How Lesbian Jewish Yankee Women Brought Us the Welfare State

[BluffTHIS!]

Catchy thread title isn't it? Did some of you think this was going to be some wacko racist post? Well guess again (at least as far as my words are concerned). I just thought I would discuss one of the seminal works of AC philosopher Murray Rothbard, hero to legions of AC posters in this forum. That work is Origins of the Welfare State in America


The cliff notes of that essay:

* Yankee protestant pietism movement (the basis of nanny-statism) starts in the early 1800s with do-gooding social advocacy.
* Above movement is gradually (and "inexorably"!) secularized by rich and social activist women, including many who are Jews and lesbians.
* This movement then progresses to the New Deal with the help of "probably the first bisexual First Lady", Eleanor Roosevelt and various rich "patrician" financiers.
* So basically, the unholy conspiracy of Women, Yankees, Lesbians and Jews (or various combinations of same), after taking over a movement started by pietistic Protestants, and with the aid of rich financiers who hoped to gain the most at the pig trough of the welfare state, were the ones responsible for foisting that welfare state on us. Other theories for the formation of the welfare state are debunked at the beginning of the essay.


Also FWIW here are some word counts from the essay:

Yankee: 39
Lesbian, Lesbianism: 15
Jew, Jewess, Jewish: 11

Granted those are out of 16,000+ words, and that the words "Christian" and "Protestant" are used more, but I'll bet they exceed the count of those words in most other economic essays.


Also this essay begs the question of since the above is a picture of whom and what is wrong, the question is what is its antithesis that is right and good? Well obviously it can't be Yankee, which means something like ante-bellum Southern I guess. And it can't be Lesbian, which means straight. And it can't be Jewish, which means gentile, even if not necessarily relgious at all. And furthermore it can't be women in general, especially the pietistic "busybody" types scorned by Rothbard. So it would seem that a bunch of ante-bellum loving Southern, white, gentile and straight males are who would be the "right persons" to found AC-land.



Now for some quotes:


If it wasn't industrialism or mass movements of the working class that brought the welfare state to America, what was it? Where are we to look for the causal forces? In the first place, we must realize that the two most powerful motivations in human history have always been ideology (including religious doctrine), and economic interest, and that a joining of these two motivations can be downright irresistible. It was these two forces that joined powerfully together to bring about the welfare state.

As early as the Puritan days, the Yankees were eager to coerce themselves and their neighbors; the first American public schools were set up in New England to inculcate obedience and civic virtue in their charges.

Of all the Yankee activists in behalf of statist "reform," perhaps the most formidable force was the legion of Yankee women, in particular those of middle- or upper-class background, and especially spinsters whose busybody inclinations were not fettered by the responsibilities of home and hearth.

Jane Addams was able to use her upper-class connections to acquire fervent supporters, many of them women who became intimate and probably lesbian friends of Miss Addams.

One of Jane Addams's close colleagues, and probable lesbian lover, at Hull House was the tough, truculent Julia Clifford Lathrop (b. 1858), whose father, William, had migrated from upstate New York to Rockford in northern Illinois.

Mary Rozet Smith, indeed, was able to replace Ellen Starr in Jane Addams's lesbian affection. She did so in two ways: by being totally submissive and self-deprecating to the militant Miss Addams, and by supplying copious financial support to Hull House. Mary and Jane proclaimed themselves "married" to each other.

The two other founders of the College Settlements were Katharine Coman (b. 1857), and her long-time lesbian lover Katharine Lee Bates.

Florence Kelley differed from her colleagues on two counts: (1) she was the only one who was an outright Marxist, and (2) she was married and not a lesbian.

Inspired by this example, however, three Yankee lesbians followed by founding the College Settlement Association in 1887

If the female social reform activists were almost all Yankee, by the late 19th century, Jewish women were beginning to add their leaven to the lump.

While she was not a Yankee, Lillian Wald continued in the dominant tradition by being a lesbian, forming a long-term lesbian relationship with her associate Lavina Dock.

Rounding out the important contingent of socialist-activist Jews were the four Goldmark sisters, Helen, Pauline, Josephine, and Alice.

At the other end of the social and ethnic spectrum from the Wilmarth sisters was the short, fiery, aggressively single Polish-American Jewess, Rose Schneiderman.

Perhaps the leading force emerging from the women's statist, social-welfare movement was none other than Eleanor Roosevelt (b. 1884), perhaps our first bisexual First Lady. Eleanor fell under the influence of the passionately radical London prep school headmistress, Madame Marie Souvestre, who apparently set Eleanor on her lifelong course.




Granted that I cherrypicked those quotes. But in a footnote, Rothbard says:

Recent feminist historians have been happy to overcome the reluctance of older historians, and have proudly "outed" the lesbianism of Addams and many other spinster Yankee progressive activists of that epoch. Probably these feminists are right, and the pervasive lesbianism of the movement is crucial to a historical understanding of why this movement got under way. At the very least, they could not simply follow other women and make a career of marriage and homemaking.


I mean, so are we to understand, that the underlying reason that the welfare statism that the AC'ers hate so much was foisted on us here in the US, was because lesbians and/or Jewish women didn't want to conform to traditional/gender roles that the society of the time expected of them, leaving them the only alternative of channeling their non-sexual energies into engineering the welfare state along with rich financiers who hoped to benefit monetarily from same? That's the impression I was left with after reading that essay.

[yukoncpa]

[ QUOTE ]
How Lesbian Jewish Yankee Women Brought Us the Welfare State


[/ QUOTE ]
Did your quotes include a single lesbian Jew that wasn't a Yankee? Yankees were our problem. Everyone loves a beautiful, green eyed, Jewish Lesbian.

[zasterguava]

Its funny that one of the first advocates of the 'welfare state' was the great Thomas Paine, who himself has been labelled (wrongly imo) an anti-semite.

[Borodog]

Lol.

Seeing as Murray N. Rothbard, like his hero and mentor Ludwig von Mises, was *gasp* Jewish, somehow I doubt that he was *quite* the antisemite you insinuate him to be. And given that, he *probably* wasn't the misogynistic, homophobic antiyank (?) you insinuate him to be, either.

[betgo]

There certainly were New England protestants and Jews who were old fashioned liberals. As a general rule, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Quakers and other extreme protestants were more into reform than Episcopalians and Catholics whose religion teaches them to go along with the system. There were also a lot of women do gooders. Middle and upper class women usually didn't work and had time to stir up trouble.

Some of the welfare state was influenced by socialist ideas that were popular with many liberal intellectuals, as well as many poor people.

I definately agree the welfare state has gone way too far, but do you realize the situation many people were in before Unemployment Compensation, Social Security, and Workmens Compensation. The conditions of workers and lack of protection of consumers influenced the government to get more involved in a lot of things.

I have some sympathy for the libertarian approach, but ACism goes way to far back to the bad old days.

[valenzuela]

Even if Rothbard is misogynistic and homophobic that doesnt mean his ideas are wrong.
Betgo, the fact that the current welfare state in the year 2000 its better than laissez faire on 1850 or something that doesnt mean the current welfare state in the year 2000 its going to be better than laissez faire on the year 2000.

[Zeno]

Yes, that is a great thread title.

I bet this cadre of Women had something to do with the passing of the Volstead Act (Prohibition) also. Although the Demon Rum Crowd had its Wowser men (Billy Sunday for example) women were dominant also, though the unholy alliance of Jewish Lesbians and Protestant Spinsters seems strange.

On Prohibition, The Failure Of

And if you insist on reading a verbose pedant stick with Spinoza, forget that Rothbard fellow.

-Zeno

[wdcbooks]

I think ACists are nuts, but I also recognize this as a really terrible argument, and the type of attack I expect to see from partisan hacks in Pub v. Dem debates. Essentially the argument is that the idea can't be valid, because someone who shared that idea was a bit wacko.

ACism can be debated on its merits quite nicely, just what is this supposed to by arguing?

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
Lol.

Seeing as Murray N. Rothbard, like his hero and mentor Ludwig von Mises, was *gasp* Jewish, somehow I doubt that he was *quite* the antisemite you insinuate him to be. And given that, he *probably* wasn't the misogynistic, homophobic antiyank (?) you insinuate him to be, either.

[/ QUOTE ]


Boro,

For someone who usually has a logically/mathematically correct argument from a given set of premises, that is pretty weak. All you have there is a set of probabilities which result in a compound probability that is less than all its individual members. Plus you have the implicit unproven premise that someone who is bigoted against one of those groups is highly likely to be bigoted against all. While I don't think that is necessarily unreasonable in many cases, I doubt you could assign a reasonable probability for same. Plus one should note the difference between religiously Jewish (observant), and being ethnically Jewish. And admit for the possibility of self-loathers.

Also I note that you don't discuss that essay at all. But let me ask you something. To what do you attribute Rothbard's apparent fixation with lesbians? Was it really necessary to even note the sexual practices of various persons in what purports to be an economic history?

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
I think ACists are nuts, but I also recognize this as a really terrible argument, and the type of attack I expect to see from partisan hacks in Pub v. Dem debates. Essentially the argument is that the idea can't be valid, because someone who shared that idea was a bit wacko.

ACism can be debated on its merits quite nicely, just what is this supposed to by arguing?

[/ QUOTE ]


valenzuela notes above, "Even if Rothbard is misogynistic and homophobic that doesnt mean his ideas are wrong." That is certainly true. Just because a person may have odious beliefs on some issues doesn't equate to all that person's beliefs being wrong.


However it still is relevant to discuss the philosphers/heroes of any group of thought. The question is, assuming of course that the ACists here disavow some seemingly odious beliefs that Rothbard might be imputed to have had due to his choice of words and themes, is why they use him. Surely their philosophy is not so bereft of good minds that they have to rely on persons who might have questionable beliefs in some areas and would be sure to cause embarrassment if those beliefs became generally known. Plus the fact is that if Rothbard had certain biases, which he seems to have had, then that very much calls into question his overall analysis, as it may have been too constrained by such biases to result in valid conclusions.

While I don't doubt that the groups he discusses had a large part in the development of socialistic welfare state policies in the U.S., it seems to me that his overall argument too casually dismisses some causes, like the trade union movements, which he concludes were not in fact a cause, but a symptom/result. It would seem to me that such could only be true as to the hyper-unionist socialism that we have today, with its legal provisions against right to work laws, and others that overly favour the unions versus the employers. But the impetus of the labor union movements was to have the right to organize and negotiate collectively, which surely AC supports, *as long as* employers are equally free to fire those employees and hire replacements, and which have involved a much greater number of persons who were leaders and thinkers for those diverse union movements, than Rothbard discusses. Also when discussing the various religious imepetus to the welfare state, Rothbard doesn't really even adequately begin to note Catholic support for trade unions, especially in the wake of Rerum Novarum.