u/careysub

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/oct/09/why-is-hollywood-obsessed-with-the-tech-bro-baddie

I live in Rancho Cucamonga and have a hundreds of books of all types to donate. Any particular suggestions are welcome.

Hi:

What is the best book about the founding of the state of California? I am looking for a serious history of how the state came into being (acquisition from Mexico, then organization into a state), not its subsequent history.

For example Kevin Starr's Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 is NOT what I am looking for as its treatment of the straight-up history of this period is slight. Any book that mentions William Gwin on only one page and does not mention slavery once is one that ignores this history.

After the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 the Lower South began organizing secession conventions to declare themselves independent of the United States.

To forestall this Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden proposed a package of six amendments (the Crittenden Compromise) to protect slavery in perpetuity.

The first five secured the "rights" of slaveholders to hold slaves in expansive ways.

But the last amendment forebade any future generations from ever changing the provisions protecting slaveholding -- creating a perpetual dead hand controlling the lives of everyone forever.

It is:

>ARTICLE VI.

>No future amendment of the Constitution shall affect the five preceding articles; nor the third paragraph of the second section of the first article of the Constitution, nor the third paragraph of the second section of the fourth article of said Constitution and no amendment shall be made to the Constitution which shall authorize or give to Congress any power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any of the States by whose laws it is, or may be allowed or permitted.

The question is: Would this be considered a legally valid formula?

The idea that people now can make decisions that control the lives of all future people no matter what they want seems to me to be fundamentally flawed.