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Populist

Populist

Populism is a political philosophy or rhetorical style that holds that the common person's interests are oppressed or hindered by the elite in society, and that the instruments of the state need to be grasped from this self-serving elite and used for the benefit and advancement of the people as a whole. Abraham Lincoln summed up the populist ideology in his famous Gettysburg Address, when he advocated "... government of the people, by the people, for the people." A populist reaches out to ordinary people, talking about their economic and social concerns, and appealing to their common sense. Most scholarship on populism since 1980 has discussed it as a rhetorical style that can be used to promote a variety of ideologies. Populism is often used derisively against appeals on behalf of the people in opposition to the interests of elites, or against distrust directed at either the political elite or the prevailing political system. Individual populists have variously promised to stand up to corporate power, remove "corrupt" elites, and "put people first." Populism incorporates anti-regime politics, and sometimes nationalism or racism. Many populists appeal to a specific region or a specific social class such as the working class, middle class, or farmers. Often they employ dichotomous rhetoric, and claim to represent the majority.

Populist methods

Populism is characterized by a sometimes radical critique of the status quo, but on the whole does not have a strong political identity as either a left-wing or right-wing movement. Populism has taken left-wing, right-wing, and even centrist forms. In recent years, conservative politicians have begun adopting populist rhetoric; for example, promising to "get big government off your backs", or to stand up to "the powerful trial lawyer lobby", "the liberal elite", or "the Hollywood elite". Also in recent years, left-wing politicians have increasingly begun adopting populist rhetoric; for example, by contrast, tend to rail against large corporations, claiming that they put profits ahead of ordinary people. Populists are seen by some scholars as a largely democratic and positive force in society, while other scholars argue populist mass movements are irrational and introduce instability into the political process. Margaret Canovan argues that both these polar views are faulty, and has defined two main branches of modern populism worldwide — agrarian and political — and mapped out seven disparate sub-categories [http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/populism.html].
- Agrarian populism
  - Commodity farmer movements with radical economic agendas such as the US People's Party of the late 19th century.
  - Subsistence peasant movements, such as the Eastern European Green militias, which followed World War I.
  - Intellectuals who wistfully romanticize hard-working farmers and peasants and build radical agrarian movements like the Russian narodniki.
- Political populism
  - Populist democracy, including calls for more political participation through reforms such as the use of popular referendums.
  - Politicians' populism marked by non-ideological appeals for "the people" to build a unified coalition.
  - Reactionary populism such as the white backlash harvested by George Wallace.
  - Populist dictatorship such as that established by Juan Peron in Argentina.

History

Classical populism

The word populism is derived from the Latin word populus, which means people in English (in the sense of "I will govern for the people", not in the sense of "There are people visiting us today"). Therefore, populism espouses government by the people as a whole (that is to say, the masses). This is in contrast to elitism, aristocracy, or plutocracy, each of which is an ideology that espouse government by a small, privileged group above the masses. Populism has been a common political phenomenon throughout history. Spartacus could be considered a famous example of a populist leader of ancient times through his slave rebellion against the rulers of Ancient Rome. In fact, such leaders of the Roman Republic as Gaius Marius, Julius Caesar, and Caesar Augustus would all fall into the populist category, as all used referendum to go over the Roman Senate's head and establish the laws that they saw fit.

Early modern period

The same conditions which contributed to the outbreak of the English Revolution of 1642-1651, also known as the English Civil War, also led to a proliferation of ideologies and political movements among peasants, self-employed artisans, and working class people in England. Many, possibly most, of these groups had a dogmatic Protestant religious bent. They included Puritans, the Levellers, and the latter's more radical offshoot, The Diggers.

The French Revolution

In the late 18th century, the French Revolution, though led by wealthy intellectuals, could also be described as a manifestation of populist sentiment against the elitist excesses and privileges of the Ancien Régime.

Religious revival

Romanticism, the anxiety against rationalism, broadened after the beginnings of the European and Industrial Revolutions because of cultural, social, and political insecurity. Romanticism led directly into a strong popular desire to bring about religious revival, nationalism and populism. The ensuing religious revival eventually blended into political populism and nationalism, becoming at times a single entity, and a powerful force of public will for change. The paradigm shift brought about was marked by people looking for security and community because of a strong emotional need to escape from anxiety and to believe in something bigger than themselves. The revival of religiosity all over Europe played an important role in bringing people to populism and nationalism.
- In France, Chateaubriand provided the opening shots of Catholic revivalism as he opposed enlightenment's materialism with the "mystery of life," the human need for redemption.
- In Germany, Schleiermacher promoted pietism by stating that religion was not the institution, but a mystical piety and sentiment with Christ as the mediating figure raising the human consciousness above the mundane to God's level.
- In England, John Wesley's Methodism split with the Anglican church because of its emphasis on the salvation of the masses as a key to moral reform, which Wesley saw as the answer to the social problems of the day. All of these were united by a search for something to believe in because of the anxiety that had developed.

Rejection of ultramontanism

Chateaubriand's beginning brought about two Catholic Revivals in France: first, a conservative revival led by Joseph de Maistre, which defended ultramontanism, also known as the supremacy of the Pope in the church, and a second populist revival led by Felicite de Lamennais, an excommunicated priest. This religious populism opposed ultramontanism and emphasized a church community dependent upon all of the people, not just the elite. Furthermore, it stressed that church authority should come from the bottom-up and that the church should alleviate suffering, not merely accept it, both principles that gave the masses strength.

Elitist nationalism

Nationalism turned in the second half of the 19th century and the nationalist sentiment was altered into an elitist and conservative doctrine. Power-state theorist and multi-volume historian Heinrich von Treitschke's Politics talked about top-down nationalism in which the state is the creator of the nation, not a result thereof. His state's power fashions political unity because, as he asserts, the national unity was always in place. For von Treitschke, the state is artificially constructed by the elite who know that power counts, but who also form myths such as racism for the comfort of the nationalistic masses. Von Treitschke's nationalism had a dark side; the eternal struggle of nations exposed the weakness of confederated states via war as social hygiene culminating in the thought that all nations are egoistic, but their struggles embody morality and embrace progress. Such notions would later be proliferated in the tenets of National Socialism.

Populism in the Americas

Populism has been a strong component of North American and Latin American political history. In Latin America, many charismatic leaders have emerged, while in the United States, the formation of such political parties during the late 1800s and early 1900s as the Populist Party, the Greenback Party, the Single Tax movement of Henry George, the Progressive Party, the Farmer-Labor Party, the Share Our Wealth movement of Huey Long, and the Union Party. Some early left-wing populist parties directly fed into the later emergence of the socialist movement, while other populists have taken on a more right-wing character, such as Father Charles Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith. Populism continues to be a force in modern US politics. The 1992 and 1996 third-party presidential campaigns of Ross Perot, Jerry Brown's campaign in the 1992 Democratic primary, Jesse Ventura's 1998 campaign for the governorship of Minnesota, the 2004 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination by former Vermont governor Howard Dean and the 1996, 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader, are all widely seen as modern manifestations of the populist phenomenon. The 2004 campaigns of Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton also had populist elements. Over time, there have been several versions of a Populist Party in the United States, inspired by the People's Party of the 1890s. This was the party of the early U.S. populist movement in which millions of farmers and other working people successfully challenged much of the social ills engendered by the "Gilded Age" monopolists. In 1984, the Populist Party name was revived by Willis Carto, and was used in 1988 as a vehicle for the presidential campaign of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Right-wing Patriot movement organizer Bo Gritz was briefly Duke's running mate. This incarnation was widely regarded as a vehicle for white supremacist recruitment. In 1995, the Reform Party was organized after the populist presidential campaign of Ross Perot in 1992. After a disputed takeover of the party in 2000, Patrick J. Buchanan received the party's nomination for president. In the 2000s, many smaller populist parties were formed in America, including the Populist Party of America in 2002, and the American Populist Renaissance in 2005. The American Moderation Party, also formed in 2005, adopted several populist ideals, chief among them working against multinational neo-corporatism.

Populism in Germany


- Fichte began the development of nationalism by stating that people have the ethical duty to further their nation.
- Herder proposed an organic nationalism that was a romantic vision of individual communities rejecting the Industrial Revolution's model communities, in which people acquired their meaning from the nation. This is a philosophy reminiscent of subsidiarity.
- The brothers Grimm collected German folklore to "gather the Teutonic spirit" and show that these tales provide the common values necessary for the historical survival of a nation.
- Fredrick Jahn, a Lutheran Minister, a professor at the University of Berlin and the "father of gymnastics," introduced the Volkstum, a racial nation that draws on the essence of a people that was lost in the Industrial Revolution.
- Adam Mueller went a step further by positing the state as a bigger totality than the government institution. This paternalistic vision of aristocracy concerned with social orders had a dark side in that the opposite force of modernity was represented by the Jews, who were said to be eating away at the state.

Populism in France

In France, the populist and nationalist picture was more mystical and metaphysical in nature.
- Historian Jules Michelet fused nationalism and populism by positing the people as a mystical unity who are the driving force of history in which the divinity finds its purpose.
- For Michelet, in history, that representation of the struggle between spirit and matter, France has a special place because the French became a people through equality, liberty, and fraternity. Because of this, he believed, the French people can never be wrong. It is important to remember that Michelet's ideas are not socialism or rational politics, but his populism always minimizes, or even masks, social class differences.

Current or recent populists

Populism is alive and well in various countries around the world. Examples of populists in the contemporary era include:
- Pauline Hanson in Australia
- Winston Peters in New Zealand
- Jean-Marie Le Pen in France
- Carl I. Hagen in Norway
- Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan, Howard Dean, Jim Hightower, Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, Bernie Sanders,and George Wallace in the United States.
- Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma/Myanmar
- Silvio Berlusconi, Umberto Bossi and Alessandra Mussolini in Italy
- Nelson Mandela in South Africa
- Jörg Haider in Austria
- Viktor Orbán in Hungary
- Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil
- Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands
- Preston Manning, Mike Harris and Ralph Klein in Canada
- Hugo Chávez in Venezuela
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. It should also be noted, however, that not all politicians who adopt a populist campaign are in fact true populists. Some politicians adopting the rhetoric and language of populism are criticized for using populist rhetoric merely as an organizing tactic without any actual intent of standing up for common people. And it should be noted that not all politicians that are labeled populists are populists or consider themselves to be populist. The term is often used derisively as a special kind of the straw man fallacy, lumping an opponent together with a bit of everything, misrepresenting an opponent's position, so as to make it easier to refute it.

See also


- American Populist Renaissance
- Black populism
- Communitarianism A partially related political philosophy
- Charismatic authority
- Christian Democracy
- Christian Socialism
- Cultural production and nationalism
- Demagogy — as an abstract kind of untruthful speech
- Marxism
- Populist Party of America
- Poujadism
- Producerism
- Social Democracy

References

General


- Canovan, Margaret. 1981. Populism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0151730784
- Laclau, Ernesto. 1977. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism. London: NLB/Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press.
- Taggart, Paul. 2000. Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press. ISBN 0335200451.

Europe


- Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195057805
- Betz, Hans-Georg. 1994. Radical Right-wing Populism in Western Europe, New York: St. Martins Press. ISBN 0312083904, ISBN 0312121954

United States


- Kazin, Michael. 1995. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0465037933, ISBN 0801485584
- Stock, Catherine McNicol. 1996. Rural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801432944
- Berlet, Chip and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press. ISBN 1572305681, ISBN 1572305622 ---- Populism could be used to describe Popular culture and Popular science. Also see Populist Party. Category:Political theories ja:ポピュリズム

Politics

Politics is the process by which decisions are made for a given society. The method of making decisions for groups varies, but the act of decision making is the key component that characterises politics. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Political science is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power, i.e. the ability to impose one's will on another. One theorist, Harold Lasswell, has defined politics as "who gets what, when, and how." Another definition of 'politics' is: "how power is distributed within a group or system".

A natural state

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published his most famous work, Leviathan, in which he proposed a model of early human development to justify the creation of human associations. Hobbes described an ideal state of nature wherein every person had equal right to every resource in nature and was free to use any means to acquire those resources. He noted that such an arrangement created a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes). Further, he noted that men would enter into a social contract and would give up absolute rights for certain protections. While it appears that social cooperation and dominance hierarchies predate human societies, Hobbes’s model illustrates a rationale for the creation of societies (polities).

Early history

V.G. Childe describes the transformation of human society that took place around 6000 BCE as an urban revolution. Among the features of this new type of civilization were the institutionalization of social stratification, non-agricultural specialised crafts (including priests and lawyers), taxation, and writing. All of which require clusters of densely populated settlements - city-states. The word "Politics" is derived from the Greek word for city-state, "Polis". Corporate, religious, academic and every other polity, especially those constrained by limited resources, contain dominance hierarchy and therefore politics. Politics is most often studied in relation to the administration of governments. The oldest form of government was tribal organization. Rule by elders was supplanted by monarchy, and a system of Feudalism as an arrangement where a single family dominated the political affairs of a community. Monarchies have existed in one form or another for the past 5000 years of human history.

Definitions


- Power is the ability to impose one's will on another. It implies a capacity for force, i.e violence.
- Authority is the power to enforce laws, to exact obedience, to command, to determine, or to judge.
- Legitimacy is an attribute of government gained through the acquisition and application of power in accordance with recognized or accepted standards or principles.
- A government is the body that has the authority to make and enforce rules or laws.

Political power

Samuel Gompers’ often paraphrased maxim,"Reward your friends and punish your enemies," hints at two of the five types of power recognized by social psychologists: incentive power (the power to reward) and coercive power (the power to punish). Arguably the other three grow out of these two. Legitimate power, the power of the policeman or the referee, is the power given to an individual by a recognized authority to enforce standards of behavior. Legitimate power is similar to coercive power in that unacceptable behavior is punished by fine or penalty. Referent power is bestowed upon individuals by virtue of accomplishment or attitude. Fulfillment of the desire to feel similar to a celebrity or a hero is the reward for obedience. Expert power springs from education or experience. Following the lead of an experienced coach is often rewarded with success. Expert power is conditional to the circumstances. A brain surgeon is no help when your pipes are leaking.

Authority and legitimacy

Max Weber identified three sources of legitimacy for authority known as (tripartite classification of authority). He proposed three reasons why people followed the orders of those who gave them:

Traditional

Traditional authorities receive loyalty because they continue and support the preservation of existing values, the status quo. Traditional authority has the longest history. Patriarchal (and more rarely Matriarchal) societies gave rise to hereditary monarchies where authority was given to descendants of previous leaders. Followers submit to this authority because "we've always done it that way." Examples of traditional authoritarians include kings and queens.

Charismatic

Charismatic authority grows out of the personal charm or the strength of an individual personality (see cult of personality for the most extreme version). Charismatic regimes are often short lived, seldom outliving the charismatic figure that leads them. Examples include Hitler, Napoleon, and Mao.

Legal-rational

Legal-Rational authorities receive their ability to compel behavior by virtue of the office that they hold. It is the authority that demands obedience to the office rather than the office holder. Modern democracies are examples of legal-rational regimes.

References

GOMPERS,SAMUEL; “Men of Labor! Be Up and Doing,” editorial, American Federationist, May 1906, p. 319

See also


- Politics (disambiguation)
- Democracy
- History of democracy
- List of democracy and elections-related topics
- List of years in politics
- List of politics by country articles
- Political corruption
- Political economy
- Political movement
- Political parties of the world
- Political party
- Political psychology
- Political sociology
- Political spectrum
- Music and politics Category:Ethics Category:Topic lists ko:정치 ms:Politik ja:政治 simple:Politics th:การเมือง



Common man

The term common man is used to emphasize the similarities or distinctions between a member of a social, political or cultural elite, and the average citizen. For example: "I was born in a two-bedroom house and walked to school with my brother."

Champion of the Common Man

The epithet "Champion of the Common Man" has been applied to several men:
- Gaius Gracchus
- Tiberius Gracchus
- John Wilkes
- Thomas Jefferson
- Andrew Jackson
- Abraham Lincoln
- William Jennings Bryan
- Eugene Debs
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- John Edwards
- Robert Malone

See also


- Populism
- Everyman
- John Doe
- John Q. Public
- Jane Doe

Oppression

Oppression is the negative outcome experienced by people targeted by the arbitrary and cruel exercise of power in a society or social group. The term itself derives from the idea of being "weighted down." The term oppression is primarily used to describe how a certain group is being kept down by unjust use of force, authority, or societal norms. When this is institutionalized formally or informally in a society, it is referred to as "systematic oppression". Oppression is most commonly felt and expressed by a widespread, if unconscious, assumption that a certain group of people are inferior. Oppression is rarely limited solely to government action. Individuals can be victims of oppression, and in this case have no group membership to share their burden of ostracization. In psychology, racism, sexism and other prejudices are often studied as individual beliefs which, although not necessarily oppressive in themselves, can lead to oppression if they are acted on, or codified into law or other systems. By comparison, in sociology, these prejudices are often studied as being institutionalized systems of oppression in some societies. In sociology, the tools of oppression include a progression of denigration, dehumanization, and demonization; which often generate scapegoating, which is used to justify aggression against targeted groups and individuals. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the concept of Human Rights in general were designed to challenge oppression by giving a clear articulation of what limits should be placed on the power of any entity to unfairly control an individual or group of people. A hierarchy of oppression is a ranking (hierarchy) of relative oppressions according to arbitrariness and cruelty, or according to the perceived negative effects on oppressed communities. Hierarchies of oppression are seen by many human rights advocates as problematic, though hierarchies of oppression are often widespread even when unstated or unconscious. When oppression is systematized through coercion, threats of violence, or violence by government agencies or non-government paramilitiaries with a political motive, it is often called Political repression. More subtle forms of political oppression/repression can be produced by blacklisting or individualized investigations such as happened during McCarthyism in the United States. Transnational systems of oppression include colonialism, imperialism, and totalitarianism, and can generate a resistance movement to challenge the oppressive status quo.

See also


- internalized oppression
- intersectionality
- racism
- sexism
- heterosexism
- homophobia
- ageism
- classism
- ableism / disablism
- authoritarianism
- political repression
- police oppression
- totalitarianism
- domination
- hierarchy
- supremacy
- tyranny
- dictatorship
- injustice
- resistance movement
- cults

Further reading


- Guillaumin, Colette. 1995. Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology. London: Routledge.
- Hobgood, Mary Elizabeth. 2000. Dismantling Privilege: An Ethics of Accountability. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.
- Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. 1996. The Anatomy of Prejudices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Noël, Lise. 1994. Intolerance, A General Survey. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- Felice, William F. 1996. Taking Suffering Seriously: The Importance of Collective Human Rights. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
- Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge.
- Feagin, Joe R. and Hernan Vera. 1995. White Racism: The Basics. New York: Routledge.
- Pincus, Fred L. 1999 and Howard J. Ehrlich, eds. 1999. Race and Ethnic Conflict: Contending Views on Prejudice, Discrimination, and Ethnoviolence. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.
- Beck, Aaron, M.D. 1999 Prisoners Of Hate. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Category:Core issues in ethics ja:弾圧

Elite

Élite is taken from the latin, eligere, "to elect". In sociology as in general usage, the élite (the "elect," from French) is a relatively small dominant group within a larger society, which enjoys a privileged status which is upheld by individuals of lower social status within the structure of a group. When applied to an individual, as in the phrase "many élites come to this restaurant," the usage quite economically both refers to an individual within that class and establishes the speaker as non-élite. An Élite are the result of economic and political forces within a social structure. Upon formation, societies have always had the tendency to stratify due to a combination of politics and ability. The position of an élite at the top of the social strata almost invariably puts it in a position of leadership and often subjects the holders of élite status to pressure to maintain their position as part of the élite. However, in spite of the pressures borne by its members, the existence of the élite as a social strata is usually unchanged.

Religious élite

In religion the Latin form "elect" is preferred over the French form "élite" in discussing Cathar or Calvinist theology, for examples, and the social structure that is theologically driven. Other religious groups may use expressions like "the saints" to describe the elect.

Linguistic élite

Some élite groups speak a language that is not shared by the commonality: in Tsarist Russia the élite spoke French, in Plantagenet England the élite spoke Anglo-Norman, in Vietnam the élite spoke French, and in Ptolemaic Egypt the élite spoke koine Greek. (See linguistic imperialism.) Élites establish correct usage for the language when they share one with the commonality. Élite usage is reflected in "prescriptive" dictionaries; common usage is reflected in "descriptive" dictionaries. Élites establish cultural canons, which are more widely agreed-upon within the élite and more generally ignored or resented among the non-élite. In the 1950s, the British élite spoke what linguists of the time called U English.

Class élite

Élite advantages are the usual ones of a dominant social class: easier access to capital and political power, more rigorous education largely free of indoctrination, resulting in cultural influence, and leadership. Élites may justify their existence based on claims of inherited position; with the rise in authority of science, certain 19th and 20th century élites have embraced pseudoscientific justifications of genetic or racial superiority. In Nazi Germany, genetic superiority was used as the basis of an imagined "Aryan" élite. Élite classes headed by monarchies have traditionally employed religious sanctions for their position. Meritocracy is a facet of society that tries to promote merit as a route to the élite. Societies such as that of the United States have it in their culture to promote such a facet [see Horatio Alger]. However, while it tends to be imperfect it sheds light as to what many believe to be the "ideal" élite: an élite that is porous and whose members have earnt their position as society's top class. Aristocracy and oligarchy are social systems which feature an élite as the ruling class. An élite group, ranged round the alpha male, is a distinct feature of other closely-related social primates.

Educational élite

Élites are educated to govern. Élite education is sceptical and inquiring, hard-headed, intolerant of sham, demanding and unsentimental. Common public education is often designed to produce large numbers of useful and loyal citizens at low cost. The élite approach to understanding the nature of society is often presented in a very intellectual fashion. When an individual attains the interest to critically examine the validity of the statements they inherently must consider themselves separate from the rest of society. Critics will describe such a self-image as being élitist in a way which excludes the bulk of society, thus preventing progress. Publicly financed élite education available through open competition is a symptom of a successful and confident society that is prepared for self-criticism.

Financial élite

Wealth is not a sure sign of élite status, as the "new rich" are frequently seen as arriving from non-élite positions. Neither does an élite necessarily show a sense of public obligation.

Élitism

In elite theory as developed by Marxist political scientists like Michael Parenti, all sufficiently large social groups will have some kind of élite group within them that actively participates in the group's political dynamics. When a group is arbitrarily excluded from the larger society, such as in the case of the racism that was widespread in the United States prior to the success of the civil rights movement, then élite members of the excluded group may form a counterélite to fight for their group's interests (although they may be fighting for those interests only to the extent they mesh with the counterélite's interests). Of course, the dominant élite can neutralize the counterélite through the classic divide-and-conquer strategy of admitting key members of the counterélite into the élite. Élitism usually draws envy and resentment from the lower classes and the counter-élite. There are cases where élites arguably use this resentment of an élite to maintain their position. See Communism. The Elite in the United States also use this method of control via popular culture and media influence. Author C. Wright Mills elaborates on this influence in his book The Power Elite.

See also


- Boston Brahmin
- Brahmin
- Elitism
- Mandarin
- Patrician
- Snob

External links


- [http://www.blue-blood.co.uk Genealogies of the Élite] Category:Social groups ja:エリート

Society

:For the Brian Yuzna film, see Society (film). For the song by the California punk band Pennywise, see Society (song). A society is a group of beings distinguishable from other groups by mutual interests, characteristic relationships, shared institutions, ranking and a common culture. In political science, the term is often used to mean the amalgamation of all voluntary human relationships, generally in contrast to the State, an institution of legal aggression. :"I mean by it [State] that summation of privileges and dominating positions which are brought into being by extra-economic power... I mean by Society, the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man..." - Franz Oppenheimer, The State.[http://www.opp.uni-wuppertal.de/oppenheimer/st/state0.htm] The social sciences use the term society to mean a group of people that form a semi-closed social system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group. More abstractly, a society is defined as a network of relationships between social entities. A society is also sometimes defined as an interdependent community, but the sociologist Tonnies sought to draw a contrast between society and community. An important component of society is social structure in which roles and ranks are given (school[cliques and labels], work[boss, admin], and so on)

Etymology

The English word society emerged in the 14th century; derived from the French société. The French word, in turn, had its origin in the Latin societas, a "friendly association with others", from socius meaning "companion, associate, comrade or business partner". Thus the meaning of society is closely related to what is considered to be social. Implicit in the meaning of society is that its members share some mutual concern or interest, a common objective or common characteristics. As such, society is often used as synonymous with the collective citizenry of a country as directed through national institutions concerned with civic welfare.

Organization of society

Human societies are often organized according to their primary means of subsistence: social scientists identify hunter-gatherer societies, nomadic pastoral societies, horticulturalist or simple farming societies, and intensive agricultural societies, also called civilizations. Some consider Industrial and Post-Industrial societies to be qualitatively different from traditional agricultural societies. One Common theme for societies in general is that societies serve to aid individuals in a time of crisis; historically, when an individual in some community requires aid, for example at birth, death, sickness, or disaster, like-minded members of that community will rally others in that society to render aid, in some form, whether the aid is symbolic, linguistic, physical, mental, emotional, financial, medical, religious, etc. Cetain societies can also put down, and scapegoat other members of the society. Many societies will also distribute largess, at the behest of some individual or some larger group of people. This type of generosity can be seen in all known cultures; typically, prestige or other cultural factor accrues to the generous individual or group. Some societies will bestow a status on some individual or larger group of people, when that individual or group performs an admired or desired action; This type of recognition is bestowed by members of that society on the individual or larger group in the form of sosubliminal messageme name, or title, or dress, or monetary reward, etc. Males especially are susceptible to this type of action and subsequent reward, even at the risk of their lives. Action by some individual or larger group in behalf of some ideal of their culture is seen in all societies. Even subsistence-based societies exhibit the characteristics of community action, generosity, and shared risk/reward, in common with other more technology-based civilizations. Societies can also be organized according to their political structure: in order of increasing size and complexity, there are band societies, tribes, chiefdoms, and state societies, with varying degrees of political power, depending on the what cultural geographical, historical environments that these societies have to contend with. Thus, when a society exists at the same time as other societies at the same level of technology and culture, but is also isolated geographically, that society is more likely to survive than an equivalent society which is prey to others which can encroach on their resources. See the history article for examples. A society which is not able to offer an effective response to other societies which may be in competition with them will usually be subsumed into the culture of the competing society. See the technology article for examples.

Shared belief or common goal

Peoples of many nations united by common political and cultural traditions, beliefs, or values are sometimes also said to be a society (for example: Judeo-Christian, Eastern, Western, etc). When used in this context, the term is being used as a means of contrasting two or more "societies" whose representative members represent alternative conflicting and competing worldviews. Also, some academic, learned and scholarly societies and associations, such as the American Society of Mathematics, describe themselves as societies. In the United Kingdom these are normally non-profit making and have charitable status. In science they range in size to include national scientific societies including the Royal Society to regional natural history societies. Academic societies may have interest in a wide range of subjects, including the arts, humanities and science. In the United States and France, the term "society" is used in commerce to denote a partnership between investors or to start a business. In the United Kingdom, partnerships are not called societies but cooperatives or mutuals are often known as societies (such as friendly societies and building societies).

Ontology

As a related note, there is still an ongoing debate in sociological and anthropological circles if there exists an entity we could call society. Some Marxist theorists, like Louis Althusser, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, argued that society is nothing more than an effect of the ruling ideology of a certain class system, and shouldn't be used as a sociological notion. Marx's concept of society as the sum total of social relations among members of a community contrasts with interpretations from the perspective of methodological individualism where society is simply the sum total of individuals in a territory.

See also


- Social
- Social relations
- Sociology
- Social theory
- Social class
- Social security

References

[http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/society Definition of Society] from the OED.
- [http://core.ecu.edu/soci/juskaa/SOCI2110/Lectures/Lect1 Lecture notes on "Defining Society"] from East Carolina University.
- [http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/glossary/society.html Learning Commons - What is Culture ? - Glossary Item - Society]
- Raymond Williams, "Society", in: Williams, Key Words: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Fontana, 1976. Category:Society Category:Sociology ja:社会 ko:사회 nb:Samfunn simple:Society zh-min-nan:Siā-hōe

State

:This article discusses states as sovereign political entities; for other meanings, see state (disambiguation). A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. Recognition of the state's claim to independence by other states, enabling it to enter into international agreements, is often important to the establishment of its statehood, although some theories do not make this a requirement - for instance, the Montevideo Convention. The "state" can also be defined in terms of domestic conditions, specifically, as conceptualized by Max Weber, "a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." [http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/xweb.htm] The exact meaning of this definition depends on what is understood by "legitimate". For more information see government.

Introduction

The word "state" in contemporary parlance often means the "Westphalian state", in reference to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. In this sense, the modern state is an entity that enjoys extensive autonomy in its domestic economic and social policy, largely free from interference from other states and powers. A number of modern commentators have claimed that we are experiencing the decline of the Westphalian state as the principal actor of the international system, pointing to economic, cultural, political, and technological changes in the world, such as globalization and the emergence of regional and supernational groupings such as the European Union. The term "state" is also used to describe subnational territorial divisions within a federal system, as in the case of the United States of America. See state (law) and state (non-sovereign). In common speech, the terms country, nation and state are casually used as synonyms, but in a more strict usage they are distinguished:
- country is the geographical area.
- nation designates a people (however, national and international both confusingly refer as well to matters pertaining to what are strictly states, as in "national capital", "international law").
- state refers to the government, and an entity in international law. Currently, the entire land surface of the Earth is divided among the territories of the roughly two hundred states now existing, with the special case of Antarctica, a variety of disputed territories, and a number of areas where state power exists in theory, but not in practice (the most significant of these being Somalia and Iraq).

Etymology

The word "state" originates from the medieval state or throne upon which the head of state (usually a monarch) would sit. By process of metonymy, the word state became used to refer to both the head of state and the power entity he represented (though the former meaning has fallen out of use). A similar association of terms can today be seen in the practice of referring to government buildings as having authority, for example "The White House today released a press statement..."

Formation of the state

The birth of the state, in the broadest sense of the word, coincides with the rise of civilization. For most of the existence of the human species, people lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. That lifestyle began to change with the invention of agriculture around the 9th millennium BC. The practice of agriculture made it necessary for human beings to build permanent settlements and spend most of their lives in close proximity to the land they cultivated. Thus, control over land became an issue for the first time. To express that control, various forms of property rights developed, with people claiming different kinds of rights over various areas of land. Disagreements over the nature and extent of such claims of ownership degenerated into violence and the first "wars". In some parts of the world, notably Mesopotamia and the Nile valley, natural conditions favoured the concentration of land ownership in few hands. Eventually, a small group of people found themselves owning the land on which many other people worked for a living. This control over the land meant control over the people whose livelihoods depended on the land; thus, the first primitive states arose. These states were usually despotic and unstable, with the ruler(s) holding absolute power over their subjects until some other ruler(s) displaced them. Since there were no laws and no infrastructure, and since power was exercised arbitrarily, some political theorists and historians do not consider such early forms of despotic rule to have been states in the proper sense of the word; they are sometimes called proto-states. One of the earliest known sets of laws, the Code of Hammurabi, has been dated to ca. 1700 BC. It was around this time that the concept of law - one of the foundations of the modern state - began to appear. But the rulers of the Ancient Near East had a long tradition of holding absolute power and claiming the status of god-kings (see hydraulic despotism). Thus, laws limiting the power of monarchs did not develop very far in that region. The city-states of Ancient Greece were the first to establish states whose powers were clearly defined in laws (even if the laws themselves could usually be changed quite easily). Also, notably, the idea of democracy was born in ancient Athens (see Athenian democracy). Many institutions of the modern state (especially in Western Europe and areas once dominated by Western-European empires) can trace their origins back to Ancient Rome, which inherited the political traditions of the Greeks and developed them further (particularly the rule of law, albeit in incomplete form). However, the Roman Republic gave way to the Roman Empire - which, in turn, created the concept of universal empire: the idea that the entire world was (or should be) under the authority of one single legitimate state. The fall of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations changed the character of European politics. The "barbarian" (i.e., non-Roman) kingdoms and chieftains that followed the Roman Empire were ephemeral and transitory and bore little resemblance to the modern state. Even the kingdom of Charlemagne was fleeting; without the tradition of primogeniture, it dissolved into three smaller kingdoms with the Treaty of Verdun in 843. These kingdoms were treated more as land holdings by the royalty that ruled them. Once again, the state became little more than an expression of the ruler's private ownership of a certain area of land. The lack of a real successor to the Roman Empire in Western Europe created a power vacuum. The kingdoms of Western Europe were besieged by invaders on the frontiers - first, the Muslim invasions from the south, then a series of new migrations from the east and finally the Viking invasions from the north. At the same time, the various kingdoms (and smaller political units) were often involved in wars with each other over territory and succession. The solution that evolved out of these affairs was decidedly opposed to the system of independent states and temporary alliances that dominate the modern international system. Religion, which had rarely been a factor in the power calculations of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, became the cornerstone of an extremely loose pan-European defensive bloc under the aegis of the Catholic Church. This system produced an extensive framework of institutions - sometimes called "feudalism" - that regulated internal conflict and enabled Western Europe to confront exterior threats, even while no individual secular entity was truly independent in the sense of the modern state. This system asserted itself abroad in the form of the Crusades as the Middle Ages progressed. In 1302, Pope Boniface VIII stated that the political powers of Christendom exercised their prerogatives "at the command and sufferance of the priest." This limited the power of kings, who were obliged to pledge their ultimate allegiance to the Pope. The Holy Roman Empire, one of the strongest medieval authorities, emerged as a competitor to Papal power under Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who invaded Italy to press his claims to secular authority in the mid-12th century. The weakening of the papacy was a major theme of the Middle Ages; the Western Schism in the later 14th century, a dispute over papal succession, was exploited by secular authorities and contributed to their growing power. The emergence of large, stable land holdings by single dynasties - for instance, France and Castile - enabled them to take a more active and independent role than their traditionally subsidiary role in the earlier middle ages. This shift to more independent, more secular actors would become a major point of controversy in Early Modern Europe. The great dynasties of Europe dramatically consolidated power by the beginning of the 16th century; additionally, the external threats to Europe had considerably lessened. The Reformation was to have a powerful impact on the structure of European politics; the dispute was not only theological, but also threatened the very fabric of the ancient political institutions of feudalism. The bloody conflicts that followed, blending the religious and political, pitted those who asserted the authority of the Pope (and in Germany, the Holy Roman Emperor) against those who asserted the authority of secular authorities and their sovereign ability to make internal policy, particularly when that policy reflected religious affiliation, Roman Catholic or Protestant. These conflicts culminated in the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century. In 1648, the powers of Europe signed the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the religious violence for purely political motives and the Church was stripped of temporal power - even though religion continued to play a political role as the foundation of the divine right of kings. The principle of "cuius regio, eius religio" established at Westphalia and previously in the Peace of Augsburg set a precedent of noninterference in other states' internal affairs that was key in the evolution of the modern state. In Germany, the office of the Holy Roman Emperor, the most prominent symbol of lingering institutions of feudalism, was emasculated as a secular authority in favor of the constituent elements of the Holy Roman Empire. The modern state was born. The state continued to develop as monarchs brought nobles and free towns into line and amassed spectacular resources and prestige. The growing numbers of civil servants eventually became known as the bureaucracy after the elevation of the Republican ideal. Nearly a century and a half after the Peace of Westphalia, the state became fully modern through the French Revolution. Claiming 'national will' as its justification, Napoleon and the Grande Armee of France swept over Europe. In response, conquered and neighboring principalities discarded their old systems and adopted the new model of the nation state. The nation state has remained the dominant political entity all over the world ever since, even though the many ideologies of the 19th and 20th century have created numerous different ways of running the affairs of nation states, as well as numerous different forms of internal and external organization (see political system and economic system).

International point of view

The legal criteria for statehood are not obvious. A document that is often quoted on the matter is the Montevideo Convention from 1933, the first article of which states: :The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states. Also, in article 3 it very clearly states that statehood is independent of recognition by other states. This is the declarative theory of statehood. While the Montevideo is a regional American convention and has no legal effect outside the Americas, some have nonetheless seen it as an accurate statement of customary international law. On the other hand, article 3 of the convention is attacked by the advocates of the constitutive theory of statehood, where a state exists only insofar as it is recognized by other states. Which theory is correct is a controversial issue in international law. An example in practice was the collapse of central government in Somalia in the early 1990s: the Montevideo convention would imply that the state of Somalia no longer existed, and the subsequently declared republic of Somaliland (comprising part of the so-called "former" Somalia) may meet the criteria for statehood. However the self-declared republic has not achieved recognition by other states. Article 1 of the convention is also attacked by those who claim that it fails to take into account the complicated situations of military occupation, territorial cession, and governments in exile. Richard W. Hartzell is a leading proponent of this view, and stresses that the four criteria of article 1 need to be expanded to nine. See [http://www.taiwanadvice.com/conventions/montconv.htm The Montevideo Convention and Military Occupation].

The domestic point of view

Looked at from the point of view of an individual nation, the state is a centralized organization of the whole country. Those studying this dimension emphasize the relationship between the state and its people. The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that in order to avoid a multi-sided civil war, in which life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", individuals must necessarily surrender many of their "natural rights" -- including that of attacking each other -- to the "Leviathan", a unified and centralized state. In this tradition, Max Weber and Norbert Elias defined the state as an organization of people that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a particular geographic area. Also in this tradition, the state differs from the "government": the latter refers to the group of people who make decisions for the state. For Weber, this was an "ideal type", or model, or pure case of the state. Many institutions that have been called "states" do not live up to this definition. For example, in countries such as Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the central state has so far not succeeded in monopolizing the legitimate use of force, and must compete with various local warlords. These cases are sometimes called "failed states". One of the most basic characteristics of a modern state is regulation of property rights, investment, trade and the commodity markets (in food, fuel, etc.) typically using its own currency. Although many states (by their own decision) increasingly cede these powers to trade bloc entities, e.g. North American Free Trade Agreement, European Union, it is always controversial to do so, and opens the question of whether these blocs are in fact simply larger states. The study of political economy, which evolved into the modern study of economics, deals with these specific questions in more detail. However, although states are often influenced in their decisions and no longer hold an absolute jurisdiction over their internal affairs, they are nonetheless much stronger in relation to international organizations or to other states than lower (substate) political subdivisions normally are. But the trend at the moment is for the power of superstate levels of governance to increase, and there is no sign of this increase abating. Many (especially those who favour constitutional theories of international law) therefore reject as outdated the idea of sovereignty, and view the state as just the chief political subdivision of the planet.

Philosophies of the state

Different political philosophies have distinct opinions concerning the state as a domestic organization. In the modern era, these philosophies emerged with the rise of capitalism, which coincided with the (re)emergence of the state as a separate and centralized sector of society. Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau pondered issues concerning the ideal and actual roles of the state. Recent philosophers like John Rawls and Robert Nozick were more concerned with distributive justice and the morality of exercising political power. There are four theories about the origin (and indirectly the justification) of the state. They are:
- Supernatural or natural authority - In this view, the state is either ordained by a higher power (such as God for the "Divine right of kings") or arises naturally out of a presumed human need for order and authority.
- Natural rights - According to this theory, human beings have certain rights that are "natural" (the implications of this word may vary), and establish states for the protection of those rights.
- Social contract - This idea holds that the state is established by the people (i.e. through the consent of the governed) in order to provide for various collective needs that cannot be satisfied through individual efforts, such as national defense, public roads, education, "the general welfare", etc.
- Conflict - Perhaps the simplest of the theories, it holds that the state did not arise out of any conscious decision, but merely as the result of violent conflict. Various groups of people fought each other for control over land or other resources, and the winning side imposed its domination on the losing side. These four theories can accommodate the full spectrum of political views. In practice, most people (and most political philosophies) subscribe to a combination of two or more of the above theories - arguing, for example, that different states have different origins. The conflict theory, in particular, is often combined with one of the other three in order to separate the illegitimate states (those created through conflict and subjugation) from the legitimate ones. There are at least five major philosophies of the state today, the last four of which correspond to specific political ideologies: contractarianism, liberalism, Marxism, conservatism, and anarchism. Contractarianism, as the name implies, is based on the social contract theory. It is also the only major philosophy of the state that does not fall within any single political ideology - perhaps because several different ideologies have adopted it as their own. Contractarianism is the foundation of modern democracy, as well as most forms of socialism and some types of liberalism. In contractarian thinking, the state should express the public interest, the interests of the whole society, and reconcile it with the separate interests of individuals. The state provides public goods and other kinds of collective consumption, while preventing individuals from free-riding (taking advantage of collective consumption without paying) by forcing them to pay taxes. Liberalism, in the classical sense, is based mainly on the natural rights theory. In this view, some or even all "rights" exist naturally and are not created by the state. For example, John Locke believed that individual property rights existed prior to the creation of the state, while the state's main job should be to preserve those rights. Historically, liberals have been less concerned with determining what the state should do and far more interested in stipulating what the state shouldn't do. The liberal philosophy of the state holds that the powers of any state are restricted by natural rights that exist independently of the human mind and overrule any social contract. However, there has been considerable debate among liberals as to what these natural rights actually are. Critics argue that they do not exist at all, since they are not evident from any observations of nature. On the other hand, there are also liberals who subscribe to the contractarian theory. In most cases, they fall on the left wing of liberalism, being social liberals ("New Deal" liberals; see American liberalism) and arguing for a welfare state. They stand in opposition to adherents of the natural rights theory, who tend to be libertarians, falling on the right wing of liberalism and arguing for a "minimal" state. The Marxist philosophy of the state is based on the conflict theory - specifically, on the idea of class conflict. In this view, the primary role of the state in practice is to enforce the existing system of unequal property and personal rights, class domination, and exploitation. The state also mediates in all types of social conflicts, and supplies necessary social-infrastructural conditions for society as a whole. Under such systems as feudalism, the lords used their own military force to exploit their vassals. Under capitalism, on the other hand, the use of force is centralized in a specialized organization which protects the capitalists' class monopoly of ownership of the means of production, allowing the exploitation of those without such ownership. In modern Marxian theory, such class domination can coincide with other forms of domination (such as patriarchy and ethnic hierarchies). Further, in Marxist theory, classes and other forms of exploitation should be abolished by establishing a socialist system, to be followed later by a communist one. Communism, the final goal, is a classless, propertyless and stateless society; however, socialism still preserves personal property and a (democratic) state. Thus, Marxism is opposed to the state (which it views as illegitimate, in accordance with the conflict theory), but does not wish to abolish the state immediately. As such, there is some overlap between Marxism and contractarianism: the socialist state that Marxists wish to establish as their short-term goal is to be based on a form of social contract. This state ought subsequently to slowly "wither away" as the representative democracy of socialism gradually transforms into the direct democracy of communism. Once the process is complete, the communist social order has been achieved and the state no longer exists as an entity separate from the people. In conservative thinking, which is based on the theory of (super)natural authority, the existing structure of traditions and hierarchies (of class, patriarchy, ethnic dominance, etc.) is seen as benefiting society overall. Thus, in a way, conservatives accept some ideas from both the Marxist and the liberal schools of thought, but view them in a different light: the state forces people to accept class and other kinds of domination, but this is seen as being for their own good. This perspective posits that, in general, current traditions only exist because they have been demonstrably successful in the past. Further, as with the liberals, the state is seen as always existing and/or "natural". Many conservatives, especially in recent decades, have come out in favor of the liberal theory of natural rights. Finally, in anarchist thinking, the state is nothing but an unnecessary and exploitative segment of society. Totally rejecting the Hobbesian notion that only a state can prevent chaos, anarchists argue that the state's monopoly of violence creates chaos. They believe that if the state and its restrictions on individual freedom were abolished, people could figure out how to work together peacefully and individual creativity would be unleashed. Contrary to the Marxist perspective, the anarchists see the state as an unnecessary evil, rather than a tool to be used in the class struggle.

See also


- Anarchy
- Country
- International relations
- Nation state
- Police state
- The purpose of government
- The justification of the state
- Social contract
- unitary state

References


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External links


- Franz Oppenheimer; [http://www.opp.uni-wuppertal.de/oppenheimer/st/state0.htm The State. (1914/1922)]
- Franz Oppenheimer; [http://www.opp.uni-wuppertal.de/oppenheimer/fo27a.htm The Idolatry of the State. (1927)] Category:International law Category:International relations Category:Social sciences Category:Political geography ja:国家 simple:State th:รัฐ

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865), sometimes called Abe Lincoln and nicknamed Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter, and the Great Emancipator, was the 16th President of the United States (1861 to 1865), and the first president from the Republican Party. Lincoln staunchly opposed the expansion of slavery into federal territories, and his victory in the 1860 presidential election further polarized an already divided nation. Before his inauguration in March of 1861, seven southern slave states seceded1 from the United States, formed the Confederate States of America, and took control of U.S. forts and other properties within their boundaries. These events soon led to the American Civil War. Lincoln is often praised for his work as a wartime leader who proved adept at balancing competing considerations and at getting rival groups to work together toward a common goal. Lincoln had to negotiate between Radical and Moderate Republican leaders, who were often far apart on the issues, while attempting to win support from War Democrats and loyalists in the seceding states. He personally directed the war effort, which ultimately led the Union forces to victory over the Confederacy. His leadership qualities were evident in his diplomatic handling of the border slave states at the beginning of the fighting, in his defeat of a congressional attempt to reorganize his cabinet in 1862, in his many speeches and writings which helped mobilize and inspire the North, and in his defusing of the peace issue in the 1864 presidential campaign. Critics vehemently attacked him for violating the Constitution, overstepping the traditional bounds of executive power, refusing to compromise on slavery in the territories, declaring martial law, suspending habeas corpus, ordering the arrest of some opposing state government officials and a number of publishers, and for being a racist. Lincoln is most famous for his roles in preserving the Union and ending slavery in the United States with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. All historians agree that Lincoln had a lasting influence on American political values and social institutions. He redefined republicanism, democracy and the meaning of the nation. He destroyed secessionism and greatly weakened states rights. Lincoln's administration established the U.S. Department of Agriculture, created the modern system of national banks, and encouraged farm ownership with the Homestead Act of 1862. During his administration West Virginia and Nevada were admitted as states. Lincoln is usually ranked as one of the greatest presidents. Because of his role in ending slavery, and his guiding the Union to victory in the civil war, his assassination made him a martyr to millions of Americans.

Early life

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin on a 348 acre (1.4 km²) Sinking Spring Farm in the Southeast part of Hardin County, Kentucky, then considered the frontier (now part of LaRue Co., in Nolin Creek, three miles (5 km) south of Hodgenville), to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Lincoln was named after his deceased grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, who was scalped in 1786 in an Indian raid. He had no middle name. Lincoln's parents were uneducated illiterate farmers. Later, when Lincoln became more renowned, reporters and storytellers often exaggerated the poverty and obscurity of Lincoln's birth. In fact, Lincoln's father Thomas was a respected and relatively affluent citizen of the Kentucky backcountry. He had purchased the Sinking Spring Farm in December 1808 for $200 cash and assumption of a debt. His parents belonged to a Baptist church that had pulled away from a larger church because they refused to support slavery. Accordingly, from a very young age, Lincoln was exposed to anti-slavery sentiment. However he never joined his parents' church, or any other church, and as a youth ridiculed religion. Three years after purchasing the property, a prior land claim filed in Hardin Circuit Court forced the Lincolns to move. Thomas continued legal action until he lost the case in 1815. Money spent on the lawsuit contributed to family difficulties. In 1811, they were able to lease 30 acres (0.1 km²) of a 230 acre (0.9 km²) farm on Knob Creek a few miles away, where they then moved. In a valley of the Rolling Fork River, this was some of the best farmland in the area. At this time, Lincoln's father was a respected community member and a successful farmer and carpenter. Lincoln's earliest recollections are from this farm. In 1815, another claimant sought to eject the family from the Knob Creek farm. Frustrated with litigation and lack of security provided by Kentucky courts, Thomas decided to move to Indiana, which had been surveyed by the federal government, making land titles more secure. It is possible that these episodes motivated Abraham to later learn surveying and become an attorney. In 1816, when Lincoln was seven years old, he and his parents moved to Spencer County, Indiana, he would state "partly on account of slavery" and partly because of economic difficulties in Kentucky. In 1818 Lincoln's mother along with others in the town, died of "milk sickness". Nancy Hanks Lincoln was only thirty-four years old when she died, and her son Abraham was nine. Soon afterwards, Lincoln's father remarried to Sarah Bush Johnston. Sarah Lincoln raised young Lincoln like one of her own children. Years later she compared Lincoln to her own son, saying "Both were good boys, but I must say -- both now being dead that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or ever expect to see." (Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald, 1995) In 1830, after more economic and land-title difficulties in Indiana, the family settled on government land on a site selected by Lincoln's father in Macon County, Illinois. The following winter was especially brutal, and the family nearly moved back to Indiana. When his father relocated the family to a nearby site the following year, the 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, canoeing down the Sangamon to Sangamon County, Illinois (now in Menard County), in the village of New Salem. Later that year, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods from New Salem to New Orleans via flatboat on the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers. While in New Orleans, he may have witnessed a slave auction that left an indelible impression on him for the rest of his life. Whether he actually witnessed a slave auction at that time or not, living in a country with a considerable slave presence, he probably saw similar atrocities from time to time. His formal education consisted of perhaps 18 months of schooling from itinerant teachers. In effect he was self-educated, studying every book he could borrow. He mastered the Bible, Shakespeare, English history and American history, and developed a plain style that puzzled audiences more used to orotund oratory. He avoided hunting and fishing because he did not like killing animals even for food and, though unusually tall and strong, spent so much time reading that some neighbors thought he must be doing it to avoid strenuous manual labor. He was skilled with an axe and a good wrestler. river

Early career

Lincoln began his political career in 1832 at the age of 23 with a campaign for the Illinois General Assembly as a member of the Whig Party. The centerpiece of his platform was the undertaking of navigational improvements on the Sangamon River in the hopes of attracting steamboat traffic to the river, which would allow sparsely populated, poor areas along and near the river to grow and prosper. He served as a captain in a company of the Illinois militia drawn from New Salem during the Black Hawk War, although he never saw combat. He wrote after being elected by his peers that he had not had "any such success in life which gave him so much satisfaction." He later tried and failed at several small-time business ventures. He held an Illinois state liquor license and sold whiskey. Finally, after coming across the second volume of Sir William Blackstone's four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England, he taught himself the law, and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1837. That same year, he moved to Springfield, Illinois and began to practice law with Stephen T. Logan. He became one of the most highly respected and successful lawyers in the prairie state, and grew steadily more prosperous. Lincoln served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives, as a representative from Sangamon County, beginning in 1834. He became a leader of the Whig party in the legislature. In 1837 he made his first protest against slavery in the Illinois House, stating that the institution was "founded on both injustice and bad policy." [http://www.hti.umich.edu/l/lincoln/] Lincoln shared a bed with Joshua Fry Speed from 1837 to 1841 in Springfield. While many claim it was not uncommon in the mid-19th century for men to share a bed (just as two men today may share a house or an apartment), C. A. Tripp's 2005 biography, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, suggesting that their relationship may also have been sexual, has generated a great deal of controversy. However, even when Lincoln was bitterly reviled for any number of faults by many enemies during the Civil War, not one ever suggested he had ever engaged in homosexual activities. In 1841 Lincoln entered law practice with William Herndon, a fellow Whig. In 1856 both men joined the fledgling Republican Party. Following Lincoln's assassination, Herndon began collecting stories about Lincoln from those who knew him in central Illinois, eventually publishing a book, Herndon's Lincoln. He never joined an antislavery society and denied he supported the abolitionists. He married into a prominent slave-owning family from Kentucky, and allowed his children to spend time there surrounded by slaves. Several of his in-laws became Confederate officers. He greatly admired the science that flourished in New England, and was perhaps the only father in Illinois at the time to send his son Robert Todd Lincoln to elite eastern schools, Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College.

Marriage

On November 4, 1842, at the age of 33, Lincoln married Mary Todd. The couple had four sons.
- Robert Todd Lincoln: b. August 1, 1843, in Springfield, Illinois; d. July 26, 1926, in Manchester, Vermont.
- Edward Baker Lincoln: b. March 10, 1846, in Springfield, Illinois; d. February 1, 1850, in Springfield, Illinois.
- William Wallace Lincoln: b. December 21, 1850, in Springfield, Illinois; d. February 20, 1862, in Washington, D.C.
- Thomas "Tad" Lincoln: b. April 4, 1853, in Springfield, Illinois; d. July 16, 1871, in Chicago, Illinois. Only Robert survived into adulthood. Of Robert's three children, only Jessie Lincoln had any children (two: Mary Lincoln Beckwith and Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith). Neither Robert Beckwith nor Mary Beckwith had any children, so Abraham Lincoln's bloodline ended when Robert Beckwith (Lincoln's great-grandson) died on December 24, 1985. [http://members.aol.com/beaufait/biography/geneology.htm]

Towards the presidency

1985 In 1846 Lincoln was elected to one term in the House of Representatives as a member of the United States Whig Party. A staunch Whig, Lincoln often referred to Whig leader Henry Clay as his political idol. As a freshman House member, Lincoln was not a particularly powerful or influential figure in Congress. He used his office as an opportunity to speak out against the war with Mexico, which he attributed to President Polk's desire for "military glory — that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood." Lincoln was a key early supporter of Zachary Taylor's candidacy for the 1848 Whig Presidential nomination. When his term ended, the incoming Taylor administration offered Lincoln the governorship of remote Oregon Territory. Acceptance would end his career in the fast-growing state of Illinois, so he declined. Returning instead to Springfield, Illinois he turned most of his energies to making a living at the bar, which involved extensive travel on horseback from county to county. By the mid-1850s, Lincoln had acquired prominence in Illinois legal circles, especially through his involvement in litigation involving competing transportation interests — both the river barges and the railroads. In 1849, he received a patent related to buoying vessels. Lincoln represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad, for example, in an 1851 dispute with one of its shareholders, James A. Barret. Barret had refused to pay the balance on his pledge to that corporation on the ground that it had changed its originally planned route. Lincoln argued that as a matter of law a corporation is not bound by its original charter when that charter can be amended in the public interest, that the newer proposed Alton & Sangamon route was superior and less expensive, and that accordingly the corporation had a right to sue Mr. Barret for his delinquent payment. He won this case, and the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court was eventually cited by several other courts throughout the United States. Another important example of Lincoln's skills as a railroad lawyer was a lawsuit over a tax exemption that the state granted to the Illinois Central Railroad. McLean County argued that the state had no authority to grant such an exemption, and it sought to impose taxes on the railroad notwithstanding. In January 1856, the Illinois Supreme Court delivered its opinion upholding the tax exemption, accepting Lincoln's arguments. Lincoln's most notable criminal trial came in 1858 when he defended William "Duff" Armstrong, who was on trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker. The case is famous for when Lincoln used judicial notice, a rare tactic at that time, to show an eyewitness had lied on the stand, claiming he witnessed the crime in the moonlight. Lincoln produced a Farmer's Almanac to show that the moon on that date was at such a low angle it could not have produced enough illumination for the would-be witness to see anything clearly. Based upon this evidence, Armstrong was acquitted. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which expressly repealed the limits on slavery's spread that had been part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, drew Lincoln back into politics. Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the most powerful man in the Senate, proposed popular sovereignty as the solution to the slavery impasse, incorporating it into the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglas argued that in a democracy the people of a territory should decide whether to allow slavery or not, and not have a decision imposed on them by Congress. It was a speech against Kansas-Nebraska, on October 16, 1854 in Peoria, that caused Lincoln to stand out among the other free soil orators of the day. He helped form the new Republican party, drawing on remnants of the old Whig, Free Soil, Liberty and Democratic parties. In a stirring campaign, the Republicans carried Illinois in 1854, and elected a senator. Lincoln was the obvious choice, but to keep party unity he allowed the election to go to his colleague Lyman Trumbull. In 1857-58 Douglas broke with President Buchanan, leading to a terrific fight for control of the Democratic party. Some eastern Republicans even favored the reelection of Douglas in 1858, since he led the opposition to the administration's push for the Lecompton Constitution which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state. Accepting the Republican nomination for the Senate in 1858, Lincoln delivered a famous speech [http://www.nationalcenter.org/HouseDivided.html] in which he stated, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." The speech created a lasting image of the danger of disunion due to slavery, and rallied Republicans across the north. The 1858 campaign featured the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a nationally noticed discussion on the issues that threatened to split the nation in two. Lincoln forced Douglas to propose his Freeport Doctrine, which lost him further support among slave-holders and speeded the division of the Democratic Party. Though the Republican legislative candidates won more popular votes, the Democrats won more seats and the legislature reelected Douglas to the Se