Utopia, you are standing in it!

Nice editorial by Mint as we just bid goodbye to India’s former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee.

Politicians are thick upon the ground in India. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a rarer breed: a statesman. It was a stature he acquired despite himself at times. In a political life that spanned seven decades, he rose to become one of India’s most consequential prime ministers and a colossus of the Indian Right.

His political life had four distinct stages. In the 1930s, K. B. Hedgewar’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was still in many respects a fledgeling organization, digesting diverse influences—from Bal Gangadhar Tilak and the Hindu Mahasabha to, most importantly, V. D. Savarkar. Vajpayee joined the organization towards the end of the decade. Under Hedgewar’s successor, M. S. Gowalkar, the RSS made a tactical choice to stay aloof from the mass movement for independence. Vajpayee had other ideas. In 1942, he jumped into…

On August 15^th a report headlined “Israel reopens Gaza cargo crossing after calm” appeared on the BBC News website’s Middle East page.

“Israel has fully reopened its cargo crossing with Gaza, saying it is in response to a period of relative calm.

Lorries carrying fuel and commercial goods passed through Kerem Shalom on Wednesday after weeks of restrictions.

The fishing zone off Gaza’s coast was also restored to 17km (nine nautical miles), having been reduced to 6km.

Kerem Shalom was closed for all but humanitarian deliveries in retaliation for cross-border incendiary kite and balloon attacks by Palestinians.”

After that reasonable account of events, the report continued with promotion of an anonymous allegation:

“Human rights groups said the move amounted to illegal collective punishment.”

Those who read previous BBC reports concerning the Kerem Shalom crossing may recall that the same allegation has been promoted twice by the BBC…

‘Our political conflicts must be in future between slavery and freedom.’ Whig Congressman Joshua Giddings at the Free Soil convention in 1848 (quoted page 61)

This massive volume (900 pages) is just part of the Penguin History of America.

The civil war is far the most written-about event in American history, not least because more Americans died in it than in all other wars America has fought put together.

The civil war tore the young Republic apart, and the schism between north and southern states is in some ways still evident to this day. Certainly the bitterly divisive issue of race in America shows no signs of going away, ever.

Social background

McPherson gives a good run-up to the war with a fascinating profile of economic and social progress in America in the half century from 1800.

I was particularly struck by his interpretation of the movement of women from…

In mid-19th century America there was a caste of people who were professional slave hunters. Hold that thought… People whose job it was to reclaim the lost ‘property’ of a southern slave owner.

1854 advert for a runaway slave

In 1850 the US Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers (a short-lived political party which took part in the 1848 and 1852 presidential races with the sole aim of preventing slavery being expanded into the new western states).

The law required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. Many northern states opposed the law and passed personal liberty laws which, in different ways, tried to block the act – by insisting that captured suspects get a fair trial, or by forbidding state authorities…