My Turn: Mackubin Owens: The lie about America
By: Mackubin Owens
Deleted. America is a great exceptional nation founded on principles of equality by divine providence. Our Declaration of Independence is a great work and our constitution is unrivaled. Deleted
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The orgy of destruction that has occurred in the wake of George Floyd’s death has been justified by a lie — that the United States is irredeemably racist to the core. Unfortunately, our educational system has peddled this lie for more than a generation. It has now achieved official status by means of The New York Times’ risible 1619 Project, which claims that the United States was founded on slavery and racism.
The truth is exactly the opposite. America’s Founding — the real one, in 1776 — expressly rejected the argument that political systems should be based on oppression, including racial oppression. The essence of such systems was best summarized by the argument of the Athenians at Melos as recounted by Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian War: “Justice arises only between equals. As for the rest, the strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.”
Before the creation of the United States, the world was divided between those “born booted and spurred,” with the natural right to rule over others “born with saddles on their backs.” At the time of the American Founding, slavery was a worldwide phenomenon. Africans sold other Africans into the Atlantic slave trade. Philosophers may have condemned such injustice, but rulers continued to rule as they always had — the strong oppressing the weak; the master oppressing the slave.
The United States was founded on a different claim, articulated in the Declaration of Independence — that human beings are equal in their possession of natural rights and that, accordingly, no one has the natural right to rule over another without the latter’s consent.
The dilemma facing the Founders was that the United States had inherited an institution at odds with the principles of the Declaration of Independence — slavery. But as men of the Enlightenment, the Founders — even the slaveholders among them — believed that since slavery was both unprofitable and a relic of barbarism, it was on the road to extinction. With that belief in mind, the drafters of the Constitution compromised on the issue of slavery in order to secure the union necessary to preserve the infant Republic. But slavery persisted, and it took a war to end it.
That war was an attempt to fulfill the promise of the Declaration. As the late Harry Jaffa once wrote, “It is not wonderful that a nation of slave-holders, upon achieving independence, failed to abolish slavery. What is wonderful, indeed miraculous, is that a nation of slave-holders founded a new nation on the proposition that ‘all men are created equal,’ making the abolition of slavery a moral and political necessity.”
The Civil War and the abolition of slavery did not, of course, end racial prejudice and racism. Neither has the expansion of civil rights over the last century and a half. It is undeniable that we as Americans have not always lived up to our own principles. The unpleasant fact is that some people are racist. Many others harbor racial prejudice in their hearts. But while racism and racial prejudice persist among individuals, the founding principles of the United States are explicitly non-racist.
Prejudice is a part of human nature. In that regard, the example of Frederick Douglass is instructive. The former slave, an ardent abolitionist who had originally condemned the Constitution as pro-slavery, came to understand that it was instead fundamentally an anti-slavery document and that without it and the Union that it created, slavery would never have been ended in America. He also understood the role of prudence in politics. While he clashed with Lincoln during the war on policy regarding the employment of Black troops, he remarked that although Lincoln shared the prejudices of the white man, he was able to rise above them.
The principles upon which the United States was founded are fundamentally non-racist. As citizens, we are obligated, like Lincoln, to rise above our prejudices and strive to live up to our own principles.
Mackubin Owens, of Newport, a monthly contributor, is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
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The amazing thing about the 1619 project is that renowned historians told them how wrong the history was, particularly the claim that the us rebelled from England to protect slavery. Despite being told their was basis for the claim by the experts in the field, the Times went ahead and published the lie because it fit the anti-American narrative it was preaching.
Similar to its' Pulitzer Prize winning denial and coverup of the Soviet induced famine in 1931, the Times was rewarded for lying in the service of propaganda. Sad to see.
In 1772, Chief Justice Lord William Mansfield ruled that English law did not support slavery. In 1833, Britain passed the Abolition of Slavery Act. So, Frederick Douglass would have been better off if we had remained a British Colony. He would have been free five years before he escaped. All other slaves would have been freed 30+ years earlier than they were, and there wouldn't have been a massively bloody civil war; at least there wasn't one in the other British colonies. It is the case that Britian compensated slave owners, and the process was gradual.
I've only read the first paragraph; I suspect this article is going to be full of 'it'.
'Unprofitable'??? Slaves were the most valuable asset in the south.
Not really true, people did not see blacks as equal to whites.
Lincoln: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
I suggest that you read ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' by Thomas Jefferson 1785.
Jefferson did not believe that blacks or Native Americans were the equals of whites.
Thanks for pointing this out. 'Slave' appears 53 times in the document; there are a lot of column inches on the topic. What's a really interesting read is his description of black people starting on page 147. Fascinating.
a lie — that the United States is irredeemably racist to the core.
That lie has led to murder, riots, violence, shamming, the removal of statues by mobs and a lot of kneeling & apologizing. Ultimately once the lie that America and her founders were racist is accepted, there were be the claim that since it's authors were "racists" - the Constitution can be discarded. That is coming!
The article is lying when it proposes that some significant number of people believe this. There is still systemic racism, and we need to address it.
These statues do not have plaques under them saying "This shithead fought to keep blacks enslaved." Instead, they praise the valor, etc. of the shithead. Time for that crap to go, especially since the majority of these were put up as part of Jim Crow, way after the war. They are often cheap crap that crumples when pulled down.
If there is, it is the fault of the Democrats who founded the Confederacy, started a Civil War, lost that war, established the KKK,
hindered Reconstruction, and who, by word and deed and political action, kept the South essentially segregated until 1964.
Conservatives in all cases.
NOPE!
Time for that crap to go
Says the mob!
Given the percentages voting for/against below, the generalization is pretty much justified.
Reposted without permission (courtesy of Dismayed Patriot):
1964 Civil Rights Act Vote By Party And Region:
Note: "Southern", as used in this section, refers to members of Congress from the eleven states that had made up the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. "Northern" refers to members from the other 39 states, regardless of the geographic location of those states.
The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94–6%)
Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85–15%)
The Senate version:
Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%)
Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%)
Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)
People who've been subject to racism for 400 years are crybabies, whereas conservatives clutch their pearls over people kneeling at football games, or wearing BLM t-shirts on basketball sidelines. Conservatives march on their state capitals with weapons after 6 weeks of having to eat their own cooking. Conservatives are the ultimate snowflakes.
Not how it works. If a corporation does something very wrong, does a change in ownership/management absolve the corporation of responsibility for its wrongdoing? Hint, the answer is NO. We are the current owners of the USA, and we reap not only the benefits of that ownership, but the responsibility for its past.
What! You mean I'm not entitled to reparations and special treatment because of English depredations in Ireland in 1640s? At the very least, I should be able to loot the Cromwell Casino without punishment, right?
Do you really think that six weeks of quarantine is in any way comparable to 400 years of racism?
Funny statement for a supporter of a President who takes no responsibility/accountability for anything. Our country is severely damaged because of that feckless, corrupt, narcissistic, puerile moron. We were expected to handle the pandemic well because we had 2-3 weeks of additional time, virtually unlimited money, the best scientists, the best medical experts, and a manufacturing capability second to none. But, unfortunately for us, that magnificent machine was put in the hands of a narcissistic incompetent.
Everyone wants to have a thriving economy. Many countries have reopened successfully, but their leaders led. Quarantine should have been used to create the massive number of test kits needed to cordon off the virus while we wait for mitigating drugs and/or a vaccine.
Funny. If the people asking for the reparations are also the owners of said country, are they not obligated too then negating the benefits?
So you are a proponent of the feds (namely the POTUS especially) being responsible for everything and not State and local Governments? THAT my friend is truly not how it is supposed to work.
You don't personally have responsibility any more than the executives who take over a firm have personal responsibility. However, the country and the firm still have responsibility for what's been done. You can choose to shirk that responsibility. Fortunately, the majority of us accept responsibility and want to fix this problem.
Do you think we should have simply abandoned Iraq after attacking it and making a huge mess? That path certainly would have been a tremendous savings in blood and treasure, but it would also have been incredibly irresponsible.
The state governments do not have access to the PDBs, or really any of the intelligence that the federal government has. The federal government should set policy on things like social distancing and mask wearing. The state governments can't be expected to maintain 50 individual epidemic/pandemic response agencies, this would be incredibly expensive and redundant. The state governments only need a pandemic response plan. The state governments do not have access to the War Powers Act to create necessary supplies. The medical people handling the pandemic should be reporting data to a central authority so that what works/doesn't work can be discovered asap and distributed.
The countries that handled the pandemic well set a policy of social distancing and mask wearing early. Trump lied about the pandemic for almost 6 weeks. Trump undermined mask wearing by making it a political statement. Trump refused to use the WPA to create the PPE to protect medical personnel and test kits we would need to reopen safely. Six southeast Asian/Pacific countries, whose combined populate is almost ours, have leaders who led. Their economies were not destroyed, they are already reopened safely with massive testing, and their combined death toll is about one fiftieth of ours.
that's a fun game. I've gotten so many flags simply by restating what the poster I'm responding to wrote. The original post is of course, never flagged.
It is really dissicult to believe what you post when the first sentence is a lie.
Any thing that comes after that sentence will be used in defense of that lie, which means that your post is pure propaganda..
In other words you are going to tells us the riots were peaceful?