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  • From: Mike.Conley AT t-online.de (Mike Conley)
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Marion & Luke; Jefferson & Washington
  • Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 17:02:34 +0200


Fellow Earthling ! We've all been moved by the logic behind Mark D.
Nanos critique of my handling of the matter of "sola fida" in my Marcion
essay. Let us apply his reasoning to a parallel, if chronologically
later, example to highlight the principle he has fallen back upon in
refuting the unpleasant propositions I have proposed. To wit:

In the Constitution of the US, as it was promulgated at the end of the
eighteenth century, one reads that slaves are worth three-fifths of a
white man, but in the Declaration of Independence, one reads, by
contrast, that "all men are created equal." Now common sense encourages
us to assume that the thinking in the two documents reflect the
attitudes of two very dissimilar camps, on the one hand, the vested
interests of the propertied class; on the other, the beliefs of the
students of the French Enlightenment of Voltaire, Rousseau et al.

But Mark clears up this erroneous conclusion quickly by showing us,
dialectically, that that's all wrong. Jefferson, if scrutinized more
closely, failed to insert the three-fifths proposition in brackets after
the word "equal" only because of his fear of the dastardly British who
were forcing down the price of Tea in the harbor of Boston!

[This account of the Boston Tea Party, by the way, is correct! Examine:
Ray Raphael, "The American Revolution: A People's History" (Profile,
2001, 384pp.) in which a veritable archive of popular US Myths about the
origins of American independent beginnings are exploded. But then, there
I go off again dashing one legend after the other. That's bad because
"Man lives not by bread alone."]

But on with our trek into Nanos four principles for testing alien
propositions:

1. Perhaps the Declaration of Independence, propped up for all to behold
in the US Congress, "does not reflect the earliest version/s." By
George! We've been swindled! Why? (As Mark tell us, later on, this `Why'
must be tested. So I beg one of you who live in the vicinity of the
District of Columbia to check out whether there's an older parchment
hidden beneath the one of display. Who knows? Maybe Lincoln somehow or
other sticks behind this deception, like Martin Luther lurks behind
Marcion's phraseology, as Mark suggests.)

2. Perhaps the propertied have succeeded in keeping the wool over the
eyes of their scribbling lackeys up to this ever day so that they "don't
know about" the Declaration of Independence!

3. Perhaps Jefferson "did not think that this information was pertinent
to the case he/she/they wished to make - or he/she/they just have
forgotten to include this element. (After all, none of us are perfect!)

4. Perhaps there was a good reason to avoid mentioning this element. (It
might cost one votes (!) in a jilted election. What if the Reactionary
Right in Congress kept you off critical legislative committees, seeing
you blabber mouthing French ideology about in the cloak rooms?

Like Mark writes in his conclusion, "Wow. How did you get here so
quickly? I do not follow the logic. Maybe, in both cases 1) my example
from the late eighteenth century and 2) Mark dialectics, there isn't any
logic involved. Maybe all of this is quite besides the point.
Cosmic good wishes to others who might join in this disctinctive
exchange,

Mike Conley




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