conversations on freedom

Some notes Erik and I took today:

How do we make people free?

Jefferson—free-est when ruled by wisest, free from obligations

Zinn—focuses on how Americans treated other people, freedom is not oppression

Anne Hutchinson—come to America to be free, oppressed anyway

Zinn and Anne Hutchinson talk about non-oppression as freedom, Jefferson justifies

+/- freedom

AH part of white settlement, Jeff mad about provlamation line, Zinn oppressing NA

Jefferson: The common man can be freed by being ruled by the wise.

Zinn: Oh yeah? What makes a man wise? Being white? Rich? A male?

Jefferson: Yes, all of those. Wealth makes him free from financial obligations; wage slaves could never be free. White race makes him free from slavery.

Anne Hutchinson: Males shouldn’t rule society. John Winthrop was not wise, but jealous of my influence. Freedom means living a morally good life. You must be free to determine what a morally good life is based on your own religious views. Religion shouldn’t be hierarchical and rule based.

Jefferson: Women are tied down with children and domestic duties. You cannot truly be free, and will impede the progress of a democracy.

Zinn: Women are only unfree because men enslaved them. Indentured servant women were frequently raped by their owners. Say, Jefferson, didn’t you have an affair with a slave girl?

Jefferson: I’m free to do what I choose because I’m a rich white male!

Zinn: You were also oppressing Native Americans by taking their land to progress your white western democracy. Part of your justification for revolution was wanting to cross the proclamation line. And Anne Hutchinson, were did the land for the Puritan settlements come from?

Anne Hutchinson: The settlements were necessary to provide a place were people could be free to live a morally good life free from the corruption of the Anglican church. Freedom is not the absence of oppression, but the presence of pressures to keep you on the path to holiness.

Jefferson: Yes, society can be improved by having the wise rule and requiring the uneducated to live well.