Progressive wokeness expanded American freedom from the beginning.
Reflections from a Empathy Surplus Network USA adult weekly forum discussing how to apply the latest insights of the brain from cognitive scientist George Lakoff's book entitled Whose Freedom?
Progressive wokeness expanded American freedom from the beginning.1 Take Virginian George Mason, America’s first woke constitutional dissenter, for example. On August 31, 1787, Mason left the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention in a foul mood because conservatives refused to end the slave trade immediately. He swore he’d rather “chop off his right hand” than sign the newly written US Constitution because it contained no Bill of Rights.2 He was one of three framers who refused to sign a US Constitution with no human rights.3 His wokeness cost him his friendship with Washington, Hamilton, and others.
Mason swore he’d rather “chop off his right hand” than sign the newly written US Constitution because it contained no Bill of Rights.
Progressive wokeness expanded American freedom from the beginning. And progressive wokeness doesn’t belong to any political party. Any partisan can wakeup to the blessings of American liberty. Our mentor, cognitive scientist George Lakoff, writes in his book Whose Freedom?, “When (conservatives) talk about freedom, they assume that they are not free and are oppressed … by Americans who view freedom as most Americans always have.” But George Mason was not the only woke early American progressive. As early as 1775, Pennsylvania Quakers and Methodists began founding Societies for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery all over the colonies. The Societies reached Mason’s Virginia in 1790, when Benjamin Franklin, the oldest framer to sign the Constitution, submitted an anti-slavery petition to the first US Congress.
“When (conservatives) talk about freedom, they assume that they are not free and are oppressed … by Americans who view freedom as most Americans always have.”
Progressive wokeness expanded American freedom from the beginning. Progressive wokeness came to Benjamin Franklin late in life. And Franklin believed wokeness is an American characteristic. As president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery, here is an excerpt from his anti-slavery petition to the first Congress in 1790: We “earnestly entreat your serious attention to the Subject of Slavery, that you will be pleased to countenance the Restoration of liberty to those unhappy Men, who alone, in this land of Freedom, are degraded into perpetual Bondage, and who, amidst the general Joy of surrounding Freemen, are groaning in Servile Subjection, that you will devise means for removing this Inconsistency from the Character of the American People.” 4
We “earnestly entreat your serious attention to the Subject of Slavery . . . that you will devise means for removing this Inconsistency from the Character of the American People.”
Progressive wokeness expanded American freedom from the beginning. So progressives must improve at promoting pro-empathy freedom. Our traditional progressive wokeness is based on securing the blessing of two basic freedoms:
First, freedom to an effective government with a moral mission to protect and empower ALL of its people, and
second, freedom to broaden prosperity and opportunity for all through progressive circular markets aligned with human rights.
Progressive wokeness expanded American freedom from the beginning. Our Empathy Surplus Network USA recently approved an updated Pledge to the People 5 for our website footer. The public is invited to recite it at public meetings while facing the flag and holding a neighbor’s hand:
Pledge to the People
I pledge allegiance to the people of the world
and the United States of America
and to their human rights, which I defend and promote,
one world committed to empathy and responsibility,
with liberty and justice for all.
Lakoff, George, Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea, Ch. 6, Conservative Freedom: The Basics, p. 95, first paragraph, last sentence: “The fact is (conservatism’s) idea of freedom is radical and outside the mainstream of American history and American life today.”
Maier, Pauline, National Endowment for the Humanities, “The First Dissenter,” Humanities, November/December 2010, Volume 31, Number 6, http://bit.ly/3RN4XvO
National Archives, America’s Founding Documents, “The Bill of Rights: How did it happen?” http://bit.ly/3RIsBJA
Franklin, Benjamin, Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery to the first US Congress, 1790, National Constitution Center, https://bit.ly/40zAPId
Watts, Charles, Pledge to the People, Empathy Surplus Network USA website footer, https://empathysurplus.com - People of different countries are welcome to insert their own country in place of “the United States of America.”