Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America

Here are some of my favorite bits from this 1989 book by David Hackett Fischer:

* Folkways in this normative sense exist in advanced civilizations as well as in primitive societies. They are functioning systems of high complexity which have actually grown stronger rather than weaker in the modern world. In any given culture, they always include the following things: —Speech ways, conventional patterns of written and spoken language: pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax and grammar. —Building ways, prevailing forms of vernacular architecture and high architecture, which tend to be related to one another. —Family ways, the structure and function of the household and family, both in ideal and actuality. —Marriage ways, ideas of the marriage-bond, and cultural processes of courtship, marriage and divorce. —Gender ways, customs that regulate social relations between men and women. —Sex ways, conventional sexual attitudes and acts, and the treatment of sexual deviance. —Child-rearing ways, ideas of child nature and customs of child nurture.

—Naming ways, onomastic customs including favored forenames and the descent of names within the family. —Age ways, attitudes toward age, experiences of aging, and age relationships. —Death ways, attitudes toward death, mortality rituals, mortuary customs and mourning practices. —Religious ways, patterns of religious worship, theology, ecclesiology and church architecture. —Magic ways, normative beliefs and practices concerning the supernatural. —Learning ways, attitudes toward literacy and learning, and conventional patterns of education. —Food ways, patterns of diet, nutrition, cooking, eating, feasting and fasting. —Dress ways, customs of dress, demeanor, and personal adornment. —Sport ways, attitudes toward recreation and leisure; folk games and forms of organized sport. —Work ways, work ethics and work experiences; attitudes toward work and the nature of work.

—Time ways, attitudes toward the use of time, customary methods of time keeping, and the conventional rhythms of life. —Wealth ways, attitudes toward wealth and patterns of its distribution. —Rank ways, the rules by which rank is assigned, the roles which rank entails, and relations between different ranks. —Social ways, conventional patterns of migration, settlement, association and affiliation. —Order ways, ideas of order, ordering institutions, forms of disorder, and treatment of the disorderly. —Power ways, attitudes toward authority and power; patterns of political participation. —Freedom ways, prevailing ideas of liberty and restraint, and libertarian customs and institutions.

Every major culture in the modern world has its own distinctive customs in these many areas. Their persistent power might be illustrated by an example. Consider the case of wealth distribution. Most social scientists believe that the distribution of wealth is determined primarily by material conditions. For Marxists the prime mover is thought to be the means of production; for Keynesians it is the process of economic growth; for disciples of Adam Smith it is the market mechanism. But to study this subject in a comparative way is to discover that the distribution of wealth has varied from one culture to another in ways that cannot possibly be explained by material processes alone. Another powerful determinant is the inherited structure of values and customs which might be called the “wealth ways” of a culture. These wealth ways are communicated from one generation to the next by many interlocking mechanisms—child-rearing processes, institutional structures, cultural ethics, and codes of law—which create ethical imperatives of great power in advanced societies as well as primitive cultures. Indeed, the more advanced a society becomes in material terms, the stronger is the determinant power of its folkways, for modern technologies act as amplifiers, and modern institutions as stabilizers, and modern elites as organizers of these complex cultural processes.

* Yankee speech owed much of its distinctive character to its pronunciation of the letter r. Postvocalic r’s tended to disappear altogether, so that Harvard became Haa-v’d (with the a pronounced as in happen). This speech-habit came from East Anglia and may still be heard in the English counties of Suffolk, Norfolk and Kent. At the same time, other r’s were added. Follow was pronounced foller, and asked became arst—a spelling which often appeared in town meeting records during the seventeenth century. Precisely the same sounds still exist today in remote parts of East Anglia.6 The Yankee twang did not develop in a perfectly uniform way throughout New England. In Boston it was spoken at a speed which made it incomprehensible even to others of the same region.

* Even in the twentieth century, the descendants of the Puritans still wear suits of slate-grey and philly-mort. In Boston’s Back Bay and Beacon Hill, Brahmin ladies still dress in sad colors, and their battered hats appear to have arrived in the hold of the Arbella.

Sad colors also survive in the official culture of New England. In the older universities of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, scholars and athletes do not appear in colors such as Princeton’s gaudy orange or Oxford’s brilliant blues and reds. The color of Harvard is a dreary off-purple euphemistically called crimson. Brown University’s idea of high color is dark brown, trimmed with black. On ceremonial occasions, the president of that institution wears a mud-colored garment which is approximately the color of used coffee grounds. Dartmouth prefers a gloomy forest-green. All of these shades were on the official list of “sadd colours” in 1638; and are still in vogue today. In the New England dialect, it is interesting to discover that clothes have been called “duds” for three centuries. This was an old English term of contempt for dress. A scarecrow, in his castoff rags was sometimes called a “dudman.” The language of dress in New England was a vocabulary of deprecation. That pejorative attitude still survives in the culture of this region.

* In most cultures, attitudes toward work are closely connected to conceptions of time. For a Puritan, time was heavily invested with sacred meaning.

* When Ebenezer Taylor of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, fell into a forty-foot well, his rescuers stopped digging on Saturday afternoon while they debated whether it was lawful to rescue him on the Sabbath.

* At New London, a courting couple named John Lewis and Sarah Chapman were brought to trial in 1670 merely for “sitting together on the Lord’s Day under an apple tree.” Sexual intercourse was taboo on the Lord’s Day.

* If daily and weekly movements were unusually strong in New England, other common rhythms were exceptionally weak or even absent altogether. The Puritans made a point of abolishing the calendar of Christian feasts and saints’ days. The celebration of Christmas was forbidden in Massachusetts on pain of a five-shilling fine. In England, the Puritan Parliament prohibited the observance of Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, saints’ days and holy days.

* This “younger son syndrome,” as one historian has called it, became a factor of high importance in the culture of Virginia. The founders of Virginia’s first families tried to reconstruct from American materials a cultural system from which they had been excluded at home.

* The great majority of Virginia’s upper elite came from families in the upper ranks of English society.

* The more hierarchical a society becomes, the stronger is the cultural dominion of its elite.

* The temporal hierarchy of Virginia ranked people largely by their ability to regulate their own time whenever and however they pleased. Time-killing thus became an expression of social rank. Through many centuries, when the people of Virginia found a moment of leisure, they “killed the time” with any lethal weapon that came to hand. A dice box did nicely, or a pack of playing cards, or a book of dramatic readings, or long conversation at table in the gathering dusk of a Chesapeake “evening”—a word which was enlarged in this culture to include the entire afternoon. The progeny of the New England Puritans, on the other hand, preferred to “improve the time” by inventing alarm clocks and daylight saving time and by turning every passing moment to a constructive purpose. Here were two distinctly different time ways which lay very near the heart of regional cultures in British America.

* Virginia’s wealth ways developed within a system of stratification, which is not easily translated into the social language of a later age. Even in its own time, it was commonly described in metaphorical terms—which may still be the best way to approach it. In the year 1699, for example, an English landowner named Richard Newdigate explained his idea of society by a metaphor that came readily to the mind of a country gentleman. Society, he wrote, was like the landscape of his native Warwickshire. The common people were the grass that grew in the fields. The nobles and gentry were the trees that shaded the grass. And the clergy were the cherries that hung from the trees.

* New England…had a truncated system of social orders. The Virginians, on the other hand, extended the full array of English social orders, and reinforced them.

* by 1676, the rigidity of social orders was very great. It was exceptionally difficult to cross the great divide that separated “common folk” and “gentle folk” in that colony.

The psychological cement of this system was a culture of subordination which modern historians call deference. Country gentlemen in England and Virginia normally expected a display of social deference from their inferiors, and by and large they received it. “Everybody offered me abundance of respect,” William Byrd entered in his diary on more than one occasion.7 Gentlefolk and common folk agreed on the fundamental fact that social deference was normal in Virginia. The classical account, often quoted by historians, is the autobiography of Devereux Jarrett, who was born in the lowest order. “We were accustomed to look upon, what were called gentle folks, as beings of a superior order,” he remembered. “For my part, I was quite shy of them, and kept off at a humble distance.”

This relationship created intense feelings of anxiety and fear among the “common folk,” in a manner that is not easy for people of another world to understand. A clergyman named James Ireland remembered an encounter with a Virginia gentleman: “When I viewed him riding up, I never beheld such a display of pride in any man. … arising his deportment, attitude and gesture; he rode a lofty elegant horse … his countenance appeared as bold and daring as satan himself.”

Social rank in Virginia was an extended hierarchy of deferential relationships. Even the greatest planters were conscious of a rank above them, which was occupied by the King himself and the royal family. Distant as the sovereign may have been, the gentry of Virginia thought much about him. William Byrd even dreamed about imaginary intimacies with members of the royal family, as did many English-speaking people in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. “I … dreamed the King’s daughter was in love with me,” he wrote in his diary on one occasion—a common fantasy in the minds of seventeenth-century Englishmen, who were obsessed with the feelings of those above them.

Just as the gentlemen of Virginia deferred to their King, so the yeomanry were expected to defer to gentlemen, servants were required to defer to their yeoman masters, and African slaves were compelled to submit themselves to Europeans of every social rank. These rules were generally obeyed in Virginia. Acts of criminal violence, for example, were rarely committed on people of higher rank by social inferiors.

* It never occurred to most Virginia gentlemen that liberty belonged to everyone. It was thought to be the special birthright of free-born Englishmen—a property which set this “happy breed” apart from other mortals, and gave them a right to rule less fortunate people in the world. Even within their own society, hegemonic liberty was a hierarchical idea. One’s status in Virginia was defined by the liberties that one possessed. Men of high estate were thought to have more liberties than others of lesser rank. Servants possessed few liberties, and slaves none at all.

* This libertarian idea had nothing to do with equality. Many years later, John Randolph of Roanoke summarized his ancestral creed in a sentence: “I am an aristocrat,” he declared, “I love liberty; I hate equality.”5 In Virginia, this idea of hegemonic liberty was thought to be entirely consistent with the institution of race slavery. A planter demanded for himself the liberty to take away the liberties of others—a right of laisser asservir, freedom to enslave. The growth of race slavery in turn deepened the cultural significance of hegemonic liberty, for an Englishman’s rights became his rank, and set him apart from others less fortunate than himself. The world thus became a hierarchy in which people were ranked according to many degrees of unfreedom, and they received their rank by the operation of fortune, which played so large a part in the thinking of Virginians. At the same time, hegemony over others allowed them to enlarge the sphere of their own personal liberty, and to create the conditions within which their special sort of libertarian consciousness flourished.

* The Puritans worshiped a very different Deity—one who was equally capable of love and wrath—a dark, mysterious power who could be terrifying in his anger and inscrutability. Anglicans, on the other hand, knelt before a great and noble Pantocrator who ruled firmly but fairly over the hierarchy of his creatures. A central tenet of Quaker theology was the doctrine of the inner light, which held that an emanation of divine goodness and virtue passed from Jesus into every human soul. They believed that this “light within” brought the means of salvation within reach of everyone who awakened to its existence. Most Quakers rejected the Calvinist principle of limited atonement. They believed that Christ died not merely for a chosen few, but for all humanity. Quakers also rejected the Calvinist ideas of inexorable predestination, unconditional election and irresistible grace. They agreed that people could spurn the spiritual gift that was given to them.

* Quakers repudiated the principle of fear as the cement of family relations. Puritans and Anglicans both regarded fear as a healthy emotion, and urged that it should be cultivated in relations between parents and children, and even husbands and wives. Members of the Society of Friends, however, actively condemned fear as an organizing principle of human relationships, except fear of God. They built their ideas of the family upon a radically different base.

* This Quaker rule against outmarriage was strictly enforced in America. For nearly two centuries, half of all the disciplinary proceedings among Pennsylvania Quakers were about problems of courtship, and marriage with “unbelievers.” The frequency of these cases increased with time.3 The rule against outmarriage was grounded not merely in a negative principle of sectarian exclusion, but in the positive idea that marriages should be founded in true Christian love. To the Quakers, love did not mean romantic attraction, sexual passion or even domestic affection. Their idea of “pure and true love” was not the Greek eros or Roman amor but the Christian caritas and pietas which were thought to be attainable only between true believers.

* Fornication before marriage, a venial sin for Puritans of Massachusetts and the Anglicans of Virginia, was sometimes cause for disownment, the heaviest penalty in the power of a meeting to inflict.

* Quakers were specially interested in ending the sexual exploitation of social inferiors. George Fox in 1672 insisted that any master who had sexual relations with a female servant must marry her, “no matter what the difference in outward rank or race.”3 The meetings of Friends also specifically condemned the predatory attitude toward sexuality which had been so much a part of Virginia’s sexual customs.

* Quakers also encouraged the practices that would be called prudery in the nineteenth century. Quaker meetings carefully monitored female dress and sternly forbade even the slightest hint of sensuality. In 1718 the London yearly meeting went so far as to condemn “naked necks.”13 Ordinary language was carefully purged of carnal connotation. A French traveler in the eighteenth century was startled to discover that respectable ladies of Pennsylvania could not bring themselves to speak plainly about their bodies even to their physicians, but delicately described everything from neck to waist as their “stomachs,” and anything from waist to feet as their “ankles.”14 This prudery had an important function. It lowered the general level of sexual tension in social relationships, even between husbands and wives. The Quakers of the Delaware Valley were very different in that respect from both the New England Puritans and Virginia Anglicans, but very similar to their co-believers in England.

* It also became part of the official culture of Philadelphia, which was very different from New York or Baltimore.

* Libertarian as the Quakers may have been on many questions, they were exceptionally intolerant on the subject of sport. The statutes of Pennsylvania forbade many forms of sport outright, under threat of severe criminal punishment. Its laws agreed upon in England banned “all prizes, stage plays, cards, dice, may games, masques, revels, bull-baitings, cock-fightings, bear-baitings and the like.”1 Most colonies in British America enacted laws on the subject of sport, but none were quite as strict as those of Pennsylvania. The legendary blue laws of New England paled by comparison with those of the Quaker province, which gave their courts unlimited power to punish any sort of amusement “which excites the people to rudeness, cruelty, looseness and irreligion.”

* The Quakers, more than any major Protestant denomination, fostered a style of life which Max Weber called worldly asceticism—the idea of living in the world but not of it. Work itself became a sacrament, and idleness a deadly sin. Wealth was not to be consumed in opulent display, but rather to be saved, invested, turned to constructive purposes. Restraints were placed upon indulgence. The most extended form of this belief was to be found not among the Puritans with whom it is often associated, but among the Quakers.

* The Quakers had a horror of debt, which they felt to be a palpable evil in the world. Falling into debt beyond one’s ability was regarded as a moral failing of the first degree.

* Quakers tended to help one another. They loaned money at lower rates of interest to believers than to nonbelievers, and sometimes charged no interest at all… It is interesting that Quakers also developed systems of insurance against commercial risks, and played a major role in the development of the insurance industry…

* International ties throughout the Atlantic world also gave Quaker merchants many advantages in the eighteenth century. “By virtue of their commercial, religious, personal and family contacts,” historian Frederick Tolles writes, “the Philadelphia Quakers were in close touch with the entire north Atlantic world from Nova Scotia to Curacao and from Hamburg to Lisbon.”12 In all of these ways, the Quakers provided an ethical and cultural environment which strongly supported industrial and capitalist development. Frederick Tolles writes from long acquaintance with the records of Quaker capitalists, “One is probably justified suggesting that in the conduct of business, the Quaker merchants were extremely cautious and prudent, meticulously accurate in details, and insistent upon others being so. It is not difficult to understand how men who exhibited these traits in their commercial dealings (no matter how generous and sympathetic as individuals and friends) should have acquired a reputation for driving a hard bargain.”13 In England Quakers played a role far beyond their numbers in the industrial revolution. The great banking houses of England were those of Quakers. The largest private bank in Britain was developed by descendants of the great Quaker writer Robert Barclay. Lloyd’s Bank was also owned by Quakers…

* Closely related to these attitudes toward work were Quaker ways of thinking about time. In place of the Puritan idea of “improving the time,” and the Anglican notion of “killing the time,” the Quakers thought in terms of “redeeming the time.” This concept of temporal redemption had a complex meaning. Fundamentally, Quakers tried to purge time of sin and corruption. They also sought to raise time above the world.

* Like the Puritans, Quakers were deeply interested in making the best use of time, which they regarded as a precious and perishable gift. They marveled at the ways in which other people squandered time.

* More than their neighbors, the Quakers were morning people. They carefully organized their daily routines and kept schedules which contrasted sharply with the time ways of Virginia gentlemen.

* This Quaker idea of a routine which made “the whole day seem like a long morning” would have filled many an English gentleman with horror.

* A Quaker’s honor was far removed from the code of chivalry that existed among Virginia gentlemen. It was also not the same as the contractual code that was kept by New England’s specially elected saints. Instead it was a reputation for Christian love, peace, “good neighborhood,” godliness, and doing good to others.

* The idea of order continued to be defined in terms of peace and mutual forbearance, rather than unity or hierarchy.

* Quakers insisted that a believing Christian had a sacred duty to stand against evil in government, and that individual conscience was the arbiter of God’s truth. The ideology of Quakerism justified political opposition in a way that was not the case in other English cultures.

* The idea of minimal government was carried farther in Pennsylvania than in any other colony. There was no legally established militia until after the 1750s. In one period, when interest from a land bank provided an alternative source of revenue, there were nearly no taxes at all. The legislature of Pennsylvania passed fewer laws before 1750 than any other assembly in British America, and its courts were less active in the work of enforcement than most provinces.

BORDERLANDS

* The young women startled Quaker Philadelphia by the sensuous appearance of their full bodices, tight waists, bare legs and skirts as scandalously short as an English undershift.

* On the subject of sex, the backsettlers tended to be more open than were other cultures of British America. Sexual talk was free and easy in the backcountry—more so than in Puritan Massachusetts or Quaker Pennsylvania, or even Anglican Virginia. So too was sexual behavior.

The Anglican missionary Charles Woodmason was astounded by the open sexuality of the backsettlers. “How would the polite people of London stare, to see the Females (many very pretty) …,” he wrote. “The young women have a most uncommon practice, which I cannot break them of. They draw their shift as tight as possible round their Breasts, and slender waists (for they are generally very finely shaped) and draw their Petticoat close to their Hips to show the fineness of their limbs—as that they might as well be in puri naturalibus—indeed nakedness is not censurable or indecent here, and they expose themselves often quite naked, without ceremony—rubbing themselves and their hair with bears’ oil and tying it up behind in a bunch like the indians—being hardly one degree removed from them.

* Other evidence suggests that these surface impressions of back-country sexuality had a solid foundation in fact. Rates of prenuptial pregnancy were very high in the backcountry—higher than other parts of the American colonies.

* Rates of illegitimacy and prenuptial pregnancy had long been higher in the far northwest of England than in any other part of that nation. The magnitude of regional differences was very great. Rates of bastardy in the northwest were three times higher than in the east of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Regional disparities persisted from the beginning of parish registers to the twentieth century. Historian Peter Laslett notes that “in early Victorian times Cumberland … had the highest recordings [of bastardy] in the country.” Westmorland was very similar. High rates of illegitimacy and prenuptial pregnancy in the backcountry were not the necessary consequences of frontier conditions. Puritans also moved onto new lands in the northern colonies and continued to behave in puritanical ways. The same continuities appeared among the Quakers when they moved to the frontier.

* From an early age, small boys were taught to think much of their own honor, and to be active in its defense. Honor in this society meant a pride of manhood in masculine courage, physical strength and warrior virtue. Male children were trained to defend their honor without a moment’s hesitation—lashing out instantly against their challengers with savage violence.

* In North Britain, from time immemorial, the rule of tanistry (or thanistry, as in thane) had long determined the descent of authority within a clan. It held that “succession to an estate or dignity was conferred by election upon the ‘eldest and worthiest’ among the surviving kinsmen.”8 Candidates for this honor were males within the circle of kin called the derbfine—all the relatives within the span of four generations. By the rule of tanistry, one man among that group was chosen to head the family: he who was strongest, toughest and most cunning. This principle became an invitation to violent conflict, and the question was often settled by a trial of strength and cunning. The winner became the elder of his family or clan, and was honored with deference and deep respect. The losers were degraded and despised—if they were lucky.

* Tanistry caused much violence in the history of North Britain. It was also a product of that violence, for it was a way of promoting elders who had the strength and cunning to defend their families, and command respect. But those elders who were unable to do so became a danger to their people.

* Drake was only mildly interested in what lay in store in the next world, but he was obsessed with the question of how death should come to him in this one. This question, for a Puritan or a Quaker, was a mere triviality compared with the great business of salvation. But for Daniel Drake, as for Robert Burns, the secular circumstances of death loomed as large as its sacred nature. Both men were fatalistic about the inevitability of death, but they were deeply affected by its uncertainties. This is an attitude that commonly exists in the face of endemic violence. In the twentieth century the same paradox of nescient fatalism—that is, of fatalism without foreknowledge—may be observed among men at war. It has also existed in entire cultures where sudden, violent and senseless death was a constant fact of life—as in the British borders and the American backcountry.

* A woman of the Bell clan who understood this backcountry culture very well, tried to explain the special quality of its fatalism to outsiders: “The fatalism of this free folk is unlike anything of the Far East; dark and mystical though it be … it is lighted with flashes of the spirit of the Vikings. A man born and bred in a vast wild land nearly always becomes a fatalist. He learns to see nature not as a thing of field and brooks, friendly to man and docile beneath his hand, but as a world of depths and heights and distances illimitable, of which he is a tiny part. He feels himself carried in the sweep of forces too vast for comprehension, forces variously at war, out of which are the issues of life and death. … Inevitably he comes to feel, with a sort of proud humility, that he has no part in the universe save as he allies himself, by prayer and obedience, with the order that rules.”

* Where the warrior ethic is strong, the work ethic grows weak. This was so among the borderers and backsettlers, on both sides of the water. A traveler in North Britain remarked that the inhabitants were “indolent in high degree, unless roused to war.”1 In the American backcountry, other travelers frequently repeated similar observations. “They are very poor owing to their extreme indolence,” wrote an itinerant clergyman. A Philadelphia Quaker wrote: “ … the Irish are mostly poor beggarly idle people.”

* These were not a people who took time by the forelock. The folkways of the backcountry differed very much in that respect from the attitudes of New England, the Delaware, and even tidewater Virginia. Of all the inhabitants of British America, the back settlers were the most conservative and the least instrumental in their time ways. By and large the people of the backcountry tended to believe that the rhythms of life were inexorable and ineluctable, and beyond the capacity of mere mortals to change in any fundamental way. In place of the more instrumental attitudes of improving time, or redeeming time, or even killing time, the backsettlers had a fatalistic idea of passing the time—letting it happen in its ineluctable way. Here was another striking paradox of backcountry culture. The more these people moved through space, the more rooted they became in time.

* Crackers, Rednecks, Hoosiers—words that described the largest social class in the American backcountry—were not coined in the New World. They were carried out of North Britain. For three centuries these terms were variously used as praise words and pejoratives, according to context and occasion. But always they described the same paradox of poverty and pride.

* Another term for this rural proletariat was redneck, which was originally applied to the backsettlers because of their religion. The earliest American example known to this historian was recorded in North Carolina by Anne Royall in 1830, who noted that “red-neck” was “a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians.” It had long been a slang word for religious dissenters in the north of England.

* A third word for this rural proletariat which also came from Britain was cracker, which derived from an English pejorative for a low and vulgar braggart.

* Within this comity, personal relations between backsettlers were often brutally direct. The mother of President Jackson prepared her son for this world with some very strong advice. “Andrew,” said she, “never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself.”1 That folk saying was a classical expression of backcountry attitudes toward order, which differed very much from other regions of British America. In the absence of any strong sense of order as unity, hierarchy, or social peace, backsettlers shared an idea of order as a system of retributive justice. The prevailing principle was lex talionis, the rule of retaliation.

* The politics of the backcountry consisted mainly of charismatic leaders and personal followings, cemented by strong and forceful acts such as Jackson’s behavior at Jonesboro. The rhetoric that these leaders used sometimes sounded democratic, but it was easily misunderstood by those who were not part of this folk culture. The Jacksonian movement was a case in point. To easterners, Andrew Jackson looked and sounded like a Democrat. But in his own culture, his rhetoric had a very different function. Historian Thomas Abernethy observes that Andrew Jackson never championed the cause of the people; he merely invited the people to champion him. This was a style of politics which placed a heavy premium upon personal loyalty. In the American backcountry, as on the British borders, loyalty was the most powerful cement of political relationships. Disloyalty was the primary political sin.

* No matter whether they came from the England or Scotland or Ireland, their libertarian ideas were very much alike—and profoundly different from notions of liberty that had been carried to Massachusetts, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The traveler Johann Schoepf was much interested in ideas of law and liberty which he found in the backcountry. “They shun everything which appears to demand of them law and order, and anything that preaches constraint,” Schoepf wrote of the backsettlers. “They hate the name of a justice, and yet they are not transgressors. Their object is merely wild. Altogether, natural freedom … is what pleases them.”2 This idea of “natural freedom” was widespread throughout the southern back settlements. But it was not a reflexive response to the “frontier” environment, nor was it “merely wild,” as Schoepf believed. The backcountry idea of natural liberty was created by a complex interaction between the American environment and a European folk culture. It derived in large part from the British border country, where anarchic violence had long been a condition of life. The natural liberty of the borderers was an idea at once more radically libertarian, more strenuously hostile to ordering institutions than were the other cultures of British America.

* A leading advocate of natural liberty in the eighteenth century was Patrick Henry, a descendant of British borderers, and also a product of the American backcountry. Throughout his political career, Patrick Henry consistently defended the principles of minimal government, light taxes, and the right of armed resistance to authority in all cases which infringed liberty.

* Patrick Henry’s idea of natural liberty was itself a border folkway that took root in the American back settlements and still flourishes in the United States today.

* In 1788, Patrick Henry led the opposition to the new national Constitution, primarily on the grounds that strong government of any sort was hostile to liberty…

* Patrick Henry’s ideas of natural liberty were not learned from treatises on political theory. His idea of a “state of nature” was not the philosophical abstraction that it had been for Locke. Thomas Jefferson said of Patrick Henry with only some exaggeration that “he read nothing, and had no books.”11 Henry’s lawyer-biographer William Wirt wrote, “Of the science of law he knew almost nothing; of the practical law he was so wholly ignorant that he was not only unable to draw a declaration or a plea, but incapable, it is said, of the most common or simple business of his profession, even of the mode of ordering a suit, giving a notice, or making a motion in court.”12 Patrick Henry’s principles of natural liberty were drawn from the political folkways of the border culture in which he grew up. He embibed them from his mother, a lady who described the American Revolution as merely another set of “lowland troubles.”13 The libertarian phrases and thoughts which echoed so strongly in the backcountry had earlier been heard in the borders of North Britain.

* This libertarian idea of natural freedom as “elbow room” was very far from the ordered freedom of New England towns, the hegemonic freedom of Virginia’s county oligarchs, and the reciprocal freedom of Pennsylvania Quakers.

* As late as 1900 nearly 60 percent of Americans had been of British stock. The old English-speaking cultures still firmly maintained their hegemony in the United States. But that pattern was changing very rapidly. By 1920 the proportion of Americans with British ancestry had fallen to 41 percent. Still, three-quarters of the nation came from northwestern Europe, but other ethnic stocks from eastern and southern Europe were growing at a formidable rate.

* There is a cultural equivalent of the iron law of oligarchy; small groups dominate every cultural system. They tend to do so by controlling institutions and processes, so that they become the “governors” of a culture in both a political and a mechanical sense. This iron law of cultural elites is an historical constant, but the relation between elites and other cultural groups is highly variable. Every culture might be seen as a system of bargaining, in which elites maintain their hegemony by concessions to other groups. These bargaining processes worked differently in the four regions of British America.

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Earn What You Deserve: How to Stop Underearning & Start Thriving

Publishers Weekly wrote in 1994: “The author of How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt and Live Prosperously here tackles the problems of another fiscally troubled group, those who are earning only enough to meet their needs. He touches on but does not treat in depth the destructive self-image that makes underearning only part of a syndrome. But he does offer advice for treating underearning, beginning with three cardinal rules: do not incur debt, do not take work that pays less than you require and do not say “no” to money, i.e., ignore opportunities to increase your income. Mundis urges drawing up a “spending plan” (not a budget, which is too constricting) and recommends such relaxation techniques as meditation and deep breathing. In what looks like padding, he also presents an adaptation of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.”

Here are some of my favorite sections of this Jerrold Mundis book:

* Pain is the messenger. It tells me that something is wrong.

* The first step in freeing yourself from underearning is to accept responsibility for the problem. This doesn’t mean it is your fault. The fact that you are an underearner, if you are, is not a condition you wanted or that you brought upon yourself. You may be completely justified in thinking that you were neglected or terribly abused somehow as a child, and yes, it may truly be a shame, and yes, perhaps anyone would empathize with you. But going over that repeatedly is not going to help you free yourself—no one ever got better confessing someone else’s sins. That you are an underearner, while not your fault, is your responsibility. What you do about it is your responsibility. No one can change that for you; no external event or circumstance will alter it. But by accepting that it is your responsibility, you can begin to free yourself from ever having to underearn again.

* Underearners evade, avoid, and deflect money like running backs hurtling toward the goal line of poverty—touchdown! Do not say no to money. Do not evade it, avoid it, or deflect it. Let it into your life. We are talking, of course, about money that meets the first two criteria: money that isn’t debt, and money that isn’t less than you need. If it satisfies both of these, then do not say no to it.

* We evade money by not following up.

* Early in my own liberation from underearning, the communications director of a large professional association called me from Washington, D.C. She’d heard that I broke writer’s block for people. (I perked up, sensing income.) That was not the problem she had. (I sagged.) Her staff writers were not blocked. (I sagged further.) Their problem was burnout and staleness, caused by having to write about the same topics over and over. (Why was she calling me?) Could I help? (How? What did I know about burnout in staff writers?) They could pay $1,250 for an afternoon session with their four writers. It was truly depressing to know that $1,250 was available, but not for me. I was about to express my regrets and thank her for the call and tell her I hoped she could find an answer somewhere, when—with the force of a hammer blow, nearly taking my breath away, and causing the hand in which I held the phone to begin sweating—I was struck by the realization that I had a compulsion to underearn … and that I was about to turn down $1,250.

Perhaps, I thought, the reason I am about to turn this money down is not valid; perhaps it is a function of my compulsion to underearn. Though it was difficult, though my throat began to close and I had trouble getting the words out, I forced myself to say: “Yes, I think I can help you with it. I’d like to give it some thought. Is there a time tomorrow afternoon that would be convenient for me to call you back?”

Six weeks later, I led a four-hour workshop for that woman and her writers down in Washington. I called it “Word Renewal.”

* Much of your underearning has resulted from distorted attitudes and perceptions you have about money, about yourself, and about yourself in relationship to money.

* On your pad, write the heading Underearning. Beneath it, list all the ways you can think of in which you actively or passively underearned over the last twelve months. (Don’t bother classifying them; the purpose here is to help you see the ways rather than to divide them.) For example: Sought work for which I wasn’t qualified. Spent a lot of time on projects that weren’t going to make me much money [if self-employed]. Incurred heavy expenses.

* Now make a second list. Here, write down all the ways in which other people you know underearn: set low fees, for example, insist on getting things their own way, continue to employ unproductive employees. Now get creative and add every other way you can think of: claiming that emotional problems prevent one from working, arguing constantly with co-workers and supervisors which results in never being promoted, not honoring commitments.

* Things I Could Do to Change My Emotions

Under this heading, list seven things you could do to change your emotions about money. Let your imagination run free: You don’t have to do any of these. The point is only to show yourself that there are ways to change, ways you never even realized or considered before. Some of your ideas will be more desirable than others. When you’re finished, breathe, exhale, and relax.

Now write the heading: Things I Could Do to Change My Beliefs

Here, write down ten things you could do to change your beliefs or attitudes about money, or about yourself in relationship to money.

* Sit down with your pen and pad. Write thé heading, 100 Ways I Could Bring More Money In.

* Sometime within the next seven days, write out a description of your ideal relationship with money—not what you think an ideal relationship ought to be but what it would actually be for you. It’s important for you to have a clear picture of this. This clarity will help you make choices and take actions that are more likely to serve your best interests.

* If you’ve been underearning for any length of time, a fair amount of what fills your life—clothes, kitchen equipment, furniture—can have become worn out, flawed, and second-rate.

* Pick a drawer, a bureau, a closet, or even an entire room in your apartment or house. Evaluate every single article within that space, from an old tie to a television set. Ask yourself: Do I really need this? Do I enjoy and take pleasure from it?

* “When I’m inside my own head,” says Harry, a chef, “I’m behind enemy lines.” What he means is that sitting alone with his own thoughts doesn’t help him—they are depressed thoughts, fearful thoughts, the thoughts of an underearner. He means that he can’t simply think his way out of underearning, or out of the low self-esteem esteem that is part of his underearning, and into feeling better about himself. So how does one improve one’s self-image, lift one’s self-esteem?

* One of the simplest and most effective ways to lift your self-esteem is by doing estimable—or esteemable—acts. Write down a number of things you could do for which you would respect or admire yourself.

* Diversifying was part of my own liberation from underearning… Diversification, then, is a process in which you identify the skills and abilities you possess in addition to those you use in your main occupation—or further ways to apply those you already do use—and then find avenues through which to turn them into income-producing activities.

* Stick with the winners.

* Finally, remain open—open to new and unexpected possibilities of recovery. To any technique, discipline, or practice you might encounter that can help you in your liberation from underearning.

Underearning is a term that makes most of us draw back uneasily . It is embarrassing , unpleasant . We feel that anyone who might be affected by it — whatever it is — might somehow be defective or incapable . Yet underearning is rampant in America

You Don’t Have to Underearn Any More. > Location 180

I am not telling you that the sky’s the limit or that you can be , do , or have anything you want . It isn’t , and you can’t . But I am telling you that you can free yourself from underearning and stay free of it forever : by using the program in this book , which is a clear , simple , and step – by – step guide .

1. In all its Glory > Page 5

And that’s where I was when Jim Roi said to me : “ Jerry , do you think — is it possible — could it be — that you are a compulsive underearner ? ”

1. In all its Glory > Page 6

To underearn is repeatedly to gain less income than you need , or than would be beneficial — usually for no apparent reason , and despite your desire to do otherwise .

1. In all its Glory > Page 8

Underearning is a self – diagnosed condition — and needs to be . No underearner will ever get free of underearning without first perceiving , or accepting , that he or she is an underearner .

1. In all its Glory > Page 8

Is underearning an illness of some sort ? It may be , it may not . Certainly it’s not a physical illness , but the argument can be made that underearning , like other self – damaging behaviors , is a psychological and spiritual illness . ( We’ll deal with those aspects as we go along . ) But ultimately — is it ? For some , it probably is ; for others , it isn’t . But what it is , is less important than that it is . There is a condition of underearning , a state of underearning , an ontology of underearning . So whatever it may or may not actually be , it is perfectly fine , I think , to call it an illness , a malady , an affliction , a habit , tendency , mindset , or anything else you might wish . Whatever underearning may ultimately be , there are basically three kinds of it : Compulsive , Problematic , and Minor .

1. In all its Glory > Page 11

Active underearning involves doing something that results in underearning , from quitting a job , to setting low fees , to turning down work

1. In all its Glory > Page 13

Passive underearning involves not doing or failing to do something that would — if you did it — cause you to earn more . It can be anything from not getting to work on time to failing to meet a deadline or neglecting to ask for help or advice . Passive underearning is more subtle than active underearning and may be more difficult to discern at first ,

1. In all its Glory > Page 16

There are many issues related to the problem of underearning , but they are not the problem itself . The beginning of wisdom , goes an old Chinese epigram , is to call things by their right name . To underearn is to gain less money than you need . Other issues , which either contribute to underearning or result from it , are part of the syndrome of underearning .

2: Underearners > Page 27 · Location 510

Dysfunctional has been employed as a synonym for murderous , hateful , savage , abusive , and even evil . It is not a synonym for any of those . Dysfunctional means “ disordered ” or “ impaired ” ; it does not mean “ awful , ” “ brutal , ” or “ catastrophic . ” I suggest , as a practical working definition of a dysfunctional household , this : A dysfunctional household is one in which , because of alcoholism or a similar affliction , the family dynamics are more hurtful or repressive than those in households that are not marked by such an affliction .

2: Underearners > Page 33 · Location 578

Or you drive yourself mercilessly only so long as seems necessary , or while your enthusiasm is high , and then at the end collapse and are barely able to perform the minimum expected or required of you . During this latter time you feel blunted , sleep a lot , and have little will for anything , not even recreation

(*) This reminds me of Bi-polar disorder

2: Underearners > Page 37 · Location 635

Many venerable spiritual traditions — at least in some of their teachings — suggest that eschewing money , possessions , and other things of this world can be beneficial and is perhaps even necessary to spiritual development . On the other hand , every tradition places great value on helping to eliminate poverty , or the ravages of poverty , from the world — which would hardly be the case if poverty were in itself ennobling or beneficial .

(*) A fascinating paradox, really. Some people misquote that “money is the root of all evil” Yet the apostle Paul actually said: [1Ti 6:6-10 NKJV] 6 Now godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into [this] world, [and it is] certain we can carry nothing out. 8 And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and [into] many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all [kinds of] evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

2: Underearners > Page 37 · Location 638

What most people forget about Saint Francis , for example , is that he was an extremely wealthy young man who renounced his family’s fortune , who chose to live a mendicant’s life , who exercised an option . As was , and did , Gautama Buddha . There is a world — perhaps even a universe — of difference between voluntary renunciation and underearning

Part II: Fundamentals

3. Getting Under Way > Page 52

Freedom from underearning means regularly to gain income that is enough to meet your needs in a humane way .

3. Getting Under Way > Page 54 ·

Resistance to surrender , which stems from fear , is based largely on a misconception of what the word means . If you’re like most people , you interpret surrender as meaning a loss of freedom , defeat , weakness . But one of its primary definitions is “To give something up in favor of something else “

3. Getting Under Way > Page 55

Denial is nearly universal at first — after all , no one wants to have an underearning problem . You tell yourself it’s your parents ’ fault , the government’s fault , your wife’s fault . It’s the economy’s fault , the patriarchy’s , the banks ’ , the credit card companies ’ , your boss’s fault , society’s fault . It’s the divorce , you say to yourself , the job market , late – paying accounts , taxes , interest rates , the new roof , high rents . Anything or anyone but you , even though you’re the one who repeatedly gains less income than you need or than would be beneficial .

(*) Its the rationalization. I’m not REALLY an underearner…implicit in this is the belief that “I” am not the problem. Admission and the subsequent surrender is the only basis on which any real change can take place. You can’t move away from something you don’t admit in the first place

4. Reconceiving > Page 74

“ This is a simple program for complicated people . ”

4. Reconceiving > Page 76 · Location 1098

Then I tell them : “ What I did while my eyes were closed was this . First , I thought the worst possible thought I could about all of you . Then I thought the best possible thought I could about all of you .Yet none of you was plunged into despair or got angry at me . Nor was anyone lifted into euphoria or overcome with affection toward me . The point is : What other people think about you cannot possibly affect you . Their thoughts cannot influence your mood . Only yours can — what you think . ”

(*)What other people think of me is none of my business

5. Proceeding > Page 100 And you cannot liberate yourself from underearning by continuing to underearn . Your real job has been underearning . And you have worked hard at it and been very successful at it : at repeatedly gaining less income than you needed , despite the negative emotional and practical consequences that followed. That job is over now . One day at a time , you’re through with underearning . So it’s time to be moseying on — toward work that will pay you enough to meet your needs in a humane fashion .

6. Couples and Families > Page 116

No matter who you are or what your living conditions , this is precisely how difficult your own situation is — more difficult than some , less difficult than others .

6. Couples and Families > Page 125

Acknowledge any legitimate discrepancy that exists between your incomes . A legitimate discrepancy is one that results from the realities of life rather than from underearning — either yours , your partner’s , or both

6. Couples and Families > Page 131

To reach accord is to come to agreement or into harmony .

6. Couples and Families > Page 134

First : Begin by recognizing that your time — as the time of a human being — is neither more valuable nor less valuable than your partner’s time . Your earning power per hour or day may be different , but the absolute value of that hour or day , as a unit of time , is not . Your time , as the time of a human being , is worth exactly the same as your partner’s . One hour equals one hour , regardless of who works it or how much he or she can command for it on the market .

Highlight (pink) – 6. Couples and Families > Page 148 · Location 2022

Finally , live and let live . Live your own life , as you choose , and let your partner , your grown children , and everyone else you know live their lives as they choose — or for reasons beyond your ken , perhaps as they must . Attend to the beam in your own eye ; the motes in theirs are their business . It is your birthright to live as you wish , it is theirs to do the same . Your liberation depends only on you . Theirs , if they are underearners , depends only on them . It is possible that we do know sometimes what is best for another adult . It is also possible that we don’t . To assume that we do is arrogance , to try to force that assumption on someone is tyranny .

Part III: Expansion

7. Growing Stronger > Page 161 · Location 2145

This is an important distinction . It is appropriate to feel fear if a large , savage dog lunges through an open gate at you ; or grief at the death of a loved one . But most fear and despondency stem primarily from your cognitions , from what you think .

7. Growing Stronger > Page 161

The Dhammapada , one of Buddhism’s favorite texts , begins : “ All we are is the result of what we have thought . ”

7. Growing Stronger > Page 163 · Location 2174

Charlotte , a painter who worked part time as a data processor , experienced agony each time she made an appointment for a prospective client to view her artwork . It would look as if she were begging for money , she felt . The client would be contemptuous of her work , think she was incompetent , reject her . She knew she would be humiliated and unable to paint for days . There would be no money . She would have to give up painting altogether and take a full – time job . All this went on in Charlotte’s head — yet her emotions , in response to her thoughts , were as searingly painful as if such events had actually happened .

7. Growing Stronger > Page 166

If any single factor in itself can make liberation from underearning impossible , it is resentment .

7. Growing Stronger Page 170

Allow yourself to experience the emotion purely , completely , without resistance . Be the emotion : Be fear . Be self – loathing . Feel it completely . Be within it ; let it be within you . Experience it totally .

(*) I’m thinking of the scene in Batman Begins when Bruce is in the cave and the bats swarm around him, and he immerses himself fully in the swarm

7. Growing Stronger > Page 170

Most people discover that they can’t experience an emotion — purely , uninterruptedly — for more than one or two minutes , often for no more than thirty seconds . Not because the emotion is so awesomely powerful that they can’t endure it any longer , but because it cannot exist in a pure state much longer than that . It burns itself out , collapses in upon itself , or crests , subsides , and disappears .

(*) This is so very important to get a hold of. Feelings are like weather, only as this points out, quite short in duration.

7. Growing Stronger > Page 174

“ The function of prayer , ” wrote the philosopher Kierkegaard , “ is not to influence God , but rather to change the nature of the one who prays . ”

(*) Prayer is dispositional

7. Growing Stronger > Page 175

Then , as best you can , place your consciousness deep within your diaphragm , in the calm and quiet center of your being . Now ask yourself silently , “ Who am I ? ” Maybe , as your first answer , your name comes to mind : Jerry . Say to yourself , easily , without strain : “ No , that is a name people call me . That is not me . Who is the ‘ I ’ who is called by that name ? ” Perhaps your occupation occurs to you next : A writer . Say to yourself easily , without strain : “ No , writing is something I do . That is not me . Who is the ‘ I ’ who does the writing ? ” My thoughts . “ No , those are a function of my consciousness . They are not me . Who is the ‘ I ’ who has these thoughts ? ” My consciousness . “ No , that is something I possess . That is not me . Who is the ‘ I ’ who has this consciousness ? ” A man . “ No , that is the sex of my body . That is not me . Who is the ‘ I ’ who has this sex ? ” My body .

7. Growing Stronger > Page 178

Money has life , and like other living things — like you , like me — it doesn’t go where it isn’t liked , isn’t wanted . It doesn’t go where it is feared , lusted after , envied , grabbed at , hoarded , resented , and otherwise made to feel unwelcome . * So begin treating money well . Don’t jam it into your pocket or push it into the bottom of your purse . Put it in your wallet , nicely and neatly . Say hello to it . Tell it how pleased you are to see it , how happy you are it’s come to visit . Treat it like a valued guest . And when the time comes for it to move on — as all guests must , and should — bid it farewell and a wonderful journey , happy that it came to visit you and looking forward to your next visitor . Be hospitable . Be a kind , loving , and generous host , into and out of whose life a steady stream of guests are delighted to flow .

(*) What about greedy mean, unkind people who have gobs of money?

7. Growing Stronger > Page

The company you work for is not the source of your money , even though it writes your paycheck . Your clients are not the source , even though they pay you . The stocks and bonds you own are not the source . Nor is the government , your friends , your family , or your customers . Just as the telephone is not the source of your phone calls , nor the mail carrier the source of your letters , but rather the agencies through which those arrive . The real source of your money is God , or the Universe — or , for the determinedly secular , your Self .

Part IV: The Steps

Steps One Through Six > Page 190 · Location 2521

The Steps are not presented in AA or any of the other Anonymous programs as something people must do in order to succeed with whatever difficulty they’re addressing . Rather , they are presented as suggestions , actions to take that will facilitate and strengthen recovery .

(*) There is a problem with this proposition. “This simple program” i.e. the steps are the path to recovery. It’s true no one in program will require or compel any member to take the steps, its clear that they were understood ss ” a new blueprint for living.” The framework within which transformation/recovery comes about.

8. Steps One Through Six > Page 191

If I would change what I experience to be the world , then I must change myself . The Steps are helpful in this.

8. Steps One Through Six > Page 192

As a rough guideline, aim to work with a Step for a least one or two full months before moving on to the next one . ( This is a very rough guideline . Ultimately , you’ll rely on your intuition . )

8. Steps One Through Six > Page 220

Even if I am highly imperfect , scored by a multitude of defects , that does not mean that I am defective , wrong , somehow no good . No more than a car is defective , or wrong , or somehow no good , because it has a defective turn signal . It is simply a car with a defective turn signal . If the defect were removed , the car would be easier to operate and less likely to cause damage to itself or anyone else .

9: Steps Seven Through Twelve > Page 227 · Location 3006

how might it do that ? Instantly . Or at the end of the day . Or over a long period of time . Forever . Or for a month , an hour , or only a few minutes . By direct and recognized divine intervention ( whatever that means to you ) , or by your encountering a good therapist , or through reading some sentences in a book , or the birth of a child , a phone call , or a conversation overheard in a restaurant . In as many ways as you can imagine and a great many more that you can’t , a God as you understand God , or a Higher Power as you understand it , might remove your shortcomings . They’ll be removed , that’s all .

(*) If you’re heading in that direction, you’re likely to get there.

9: Steps Seven Through Twelve > Page 234

No matter what kind of harm you have done in your life , you are not a terrible and hurtful human being ; you would not be reading a book like this if you were . Nor , conversely , are you someone so gentle , timid , and sweet that you have never harmed another human being . It’s not possible to have lived long enough to become an adult without having harmed others along the way .

9: Steps Seven Through Twelve > Page 248

“ Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer and meditation would no more do without them than we would refuse air , food , or sunshine . ”

9: Steps Seven Through Twelve > Page 249

The fear I had of this Step , and the fear of practically anyone who’s ever been reluctant to approach it , was that God’s will would not be consonant with my own . In other words , that I wouldn’t get what I want . It is very difficult to pray only for a knowledge of God’s will for you and the power to carry that out when you fear that this might mean something you don’t want : suffering , being hurt , being deprived , punished , not getting what you want or think you need . But it’s not difficult to pray only for a knowledge of the will of what is best in you and best in other people and the power to carry that out . Take a moment to sit quietly and identify what is truly best in you and in the people you know .

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Sex, Lies & Videotape (1989)

Bud says: I just watched Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) for the first time since it came out, what a debut by Soderbergh. One detail I missed the first time, Andie MacDowell’s character wears a cross throughout the film, up until after she does the video interview with Spader, when she confronts her husband with the bad news she’s wearing what appears to be a Magen David. In the final scene she has no necklace. Quite odd, Soderbergh is not MoT.

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Joseph Cotto Debates Luke Ford On 2020 Voter Fraud Allegations (6-11-21)

00:00 Ethan Ralph hosted Joseph Cotto and me to discuss Election 2020
02:00 Henry Olsen: How we can be confident that Trump’s voter fraud claims are baloney, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=135305
04:00 Joseph Cotto, https://twitter.com/JosephFordCotto
06:00 Cotto/Gottfried on Rumble, https://rumble.com/c/CottoGottfried
1:35:00 When was I last out of the LA bubble?
2:05:00 Southern Dingo calls in and reads two of Luke’s spicy quotes
2:51:00 Luke funded and ran the Goyim Defense League
2:52:40 Luke debates Joseph Cotto: Did Voter Fraud Determine The 2020 Election? (5-13-21), https://rumble.com/vh5c27-did-voter-fraud-determine-the-2020-election-5-13-21.html
2:54:30 Tucker Carlson
3:30:00 Who is Hans von Spakovsky? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=135307
3:34:00 Kris Kobach’s bogus claims on voter fraud

The Power Of The Situation To Shape Behavior, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140115
Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139670
The Myth Of Voter Fraud, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=137198
Debunking the most common claims of voter fraud: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140096
“How claims of voter fraud were supercharged by bad science” https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140090
Kris Kobach’s False Claims About Voter Fraud, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140070
‘Trump’s Claims About Illegal Votes Are Nonsense. I Debunked the Study He Cites as ‘Evidence.’’ https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140088
‘Trump And Allies Keep Claiming Republican Poll Watchers Were Banned—That’s A Lie’ https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140062
NYT: There’s no evidence to support claims that election observers were blocked from counting rooms, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140057
‘EXPLAINER: Why poll watcher complaints don’t amount to fraud’ https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140055
‘No, Georgia election workers didn’t kick out observers and illegally count ‘suitcases’ of ballots’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140053
‘Mail-in Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139307
No Evidence For Voter Fraud: A Guide To Statistical Claims About The 2020 Election, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=137683
OutsideTheBeltway.com: A Return to the (Lack of) Evidence of Significant Fraud, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=137612
Michael Anton Says He Does Not Know Who Truly Won The 2020 Election, But He’s ‘Moved On’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=137453
Henry Olsen: How we can be confident that Trump’s voter fraud claims are baloney, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=135305

Posted in America, Voter Fraud | Comments Off on Joseph Cotto Debates Luke Ford On 2020 Voter Fraud Allegations (6-11-21)

Do You Like Watching Soccer?

Bud: Soccer is UnAmerican. Maybe the US can’t assimilate foreigners like Fordy who still cling to their native cultures. My loyalty oath would be a pledge to disavow soccer and all it stands for. Ties, flopping, crowd behavior, no scoring. It’s third world. Watching sports is for the plebs with exception of the NFL. There is nothing more iconically American than a star quarterback. He’s a leader, he risks his body to lead the pawns down the field. He has to have mind of a field general one game per week.

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