‘The Very Best Form of Socialism’: The Pro-Slavery Roots of the Modern Left

Breitbart ^ | August 6th, 2013 | Jarrett Stepman & Inez Feltscher

[ProgressingAmerica]

The left has been waging a decades-long smear campaign against conservatives, painting them as bigots who have been on the wrong side of history on every issue, including America’s greatest sin – slavery. Vice President Joe Biden even went as far as to suggest during the 2012 election that a Republican victory would re-enslave African-Americans.

Leftist academics and historians have gone to great lengths to bury and distort the names and legacies of the men who defended the ugliest of American institutions; men whose philosophy on government, rights, and liberty, as it turns out, is uncomfortably close to their own. A modified but nonetheless similar tendency to subjugate continues to run through liberal policies today, replacing slavery with a cradle-to-grave entitlement system that trades liberty for material security, and the plantation master for government itself.

Ann Coulter, Kevin D. Williamson, Sean Trende, and others have pushed back on the idea that the modern Republican Party is primarily built on racism. However, a further examination of what makes the modern parties, and more importantly, the modern philosophies of conservatism and progressivism, is essential. Little attention has been paid to the thinkers who made Democrats the party of slavery in the lead-up to the Civil War, and their influence on modern liberal ideas.

Conservatives and liberals alike may be surprised to find that in reality John C. Calhoun, a South Carolina antebellum statesman and political theorist, and his pro-slavery allies, stand firmly as the intellectual forebears of the political philosophy of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and the modern left.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Ping............

[gotribe]

Of course the Dems are pro-slavery. They’ve enslaved everyone of us.

[Vaduz]

Uncomfortably close to their own indeed it’s why they keep rewriting history it helps in the dumbing down act and the MSM is eager to help.

[TEXOKIE]

It’s a long, but very interesting read as far as I had time to go. This was my take-away from it:

“Calhoun and the antebellum thinkers behind the positive defense of slavery in the nineteenth century represent the first major criticism of American founding principles – principles the American conservative movement seeks to preserve – as well as the intellectual seed for the later Progressive movement and what is considered modern-day liberalism.”

Thanks for the post.

[Maceman]

The only real objection that modern leftists have to chattel slavery in America is that the slaves were privately owned.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

She really should have cited George Fitzhugh’s real opus:
Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters (1857). It is in effect a founding document of the modern Democrat party, and was called by Abraham Lincoln, “The most dangerous book ever written.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh

Importantly, it has been in print ever since.

[celmak]

Bump.

This article should have gotten more attention being that there are so many that fly the Confederate flag - which was born out of those who wanted to keep slavery/socialism alive.

.

[celmak]

It’s old, but it’s good.