By John Lord, LL. D. THOMAS AQUINAS. THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. (ii.) With the Crusades arose a new spirit, which gave an impulse to philosophy as well as to art and enterprise. "The primum mobile of the new system was Motion, in distinction from the Rest which marked the old monas- tic retreats." An immense enthusiasm for knowledge had been kindled by Abélard, which was further in- tensified by the Scholastic doctors of the thirteenth century, especially such of them as belonged to the Dominican and Franciscan friars. These celebrated Orders arose at a great crisis in the Papal history, when rival popes aspired to the throne of Saint Peter, when the Church was rent with divisions, when princes were contending for the right of investiture, and when heretical opinions were de- fended by men of genius. At this crisis a great Pope was called to the government of the Church,——Inno- cent III., under whose able rule the papal power culminated. He belonged to an illustrious Roman family, and received an unusual education, being versed in theology, philosophy, and canon law. His name was Lothario, of the family of the Conti; he was nephew of a pope, and counted three cardinals among his relatives. At the age of twenty-one, about the year 1181, he was one of the canons of Saint Peter's Church; at twenty-four he was sent by the Pope on important missions. In 1188 he was created cardinal by his uncle, Clement III.; and in 1198 he was elected Pope, at the age of thirty-eight, when the Crusades were at their height, when the south of France was agitated by the opinions of the Albigenses, and the provinces on the Rhine by those of the Waldenses. It was a turbulent age, full of tumults insurrections, wars, and theological dissensions. The old monastic orders had degenerated and lost influence through idleness and self-indulgence, while the secular clergy were scarcely any better. Innocent cast his eagle eye into all the abuses which disgraced the age and Church, and made fearless war upon those princes who usurped his pre- rogatives. He excommunicated princes, humbled the Emperor of Germany and the King of England, put kingdoms under their interdict, exempted abbots from the jurisdiction of bishops, punished heretics, formed cru- sades, laid down new canons, regulated taxes, and di- rected all ecclesiastical movements. His activity was ceaseless, and his ambition was boundless. He in- stituted important changes, and added new orders of monks to the Church. It was this Pope who made auricular confession obligatory, thus laying the founda- tion of an imperious spiritual sway in the form of inquisitions. A firm guardian of public morals, his private life was above reproach. His habits were simple and his tastes were cultivated. He was charitable and kind to the poor and unfortunate. He spent his enormous revenues in building churches, endowing hospitals, and rewarding learned men; and otherwise showed himself the friend of scholars, and the patron of benevolent movements. He was a reformer of abuses, publishing the most se- vere acts against venality, and deciding quarrels on prin- ciples of justice. He had no dramatic conflicts like Hildebrand, for his authority was established. As the supreme guardian of the interests of the Church he sel- dom made demands which he had not the power to en- force. John of England attempted resistance, but was compelled to submit. Innocent even gave the arch- bishopric of Canterbury to one of his cardinals, Stephen Langton, against the wishes of a Norman king. He made Philip II take back his lawful wife; he nominated an emperor to the throne of Constantine; he compelled France to make war on England, and incited the barons to rebellion against John. Ten years' civil war in Ger- many were the fruit of his astute policy, and the only great failure of his administration was that he could not exempt Italy from the dominion of the Emperors of Germany, thus giving rise to the two great political par- ties of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,——the Guelphs and Ghibellines. To cement his vast spiritual power and to add to the usefulness and glory of the Church, he not only countenanced but encouraged the Mendicant Friars, established by Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Dominic of the great family of the Guzmans in Spain. These men made substantially the same offers to the Pope that Ignatius Loyola did in after times,——to go where they were sent as teachers, preachers, and missionaries without condition or reward. They renounced riches, professed absolute poverty, and wandered from village to city bare- footed, and subsisting entirely on alms as beggars. The Dominican friar in his black habit, and the Fran- ciscan in his gray, became the ablest and most effective preachers of the thirteenth century. The Dominicans confined their teachings to the upper classes, and be- came their favorite confessors. They were the most learned men of the thirteenth century, and also the most reproachless in morals. The Franciscans were itinerary preachers to the common people, and created among them the same religious revival that the Meth- odists did later in England under the guidance of Wes- ley. The founder of the Franciscans was a man who seemed to be "inebriated with love," so unquenchable was his charity, rapt his devotions, and supernal his sympathy. He found his way to Rome in the year 1215, and in twenty-two years after his death there were nine thousand religious houses of his Order. In a century from his death the friars numbered one hundred and fifty thousand. The increase of the Do- minicans was not so rapid, but more illustrious men belonged to this institution. It is affirmed that it produced seventy cardinals, four hundred and sixty bishops, and four popes. It was in the palmy days of these celebrated monks, before corruption had set in, that the Dominican Order was recruited with one of the most extraordinary men of the Middle Ages. This man was Saint Thomas, born 1225 or 1227, son of a Count of Aquino in the kingdom of Naples, known in history as Thomas Aqui- nas, "the most successful organizer of knowledge," says Archbishop Trench, "the world has known since Aris- totle." He was called "the angelical doctor," exciting the enthusiasm of his age for his learning and piety and genius alike. He was a prodigy and a marvel of dialectical skill, and Catholic writers have exhausted language to find expressions for their admiration. Their Lives of him are an unbounded panegyric for the sweetness of his temper, his wonderful self-control, his lofty devotion to study, his indifference to praises and rewards, his spiritual devotion, his loyalty to the Church, his marvellous acuteness of intellect, his in- dustry, and his unparalleled logical victories. When he was five years of age his father, a noble of very high rank sent him to Monte Cassino with the hope that he would become a Benedictine monk, and ulti- mately abbot of that famous monastery, with the control of its vast revenues and patronage. Here he remained seven years, until the convent was taken and sacked by the soldiers of the Emperor Frederic in his war with the Pope. The young Aquino returned to his father's castle, and was then sent to Naples to be edu- cated at the university, living in a Benedictine abbey, and not in lodgings like other students. The Domini- cans and Franciscans held chairs in the university, one of which was filled with a man of great ability, whose preaching and teaching had such great influence on the youthful Thomas that he resolved to join the Order, and at the age of seventeen became a Dominican friar, to the disappointment of his family. His mother Theodora went to Naples to extricate him from the hands of the Dominicans, who secretly hurried him off to Rome and guarded him in their convent, from which he was rescued by violence. But the youth persisted in his intentions against the most passionate entreaties of his mother, made his escape, and was carried back to Naples. The Pope, at the solicitation of his family, offered to make him Abbot of Monte Cassino, but he remained a poor Dominican. His superior, seeing his remarkable talents, sent him to Cologne to attend the lectures of Albertus Magnus, then the most able ex- pounder of the Scholastic Philosophy, and the oracle of the universities, who continued his lectures after he was made a bishop, and even until he was eighty-five. When Albertus was transferred from Cologne to Paris, where the Dominicans held two chairs of theology, Thomas followed him, and soon after was made bach- elor. Again was Albert sent back to Cologne, and Thomas was made his assistant professor. He at once attracted attention, was ordained priest, and became as famous for his sermons as for his lectures. After four years at Cologne Thomas was ordered back to Paris, travelling on foot, and begging his way, yet stopping to preach in the large cities. He was still magister and Albert professor, but had greatly distinguished himself by his lectures. His appearance at this time was marked. His body was tall and massive, but spare and lean from fasting and labor. His eyes were bright, but their expression was most modest. His face was oblong, his complex- ion sallow; his forehead depressed, his head large, his person erect. His first great work was a commentary of about twelve hundred pages on the "Book of Sentences," in the Parma edition, which was received with great ad- miration for its logical precision, and its opposition to the rationalistic tendencies of the times. In it are discussed all the great theological questions treated by Saint Augustine,——God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, grace, predestination, faith, free-will, Providence, and the like,——blended with metaphysical discussions on the soul, the existence of evil, the nature of angels, and other subjects which interested the Middle Ages. Such was his fame and dialectical skill that he was taken away from his teachings and sent to Rome to defend his Order and the cause of orthodoxy against the slander of William of Saint Amour, an aristo- cratic doctor, who hated the Mendicant Friars and their wandering and begging habits. William had written a book called "Perils," in which he exposed the dangers to be apprehended from the new order of monks, in which he proved himself a true prophet, for ultimately the Mendicant Friars became subjects of ridicule and reproach. But the Pope came to the rescue of his best supporters. On the return of Thomas to Paris he was made doc- tor of theology, at the same time with Bonaventura the Franciscan, called "the seraphic doctor," between whom and Thomas were intimate ties of friendship. He had now reached the highest honor that the uni- versity could bestow, which was conferred with such extraordinary ceremony that it would seem to have been a great event in Paris at that time. His fame chiefly rests on the ablest treatise written in the Middle Ages,——the "Summa Theologica,"——in which all the great questions in theology and philosophy are minutely discussed, in the most exhaustive manner. He took the side of the Realists, his object being to uphold Saint Augustine. He was more a Platonist in his spirit than an Aristotelian, although he was in- debted to Aristotle for his method. He appealed to both reason and authority. He presented the Christian religion in a scientific form. His book is an assimila- tion of all that is precious in the thinking of the Church. If he learned many things at Paris, Cologne, and Naples, he was also educated by Chrysostom, by Augustine, and Ambrose. "It is impossible," says Car- dinal Newman, and no authority is higher than his, "to read the Catena of Saint Thomas without being struck by the masterly skill with which he put it together. A learning of the highest kind,——not merely literary book knowledge which may have supplied the place of in- dexes and tables in ages destitute of these helps, and when they had to be read in unarranged and frag- mentary manuscripts, but a thorough acquaintance with the whole range of ecclesiastical antiquity, so as to be able to bring the substance of all that had been written on any point to bear upon the text which in- volved it,——a familiarity with the style of each writer so as to compress in a few words the pith of the whole page, and a power of clear and orderly arrangement in this mass of knowledge, are qualities which make this Catena nearly perfect as an interpretation of Patristic literature." Dr. Vaughan, in eulogistic language, says: "The 'Summa Theologica' may be likened to one of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages, infinite in detail but massive in the groupings of pillars and arches, forming a complete unity that must have taxed the brain of the architect to its greatest extent. But greater as work of intellect is this digest of all theologi- cal richness for one thousand years, in which the thread of discourse is never lost sight of, but winds through a labyrinth of important discussions and digressions, all bearing on the fundamental truths which Paul declared and Augustine systematized." This treatise would seem to be a thesaurus of both Patristic and Mediæval learning; not a dictionary of knowledge, but a system of truth severely elaborated in every part,——a work to be studied by the Mediæval students as Calvin's "Institutes" were by the scholars of the Reformation, and not far different in its scope and end; for the Patristic, the Mediæval, and the Protestant divines did not materially differ in refer- ence to the fundamental truths pertaining to God, the Incarnation, and Redemption. The Catholic and Protestant divines differ chiefly on the ideas pertain- ing to government and ecclesiastical institutions, and the various inventions of the Middle Ages to uphold the authority of the Church, not on dogmas strictly theological. A student in theology could even in our times sit at the feet of Thomas Aquinas, as he could at the feet of Augustine or Calvin; except that in the theology which Thomas Aquinas commented upon there is a cumbrous method, borrowed from Aristotle, which introduced infinite distinctions and questions and defi- nitions and deductions and ramifications which have no charm to men who have other things to occupy their minds than Scholastic subtilties, acute and logical as they may be. Thomas Aquinas was raised to combat, with the weapons most esteemed in his day, the various forms of Rationalism, Pantheism, and Mysticism which then existed, and were included in the Nominalism of his antagonists. And as long as universities are cen- tres of inquiry the same errors, under other names, will have to be combated, but probably not with the same methods which marked the teachings of the "angelical doctor." In demolishing errors and systematizing truth he was the greatest benefactor to the cause of "ortho- oxy" that appeared in Europe for several centuries, admired for his genius as much as Spencer and other great lights of science are in our day, but standing pre- eminent and lofty over all, like a beacon light to give both guidance and warning to inquiring minds in every part of Christendom. Nor could popes and sovereigns render too great honor to such a prodigy of genius. They offered him the abbacy of Monte Cassino and the archbishopric of Naples, but he preferred the life of a quiet student, finding in knowledge and study, for their own sake, the highest reward, and pursuing his labors without the impedimenta of those high posi- tions which involve ceremonies and cares and pomps, yet which most ambitious men love better than freedom, placidity, and intellectual repose. He lived not in a palace, as he might have lived, surrounded with flatterers, luxuries, and dignities, but in a cell, wearing his simple black gown, and walking bare- footed wherever he went, begging his daily bread ac- cording to the rules of his Order. His black gown was not an academic badge, but the Dominican dress. His only badge of distinction was the doctors' cap. Dr. Vaughan, in his heavy and unartistic life of Thomas Aquinas, has drawn a striking resemblance be- tween Plato and the Mediæval doctor: "Both," he says, "were nobly born, both were grave from youth, both loved truth with an intensity of devotion. If Plato was instructed by Socrates, Aquinas was taught by Albertus Magnus; if Plato travelled into Italy, Greece, and Egypt, Aquinas went to Cologne, Naples, Bologna, and Rome; if Plato was famous for his erudition, Aqui- nas was no less noted for his universal knowledge. Both were naturally meek and gentle; both led lives of retirement and contemplation; both loved solitude; both were celebrated for self-control; both were brave; both held their pupils spell-bound by their brilliant mental gifts; both passed their time in lecturing to the schools (what the Pythagoreans were to Plato, the Benedictines were to the angelical); both shrank from the display of self; both were great dialecti- cians; both reposed on eternal ideas; both were ora- cles to their generation." But if Aquinas had the soul of Plato, he also had the scholastic gifts of Aris- totle, to whom the Church is indebted for method and nomenclature as it was to Plato for synthesis and that exalted Realism which went hand in hand with Chris- tianity. How far he was indebted to Plato it is diffi- cult to say. He certainly had not studied his dialec- tics through translations or in the original, but had probably imbibed the spirit of this great philosopher through Saint Augustine and other orthodox Fathers who were his admirers. Although both Plato and Aristotle accepted "uni- versals" as the foundation of scientific inquiry, the former arrived at them by consciousness, and the other by reasoning. The spirit of the two great masters of thought was as essentially different as their habits and lives. Plato believed that God governed the world; Aristotle believed that it was governed by chance. The former maintained that mind is divine and eter- nal; the latter that it is a form of the body, and con- sequently mortal. Plato thought that the source of happiness was in virtue and resemblance to God; while Aristotle placed it in riches and outward prosperity. Plato believed in prayer; but Aristotle thought that God would not hear or answer it, and therefore that it was useless. Plato believed in happiness after death; while Aristotle supposed that death ended all pleasure. Plato lived in the world of abstract ideas; Aristotle in the realm of sense and observation. The one was reli- gious; the other secular and worldly. With both the passion for knowledge was boundless, but they differed in their conceptions of knowledge; the one basing it on eternal ideas and the deductions to be drawn from them, and the other on physical science,——the phenomena of Nature,——those things which are cognizable by the senses. The spiritual life of Plato was "a longing after love and of eternal ideas, by the contemplation of which the soul sustains itself and becomes partici- pant in immortality." The life of Aristotle was not spiritual but intellectual. He was an incarnation of mere intellect, the architect of a great temple of knowl- edge, which received the name of Organum, or the philosophy of first principles. Thomas Aquinas, we may see from what has been said, was both Platonic and Aristotelian. He resembled Plato in his deep and pious meditations on the eternal realities of the spiritual world, while in the severity of his logic he resembled Aristotle, from whom he learned precision of language, lucidity of statement, and a syllogistic mode of argument well calculated to confirm what was already known, but not to make attainments in new fields of thought or knowledge. If he was gentle and loving and pious like Plato, he was also as calm and passionless as Aristotle. This great man died at the age of forty-eight, in the year 1274, a few years after Saint Louis, before his sum of theology was completed. He died prematurely, exhausted by his intense studies; leaving, however, treatises which filled seventeen printed folio volumes, ——one of the most voluminous writers of the world. His fame was prodigious, both as a dialectician and a saint, and he was in due time canonized as one of the great pillars of the Church, ranking after Chrysos- tom, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great,—— the standard authority for centuries of the Catholic theology. The Scholastic Philosophy, which culminated in Thomas Aquinas, maintained its position in the uni- versities of Europe until the Reformation, but declined in earnestness. It descended to the discussion of unim- portant and often frivolous questions. Even the "an- gelical doctor" is quoted as discussing the absurd question as to how many angels could dance together on the point of a needle. The play of words became interminable. Things were lost sight of in a barbarous jargon about questions which have no interest to hu- manity, and which are utterly unintelligible. At the best, logical processes can add nothing to the ideas from which they start. When these ideas are lofty, discussion upon them elevates the mind and doubtless strengthens its powers. But when the subjects them- selves are frivolous, the logical tournaments in their defence degrade the intellect and narrow it. Nothing destroys intellectual dignity more effectually than the waste of energies in the defence of what is of no practical utility, and which cannot be applied to the acquisition of solid knowledge. Hence the Scholastic Philosophy did not advance knowledge, since it did not seek the acquisition of new truths, but only the estab- lishment of the old. Its utility consisted in training the human mind to logical reasonings. It exercised the intellect and strengthening it, as gymnastics do the body, without enlarging it. It was nothing but barren dialectics,——"dry bones," a perpetual fencing. The soul cries out for bread; the Scholastics gave it a stone. We are amazed that intellectual giants, equal to the old Greeks in acuteness and logical powers, could waste their time on the frivolous questions and dialectical subtilties to which they devoted their mighty powers. However interesting to them, nothing is drier and duller to us, nothing more barren and unsatisfying, than their logical sports. Their treatises are like trees with endless branches, each leading to new ramifica- tions, with no central point in view, and hence never finished, and which might be carried on ad infini- tum. To attempt to read their disquisitions is like walking in labyrinths of ever-opening intricacies. By such a method no ultimate truth could be arrived at, beyond what was assumed. There is now and then a man who professes to have derived light and wisdom from those dialectical displays, since they were doubt- less marvels of logical precision and clearness of state- ment. But in a practical point of view those "master- pieces of logic" are utterly useless to most modern inquirers. These are interesting only as they exhibit the waste of gigantic energies; they do not even have the merit of illustrative rhetoric or eloquence. The earlier monks were devout and spiritual, and we can still read their lofty meditations with profit, since they ele- vate the soul and make it pant for the beatitudes of spiritual communion with God. But the writings of the Scholastic doctors are cold, calm, passionless, and purely intellectual,——logical without being edifying. We turn from them, however acute and able, with blended disappointment and despair. They are fig- trees, bearing nothing but leaves, such as out Lord did curse. The distinctions are simply metaphysical, and not moral. Why the whole force of an awakening age should have been so devoted to such subtilties and barren dis- cussion it is difficult to see, unless they were found use- ful in supporting a theology made up of metaphysical deductions rather than an interpretation of the meaning of Scripture texts. But there was then no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew; there was no exegetical research; there was no science and no real learning. There was nothing but theology, with the exception of Lives of the Saint. The horizon of human inquiries was ex- tremely narrow. But when the minds of very intel- lectual men were directed to one particular field, it would be natural to expect something remarkable and marvellously elaborate of its kind. Such was the Scholastic Philosophy. As a mere exhibition of dia- lectical acumen, minute distinctions, and logical pre- cision in the use of words, it was wonderful. The intricacy and detail and ramifications of this system were an intellectual feat which astonishes us, yet which does not instruct us, certainly outside of a metaphys- ical divinity which had more charm to the men of the Middle Ages than it can have to us, even in a theologi- cal school where dogmatic divinity is made the most important study. The day will soon come when the principal chair in the theological school will be for the explanation of the Scripture texts on which dogmas are based; and for this, great learning and scholar- ship will be indispensable. To me it is surprising that metaphysics have so long retained their hold on the minds of Protestant divines. Nothing is more unsatis- factory, and to many more repellent, than metaphysical divinity. It is a perversion of the spirit of Christian teachings. "What says our Lord?" should be the great inquiry in our schools of theology; not, What deduc- tions can be drawn from them by a process of ingenious reasoning which often, without reference to other im- portant truths, lands one in absurdities, or at least in one-sided systems? But the metaphysical divinity of the Schoolmen had great attractions to the students of the Middle Ages. And there must have been something in it which we do not appreciate, or it would not have maintained itself in the schools for three hundred years. Perhaps it was what those ages needed,——the discipline through which the mind must go before it could be prepared for the sci- entific investigations of our own times. In an important sense the Scholastic doctors were the teachers of Luther and Bacon. Certainly their unsatisfactory science was one of the marked developments of the civilization of Europe, through which the Gothic nations must need pass. It has been the fashion to ridicule it and depre- ciate it in our modern times, especially among Prot- estants, who have ridiculed and slandered the papal power and all the institutions of the Middle Ages. Yet scholars might as well ridicule the text-books they were required to study fifty years ago, because they are not up to our times. We should not disdain the early steps by which future progress is made easy. We can- not despise men who gave up their lives to the contem- plation of subjects which demand the highest tension of the intellectual faculties, even if these exercises were barren of utilitarian results. Some future age may be surprised at the comparative unimportance of questions which interest this generation. The Scholastic Philos- ophy cannot indeed be utilized by us in the pursuit of scientific knowledge; nor (to recur to Vaughan's simile for the great work of Aquinas) can a mediæval cathedral be utilized for purposes of oratory or business. But the cathedral is nevertheless a grand monument, suggesting lofty sentiments, which it would be senseless and ruth- less barbarism to destroy or allow to fall into decay, but which should rather be preserved as a precious memento of what is most poetic and attractive in the Middle Ages. When any modern philosopher shall rear so gigantic a symmetrical monument of logical disquisitions as the "Summa Theologica" is said to be by the most com- petent authorities, then the sneers of a Macaulay or a Lewes will be entitled to more consideration. It is said that a new edition of this great Mediæval work is about to be published under the direct auspices of the Pope, as the best and most comprehensive system of Christian theology ever written by man. AUTHORITIES. Dr. Vaughan's Life of Thomas Aquinas; Histoire de la Vie et des Écrits de St. Thomas d'Aquin, par l'Abbé Bareille; Lacordaire's Life of Saint Dom- inic; Dr. Hampden's Life of Thomas Aquinas; article on Thomas Aquinas, in London Quarterly, July, 1881; Summa Theologica; Neander, Milman, Fleury, Dupin, and Ecclesiastical Histories generally; Biographie Univer- selle; Werner's Leben des Heiligen Thomas von Aquino; Trench's Lectures on Mediæval History; Ueberweg & Rousselot's History of Philosophy. Dr. Hampden's article, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, on Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastic Philosophy, is regarded by Hallam as the ablest view of this subject which has appeared in English.
Take NPR’s story that black-Asian American tension was the real race story in West Baltimore. Although the report notes in passing that some Blacks stood in harm’s way to protect Asian-owned stores, the only black voices we hear are from possibly two-faced patrons, from those who heartlessly taunt the Chinese American owner Tina Chen in her hollowed-out store—prompting her tears to fall, her voice to break –and those who feel that the anti-Asian arson was justifiable “payback” (even if not “reasonable”). Besides the fact that the overlay is too convenient and lopsided, these reports say nothing of the broader context – the racial history, the workings of elite power — that dangled in front of Blacks a “foreign model minority” myth about Asian Americans; that “they” aren’t really Americans but their success all the same made a mockery of “your” black failure. That is, they owned farms and homes, had good jobs and kept them, stormed Harvard and Stanford, and could skate or play violin at a world-class level – what have you done lately? — you want to cry racism when even the foreigners can “out-American” you?Still Not Doing the Right Thing - Black and Asian American Relations
Of course, the white elites don’t mention that this divide and conquer tactic was made possible by their own machinations of power: starting in the 1960s they drained the central cities of industry’s unionized, high-paying jobs; put nothing in their place; gutted strong civil rights and anti-poverty programs that would’ve helped; then demonized the black and Latino residents for being jobless, working the “illegal” economy, or simply speaking truth to power. Hello, under-served and over-policed West Baltimore. To add insult to injury, elite institutions made sure to pit the black and brown poor against selective cohorts of college-educated Asian immigrants, many of whom began showing up in central cities as new business owners when US institutions wouldn’t recognize their Asian credentials. To the black and brown residents, here was the “nemesis” filling in the nice shoes of the Italians and Jews before.
The key to understanding Marx is his class definition. A class is defined by the ownership of property. Such ownership vests a person with the power to exclude others from the property and to use it for personal purposes. In relation to property there are three great classes of society: the bourgeoisie (who own the means of production such as machinery and factory buildings, and whose source of income is profit), landowners (whose income is rent), and the proletariat (who own their labor and sell it for a wage).To really understand this shit, you need to go back. Way back. Back to the 19th century, back to the time of Alien Land Laws.
Class thus is determined by property, not by income or status. These are determined by distribution and consumption, which itself ultimately reflects the production and power relations of classes. The social conditions of bourgeoisie production are defined by bourgeois property. Class is therefore a theoretical and formal relationship among individuals.
Alien land laws were a series of legislative attempts to discourage Asian and other "non-desirable" immigrants from settling permanently in U.S. states and territories by limiting their ability to own land and property. Because the Naturalization Act of 1870 had extended citizenship rights only to African Americans but not other ethnic groups, these laws relied on coded language excluding "aliens ineligible for citizenship" to prohibit primarily Chinese and Japanese immigrants from becoming landowners without explicitly naming any racial group. Various alien land laws existed in over a dozen states before they were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1952. Like other discriminatory measures aimed at preventing minorities from establishing homes and businesses in certain areas, such as redlining and restrictive covenants, many alien land laws remained technically in effect, forgotten or ignored, for many years after enforcement of the laws fell out of practice.Property rights are the cornerstone of White Supremacy. Who owns this land, who has the rights to it, and who doesn’t. What is Manifest Destiny? The idea that Whites own this land, all the land, that the entire Earth belongs to them. From feudal times, land ownership has been the primary method of the ruling class to generate rents from the underclass, which had to sell their labor for wages to live on that land.
In the late 1930s, few housing markets received more attention from the FHA than California. “Because of … recent residential building activity (primarily under F.H.A. type financing),” reported field agent T.H. Bowden and analyst D.W. Mayborn, “it is believed that the homeownership rate is now substantially larger than 1930, possibly as high as fifty percent.” Unfortunately for Los Angeles’s non-white residents, the FHA largely excluded minorities from its program. …to Los Angeles assessors, who occupied a key place in FHA and HOLC policy making, blacks and Asians remained the most pressing threats to neighborhood housing values. Federal policy makers viewed racial and ethnic heterogeneity as problematic and purposely rated communities with such diversity as poor investments for private financing, thus establishing an institutionalized system of discriminatory lending that private capital followed rigidly.Source: Only Some May Follow: Southern California, Asian Americans, and Housing During the Cold War
Though ethnic whites and many Mexicans endured housing discrimination, “social class, occupation, and skin color provided a ladder to whiteness” for segments of these populations, notes Charlotte Brooks in her study of Asian American housing integration, Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California. For blacks and Asian Americans, no amount of income could reconcile their racial difference. As one surveyor put it, the best sign that homeowners “remained ‘low class Southern Europeans’” rested on their communities’ proximity to non-whites. Obviously, the diversity of Central Los Angeles presented surveyors and homeowners with obstacles as assessors frequently highlighted the problematic heterogeneity of these neighborhoods and their pockets of Japanese and black populations.
Nearby West Adams had already riled up local white homeowners. Restrictive covenants in the community had expired, enabling Japanese and black integration. Arlington Boulevard served as the racial dividing line, and the local West Adams homeowner association continued to fight against non-white newcomers. When the FHA approved the PIC development, it more or less ensured racial transition of West Adams and the FHA’s intent to contain non-white community expansion.
Whites feared the threat of interracial romances that many equated with housing integration.Fucking haoles and their obsession with muh dick.
Needless to say, US wartime propaganda depicted the Japanese as morally questionable and untrustworthy. When the war ended, however, so too did the need arise to change American ideas about Asian Americans. Certainly along with their black, Latino, and Native American counterparts, Asian Americans contributed mightily to the war effort. Still, even military service only brought these groups so close to full citizenship. For Asian Americans, the ensuing Cold War also helped. After all, with the communist threat looming and the Cold War just gearing up, American officials and the public realized the need to put on a good face for an international community that it hoped would side with the United States in future conflicts with the USSR, particularly in Asia.This right here, folks. This right here is when they decided, hey, fuck it, we can’t stop the tide of migration from all these colored folks, let’s use one of them as the gatekeepers to our community. This shit here is the birth of the model minority.
If Jefferson Park demonstrated the boundaries that still prevented Japanese and Asian Americans from enjoying full equal rights, housing controversies of the 1950s illustrated new realities. Not only had international politics impacted local concerns, so too did demographic change driven by WWII. Blacks and Latinos, mostly Mexican Americans spurred on by the Bracero Program, rapidly increased their numbers in Southern California. Though Los Angeles assessors had considered blacks and Asians of equal threat to property values in the 1940s, by the 1950s the increase in SoCal’s black population ratcheted up white fears. Within this dynamic of Cold War politics and changing demographics, African Americans found themselves enduring the most pernicious housing discrimination, while Asian Americans enjoyed new opportunities
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the United States Army was a fighting unit composed almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who fought in World War II. Most of the families of mainland Japanese Americans were confined to internment camps in the United States interior. Beginning in 1944, the regiment fought primarily in Europe during World War II, in particular Italy, southern France, and Germany.Yeah, they love taking us hostage and forcing us to fight their battles for them. They do it abroad, and they do it at home, because these motherfuckers just constantly re-use the same Divide & Conquer tactics over and over.
The unit was called the “guinea pig battalion” by some and considered expendable. In the 100th’s first nine months of engagements, most notably Monte Cassino Abbey, the unit became known as the Purple Heart Battalion because of the extremely high number of casualties it suffered.
Among the best known was the unit’s rescue of the Texas “Lost Battalion,” which was surrounded by Germans in the Vosges Mountains in France. The 442nd was called in after two failed attempts to rescue the 230 trapped soldiers.
After a five-day, uphill battle, the 442nd broke through and rescued the Texans, at a high price — more than 800 casualties.
General Dahlquist's actions and orders received mixed reviews. Many Nisei veterans disliked or disrespected General Dahlquist, and believed that Dahlquist saw the Nisei only as cannon fodder, or expendable soldiers.
The Battle of Monte Cassino was fought January 17 to May 18, 1944, during World War II and saw the Allies win after four bloody engagements. Why Did the Allies Bomb the Abbey at Monte Cassino During World War II? A controversial decision. by Warfare History Network. For the thousands of Allied soldiers who had fought and suffered for Monte Cassino, in the province of Lazio, is located 81 miles South of Rome is the site of the ancient Roman town of Casinum, but it is best known for its historic Benedictine Abbey that was a focal point for one the most bloody WWII battles.It was St. Benedict of Nursia who established this very first Benedictine monastery around the year 529. After months of battle and tremendous loss of life Dr Danila Bracaglia, historian and licensed guide, monte cassino war tours, monte cassino battlefield tours, following the footsteps of the 36th texas divsion, t-patchers and red bull tours, fssf monte la defensa, monte sammucro, mount trocchio, monte cassino tours, battlefiled tours cassino, ww2 tours italy, ww2 tours salerno, ww2 tours anzio, operation shingle, operation avalanche, tours ww2 (9/11) Battlefield II The Battle for Monte Cassino Ep13 World War II (00:10:00m) Bitwa o Monte Cassino (HQ) Battle for Monte Cassino (English w/Polish subtitles) (00:003:30m) The Battle of Monte Cassino Phase Four March 26 - May 18, 1944 Since the Battle began, the German defenses at Cassino and Monastery Hill could not be penetrated. Despite heavy bombing, the enemy held fast and continued to World War Two: The Battle of Monte Cassino. By Professor Richard Holmes Last updated 2011-02-17. Richard Holmes asks whether the epic Battle of Cassino would have taken place, if Allied leadership In early February the U.S. Thirty-fourth Infantry Division failed to capture the western anchor of the Gustav Line, and one of the holiest shrines of Roman Catholicism, the abbey of Monte Cassino In World War II: The Italian front, 1944 …Line, which was hinged on Monte Cassino. To bypass that line, the Allies landed some 50,000 seaborne troops, with 5,000 vehicles, at Anzio, only 33 miles south of Rome, on January 22, 1944. The complex that stood above Cassino during World War II was constructed primarily in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many of the manuscripts preserved within its walls were evacuated to Rome before the fighting raged around the site, however, this did not spare the Abbey itself from ultimate destruction. As the Allies moved northward up the boot of Italy, invasion forces stalled on The Monte Cassino Monastery during the Second World War was at the center of war events. Unfortunately, despite previous arrangements, it suffered a lot and was bombed. However, the abbey was rebuilt and today it can be visited again. The Monte Cassino Monastery is located about halfway between Rome and Naples. For centuries, its strategic location has been the reason for many attacks. During
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Prabhupada:Just see. All freedom lost. All freedom lost. It is a government of terrorism, that's all. And whatever the Communists do, simply by terrorizing t... The decision to attack the monastery, occupied and fortified by the Germans, was a military necessity. The results of the decision are vividly portrayed in the following sensational pictures. CUTS ... This silent film, which would have been shown as part of an intelligence briefing to senior commanders in Italy, possibly including Gen. Mark Clark, shows pa... In March 1944 the 1st and 4th Essex Battalion's were enmeshed in one of the most bloody, dramatic British engagements of the war - five brutal days of fighti... Front chronicle of World War II Battle of Monte CassinoThe battle for Monte Cassino is one of the most bloody battles of the Allies during the Second World W... Visiting the Historiale Museo in Cassino - Italy 2019Historiale of Cassino has been created firstly thanks to the City of Cassino, to celebrate the 60th anni... This video is not monetized. Consider Supporting HoH: https://www.patreon.com/HouseofHistoryIn the winter of 1944, the Allied powers had already landed in S... World War II Second World War Videos The Battle of Monte Cassino consisted of four separate battles fought over the course of five months. Forces from the Un...
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