David Moody says,

>In the John Adams cantos, given a democratic system, he
>follows Adams in his pursuit of the laws proper to an American democracy.
>(To
>seek to rectify democracy is to honour its principles, not to despise it.
>To
>put it the other way, to attack the abuses or the failings of a democracy
>is
>not to attack democracy.)

I agree that "to seek to rectify democracy is to honor its principles."  I
agree also that to "attack the failings of a democracy is not to attack
democacy."  I agree with these statements one hundred per cent.  If Pound
had limited himself to pointing out the failings or abuses of capitalists
democracies, or if he had proposed solutions which were design to ENHANCE
democracy this conversation would be very different.

When you say "In the John Adams cantos, given a democratic system, he
follows Adams in his pursuit of the laws proper to an American democracy" I
am left with many questions.

Where is there any phrase in these Cantos which can even be remotely
interpreted as an endorsement of the democratic principles embodied in the
US constitution?  How can you assert that in these Cantos he follows Adams
"in the pursuit of laws proper to an American democracy"?  On what basis do
you make this statement?  Simply to talk about Adams, even at length, is not
to express a belief in the system of elective democracy, in checks and
balances, and the sovereignty of the people.  Does Pound endorse any of
these principles in the "Adams Cantos"?   What are Pound's specific
historical, political and economic concerns in this work?

Even more importantly, why does he pick Adams, of all people, to dwell upon?
   I was not aware of this until fairly recently, but a careful reading of
the documents of the era shows that Adams was the least democratic of all
our early Presidents.  He strove mightily to undermine the First amendment
through the Alien and Sedition Acts, and managed to jail a tremendous number
of journalists, until he was thrown out in the election of 1800.   He also
did his utmost to enchance the power of the military and destroy "faction"
(political opposition).

As the newspaper "Aurora" opined, regarding Adams attempts to bring about a
state of war between the US and France in 1798, over the XYZ affair:

That war is an evil . . . the refusal of a government to regard the
invocation of the people for averting a war would be sufficient to elicit a
suspicion that it is guided by other views than the public good, especially
as  a nation seldom makes an advantage by war, a government often does.
Soldiers and money , to the people the expense, to a government are the
fruits of war . . ."  (Aurora, Wed, April 18, 1798.   See the excellent 900
page book by Richard N. Rosenfeld called:  "AMERICAN AURORA:  A DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLICAN RETURNS --The Suppresed History of our Nation's Beginnings and
the heroic newspaper that tried to report it").

When Pound wrote the Adams Cantos he was expressing publicly in other
documents support for the war aims of the fascists.  He had given up, more
or less, his earlier critique of governments and arms manufacturers working
hand in glove to usurp wealth to undermine the public good (or at least, he
refused to apply such a critique to Mussolini, arguing instead that fascist
war aims were entirely justified).

Let me ask SOMEONE to try and explicate the supposed democratic content of
the Adams Cantos.  I admit that if a case for Pound's openness to democratic
notions can be made, it is probably best made by reference to the Adams
Cantos.  But I have yet to have seen it done.


Regards,

Wei


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