Historical Markers and the Mystery of the Maya

I recently reread a book called, "The Chronicle of Maya Kings and Queens," which I enjoyed but also found frustrating. The past 20 years have been something of a Golden Age for Mayan archeology. There are significant on-going excavations at major and relatively recently discovered sites such as Caracol, not to mention old standards like Palenque and Chichen Itza. The text used by the classical Mayan civilizations has been deciphered and some names and events restored to history. Even so the picture is murky. For instance, we know a great deal more about the roughly contemporaneous reign of Charlemagne in France and Germany than about any Mayan King's reign.

This is partly a matter of European monastic chronicles not be subjected to active destruction that Mayan records on bark paper were. (Thanks a lot, Bishop Landa) However, part of the murkiness is a matter of random survival. I had the thought that the contemporary equivalent of the Mayan monuments are historical markers. These markers are ubiquitous, one Internet database lists over 24,000, in what is almost surely an incomplete count.

If an interval of 1200 to 1500 years were to pass, how much useful historical information could we draw from the surviving historical markers about 17th to 21st Century history? (As an aside, could the text from all the markers yield a comprehensible narrative history of American society?)

As a thought experiment, say that 0.1% of all markers are destroyed each year. Applying the rule of 70, half of all existing monuments would disappear in 700 years. After 1400 years only a quarter would remain. That would take the count mentioned above from 24,000 to approximately 6000.

In addition, besides outright destruction, the markers would be subject to damage that makes them harder to read. Suppose that the average marker has 100 significant syntactical units (subject phrases, verbs, objects, subordinate clauses, etc.) For instance, the marker on the left above, has 13 significant semantic units, beginning with, " Approaching Statesboro." If in any given year 0.1% of the syntactical units suffers some damage, how long does it take for the semantic unit to be unreadable? Again the rule of 70 suggests that in 1400 years only a quarter of the units will be fully intelligible, although probably enough would remain of the first sentence to suggest a battle occurred. Of course, the causes of the battle would be obscure, at least in terms of this marker.

Corporate Personhood and Slavery

The Supreme Courts latest atrocity against common sense and democracy has attracted a lot of attention by seemingly weakening the position of ordinary citizens vis-a-vis corporations. However, something interesting happens if you push the logic of identity of corporate personhood with natural personhood.

The origin of this comedy is Bancroft Davis who as a court reporter in the 19th Century created the idea of corporate personhood as a gloss upon a Supreme Court decision. Please note, this idea was not a part of the original decision. In the Citizens United case, decided yesterday, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court pressed the logic of corporate personhood further than ever, finding the corporations are endowed with the same free speech rights as natural persons.

Steve Andrew, known on Kos as Darksyde, discusses some potential consequences for the case for the state of Texas, here While another Kos contributor notes the potential for a New Gilded Age. (And I thought the Reagan era already initiated the Second Gilded Age of the United States. That would make this Gilded Age 3.0, to go all 21st Century.)

I am here to tell my fellow progressives not to despair. This decision, in fact, provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to move a vast progressive agenda forward. What we must do now is push the logic of corporate personhood still farther.

Specifically, we must point out that if corporations are to possess all of the attributes of natural persons, some additional progress needs to be made. The attribute that I refer to is personal freedom. After all, the 13th Amendment states: Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

What is slavery? According to the The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
slav·er·y

(slā'və-rē, slāv'rē) n. pl. slav·er·ies The state of one bound in servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

It is perfectly clear that corporations are held as the property of their owners. Thus, the full doctrine of corporate personhood suggests that the next civil rights struggle must be to free corporations from ownership by private individuals.

Of course, it is also perfectly clear that corporations are not competent to exercise many of the rights that are inherent in natural personhood. This suggests that after the liberation of corporations from private ownership, they must become wards of the state. This is identical to the situation of orphaned children who have no natural relatives who can undertake their supervision and education.

This is clearly a desirable outcome for progressives, with careful tutelage corporations could grow up to be responsible adults who don't soil themselves, trash their neighborhoods, or cause harm to individuals through malice or negligence.

Of course, it would also be possible to just recognize that a corporation is a legal fiction used by our society to organize certain types of activities and are entitled to exactly the rights and responsibilities that democratic governments grant them. Nah, that would be too simple.

More on Citizens United

Steven Andrew (Darksyde)

Daily Kos (New Gilded Age)

Daily Kos (Justice Thomas)

Daily Kos (Analysis of Citizens United)

Wall Street Journal (one from the other side)

New York Times