May 21, 2025 • 49 mins
Margaret continues talking with Kat Abughazaleh about the folk councils that came to define English Common Law.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
You're weekly reminder that I have a podcast that comes
out twice a week, so it's actually twice a week
reminder that I have a podcast. It's also a show
where we talk about stuff, and we talk about that stuff,
usually to a guest. And this week my guest is Katabugazala,
and she's cool and she's my guest, and she's also
(00:25):
running for I keep thinking Congress means senate.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm running for the US House. Yeah, the ninth District
of Illinois. And Hi, I'm Kat.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Nice to have you. We also have a producer named
Sophie Hi. Sophie Hi, Sophie Hi, and our audio engineer
is Eva Hi Eva Hi Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Thank you for listening to our voices are The musical.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Was written force by un Woman. And this is part
two on another episode about the things they're trying to
take away from us, in this case Habeas corpus Uka.
They're not allowed to throw you in jail unless they
think you did something, which is such a fundamental right
that they literally didn't even think they had to explain
it in the fucking Constitution. They only had to explain
(01:12):
how to suspend it in the time of crisis. In
part one, we talked about hard boiled egg, who wants
to take it away from everyone? And I'm just actually
not above making fun of certain people. I like, I
guess I never really thought it was above making fun
of certain people. I think when people are trying to
eradicate you, that's like a nice thing you can do
(01:37):
is only make fun of them. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
As someone that grew up conservative, like someone comes in
good faith, like if you're ignorant, Like yeah, like ignorance itself,
Like you don't know what you don't know. I mean
I didn't know about like the Dakota people being executed.
I had no idea about that. Yeah. But like if
someone's trying to tell you to justify your existence, you
don't have to do that. Yeah, we should just understand
that we don't need to take in good faith and
(02:00):
as people are idiots.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I think that's such a good point. Is like specifically
around good faith, is like there are people who like
don't know things, and I don't know things. I learned
that every week. I read a ton of books and
essays and articles every week, and I learned so many
new things. And yeah, if you can engage with someone
in good faith, engage with them in good faith. I
(02:24):
do believe in talking to people and figuring out our
differences and shit, and some people are trying to kill
us all and I'm being real nice if all I
do is call them hard boiled eggs, you know. Yeah,
some part one we talked about Stephen Miller and Trump
administration talking about getting rid of the most basic right
in the concept of a legal system. And so we're
(02:48):
talking about where that concept of a legal system came
from English common law, which means we have to talk
about England, which historically is not my favorite thing, but
sometimes it's kind of interesting. And it's interesting when you
don't look at so and so begat so and so
and then they built an army to fight so and so,
(03:09):
but instead look about like what peasants were doing, and
the fact that everyone started off not as colonial people,
even the English, because they were called the British at
the time. Okay, British history a long ass time ago,
like BCE or whatever. Celtic people lived on the island.
They weren't the first people to live there or whatever.
(03:30):
But we're going to start with them. The southern trunk
of the island what's now England was a Celtic group
of people known as the Britons. They spoke the Celtic
language Brittonic. In forty three AD, Rome was like you're
in the Empire now, and they called it Britannia and
they held it until the early four hundreds. Usually when
people talk about Rome leaving because people call the time
(03:52):
afterwards the Dark Ages, which is a lie, and every
historian will roll their eyes if you say the Dark Ages.
But I really like it because it's really metal sounding,
but it's presented as this abandonment, right the Romans were
busy elsewhere, they couldn't keep up the colony. Britannia fell
into ruin in darkness, but at least one historian I've
read a man named Tony Dyer who's pamphlet Anglo Saxon Democracy.
(04:14):
We're actually going to talk about him and what he's
up to these days at the very end of this episode.
It's actually really interesting. He wrote a pamphlet called Anglo
Saxon Democracy about fifteen years ago. It's one of my
main sources for this part of the story, and it
presents a very different example of how even the Roman
abandonment could have gone down in three eighty three. This
(04:35):
is what I was saying earlier about I live in
the past instead of the present. I'm like, I spent
all day reading about three eighty three AD or whatever.
I'm like, I don't know what's happening in the twenty
first century. In three eighty three, Rome started pulling back
its troops because they were needed elsewhere. And then in
the year four oh six, the quote unquote barbarians crossed
the Rhine and started heading towards Rome. So by fourteen
(04:56):
ten there's barely any troops left in Britannia. Basically, by
fourteen ten, the Romano British, because they're no longer just
the British. They've integrated with each other in various ways
over hundreds of years. They're like, get the fuck out
of here, we can do this for ourselves, right, And
there's this whole movement I hope to come back to
(05:17):
on this show, mostly in Gaul what's now France, especially Brittany,
the chunk of northwest France. That shit confused me for
a million years. The fact that the Normans do get
their name from Norway, but they're from France, and then
Britannia is part of France. It's just like it's fucking
speaking of not having enough names, a bunch of people
teamed up into massive peasant armies the bakude from a
(05:39):
Gaulish word for fighters, and these were people who are
tired of high taxes and low benefits basically like Rome
coming and taking their money and not actually providing social services,
because governments should provide social services. That's the exchange for taxes.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Hello, yeah, say it again. Brought up people in the back.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, and then there's a lot of upright scenes if
you don't give people social services and just take their money.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
It's one of those things too where people are like
like the libertarian right is just like, oh, taxes are
the problem, and you're like, well, tax is the fun.
Certain shit is like I don't mind that we all
collectively keep the roads maintained and make sure people have
houses and don't die. That sounds great.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I think that's good. Yeah yeah, but like what if
we all like paid our fair share, like all of us,
like every one of us to live in a society.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, And it wasn't a way to extract money from
people and put it towards it, like, oh, I don't
know fucking Elon Musk's various schemes to take money from
the government for carbon credits or whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
As someone that was laid off because of Elon Musk
and just finish my taxes as a freelancer.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Ooh, you got to pay double.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I got to pay double and I am on a
payment plan with IRS. Oh fuck yep, first year I've
had to do that. Yeah, check out my financial disclosures
if you're curious. Seeing an independent contractor and having to
pay taxes in this country is defly a villain origin story.
That's like yeah, yeah, it's wild. And then like having
to fill out of public financial disclosure form like the
House Ethics Committee like you have interest and it's like
(07:08):
one to two hundred dollars and like the House Ethics
Committee literally is like you're a broke bitch. Cool.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, So independent contractors paid double taxes and do whatever everything.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Podcasters in Old England were also doing.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
That, yeah, exactly. Yeah, And we know about these peasant
uprisings in France and we also know that they kind
of went to Spain, like a lot of places at
the fringes of the Roman Empire. The argument is that
they were probably there in England. There's not a lot
of written sources during the quote unquote dark ages, and
that is the one part that is true. Is the
first couple hundred years after the Romans leap, there's like
not a lot of people writing shit down. But people
(07:44):
are like, we don't like fucking giving roam our money
and not getting anything back. And some of those people
were enslaved who joined these peasant armies, and so they
had an extra reason to hate the economic arrangement of
the time that said, getting rid of Rome does not
get rid of slavery. Slavery stays threat the entire story
we're telling, it starts transitioning to more like surf, dumb
(08:04):
and stuff in the eleventh century. Anyway, people argue about
the intentions of the Bakudai, who I don't know how
to pronounce because it looks like a Latin thing, but
it's actually from a Gaulish word, and I don't fucking
understand Gaulish. But people try to argue and like slot
them into various things. They're nationalists, they're the people who
love France, and they're therefore probably fascist, but in a
(08:26):
good way. According to that story, they're Marxists, they're Christians.
There's a lot of people, i'm sure, who are arguing
that they're like anti civilization pagans, but in a good way. Whatever.
They're peasant uprisings. I like them. I don't know what
the fuck they're doing. They seem to have wanted to
return to pre Roman traditional methods of cooperative land ownership,
(08:47):
and it's quite likely that the British equivalent was part
of driving the Roman government off the island. And I'm
going to say the Roman government because it doesn't seem
to have been about driving the Roman ethnicity off the island,
because modern conceptions about ethnic purity don't apply well to
pre modern people. And I know probably a lot of
right wing dick bags aren't listening to this show. But
(09:09):
if you are and you romanticize, like ye old the
Dark aged sword shit, you're just wrong if you then
turn it to Nazi shit. Is my argument. The Roman
government's gone now the Romano British people remain, and that's
when they start doing really cool shit. First they have
to get by some accounts invaded by modern historical understandings
(09:30):
they just get all ethnically and culturally mixed up. Is
a combination of rating and migration from the Angles and
the Saxons. The origin of the Anglo Saxons or these
two Germanic groups. Another term that historians generally hate is
Anglo Saxons.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, it's kind of interesting to me. Okay. They absolutely
agree that there were Angles and Saxons, and they are
Germanic people, and they started living in France and England basically,
and they started settling a bunch of places, but they
didn't replace the population. They're only a tiny percentage of
the population. And so there is a cultural thing of
(10:06):
like the Germanic influence, but it's not as much as
people think. And so everyone who's like a proud Anglo
Saxon from England probably isn't. They're probably just wrong. And
I think that's funny because then the Wasps aren't actually wasps,
and the Angles and the Saxons they start invading and
settling a bunch of places. The Saxons actually started arriving
(10:28):
before Rome even left, but it wasn't quite colonization. They
would settle somewhere and the culture would shift but not
in a like you're part of the Roman Empire now
it wasn't like haha, the Germanic Empire has expanded the
same Germanic groups are similar ones like the Franks started
showing up in gaul what's now frank Sorry France, but
(10:50):
the France comes from the word Frank, right, the Franks
gave their name to France, and therefore the name of
the French language. But interesting at least to me, and
possibly that's that. What else? But I find this shit
fucking fascinating. French itself, the language doesn't come from the
Frankish Germanic language. French the language because it's a Romance language, right,
(11:10):
whereas English is a Germanic language. French mixes Vulgar Latin
with Gaulish in its roots.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, I think the funny pronunciation of France it's very
different than all the other Romance languages. Yeah, I think
that's the Gaulish influence. But I read a bunch of
articles about it, and they're all written for linguists. I'm
not a linguist.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Someone that's a linguist listening to this tag me and
backpi this last note.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, and if you're telling us that we're wrong. It's okay.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I didn't say anything. It would be you that's wrong. Yeah,
because once again on.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Perfect Actually you sent the script to me before we started.
How can we am I not supposed to tell anyone
that that you wrote this, that.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I wrote this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I wrote this. Yeah,
this is what I've been studying my congressional campaign on. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, absolutely none of that is true for the people
who take everything too literally. In England, it was the
Germanic language that won out English. The language wiped out
the Celtic language of Brittonic, although Welsh survived as an
offshoot of this.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Oh but Brittonic is such a cool name. I know
that's also an envy name for sure, one hundred percent right.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, absolutely, And it was someone who was named Brittany
and they changed their name to Brittonic and I support you.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So because English one, people tend to assume, oh, they
got rid of the Britons, right, they're wiped out, and
that's just not true at all. Modern DNA analysis confirms this.
To quote that historian Tony Dyer quote, rather than a
(12:48):
mass genocide and almost total population replacement to create England,
The reality is that even in England, the Anglo Saxons
remained a minority, outnumbered by Romano British quote unquote natives.
In fact, many geneticists now agree that somewhere in the
region of seventy percent of the genetic makeup of the
population of England can be traced back to the Paleolithic
period hunter gatherer population, basically meaning that these invasions added
(13:14):
slightly to the genetic diversity but didn't wipe anyone out.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, no, totally right. I don't like playing games about
genetics and bloodlines is like a general rule. But it's
important that a popular understanding of this era tends to
be wrong, and that basically people who are like, ah,
this is the way it is and has always been,
the strong replaced the weak, you know, like the fucking
conquered not stolen people. Have you ever seen these? I
(13:40):
don't know how much of your time you spend countering
Nazi graffiti, but there's like stickers that Nazis put up
that say conquered, not stolen with a picture of America,
you know, and they're like, this is just the way
it is, this is our human animal nature. No, you're
just fucking Nazis right, Like, there are examples of this
happening throughout time, but there's so many examples of even
(14:02):
like fucking Viking ass raiders who kill and slave and
do all kinds of horrible shit, still not genociding people
to replace them, but instead eventually cohabitating the area. No
modern comparisons need to be drawn about any current geopolitical.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Everything has only happened one time.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, totally, So these dreaded dark ages come and popular
imagination has a time of chaos and anarchy and bloodshed
and everyone getting wiped out and rule of the week
by the strong, until one day all power will be
centralized and everyone becomes Christian and monarchy sets everyone straight.
But that's not what said everyone's straight. What set everyone
(14:40):
straight was the sweet, sweet deals that we are offering
you are listeners, where actually there's almost never any deals
in any of our ads.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
They've gone through millennia to come here.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, that's right. That's why this episode is brought to
you by the well I forget the name of it,
and so the sponsor is going to be mad, But
I belie leave the Celts. I think it was the Celts,
but maybe it was the picks. I don't know. They
had a throwing axe and it was really neat and
the people at the front of the battle would throw
the throwing axe and it would bounce, and everyone's gonna
(15:10):
be mad at me for not knowing the name of this.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I want to bounce you throwing.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, so you throw the axe as you're like running
into battle, usually naked, maybe be covered in blue or whatever,
and then it would bounce and then it would kind
of like cause chaos as it bounced through the ranks
of the enemy.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
I just have like a very large axe that Robert
gave me. That sounds faut, right, Yeah, that's pretty good.
It's engraved on one side it says fuck you and
on the other side it says pay me. It's really
kind of amazing. But I don't think it would bounce
because it weighs more than Anderson.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I will say, if you ever have to home defend,
don't use that because it'll look really bad for your
self defense case.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Here's ads.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah they are and we're back, and I want to apologize,
dear listener, I have led you astray. I implied that
the Francesca the throwing acts that I was just discussing.
I implied that it was Celtic. It was not. It
(16:18):
was traumatic. It gets its name from the Franks, so
really just the opposite side of the conflicts. I was
just discussing. And one, I know, they're really pretty. They
have a kind of a curved head a little bit.
They're like, they're cool. Yeah. Anyway, I just want to
apologize to Francesca. Anyone named Francesca. You have a pretty
(16:41):
cool name. You can be thrown into battle and cause
chaos among the enemies, which is a neat thing to
be able to do. Or you can wield a Francesca
as Francesca. You have so many options. Anyway, instead of
actually being a period of there is warfare and shit,
like it's not like peaceful happy times, but like you
actually have a period that has the origins of a
(17:04):
lot of the better parts of Western political structure, because
when peasants and shit kick roam the fuck out, they
return to what can be understood as a plan or
tribal structure by and large, Specifically, to quote Tony Dyer again,
quote it is probable, and a lot of the probables
around the seat. He provides tons of evidence and shit
(17:25):
that I'm just not going to get into about like
where there's mounds and forests and what has been abandoned
and what hasn't or whatever. But there again, not a
lot of writing during this period. It is probable that
following the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, the
local population regained control of their own territories, returning to
a form of governance based on kindred groups working with
other kindred groups, and a relationship in which local people
(17:47):
made local decisions whilst also contributing to a wider political territory.
And so the reason I'm calling it bottom up instead
of just like purely decentralized is most decisions are happening
at all local level, and some decisions are happening at
a larger level. Just like No, yeah, I mean I
would argue that we're kind of top down.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But yeah, I've been like a lot of like really
impactful stuff that you don't even hear about topics with
the local and state life.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
No, totally, And like a very good and active thing
that needs to be done is to continue to try
and remind democracy that it fundamentally should be a bottom
up thing, or it is a less democratic The more
top down it is, the less democratic it is. And
this is a pattern I've seen again and again, no
matter what time or place I look. When you get
rid of empire, what replaces it is rarely warlordism, although
(18:34):
I think it is sometimes warloadism, and I just won't read
those books as much. But you get time and time
again bottom up democratic assemblies, and no one ever talks
about community assemblies, and then how they start federating with
one another to make larger decisions. But this happens over
and over again, and that's what they were doing in
(18:54):
Dark Age is Britain to greater or lesser degrees. And
you can trace a direct path, and I'm going to
over the next however long we're continue to record, you
can trace a direct path from these local assemblies to
the modern parliamentary system of Western democracy, and you would
form kinship groups, and those groups would form larger groups.
And specifically, these groups have a lot of what we
(19:17):
talk about a lot on the show, the commons, the
thing that gets stolen from us by the enclosure, which
is in this ye oldly dark Age. I'm gonna keep
calling it the dark Ages. So every historian's already mad
at me, But it's just like the nice period of
Gothic spookytom and the sun never came out. Well yeah,
I know, Well it was England. I've only been there
(19:40):
a couple of times. And when I like Land, you
just like move through a sea of clouds and then
just like are like in the soup of England when
you get there. Nearly all privately owned land and resources
were owned by an entire clan. There was like private
ownership of land, but it was communal private ownership of
land or potentially a whole village. But everything that wasn't
privately owned was the commons. Places you could graze your sheep, woods,
(20:04):
you could go hunt and gather wooden rivers to fishing.
And importantly, this structure looks a lot like what both
Celtic and Germanic groups would be familiar with going back
to at least the second millennium BC. So the Britons,
the Angles, and the Saxons could all be like, ah,
this just makes sense. We don't have a fucking empire
(20:26):
over us anymore, so we go back to doing this thing.
And this part matters to me because again, like anytime
I read about like the idyllic folk past or whatever
they literally get called folk, moot the organizations they have.
I worry about the kind of shit that Nazis like romanticizing.
So I want to point out again to my imaginary
Nazi listeners made it this far.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Nazis love those podcasts, obviously.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I know, right, I will say, compared to like writing,
very few people hate listen to podcasts, and I think
that's saved me a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Like listening to a whole last podcast. Yeah, to hate listen,
that's just exhawesome.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, I mean, you did media the right wing shit
for a very long time. You did that hard one,
so I would know exactly. So anyone hate listening, you
might be thinking. Yees see, when they kicked out the
Roman foreigner, they had a good idyllic utopia. Again, First
of all, they didn't kick out ethnically Roman people. A
lot of them were ethnically Roman. They moved to a
(21:19):
traditional style of governance for their own area. But both
Germanic and Celtic traditions have a bunch of laws saying
that strangers are welcome to become members and like citizens
and even nobility in any of these groups. So fuck
you Nazus.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
How do you become nobility? Oh?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I want to find more about it. I was like
that part. I tried to look a little bit more.
I think that there's this idea that be really hot. Yeah, honestly,
probably a lot of the like becoming nobility in a
smaller area is around the sort of person in charge
giving you like special privileges or whatever and being like
you're my favorite basically, and it does fight against the
egalitarianism of this area. And there's this give and take
(22:01):
between egalitarianism and a noble system that's like constantly happening.
But probably the answers that be really hot. Yeah, actually, okay,
I know anthropology is really dangerous when you like compare
one group to another, right, But in our episodes about
the weird pirate utopias on Madagascar, it did talk about
(22:21):
a lot of people becoming nobility not by showing up
and being like haha, I'm in charge, but literally by
showing up and being like I am now part of
your organizational system and people being like, great, you're like
a weird foreigner. You're a noble now because you're interesting,
you have different stories and shit. Yeah, and there's a
lot of like chiefs marrying their daughters to foreigners and
(22:42):
stuff like that, and so it might be through a
similar way. But whenever you compare anthropologies, you're playing dangerous games.
So a regional level above this hyper local level, which
was the kingdom, which was not like England. Yet there's
all these little kingdoms and there's general a king. I'm
not a big fan of kings. Historically, Tolkien would fucking
(23:04):
love this shit and probably did. This is probably how
he because he's like a weird anarcho monarchist, which is
absolutely a contradiction in terms, but he's interesting in the
strange guy. When you imagine a king of England, you're
imagining wrong. When you imagine these folks at the beginning,
by the end of this era, you're thinking, right. There
(23:25):
was a council of wise men, the Watan especially what
you're running for, and they would meet at the witten
Moot to advise the king and serve basically as the
highest court in the kingdom, and most likely they met
to elect the king. There's arguing among historians about whether
or not kings during this era were elected directly by
(23:46):
the Wittan, or the Wittan would get together to sign
off on like yeah, yeah, the king's eldest son is
the heir as like a formality. But a tenth century
abbot named Alfrick, which is a good name. It's got
that ae at the beginning. Bring that back, don't. It's
probably bad. It's everyone he probably wants to do. That
is bad, but it's not boring. Alfrek wrote, quote, no
(24:09):
man can make himself king, but the people has the
choice to choose as king whom they please. But after
he is consecrated as king, he then has dominion over
the people and they cannot shake his yoke off their necks.
So the Witan, though, actually did depose at least two
kings in the eighth century. They were like, no, you're
(24:30):
not doing right, bias, you gotta go. The king in
this period had a mandate from the people, and so
there is a comparison that can be made to these
early kings with a mandate from the people to a
modern politician. That can't be made to a later king
right only centuries later, as the Church gains more power,
(24:51):
does the mandate explicitly come from heaven instead the earlier
kings were selected ostensibly. I'm sure that this was absolutely corrupt,
and they're shitty kings everywhere. And I'm not defending monarchy,
but the earlier kings were selected because people were like,
we want someone to keep us safe and keep this
whole place peaceful. We think this guy will do it.
(25:12):
Over the centuries, as Tolkien predicted, power will corrupt people.
The kings will start amassing more and more power. In
the earliest days of this, you don't actually owe the
king anything unless he shows up, Like you just kind
of most of the year, you're these autonomous villages doing
your own autonomous thing, and then every now and then
the king rolls through and he's like, hey, I'm the king,
and people are like, huh, all right, I guess you're
(25:34):
in charge today. How long are you stay in You're
gonna be here long And they're like, you know, they
give him us taxes and shit, and it's like having
really annoying in laws. Yeah, totally, the king is you're
in laws. You can have some of our stuff and
be in charge for a minute. I guess, because by
and large, more of the power resided, even though there's
(25:55):
the higher court. More power resided not with the wits
and moot, but with the folk moot, the people's gathering,
the assembly. Basically these were at much smaller levels. I
am unclear who could vote in these assemblies. The inference
again not a lot of writing. The inference is that
it was free men because there's slavery in this period,
although most slavery in Britain during this period is not
(26:18):
people in these villages owning people, but instead people in
these villages getting stolen and sold. So hooray, and women
were likely allowed to be there but not vote. Is
the best I can tell by comparing if it's analogous
to an Icelandic thing that we do have more information
about anyway, the other Germanic ones, these assemblies, they weren't
(26:40):
called vocalots. They were called things, and that's where the
word thing comes from. So if you're like, hey, you
go into the thing, you're actually more accurate than if
you're like, hey, can you hand me the thing? Because
the thing was a gathering.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Interesting, Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I love learning etymology like those.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I know, and like half of this is just about like,
isn't language neat The folk moot would meet to sort
out the taxes and conscription into the army, and hear
out grievances basically to put people on trial. These were
trials based on evidence and testimony and involve neutral third parties.
So this idea of like, ah, back in the day,
(27:17):
it was Game of thrones, and whoever had the biggest
sword is innocent or whatever. It's not the thing. That's
not what happens at the thing. Thank you, thank you,
I appreciate it to laugh. And these were trials based
on evidence, and then everyone involved, everyone who had voting
power at the thing, they would all vote on the verdict,
(27:38):
and it wasn't like innocent or guilty, but instead, okay,
what do we do with this situation?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Gotcha?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Because it wasn't a punitive legal system, it was a
I can't really say it was like a restorative Actually
probably would have identified as more of a restorative justice system.
I'm not trying to claim it's perfect. I get you,
but we literally can watch pative trials come in hundreds
of years later. The punishment was usually a fine of
some sort, which is best as I can understands. You
(28:07):
then swear an oath to make the victim hole again
or their family hole again if you killed someone or whatever. Right,
and this oath that you've sworn. Both sides of your parents'
family is also on the hook for it. So you
do something bad, you get fined a ton of money.
Not only are you on the hook for it, but
so are like all your aunts and uncles and your parents,
(28:27):
and so they're all mad as shit at you. And
so that's kind of part of how it handles making
people be better, is you don't want to drag your
entire family into this. Yeah, such oaths were not taken lightly.
At the beginning of this Everyone's a Pagan. By the
end of this, everyone's a Christian. Everyone involved takes oaths
very seriously. To quote the historian hr Loin quote, a
(28:54):
freeman in one of our early territorial kingdoms still bore
the characteristics of a free member of a tribe. He
was oath worthy and weapon worthy, a person of repute,
possessed of a free kindred, and capable of playing a
full part in the army in the courts. Such a
part involved much more active self help than would have
been considered proper or seemly in a later age. He
(29:16):
fulfilled his duties without an elaborate hierarchy or officialdom to
sustain him and they actually started with the folk moots
and then developed the Witten moot, the bigger one. Well
actually I don't know if it's like physically bigger, but
the bigger region one. And this is the fucking origin
of the idea of parliament for England, and therefore everywhere
(29:37):
that England colonized and sent all of its good and
bad ideas to people. Have it backwards. There wasn't autocracy,
and then slowly people added layers of democracy. It was
that they added layers of hierarchy to their democracy in
an effort to make larger scale decisions, probably for good reasons,
(29:58):
but power corrupts and sla The kings centralize their authority,
usually through the need to raise and maintain militaries. However,
the power that has corrupted us is the power that
could be available to you through purchasing the goods and
services that support this show. Because that's how we all
(30:19):
got where we are today, was doing whatever the next
ad tells us to do. Hi, Margaret Kiljoy, here boy.
The world sure is a mess right now?
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Seems like every day there are more and more reasons
to get out into the streets and protest. That's why
when I get arrested, there's only one strategy. I trust,
I shut the fuck up. I say, I would like
to remain silent, I would like to talk to my lawyer,
and then I shut the fuck up. In the United
States of America, it's constitutionally protected and recommended by the
National Lawyers Guild. That's shut thch f u c k up.
(30:57):
Once again, that sah thche fuc k up. Because you
can't talk yourself out of custody, but you can talk
yourself into a conviction.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and
situations giving them an address expedient in most circumstances. Never
discuss the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor,
or therapist. Posting pictures of protests and actions on social
media may lead to complications. If you have already talked
to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops, call
your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of more
serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to cops
(31:30):
does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are
for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
consult an attorney.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And we're back. Slowly, the system of democracy started getting
corupted by hierarchy and autocracy. After a while, the Folkmot
became the Hundred, which is a very hard term to google.
I'll have you know. Usually what I do is I
read about things in books whenever possible. But then I
like books have like just to tell you how the
sausage is made of the historical research I do for
(32:00):
the show, Dear Listener, the books will have the more
in depth information and often the like more complicated takes,
but because they're just literally older, like because I can't
read a book that was written yesterday, I can. Yeah, no,
I know it is because you're perfect, which is honestly
impressive that you're able to do that.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
So then I'm like searching more information about this. So
I'm like reading about how the Folkmot became the hundred,
and you know this piece I'm reading Anglo Saxon Democracy
by Tony Dyer. And then I'm like, all right, I
need to know more about that transition because I have
this one perspective and I try and compare with multiple perspectives,
and I wasn't able to find as much about that
transition just partly because an organization called the Hundred it's
(32:43):
fucking hard to google. I'm like, but why isn't there
more readily available information about this thing that happened in
one part of England and seven hundreds hyper fixations.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's what people don't understand about a history podcast is
that it only if your brain is set up to
hyper fixate on a new thing every week. So anyway,
the folk Moot became the Hundred, which is similar to
the Folk Moot. The peasants were still in charge, but
there's a royal official there running the whole thing, and
he's not making the decisions, but he's kind of like
(33:18):
the facilitator. And that slowly it's actually developed into the
shire system, which is the county system, which is why
everything is named sure, you know, like Hampshire whatever. I
don't know the names of the counties in England. With
the rise of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church,
shit started getting more formalized and more hierarchy was everywhere,
and I don't know how to pronounce hierarchy. I apparently
(33:40):
the king went from the person that all the wise
people agree should probably be in charge of keeping the
peace to kings are chosen by God to make Pagans
into Christians. And this is where the mandate of heaven
comes in. And the job isn't Yeah, different fucking mandates.
People don't talk about mandates enough. Like the idea of
like being like we elected politician to do this thing
(34:01):
on our behalf, you know, it is not we don't
elect fucking kings. Well they did, but that also wasn't great,
right we elect saying like, hey, we think you'll help
to get universal health care. Please go do that, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, and try out you can and like do a
job and talk to people and ask where they're at
and like the house. You know, as the US gets
bigger and bigger, it's more difficult to do that totally.
But like, if you're asking for this job, you have to,
like you have to act. I've been wondering. I'm like,
how do people do this for decades and decades? And
(34:38):
I'm like, the thing that's becoming very clear to me is, oh,
they just don't do a good job, like even if
they started for the right reasons. Like, this is tiring
and we're two months in and it's very fun and
I've met so many cool people, and it's like one
of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. But like,
first off, you know, the country, the constitution are you know,
(34:58):
legal systems should be dynamic and fluid, just like the world.
But also like doing this for a really long time,
like a really long time and doing it right that
has to be like emotionally exhausting, because like empathy is
a muscle that you flex and when you're representing like
five hundred and seven hundred thousand people, yeah, you got
to flex it a lot.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah. No, it makes sense because it's like you know,
in a smaller scale thing, it's much easier to have
a direct mandate a like if I am part of
a group that sends someone to a spokes council meeting,
we're like, all right, you are there to represent us,
and this is our position and that is the position
you will take there. But you're coming from a position
where like you don't have a consensus mandate. You don't
(35:40):
have everyone that you're you know representing, all agreeing on
the same thing. It's messy and it's worth using every
tool and toolbox to try and make the world a
better place. And so so kings mandate to heaven and
the kings start meeting out more and metting out, I
don't know, giving more shit to certain people. And they're like, oh,
(36:04):
you can collect taxes in the following area and own
the following chunk of everything, like the commons. It's not
the commons now. You can keep it as the Commons
if you want, but it's your shit, right folk land.
The commons started to become bookland, private land. It basically
made lots of little kings, people who could go and
take shit from the peasants and tell them what to do.
(36:26):
This is the rise of the nobility, which was the
king taking a direct note out of the Catholic Church's book.
This land allocation wasn't under control of local councils. So
the enclosure of the commons, which later led to capitalism,
was the death of this period of democracy. And to
me that's an important point because most tellings of the
(36:48):
story of democracy in Western Europe talk about it starting
with the rich people. And I want to say capitalism
was the death of democracy or the thing later built
to capitalism. And for anyone who's listening, when I say capitalism,
I don't mean the idea of buying and selling everything.
We don't live in a binary world where you either
of the fucking USSR or the USA. Capitalism whatever, capitalism
(37:10):
is a specific economic system, and it can be questioned.
The legal system becomes much more strictly formalized. Common law
basically means law that's built up by precedent rather than
the legislation. Legislation starts becoming more common and instead of
compensating victims, criminal justice moved to become more punitive. Suddenly
(37:33):
way more shit had the death penalty. I did while like,
I was like reading this glowing thing about Anglo Saxon democracy,
and I was like, was this the downside here? And
so I read a lot more about slavery. And one
of the things that could happen is if you owe
someone a lot of money, you basically saw yourself and
the like ostensibly non punitive system led to sometimes the
(37:54):
punitive thing of people being owned by people. And yeah,
all the people who have been given all this fucking
land and the right to tax people, the nobles in
the church got wealthy as shit. The next nail in
the folk coffin was the Viking invasions of the nine hundreds,
which led to a massive restructuring of England to support
(38:14):
the military to defend against the raiders. To quote Tony
Dyer again quote, the peasant's status began to change from
that of a free farmer to that of a subject
tenant with significant ongoing obligations of rent and service to
his lord. And then the final nail didn't come from
within England, though England was clearly moving in a more
autocratic direction with its monarchy. The final nail was the
(38:37):
Norman conquest of ten sixty six. Normandy is part of
the northwest of France and in the tenth century some
Vikings settled there and then christianized, and then in ten
sixty six a fuck ton of them invaded England, the Normans,
and they were successful and brutal, and they built pasty.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Can you imagine a race named Norman. We have Frank,
we have Norman, Like, what's next the Garys.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I know? And then the Garys are just murdering everyone
you've ever met. Yeah, not a good point that he's
like the most standard ass boring names.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yeah, they're like this is the Steves. Yeah, oh no,
the Ryans are coming.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
From All of their hair is surprisingly well kempt Brittonic
they're defeated by the non binary army of the Brittonics.
(39:37):
And yeah, so suddenly castles go from and again this
is an oversimplification, but castles go from being there to
like protect the population from invasion to subjugating the population
and being like, now where the the autocrats running around
in our little dystopia we're building, and we know that
this case they actually did successfully not change all of ethnicity,
(39:57):
but like conquer the economy. There's a book called the
Domesday Book, and it's an eleventh century record book of
like taxes and shit. It's just like who owns what,
and essentially everyone with money was Norman not English, like
basically like I think ninety percent of landed people were
the Norman invaders. They close a lot of the commons,
(40:19):
they enforced the law brutally, and it's Norman rule that
becomes the baseline authoritarianism that people, largely rich people, begin
to rebel against. And so the rich didn't event democracy,
they claimed it from the peasantry. That's my thesis, and
that when people one writes it wasn't for the first time,
it was drawing on something older, something ancient. So when
(40:42):
we demand habeas corpus. When we demand that we have
a fair system of justice and democracy, we are drawing
on something that has existed all over the fucking world
that literally predates civilization. And I promise I'll tell you
about this guy, Tony Dyer. Oh yeah, I haven't had
any named like cool people this whole fucking episode the historian.
(41:04):
I was like, what's this guy up to now? And
so I googled them, and there's a fair number of
people named Tony Dyer. But his pamphlet was put out
by the Bristol Radical Pamphleteers or something like that, And
so I was searching Tony Dyer Bristol and I found
that he is a Green Party politician who is currently
in charge of the city of Bristol, a city of
half a million people. He's not the mayor because the
(41:26):
city got rid of the position of mayor. He is
the leader of the city council. Now that there is
no mayor, the entire city council makes decisions instead.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
That's so cool, I know, I know, that's so cool.
And this is like today, like right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah. In twenty twenty four, he became the fucking all
of the articles about this were from last year, Like
that's awesome, And in an interview he said about this system,
decisions should be reached by consensus, collaboration, and compromise in
a public setting.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
That's how I run cool Zone.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, like and so like I had this moment where
I was like, I wonder if this is the same guy,
and I'm like, no, this is obviously the same man,
because it is what he wrote about as a historian.
He wrote about local democracy and making it be as
public as possible and as participatory as possible and like
(42:23):
a galitarian and shit. Yeah, and I'm sure it is
not perfect, but I like it didn't find the imperfect yet. Yeah,
if you're listening in Bristol, you might have completely different information.
But the Green led city council there has been focusing
on removing car infrastructure, improving walking and cycling infrastructure. Some
of the interview questions I found with him people being
(42:44):
like why do you hate cars? I like my car,
you know, and his answers are like, well, actually, you know,
we save lives this way and it's better and whatever,
and like hey, you're.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Being on a train. You don't have to do anything.
You can read.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
You just fun read a book. You can be listening
to this right here. Well, you guess you can listen
while driving, but it's less nice.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
You can listen and then stare at the thing going
like the little thing that scrubs, which is of how
everyone listens to a podcasts. They just stare at the
screen and they use it continues.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
But even more than enacting like green and progressive legislation
like removing car infrastructure, improving walking and psychling infrastructure, which rules.
I am most impressed not by when progressives and leftist
politicians enact leftist policies, but when they change the structure
of government to become more egalitarian.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, exactly, and sick.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah, someone who extensively studied the history of the region
and saw its radical democratic roots is working to put
them into practice. And so the surprise cool person of
today is the non mayor of a major city who
wrote a pamphlet that I read about ten years ago
that fundamentally changed my understanding of a lot of history. Yeah, sick, Yeah,
(44:01):
that's what I got. That's Margaret's theory of the development
of English common law. That it's like this is not
every all over the world. There's people who have democratic
traditions that they're drawing on right, and some of them
are similar to this and some of them aren't. But
unfortunately England then went on to you know, famously draw
random lines across the map that caused a huge chunk
(44:23):
of all the conflicts that are happening today.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
I've never heard of.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
This is a good I don't know if it's a meme,
if it's a video. I'm old there's a good thing.
That's like the like the English watching all of the
world be destroyed by lines they draw on the map
one hundred years ago, and it's a bunch of people
in pith helmets like skanking in the desert. It's very good, amazing.
(44:49):
So yeah, I don't know any thoughts. How are you feeling?
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah, I mean I feel good. I think democracy is cool.
I mean I didn't know about all this. Like when
you think about you know, English democracy, you think the
Karta and like this is really interesting. And also the
step of a like restorative versus punitive justice and like oaths.
It's just it's really fascinating to see how people handle things,
and especially in a system where you're not constantly living
(45:16):
under fear of having your life ruined by one thing
or another, whether that's Stephen Miller coming to arrest you
for having darker skin, or you know, crushing debt or
whatever else it may be. It's just really interesting to
see how different communities can work together and create these systems.
And I seriously had no idea about any of those.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
They call it the fucking Dark Ages. They don't talk
about it, you know, And yeah, and part of it
is because some of it speculative, right, like this is like, yeah,
but historians are I'm not a historian. Historians are good
at their jobs and it is a science, and they
like try to figure out, like we think this is
what happened, you know. Yeah, well you got anything you
(45:57):
want to plug if you've been up to anything, like
I think you're kind of low key and off the radar.
I haven't seen anyone attacking wildly on the internet randomly
at all times.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, not really doing anything lately, just kidding. I'm running
for Congress, running for Congress in the ninth District of Illinois.
If you want to know more about what I'm about,
you can go to Catfreillinois dot com. That's Kat with
the K. Can you tell that I have said this
little spiel quite a few times.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yeah, huh, yeah, no, that's fair.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Today, we just took our as we're recording this or
I guess in two days, because we need to make
sure that the illusion of time is there. A few
days later, Yeah, we made our discords over republic and
so you can join that in the volunteer section of
our website because we need help from all people, local, remote,
We really want to try to do this progressive grassroots
(46:42):
approach that's not only like not taking corporate money, but
we're trying to spend our money in ways to improve
as many lives as we can along the way. So
if you've got a few bucks to spare, consider chipping
in at Catfreillinois dot com. And if you have some
skills or I've thought, why don't politicians do this? Like
we want to get creative, we want to get weird.
So come volunteer, hang out on the discord and as always,
(47:03):
listened to this podcast.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
All right, yeah, what else do I want to plug?
I don't know, take care of each other, don't let
them suspend habeas corpus. And also I can be somewhat
sectarian as every leftist or whatever it can be, but
it's not. We got to be as careful about as possible.
We have to de escalate all conflict that isn't with
the enemy. What I try to do is be like,
(47:28):
is this person trying to enact systems that kill me
and or everyone that I care about and or other
people that I've never met that still shouldn't get murdered.
And if the answer is no, they're probably not my enemy,
and I probably want I'm in conflict with them, rather
than trying to find all the ways that they're wrong,
try to find common ground.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Unless their boyfriend is the CEO of The Onion. Oh yeah, no, okay,
spark that person. Could you imagine someone running a satire
website is dating someone that's just a moral as far
as I can you imagine, especially if they've been dating
for years? Yeah, what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Yeah? Absolutely? I will say though, like it's funny because
in my mind, as soon as someone's like, oh, what's
the journalistic integrity of the Onion supporting you, I'm like, well,
it's not journalism. It is a fucking comedy website.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
It's America's finest news source. Let's be clear here.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yeah, there are a lot of Times when the onion
is more correct than the New York Times, Like, there's
some stuff that I've like. I remember twenty some years
ago when Schwarzenegger was elected in California, the onion headline
was a strong man elected leader of world's fifth largest
economy or whatever. You're just like, yeah, no, that's that's
(48:34):
just the news that happened.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
That's just the news that happened.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
So we live in a clown world. So maybe the
clown news is the real news. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Oh my God, to put the clown creators in Congress.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Yeah, anyway, we'll see you all next week. Unless we
have no habeas corpus.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
I won't see you next week, but I like seeing
you this week, So thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, it was nice to see you all right, Hi everyone. Bye.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
Goolezonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
You're weekly reminder that I have a podcast that comes
out twice a week, so it's actually twice a week
reminder that I have a podcast. It's also a show
where we talk about stuff, and we talk about that stuff,
usually to a guest. And this week my guest is Katabugazala,
and she's cool and she's my guest, and she's also
(00:25):
running for I keep thinking Congress means senate.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm running for the US House. Yeah, the ninth District
of Illinois. And Hi, I'm Kat.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Nice to have you. We also have a producer named
Sophie Hi. Sophie Hi, Sophie Hi, and our audio engineer
is Eva Hi Eva Hi Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Thank you for listening to our voices are The musical.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Was written force by un Woman. And this is part
two on another episode about the things they're trying to
take away from us, in this case Habeas corpus Uka.
They're not allowed to throw you in jail unless they
think you did something, which is such a fundamental right
that they literally didn't even think they had to explain
it in the fucking Constitution. They only had to explain
(01:12):
how to suspend it in the time of crisis. In
part one, we talked about hard boiled egg, who wants
to take it away from everyone? And I'm just actually
not above making fun of certain people. I like, I
guess I never really thought it was above making fun
of certain people. I think when people are trying to
eradicate you, that's like a nice thing you can do
(01:37):
is only make fun of them. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
As someone that grew up conservative, like someone comes in
good faith, like if you're ignorant, Like yeah, like ignorance itself,
Like you don't know what you don't know. I mean
I didn't know about like the Dakota people being executed.
I had no idea about that. Yeah. But like if
someone's trying to tell you to justify your existence, you
don't have to do that. Yeah, we should just understand
that we don't need to take in good faith and
(02:00):
as people are idiots.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I think that's such a good point. Is like specifically
around good faith, is like there are people who like
don't know things, and I don't know things. I learned
that every week. I read a ton of books and
essays and articles every week, and I learned so many
new things. And yeah, if you can engage with someone
in good faith, engage with them in good faith. I
(02:24):
do believe in talking to people and figuring out our
differences and shit, and some people are trying to kill
us all and I'm being real nice if all I
do is call them hard boiled eggs, you know. Yeah,
some part one we talked about Stephen Miller and Trump
administration talking about getting rid of the most basic right
in the concept of a legal system. And so we're
(02:48):
talking about where that concept of a legal system came
from English common law, which means we have to talk
about England, which historically is not my favorite thing, but
sometimes it's kind of interesting. And it's interesting when you
don't look at so and so begat so and so
and then they built an army to fight so and so,
(03:09):
but instead look about like what peasants were doing, and
the fact that everyone started off not as colonial people,
even the English, because they were called the British at
the time. Okay, British history a long ass time ago,
like BCE or whatever. Celtic people lived on the island.
They weren't the first people to live there or whatever.
(03:30):
But we're going to start with them. The southern trunk
of the island what's now England was a Celtic group
of people known as the Britons. They spoke the Celtic
language Brittonic. In forty three AD, Rome was like you're
in the Empire now, and they called it Britannia and
they held it until the early four hundreds. Usually when
people talk about Rome leaving because people call the time
(03:52):
afterwards the Dark Ages, which is a lie, and every
historian will roll their eyes if you say the Dark Ages.
But I really like it because it's really metal sounding,
but it's presented as this abandonment, right the Romans were
busy elsewhere, they couldn't keep up the colony. Britannia fell
into ruin in darkness, but at least one historian I've
read a man named Tony Dyer who's pamphlet Anglo Saxon Democracy.
(04:14):
We're actually going to talk about him and what he's
up to these days at the very end of this episode.
It's actually really interesting. He wrote a pamphlet called Anglo
Saxon Democracy about fifteen years ago. It's one of my
main sources for this part of the story, and it
presents a very different example of how even the Roman
abandonment could have gone down in three eighty three. This
(04:35):
is what I was saying earlier about I live in
the past instead of the present. I'm like, I spent
all day reading about three eighty three AD or whatever.
I'm like, I don't know what's happening in the twenty
first century. In three eighty three, Rome started pulling back
its troops because they were needed elsewhere. And then in
the year four oh six, the quote unquote barbarians crossed
the Rhine and started heading towards Rome. So by fourteen
(04:56):
ten there's barely any troops left in Britannia. Basically, by
fourteen ten, the Romano British, because they're no longer just
the British. They've integrated with each other in various ways
over hundreds of years. They're like, get the fuck out
of here, we can do this for ourselves, right, And
there's this whole movement I hope to come back to
(05:17):
on this show, mostly in Gaul what's now France, especially Brittany,
the chunk of northwest France. That shit confused me for
a million years. The fact that the Normans do get
their name from Norway, but they're from France, and then
Britannia is part of France. It's just like it's fucking
speaking of not having enough names, a bunch of people
teamed up into massive peasant armies the bakude from a
(05:39):
Gaulish word for fighters, and these were people who are
tired of high taxes and low benefits basically like Rome
coming and taking their money and not actually providing social services,
because governments should provide social services. That's the exchange for taxes.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Hello, yeah, say it again. Brought up people in the back.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, and then there's a lot of upright scenes if
you don't give people social services and just take their money.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
It's one of those things too where people are like
like the libertarian right is just like, oh, taxes are
the problem, and you're like, well, tax is the fun.
Certain shit is like I don't mind that we all
collectively keep the roads maintained and make sure people have
houses and don't die. That sounds great.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I think that's good. Yeah yeah, but like what if
we all like paid our fair share, like all of us,
like every one of us to live in a society.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, And it wasn't a way to extract money from
people and put it towards it, like, oh, I don't
know fucking Elon Musk's various schemes to take money from
the government for carbon credits or whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
As someone that was laid off because of Elon Musk
and just finish my taxes as a freelancer.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Ooh, you got to pay double.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I got to pay double and I am on a
payment plan with IRS. Oh fuck yep, first year I've
had to do that. Yeah, check out my financial disclosures
if you're curious. Seeing an independent contractor and having to
pay taxes in this country is defly a villain origin story.
That's like yeah, yeah, it's wild. And then like having
to fill out of public financial disclosure form like the
House Ethics Committee like you have interest and it's like
(07:08):
one to two hundred dollars and like the House Ethics
Committee literally is like you're a broke bitch. Cool.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, So independent contractors paid double taxes and do whatever everything.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Podcasters in Old England were also doing.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
That, yeah, exactly. Yeah, And we know about these peasant
uprisings in France and we also know that they kind
of went to Spain, like a lot of places at
the fringes of the Roman Empire. The argument is that
they were probably there in England. There's not a lot
of written sources during the quote unquote dark ages, and
that is the one part that is true. Is the
first couple hundred years after the Romans leap, there's like
not a lot of people writing shit down. But people
(07:44):
are like, we don't like fucking giving roam our money
and not getting anything back. And some of those people
were enslaved who joined these peasant armies, and so they
had an extra reason to hate the economic arrangement of
the time that said, getting rid of Rome does not
get rid of slavery. Slavery stays threat the entire story
we're telling, it starts transitioning to more like surf, dumb
(08:04):
and stuff in the eleventh century. Anyway, people argue about
the intentions of the Bakudai, who I don't know how
to pronounce because it looks like a Latin thing, but
it's actually from a Gaulish word, and I don't fucking
understand Gaulish. But people try to argue and like slot
them into various things. They're nationalists, they're the people who
love France, and they're therefore probably fascist, but in a
(08:26):
good way. According to that story, they're Marxists, they're Christians.
There's a lot of people, i'm sure, who are arguing
that they're like anti civilization pagans, but in a good way. Whatever.
They're peasant uprisings. I like them. I don't know what
the fuck they're doing. They seem to have wanted to
return to pre Roman traditional methods of cooperative land ownership,
(08:47):
and it's quite likely that the British equivalent was part
of driving the Roman government off the island. And I'm
going to say the Roman government because it doesn't seem
to have been about driving the Roman ethnicity off the island,
because modern conceptions about ethnic purity don't apply well to
pre modern people. And I know probably a lot of
right wing dick bags aren't listening to this show. But
(09:09):
if you are and you romanticize, like ye old the
Dark aged sword shit, you're just wrong if you then
turn it to Nazi shit. Is my argument. The Roman
government's gone now the Romano British people remain, and that's
when they start doing really cool shit. First they have
to get by some accounts invaded by modern historical understandings
(09:30):
they just get all ethnically and culturally mixed up. Is
a combination of rating and migration from the Angles and
the Saxons. The origin of the Anglo Saxons or these
two Germanic groups. Another term that historians generally hate is
Anglo Saxons.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, it's kind of interesting to me. Okay. They absolutely
agree that there were Angles and Saxons, and they are
Germanic people, and they started living in France and England basically,
and they started settling a bunch of places, but they
didn't replace the population. They're only a tiny percentage of
the population. And so there is a cultural thing of
(10:06):
like the Germanic influence, but it's not as much as
people think. And so everyone who's like a proud Anglo
Saxon from England probably isn't. They're probably just wrong. And
I think that's funny because then the Wasps aren't actually wasps,
and the Angles and the Saxons they start invading and
settling a bunch of places. The Saxons actually started arriving
(10:28):
before Rome even left, but it wasn't quite colonization. They
would settle somewhere and the culture would shift but not
in a like you're part of the Roman Empire now
it wasn't like haha, the Germanic Empire has expanded the
same Germanic groups are similar ones like the Franks started
showing up in gaul what's now frank Sorry France, but
(10:50):
the France comes from the word Frank, right, the Franks
gave their name to France, and therefore the name of
the French language. But interesting at least to me, and
possibly that's that. What else? But I find this shit
fucking fascinating. French itself, the language doesn't come from the
Frankish Germanic language. French the language because it's a Romance language, right,
(11:10):
whereas English is a Germanic language. French mixes Vulgar Latin
with Gaulish in its roots.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, I think the funny pronunciation of France it's very
different than all the other Romance languages. Yeah, I think
that's the Gaulish influence. But I read a bunch of
articles about it, and they're all written for linguists. I'm
not a linguist.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Someone that's a linguist listening to this tag me and
backpi this last note.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, and if you're telling us that we're wrong. It's okay.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I didn't say anything. It would be you that's wrong. Yeah,
because once again on.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Perfect Actually you sent the script to me before we started.
How can we am I not supposed to tell anyone
that that you wrote this, that.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I wrote this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I wrote this. Yeah,
this is what I've been studying my congressional campaign on. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, absolutely none of that is true for the people
who take everything too literally. In England, it was the
Germanic language that won out English. The language wiped out
the Celtic language of Brittonic, although Welsh survived as an
offshoot of this.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Oh but Brittonic is such a cool name. I know
that's also an envy name for sure, one hundred percent right.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, absolutely, And it was someone who was named Brittany
and they changed their name to Brittonic and I support you.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So because English one, people tend to assume, oh, they
got rid of the Britons, right, they're wiped out, and
that's just not true at all. Modern DNA analysis confirms this.
To quote that historian Tony Dyer quote, rather than a
(12:48):
mass genocide and almost total population replacement to create England,
The reality is that even in England, the Anglo Saxons
remained a minority, outnumbered by Romano British quote unquote natives.
In fact, many geneticists now agree that somewhere in the
region of seventy percent of the genetic makeup of the
population of England can be traced back to the Paleolithic
period hunter gatherer population, basically meaning that these invasions added
(13:14):
slightly to the genetic diversity but didn't wipe anyone out.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, no, totally right. I don't like playing games about
genetics and bloodlines is like a general rule. But it's
important that a popular understanding of this era tends to
be wrong, and that basically people who are like, ah,
this is the way it is and has always been,
the strong replaced the weak, you know, like the fucking
conquered not stolen people. Have you ever seen these? I
(13:40):
don't know how much of your time you spend countering
Nazi graffiti, but there's like stickers that Nazis put up
that say conquered, not stolen with a picture of America,
you know, and they're like, this is just the way
it is, this is our human animal nature. No, you're
just fucking Nazis right, Like, there are examples of this
happening throughout time, but there's so many examples of even
(14:02):
like fucking Viking ass raiders who kill and slave and
do all kinds of horrible shit, still not genociding people
to replace them, but instead eventually cohabitating the area. No
modern comparisons need to be drawn about any current geopolitical.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Everything has only happened one time.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, totally, So these dreaded dark ages come and popular
imagination has a time of chaos and anarchy and bloodshed
and everyone getting wiped out and rule of the week
by the strong, until one day all power will be
centralized and everyone becomes Christian and monarchy sets everyone straight.
But that's not what said everyone's straight. What set everyone
(14:40):
straight was the sweet, sweet deals that we are offering
you are listeners, where actually there's almost never any deals
in any of our ads.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
They've gone through millennia to come here.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, that's right. That's why this episode is brought to
you by the well I forget the name of it,
and so the sponsor is going to be mad, But
I belie leave the Celts. I think it was the Celts,
but maybe it was the picks. I don't know. They
had a throwing axe and it was really neat and
the people at the front of the battle would throw
the throwing axe and it would bounce, and everyone's gonna
(15:10):
be mad at me for not knowing the name of this.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I want to bounce you throwing.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, so you throw the axe as you're like running
into battle, usually naked, maybe be covered in blue or whatever,
and then it would bounce and then it would kind
of like cause chaos as it bounced through the ranks
of the enemy.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
I just have like a very large axe that Robert
gave me. That sounds faut, right, Yeah, that's pretty good.
It's engraved on one side it says fuck you and
on the other side it says pay me. It's really
kind of amazing. But I don't think it would bounce
because it weighs more than Anderson.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I will say, if you ever have to home defend,
don't use that because it'll look really bad for your
self defense case.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Here's ads.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah they are and we're back, and I want to apologize,
dear listener, I have led you astray. I implied that
the Francesca the throwing acts that I was just discussing.
I implied that it was Celtic. It was not. It
(16:18):
was traumatic. It gets its name from the Franks, so
really just the opposite side of the conflicts. I was
just discussing. And one, I know, they're really pretty. They
have a kind of a curved head a little bit.
They're like, they're cool. Yeah. Anyway, I just want to
apologize to Francesca. Anyone named Francesca. You have a pretty
(16:41):
cool name. You can be thrown into battle and cause
chaos among the enemies, which is a neat thing to
be able to do. Or you can wield a Francesca
as Francesca. You have so many options. Anyway, instead of
actually being a period of there is warfare and shit,
like it's not like peaceful happy times, but like you
actually have a period that has the origins of a
(17:04):
lot of the better parts of Western political structure, because
when peasants and shit kick roam the fuck out, they
return to what can be understood as a plan or
tribal structure by and large, Specifically, to quote Tony Dyer again,
quote it is probable, and a lot of the probables
around the seat. He provides tons of evidence and shit
(17:25):
that I'm just not going to get into about like
where there's mounds and forests and what has been abandoned
and what hasn't or whatever. But there again, not a
lot of writing during this period. It is probable that
following the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, the
local population regained control of their own territories, returning to
a form of governance based on kindred groups working with
other kindred groups, and a relationship in which local people
(17:47):
made local decisions whilst also contributing to a wider political territory.
And so the reason I'm calling it bottom up instead
of just like purely decentralized is most decisions are happening
at all local level, and some decisions are happening at
a larger level. Just like No, yeah, I mean I
would argue that we're kind of top down.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But yeah, I've been like a lot of like really
impactful stuff that you don't even hear about topics with
the local and state life.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
No, totally, And like a very good and active thing
that needs to be done is to continue to try
and remind democracy that it fundamentally should be a bottom
up thing, or it is a less democratic The more
top down it is, the less democratic it is. And
this is a pattern I've seen again and again, no
matter what time or place I look. When you get
rid of empire, what replaces it is rarely warlordism, although
(18:34):
I think it is sometimes warloadism, and I just won't read
those books as much. But you get time and time
again bottom up democratic assemblies, and no one ever talks
about community assemblies, and then how they start federating with
one another to make larger decisions. But this happens over
and over again, and that's what they were doing in
(18:54):
Dark Age is Britain to greater or lesser degrees. And
you can trace a direct path, and I'm going to
over the next however long we're continue to record, you
can trace a direct path from these local assemblies to
the modern parliamentary system of Western democracy, and you would
form kinship groups, and those groups would form larger groups.
And specifically, these groups have a lot of what we
(19:17):
talk about a lot on the show, the commons, the
thing that gets stolen from us by the enclosure, which
is in this ye oldly dark Age. I'm gonna keep
calling it the dark Ages. So every historian's already mad
at me, But it's just like the nice period of
Gothic spookytom and the sun never came out. Well yeah,
I know, Well it was England. I've only been there
(19:40):
a couple of times. And when I like Land, you
just like move through a sea of clouds and then
just like are like in the soup of England when
you get there. Nearly all privately owned land and resources
were owned by an entire clan. There was like private
ownership of land, but it was communal private ownership of
land or potentially a whole village. But everything that wasn't
privately owned was the commons. Places you could graze your sheep, woods,
(20:04):
you could go hunt and gather wooden rivers to fishing.
And importantly, this structure looks a lot like what both
Celtic and Germanic groups would be familiar with going back
to at least the second millennium BC. So the Britons,
the Angles, and the Saxons could all be like, ah,
this just makes sense. We don't have a fucking empire
(20:26):
over us anymore, so we go back to doing this thing.
And this part matters to me because again, like anytime
I read about like the idyllic folk past or whatever
they literally get called folk, moot the organizations they have.
I worry about the kind of shit that Nazis like romanticizing.
So I want to point out again to my imaginary
Nazi listeners made it this far.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Nazis love those podcasts, obviously.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I know, right, I will say, compared to like writing,
very few people hate listen to podcasts, and I think
that's saved me a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Like listening to a whole last podcast. Yeah, to hate listen,
that's just exhawesome.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, I mean, you did media the right wing shit
for a very long time. You did that hard one,
so I would know exactly. So anyone hate listening, you
might be thinking. Yees see, when they kicked out the
Roman foreigner, they had a good idyllic utopia. Again, First
of all, they didn't kick out ethnically Roman people. A
lot of them were ethnically Roman. They moved to a
(21:19):
traditional style of governance for their own area. But both
Germanic and Celtic traditions have a bunch of laws saying
that strangers are welcome to become members and like citizens
and even nobility in any of these groups. So fuck
you Nazus.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
How do you become nobility? Oh?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I want to find more about it. I was like
that part. I tried to look a little bit more.
I think that there's this idea that be really hot. Yeah, honestly,
probably a lot of the like becoming nobility in a
smaller area is around the sort of person in charge
giving you like special privileges or whatever and being like
you're my favorite basically, and it does fight against the
egalitarianism of this area. And there's this give and take
(22:01):
between egalitarianism and a noble system that's like constantly happening.
But probably the answers that be really hot. Yeah, actually, okay,
I know anthropology is really dangerous when you like compare
one group to another, right, But in our episodes about
the weird pirate utopias on Madagascar, it did talk about
(22:21):
a lot of people becoming nobility not by showing up
and being like haha, I'm in charge, but literally by
showing up and being like I am now part of
your organizational system and people being like, great, you're like
a weird foreigner. You're a noble now because you're interesting,
you have different stories and shit. Yeah, and there's a
lot of like chiefs marrying their daughters to foreigners and
(22:42):
stuff like that, and so it might be through a
similar way. But whenever you compare anthropologies, you're playing dangerous games.
So a regional level above this hyper local level, which
was the kingdom, which was not like England. Yet there's
all these little kingdoms and there's general a king. I'm
not a big fan of kings. Historically, Tolkien would fucking
(23:04):
love this shit and probably did. This is probably how
he because he's like a weird anarcho monarchist, which is
absolutely a contradiction in terms, but he's interesting in the
strange guy. When you imagine a king of England, you're
imagining wrong. When you imagine these folks at the beginning,
by the end of this era, you're thinking, right. There
(23:25):
was a council of wise men, the Watan especially what
you're running for, and they would meet at the witten
Moot to advise the king and serve basically as the
highest court in the kingdom, and most likely they met
to elect the king. There's arguing among historians about whether
or not kings during this era were elected directly by
(23:46):
the Wittan, or the Wittan would get together to sign
off on like yeah, yeah, the king's eldest son is
the heir as like a formality. But a tenth century
abbot named Alfrick, which is a good name. It's got
that ae at the beginning. Bring that back, don't. It's
probably bad. It's everyone he probably wants to do. That
is bad, but it's not boring. Alfrek wrote, quote, no
(24:09):
man can make himself king, but the people has the
choice to choose as king whom they please. But after
he is consecrated as king, he then has dominion over
the people and they cannot shake his yoke off their necks.
So the Witan, though, actually did depose at least two
kings in the eighth century. They were like, no, you're
(24:30):
not doing right, bias, you gotta go. The king in
this period had a mandate from the people, and so
there is a comparison that can be made to these
early kings with a mandate from the people to a
modern politician. That can't be made to a later king
right only centuries later, as the Church gains more power,
(24:51):
does the mandate explicitly come from heaven instead the earlier
kings were selected ostensibly. I'm sure that this was absolutely corrupt,
and they're shitty kings everywhere. And I'm not defending monarchy,
but the earlier kings were selected because people were like,
we want someone to keep us safe and keep this
whole place peaceful. We think this guy will do it.
(25:12):
Over the centuries, as Tolkien predicted, power will corrupt people.
The kings will start amassing more and more power. In
the earliest days of this, you don't actually owe the
king anything unless he shows up, Like you just kind
of most of the year, you're these autonomous villages doing
your own autonomous thing, and then every now and then
the king rolls through and he's like, hey, I'm the king,
and people are like, huh, all right, I guess you're
(25:34):
in charge today. How long are you stay in You're
gonna be here long And they're like, you know, they
give him us taxes and shit, and it's like having
really annoying in laws. Yeah, totally, the king is you're
in laws. You can have some of our stuff and
be in charge for a minute. I guess, because by
and large, more of the power resided, even though there's
(25:55):
the higher court. More power resided not with the wits
and moot, but with the folk moot, the people's gathering,
the assembly. Basically these were at much smaller levels. I
am unclear who could vote in these assemblies. The inference
again not a lot of writing. The inference is that
it was free men because there's slavery in this period,
although most slavery in Britain during this period is not
(26:18):
people in these villages owning people, but instead people in
these villages getting stolen and sold. So hooray, and women
were likely allowed to be there but not vote. Is
the best I can tell by comparing if it's analogous
to an Icelandic thing that we do have more information
about anyway, the other Germanic ones, these assemblies, they weren't
(26:40):
called vocalots. They were called things, and that's where the
word thing comes from. So if you're like, hey, you
go into the thing, you're actually more accurate than if
you're like, hey, can you hand me the thing? Because
the thing was a gathering.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Interesting, Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I love learning etymology like those.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I know, and like half of this is just about like,
isn't language neat The folk moot would meet to sort
out the taxes and conscription into the army, and hear
out grievances basically to put people on trial. These were
trials based on evidence and testimony and involve neutral third parties.
So this idea of like, ah, back in the day,
(27:17):
it was Game of thrones, and whoever had the biggest
sword is innocent or whatever. It's not the thing. That's
not what happens at the thing. Thank you, thank you,
I appreciate it to laugh. And these were trials based
on evidence, and then everyone involved, everyone who had voting
power at the thing, they would all vote on the verdict,
(27:38):
and it wasn't like innocent or guilty, but instead, okay,
what do we do with this situation?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Gotcha?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Because it wasn't a punitive legal system, it was a
I can't really say it was like a restorative Actually
probably would have identified as more of a restorative justice system.
I'm not trying to claim it's perfect. I get you,
but we literally can watch pative trials come in hundreds
of years later. The punishment was usually a fine of
some sort, which is best as I can understands. You
(28:07):
then swear an oath to make the victim hole again
or their family hole again if you killed someone or whatever. Right,
and this oath that you've sworn. Both sides of your parents'
family is also on the hook for it. So you
do something bad, you get fined a ton of money.
Not only are you on the hook for it, but
so are like all your aunts and uncles and your parents,
(28:27):
and so they're all mad as shit at you. And
so that's kind of part of how it handles making
people be better, is you don't want to drag your
entire family into this. Yeah, such oaths were not taken lightly.
At the beginning of this Everyone's a Pagan. By the
end of this, everyone's a Christian. Everyone involved takes oaths
very seriously. To quote the historian hr Loin quote, a
(28:54):
freeman in one of our early territorial kingdoms still bore
the characteristics of a free member of a tribe. He
was oath worthy and weapon worthy, a person of repute,
possessed of a free kindred, and capable of playing a
full part in the army in the courts. Such a
part involved much more active self help than would have
been considered proper or seemly in a later age. He
(29:16):
fulfilled his duties without an elaborate hierarchy or officialdom to
sustain him and they actually started with the folk moots
and then developed the Witten moot, the bigger one. Well
actually I don't know if it's like physically bigger, but
the bigger region one. And this is the fucking origin
of the idea of parliament for England, and therefore everywhere
(29:37):
that England colonized and sent all of its good and
bad ideas to people. Have it backwards. There wasn't autocracy,
and then slowly people added layers of democracy. It was
that they added layers of hierarchy to their democracy in
an effort to make larger scale decisions, probably for good reasons,
(29:58):
but power corrupts and sla The kings centralize their authority,
usually through the need to raise and maintain militaries. However,
the power that has corrupted us is the power that
could be available to you through purchasing the goods and
services that support this show. Because that's how we all
(30:19):
got where we are today, was doing whatever the next
ad tells us to do. Hi, Margaret Kiljoy, here boy.
The world sure is a mess right now?
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Seems like every day there are more and more reasons
to get out into the streets and protest. That's why
when I get arrested, there's only one strategy. I trust,
I shut the fuck up. I say, I would like
to remain silent, I would like to talk to my lawyer,
and then I shut the fuck up. In the United
States of America, it's constitutionally protected and recommended by the
National Lawyers Guild. That's shut thch f u c k up.
(30:57):
Once again, that sah thche fuc k up. Because you
can't talk yourself out of custody, but you can talk
yourself into a conviction.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and
situations giving them an address expedient in most circumstances. Never
discuss the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor,
or therapist. Posting pictures of protests and actions on social
media may lead to complications. If you have already talked
to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops, call
your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of more
serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to cops
(31:30):
does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are
for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
consult an attorney.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And we're back. Slowly, the system of democracy started getting
corupted by hierarchy and autocracy. After a while, the Folkmot
became the Hundred, which is a very hard term to google.
I'll have you know. Usually what I do is I
read about things in books whenever possible. But then I
like books have like just to tell you how the
sausage is made of the historical research I do for
(32:00):
the show, Dear Listener, the books will have the more
in depth information and often the like more complicated takes,
but because they're just literally older, like because I can't
read a book that was written yesterday, I can. Yeah, no,
I know it is because you're perfect, which is honestly
impressive that you're able to do that.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
So then I'm like searching more information about this. So
I'm like reading about how the Folkmot became the hundred,
and you know this piece I'm reading Anglo Saxon Democracy
by Tony Dyer. And then I'm like, all right, I
need to know more about that transition because I have
this one perspective and I try and compare with multiple perspectives,
and I wasn't able to find as much about that
transition just partly because an organization called the Hundred it's
(32:43):
fucking hard to google. I'm like, but why isn't there
more readily available information about this thing that happened in
one part of England and seven hundreds hyper fixations.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's what people don't understand about a history podcast is
that it only if your brain is set up to
hyper fixate on a new thing every week. So anyway,
the folk Moot became the Hundred, which is similar to
the Folk Moot. The peasants were still in charge, but
there's a royal official there running the whole thing, and
he's not making the decisions, but he's kind of like
(33:18):
the facilitator. And that slowly it's actually developed into the
shire system, which is the county system, which is why
everything is named sure, you know, like Hampshire whatever. I
don't know the names of the counties in England. With
the rise of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church,
shit started getting more formalized and more hierarchy was everywhere,
and I don't know how to pronounce hierarchy. I apparently
(33:40):
the king went from the person that all the wise
people agree should probably be in charge of keeping the
peace to kings are chosen by God to make Pagans
into Christians. And this is where the mandate of heaven
comes in. And the job isn't Yeah, different fucking mandates.
People don't talk about mandates enough. Like the idea of
like being like we elected politician to do this thing
(34:01):
on our behalf, you know, it is not we don't
elect fucking kings. Well they did, but that also wasn't great,
right we elect saying like, hey, we think you'll help
to get universal health care. Please go do that, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, and try out you can and like do a
job and talk to people and ask where they're at
and like the house. You know, as the US gets
bigger and bigger, it's more difficult to do that totally.
But like, if you're asking for this job, you have to,
like you have to act. I've been wondering. I'm like,
how do people do this for decades and decades? And
(34:38):
I'm like, the thing that's becoming very clear to me is, oh,
they just don't do a good job, like even if
they started for the right reasons. Like, this is tiring
and we're two months in and it's very fun and
I've met so many cool people, and it's like one
of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. But like,
first off, you know, the country, the constitution are you know,
(34:58):
legal systems should be dynamic and fluid, just like the world.
But also like doing this for a really long time,
like a really long time and doing it right that
has to be like emotionally exhausting, because like empathy is
a muscle that you flex and when you're representing like
five hundred and seven hundred thousand people, yeah, you got
to flex it a lot.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah. No, it makes sense because it's like you know,
in a smaller scale thing, it's much easier to have
a direct mandate a like if I am part of
a group that sends someone to a spokes council meeting,
we're like, all right, you are there to represent us,
and this is our position and that is the position
you will take there. But you're coming from a position
where like you don't have a consensus mandate. You don't
(35:40):
have everyone that you're you know representing, all agreeing on
the same thing. It's messy and it's worth using every
tool and toolbox to try and make the world a
better place. And so so kings mandate to heaven and
the kings start meeting out more and metting out, I
don't know, giving more shit to certain people. And they're like, oh,
(36:04):
you can collect taxes in the following area and own
the following chunk of everything, like the commons. It's not
the commons now. You can keep it as the Commons
if you want, but it's your shit, right folk land.
The commons started to become bookland, private land. It basically
made lots of little kings, people who could go and
take shit from the peasants and tell them what to do.
(36:26):
This is the rise of the nobility, which was the
king taking a direct note out of the Catholic Church's book.
This land allocation wasn't under control of local councils. So
the enclosure of the commons, which later led to capitalism,
was the death of this period of democracy. And to
me that's an important point because most tellings of the
(36:48):
story of democracy in Western Europe talk about it starting
with the rich people. And I want to say capitalism
was the death of democracy or the thing later built
to capitalism. And for anyone who's listening, when I say capitalism,
I don't mean the idea of buying and selling everything.
We don't live in a binary world where you either
of the fucking USSR or the USA. Capitalism whatever, capitalism
(37:10):
is a specific economic system, and it can be questioned.
The legal system becomes much more strictly formalized. Common law
basically means law that's built up by precedent rather than
the legislation. Legislation starts becoming more common and instead of
compensating victims, criminal justice moved to become more punitive. Suddenly
(37:33):
way more shit had the death penalty. I did while like,
I was like reading this glowing thing about Anglo Saxon democracy,
and I was like, was this the downside here? And
so I read a lot more about slavery. And one
of the things that could happen is if you owe
someone a lot of money, you basically saw yourself and
the like ostensibly non punitive system led to sometimes the
(37:54):
punitive thing of people being owned by people. And yeah,
all the people who have been given all this fucking
land and the right to tax people, the nobles in
the church got wealthy as shit. The next nail in
the folk coffin was the Viking invasions of the nine hundreds,
which led to a massive restructuring of England to support
(38:14):
the military to defend against the raiders. To quote Tony
Dyer again quote, the peasant's status began to change from
that of a free farmer to that of a subject
tenant with significant ongoing obligations of rent and service to
his lord. And then the final nail didn't come from
within England, though England was clearly moving in a more
autocratic direction with its monarchy. The final nail was the
(38:37):
Norman conquest of ten sixty six. Normandy is part of
the northwest of France and in the tenth century some
Vikings settled there and then christianized, and then in ten
sixty six a fuck ton of them invaded England, the Normans,
and they were successful and brutal, and they built pasty.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Can you imagine a race named Norman. We have Frank,
we have Norman, Like, what's next the Garys.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I know? And then the Garys are just murdering everyone
you've ever met. Yeah, not a good point that he's
like the most standard ass boring names.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yeah, they're like this is the Steves. Yeah, oh no,
the Ryans are coming.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
From All of their hair is surprisingly well kempt Brittonic
they're defeated by the non binary army of the Brittonics.
(39:37):
And yeah, so suddenly castles go from and again this
is an oversimplification, but castles go from being there to
like protect the population from invasion to subjugating the population
and being like, now where the the autocrats running around
in our little dystopia we're building, and we know that
this case they actually did successfully not change all of ethnicity,
(39:57):
but like conquer the economy. There's a book called the
Domesday Book, and it's an eleventh century record book of
like taxes and shit. It's just like who owns what,
and essentially everyone with money was Norman not English, like
basically like I think ninety percent of landed people were
the Norman invaders. They close a lot of the commons,
(40:19):
they enforced the law brutally, and it's Norman rule that
becomes the baseline authoritarianism that people, largely rich people, begin
to rebel against. And so the rich didn't event democracy,
they claimed it from the peasantry. That's my thesis, and
that when people one writes it wasn't for the first time,
it was drawing on something older, something ancient. So when
(40:42):
we demand habeas corpus. When we demand that we have
a fair system of justice and democracy, we are drawing
on something that has existed all over the fucking world
that literally predates civilization. And I promise I'll tell you
about this guy, Tony Dyer. Oh yeah, I haven't had
any named like cool people this whole fucking episode the historian.
(41:04):
I was like, what's this guy up to now? And
so I googled them, and there's a fair number of
people named Tony Dyer. But his pamphlet was put out
by the Bristol Radical Pamphleteers or something like that, And
so I was searching Tony Dyer Bristol and I found
that he is a Green Party politician who is currently
in charge of the city of Bristol, a city of
half a million people. He's not the mayor because the
(41:26):
city got rid of the position of mayor. He is
the leader of the city council. Now that there is
no mayor, the entire city council makes decisions instead.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
That's so cool, I know, I know, that's so cool.
And this is like today, like right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah. In twenty twenty four, he became the fucking all
of the articles about this were from last year, Like
that's awesome, And in an interview he said about this system,
decisions should be reached by consensus, collaboration, and compromise in
a public setting.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
That's how I run cool Zone.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, like and so like I had this moment where
I was like, I wonder if this is the same guy,
and I'm like, no, this is obviously the same man,
because it is what he wrote about as a historian.
He wrote about local democracy and making it be as
public as possible and as participatory as possible and like
(42:23):
a galitarian and shit. Yeah, and I'm sure it is
not perfect, but I like it didn't find the imperfect yet. Yeah,
if you're listening in Bristol, you might have completely different information.
But the Green led city council there has been focusing
on removing car infrastructure, improving walking and cycling infrastructure. Some
of the interview questions I found with him people being
(42:44):
like why do you hate cars? I like my car,
you know, and his answers are like, well, actually, you know,
we save lives this way and it's better and whatever,
and like hey, you're.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Being on a train. You don't have to do anything.
You can read.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
You just fun read a book. You can be listening
to this right here. Well, you guess you can listen
while driving, but it's less nice.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
You can listen and then stare at the thing going
like the little thing that scrubs, which is of how
everyone listens to a podcasts. They just stare at the
screen and they use it continues.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
But even more than enacting like green and progressive legislation
like removing car infrastructure, improving walking and psychling infrastructure, which rules.
I am most impressed not by when progressives and leftist
politicians enact leftist policies, but when they change the structure
of government to become more egalitarian.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, exactly, and sick.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah, someone who extensively studied the history of the region
and saw its radical democratic roots is working to put
them into practice. And so the surprise cool person of
today is the non mayor of a major city who
wrote a pamphlet that I read about ten years ago
that fundamentally changed my understanding of a lot of history. Yeah, sick, Yeah,
(44:01):
that's what I got. That's Margaret's theory of the development
of English common law. That it's like this is not
every all over the world. There's people who have democratic
traditions that they're drawing on right, and some of them
are similar to this and some of them aren't. But
unfortunately England then went on to you know, famously draw
random lines across the map that caused a huge chunk
(44:23):
of all the conflicts that are happening today.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
I've never heard of.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
This is a good I don't know if it's a meme,
if it's a video. I'm old there's a good thing.
That's like the like the English watching all of the
world be destroyed by lines they draw on the map
one hundred years ago, and it's a bunch of people
in pith helmets like skanking in the desert. It's very good, amazing.
(44:49):
So yeah, I don't know any thoughts. How are you feeling?
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah, I mean I feel good. I think democracy is cool.
I mean I didn't know about all this. Like when
you think about you know, English democracy, you think the
Karta and like this is really interesting. And also the
step of a like restorative versus punitive justice and like oaths.
It's just it's really fascinating to see how people handle things,
and especially in a system where you're not constantly living
(45:16):
under fear of having your life ruined by one thing
or another, whether that's Stephen Miller coming to arrest you
for having darker skin, or you know, crushing debt or
whatever else it may be. It's just really interesting to
see how different communities can work together and create these systems.
And I seriously had no idea about any of those.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
They call it the fucking Dark Ages. They don't talk
about it, you know, And yeah, and part of it
is because some of it speculative, right, like this is like, yeah,
but historians are I'm not a historian. Historians are good
at their jobs and it is a science, and they
like try to figure out, like we think this is
what happened, you know. Yeah, well you got anything you
(45:57):
want to plug if you've been up to anything, like
I think you're kind of low key and off the radar.
I haven't seen anyone attacking wildly on the internet randomly
at all times.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, not really doing anything lately, just kidding. I'm running
for Congress, running for Congress in the ninth District of Illinois.
If you want to know more about what I'm about,
you can go to Catfreillinois dot com. That's Kat with
the K. Can you tell that I have said this
little spiel quite a few times.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yeah, huh, yeah, no, that's fair.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Today, we just took our as we're recording this or
I guess in two days, because we need to make
sure that the illusion of time is there. A few
days later, Yeah, we made our discords over republic and
so you can join that in the volunteer section of
our website because we need help from all people, local, remote,
We really want to try to do this progressive grassroots
(46:42):
approach that's not only like not taking corporate money, but
we're trying to spend our money in ways to improve
as many lives as we can along the way. So
if you've got a few bucks to spare, consider chipping
in at Catfreillinois dot com. And if you have some
skills or I've thought, why don't politicians do this? Like
we want to get creative, we want to get weird.
So come volunteer, hang out on the discord and as always,
(47:03):
listened to this podcast.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
All right, yeah, what else do I want to plug?
I don't know, take care of each other, don't let
them suspend habeas corpus. And also I can be somewhat
sectarian as every leftist or whatever it can be, but
it's not. We got to be as careful about as possible.
We have to de escalate all conflict that isn't with
the enemy. What I try to do is be like,
(47:28):
is this person trying to enact systems that kill me
and or everyone that I care about and or other
people that I've never met that still shouldn't get murdered.
And if the answer is no, they're probably not my enemy,
and I probably want I'm in conflict with them, rather
than trying to find all the ways that they're wrong,
try to find common ground.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Unless their boyfriend is the CEO of The Onion. Oh yeah, no, okay,
spark that person. Could you imagine someone running a satire
website is dating someone that's just a moral as far
as I can you imagine, especially if they've been dating
for years? Yeah, what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Yeah? Absolutely? I will say though, like it's funny because
in my mind, as soon as someone's like, oh, what's
the journalistic integrity of the Onion supporting you, I'm like, well,
it's not journalism. It is a fucking comedy website.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
It's America's finest news source. Let's be clear here.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yeah, there are a lot of Times when the onion
is more correct than the New York Times, Like, there's
some stuff that I've like. I remember twenty some years
ago when Schwarzenegger was elected in California, the onion headline
was a strong man elected leader of world's fifth largest
economy or whatever. You're just like, yeah, no, that's that's
(48:34):
just the news that happened.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
That's just the news that happened.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
So we live in a clown world. So maybe the
clown news is the real news. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Oh my God, to put the clown creators in Congress.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Yeah, anyway, we'll see you all next week. Unless we
have no habeas corpus.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
I won't see you next week, but I like seeing
you this week, So thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, it was nice to see you all right, Hi everyone. Bye.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
Goolezonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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