced judgment. This book offers a much-needed exploration of the ways revolutionary political ideas, and especially the idea of equality, penetrated popular thinking and everyday practice.

Equal Rights and Unequal People

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
The Law ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Ideal

Though Americans have favored the idea of equal rights and equal opportunity, they recognize that differences in wealth and social advantage, like differences in ability and appearance, influence the realization, or not, of equal rights, including equality before the law. In the generations after 1776 the rights of creditors, for example, often overrode the rights of debtors. And criminal trials demonstrate that in courtrooms equal treatment was most often achieved when defendant and victim came from the same social class. Otherwise if they came from different classes social realities, including ethnicity, color, and gender could shape court officials and public opinion. And when a woman’s sexual virtue was compromised, her credibility was almost always discounted. In principle officials paid homage to the ideal of equality before the law, but in practice unequal rights often prevailed.

“An End to Unjust Inequality in the World”

2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-530
Author(s):  
Randall Balmer
Keyword(s):  
Early Republic ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Temperance Movement ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
Common Schools ◽  
The North ◽  
The World ◽  
American Evangelicalism

Since the emergence of the Religious Right in the late 1970s, American evangelicalism has commonly been associated with conservative politics. An examination of nineteenth-century evangelicalism, however, suggests a different affinity. Antebellum evangelicals marched in the vanguard of social change with an agenda that almost invariably advocated for those on the margins of society, including women and African Americans. Evangelicals were involved in peace crusades and the temperance movement, a response to social ills associated with rampant alcohol consumption in the early republic. They advocated equal rights for women, including voting rights. Evangelicals in the North crusaded against slavery. Although Horace Mann, a Unitarian from Massachusetts, is the person most often associated with the rise of common schools, Protestants of a more evangelical stripe were early advocates of public education, including leaders in Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky. Some evangelicals, including Charles Grandison Finney, even excoriated capitalism as inconsistent with Christian principles.

“Tried, Convicted, and Condemned, in Almost Every Bar-room and Barber's Shop”: Anti-Irish Prejudice in the Trial of Dominic Daley and James Halligan, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1806

2011 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-233
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Early Republic ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Criminal Trials

To elucidate the question of equal rights for “foreigners,” this essay considers anti-Irish and anti-foreign prejudice in Massachusetts criminal proceedings in the early republic. The trial of Daley and Halligan, long remembered as an example of anti-Irish Catholic prejudice, is examined in the context of other criminal trials of the period.

Suffrage Reform as Coup d’État

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Retallack
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
National Level ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Class Voting

In the period 1894 to 1902 Saxons demonstrated that the expansion of voting rights could be slowed and actually reversed. This chapter shows how right-wing politicians, statesmen, municipal councilors, and others used a perceived crisis following political assassinations in mid-1894 to refocus middle-class fears on the “threat” of socialism. At the national level, calls for a coup d’état against the Reichstag dovetailed with less dramatic calls to action against Social Democracy. When these appeals yielded meager results, Saxons responded by passing a reform of their Landtag’s suffrage in 1896: it replaced a relatively equitable system with unequal three-class voting. Socialists disappeared from the Landtag, and the Reichstag elections of 1898 were unexciting. In the period 1898–1902 Saxon Conservatism reached the zenith of its power. But Social Democratic outrage over “suffrage robbery” had already planted the seeds of a political reversal.

People of Color and Equal Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Professional Standards ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
The U.S

In New England, if anywhere, equal rights might have included people of color. Free blacks comprised a small fraction of the population, and slave uprisings posed no threat. Yet in this region, as in others, racism prevailed. Discrimination in public business, including voting and education, was commonplace. But in criminal trials procedural safeguards and professional standards limited the effects of prejudice. Public opinion was not so restrained. And in rural New England vigilantes shut down New Hampshire’s racially integrated Noyes Academy and Prudence Crandall’s school for black girls in Connecticut. Connecticut banned schools like Crandall’s, she was jailed briefly, and the state’s supreme court denied equal rights for blacks, setting a precedent for the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott ruling.

scholarly journals Mengawal Anggota Legislatif Mewujudkan Pemerintahan yang Bersih*

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 634
Author(s):  
M Muslih
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Election Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legislative Body ◽  
Election Process ◽  
Professional Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Legislative Election

Legislative members are partners as well as balancing the government in regulating and controlling the government, therefore it is necessary to have a "presence" of honest and clean professional legislators. Reality shows that the professionalism of some legislators still disappoints some of their constituents. For this reason, it is necessary to think about how to escort members of the legislative body in order to realize a clean government. To meet these expectations an election process is needed that can guarantee the implementation of an honest and fair election process. In order to realize the ideal above, the presence of a good legislative Election Law, a professional law enforcement apparatus, and a culture of high legal awareness from the public in exercising their voting rights.

scholarly journals 權利與善——論同性婚姻

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Xudong FANG
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Reductio Ad Absurdum ◽  
Traditional Marriage ◽  
Heterosexual Marriage ◽  
The Ideal

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.本文由兩個部分構成，第一部分闡述了不反對同性婚姻合法化的理由，逐一討論了對同性婚姻合法化的五種反對意見，認為它們都不成立。第二部分論述了儒家推崇異性婚姻的原因，其主要考慮是同性婚姻不能像異性婚姻那樣可以提供倫理的完整性。作者強調，作為公民權利，同性婚姻可以被自由追求，但作為儒家則以異性婚姻為婚姻的理想模式。前者事關權利，後者事關“善”，有各自的界限，不得逾越。This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, the author refutes, one by one, five objections to the legalization of same-sex marriage, including arguments grounded in naturalness, origin, reductio ad absurdum, compromising traditional marriage, and Jiang Qing’s doctrine of particular human rights. The strongest reason for advocating the legalization of same-sex marriage is the doctrine of equal rights. As contemporary people, we have no reason to deny that all individuals have equal rights. The second part discusses why Confucianism prefers heterosexual marriage. The main consideration is that same-sex marriages cannot provide ethical integrity, as heterosexual marriages do. The author emphasizes that, as a civil right, same-sex marriage can be pursued freely, but for a Confucian, heterosexual marriage is the ideal mode of marriage. The former concerns what is “right,” whereas the latter relates to what is “good.” There is an insurmountable boundary between right and good.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 423 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Max Weber and federal democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 346-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Whimster
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
German States ◽  
Class Voting ◽  
Voting System ◽  
German Federal State

This article challenges the received view of Max Weber as a supporter of unitary centralised state presided over by a plebiscitary leader. His wartime writings on Germany’s political situation demand the end of Prussian hegemony and the abolition of the three-class voting system. Democracy in the mass age means that all citizens of the state have equal voting rights, political parties can freely compete for votes and parliamentary representative democracy, argued Weber, is superior to all forms of direct democracy. Weber strongly supported federal democracy and argued for the division of executive, administrative and political functions between the Reich and the separate German states, not unlike the constitution of today’s German federal state. Weber advances a number of process arguments about how large states within a confederation are able to exert control that is insufficiently accountable to parliaments. It is suggested his views on federal democracy can be used as a critique of hegemonic and undemocratic features of today’s European Union.

scholarly journals Women in Science and Technology: An Indian scenario

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akanksha Swarup ◽  
Tuli Dey
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Current State ◽  
The World ◽  
Indian Scenario

AbstractThe concept of treating women as equal to their male counterpart became a topic of political debate in Europe during the ‘age of enlightenment’ (18th Century). The battle towards equal voting rights took approximately 100 years to win, and went until the 19th Century. It was only around 1902-1920 that women got equal voting rights in prominent Western countries followed by others. Amidst the celebration of ‘women’s vote centenary’ throughout the world, the issue of equal rights to education and work is still waiting for the proper attention. Historically the presence of women in educational, technological and scientific fields remains mostly marginal. In this article, the current state of under-representation of women in the science and technology community is depicted, primarily highlighting the Indian scenario. It is observed that throughout India, and amongst the relatively developed countries of the world, the presence of women in highly prestigious Institutes and Universities remains negligible even in this day and age. The probable causes behind such inequality need to be analyzed, addressed and looked upon for remedial purposes.

scholarly journals Swiss Alpine Milk, Education, and the Fabrication of the Ideal Swiss Citizen

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michèle Hofmann
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Dairy Products ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Swiss Alps ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Drinking Milk ◽  
Swiss Citizen ◽  
The Ideal

Since the 18th century, the Swiss Alps and Swiss alpine life have been idealized,giving rise to the Swiss Alpine myth. In the late 19th century – as a part of theso-called agrarian revolution – dairy farming was transformed into the mainsector of Swiss agriculture. Unlike in other countries, in Switzerland milk becameavailable to all social classes and was advertised as the Swiss national drink.Because milk was associated with the idyllic notion of healthy cows grazing onlush mountain pastures, dairy products eventually became an integral part of theAlpine myth. As a result, relatively banal activities such as drinking milk or eatingcheese were subsumed into the Swiss identity. In this paper, the role of primaryschool education in this phenomenon is explored and the significance of schoolingin the conceptualization of the ideal Swiss citizen as a milk drinker is analyzed.Key words: national identity; nutrition; primary school; Switzerland; temperancemovement.

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