Have the Good Old Days Returned?

Today is the 160th anniversary of the caning of Senator Charles Sumner. It’s not far-fetched to imagine that kind of thing happening today.

On May 22, 1856, on the floor of the United States Congress, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a walking cane. The physical attack was in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which the senator denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a piece of pro-slavery legislation he opposed.

The beating nearly killed Sumner and it drew a sharply polarized response from the American public on the subject of the expansion of slavery in the United States. The beating has been considered symbolic of the “breakdown of reasoned discourse” that eventually led to the American Civil War.

Interestingly, the debate wasn’t over 1st Amendment rights or civility. In those days is was politically correct to call your property a n—–, but you couldn’t call a bully a bully if the bully was defending slavery. On the other hand, you could say the defense of liberty for all was “government oppression” if it interfered with the privilege of some.

So if you’ve been yearning for the good old days … maybe those days are closer than you think.

If you feel inclined, go ahead and leave a comment.