Jennifer van Bergen

on for "Another World Is Possible"

Leonora Sansay and her friend and mentor Aaron Burr (Vice President under President Thomas Jefferson) were early 19th century revolutionaries, humanitarians, and iconoclasts in the pure sense: they believed in the intrinsic worth and equality of every individual (African Americans, Native Americans, and Haitians).

Leonora was in Haiti during the 1802-3 black slave uprisings by which they obtained their independence and about which she wrote in her book "Secret History" (Philadelphia, 1808), which she later developed into a full-fledged novel: "Zelica: the Creole" (London, 1820), perhaps the first book by a white American that has a mulatta heroine.

Roger Kennedy shows in his book "Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character" (Oxford University Press, 1999) that Burr was an active abolitionist, whose political presence so threatened southern slave owners that they had good reason to take him down, as Jefferson later used Burr's western adventure to do. Kennedy also shows that Burr was a friend to and advocate for Native Americans.

In 1800, Burr and Jefferson tied for the presidency and Jefferson accused Burr of trying to steal the election, but it later came to light that it was Jefferson who made a deal with the opposite party to put himself in office by making certain concessions to them. (See my article on the tie here.) I am not the first to have revealed the fact, but I am the first to have stood up for Burr.

The more we learn about Burr and about those who engineered his downfall, the more clear it is how wrong historians have been.

Leonora was close to Burr and her life and relationship with him says a lot about him and about America, but the focus of this article is limited to her identity and early life. It is an article that sets down a cornerstone of a much larger structure I hope to complete.

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David Swanson

The occupied government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have both concluded that U.S.-led troops recently dragged eight sleeping children out of their beds, handcuffed some of them, and shot them all dead. While this apparently constitutes an everyday act of kindness, far less intriguing than the vicious singeing of his pubic hairs by Captain Underpants, it is at least a variation on the ordinary American technique of murdering men, women, and children by the dozens with unmanned drones.

Also this week in Afghanistan, eight CIA assassins (see if you can find a more appropriate name for them) were murdered by a suicide bombing that one of them apparently executed against the other seven. The Taliban in Pakistan claims credit and describes the mass-murder as revenge for the CIA's drone killings. And we thought unmanned drones were War Perfected because none of the right people would have to risk their lives. Oops. Perhaps Detroit-bound passengers risked theirs unwittingly.

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Atheist Ireland / blasphemy.ie

From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational, and we begin our campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine. The new law defines blasphemy as publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted.

This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.

We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.

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