Posted on 08/26/2019 12:44:15 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Why did the Civil Rights movement succeed? It might have failed. In the U.S., unlike in South Africa, black Americans didn’t make up a huge, oppressed majority. They constituted just 11 percent of the population. Nor did they wield proportionate economic power — the heritage of slavery and Jim Crow had seen to that.
They weren’t well-armed. Gun control laws, which always disarm the most helpless, had made quite sure of that. The militant approach favored by Malcolm X, and later the Black Panthers, certainly frightened white people. But it could have just as easily provoked a savage backlash which would have set black Americans back.
That’s what had happened for centuries in Ireland, in the wake of most revolts against the British. It’s what happens to Christians who push back in the Muslim world today. And to Muslims who push back against the Chinese Communists.
No Historical Inevitability machine guaranteed the relatively swift dismantling of legal discrimination, and laws banning segregation. There is no “right side of History” because History doesn’t exist. That’s an Hegelian fantasy, lifted by Marx and painted red. Why the Civil Rights Movement Succeeded
No, the Civil Rights movement succeeded because its leaders tapped into the biblical theme of justice, the Christian concept of equality before God, and the high ideals preached in our founding. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not echo the Marxist rhetoric or Black Muslim fantasies current among many angry black citizens. Instead, he harped on each of those themes which united black Americans with white. King spoke of the “promissory note” issued all Americans by our founders, and simply, peacefully, said he had come to cash it in.
Why did white Americans overwhelmingly embrace that? Why accept the disruptive and sometimes frightening changes required to grant legal equality and dismantle private discrimination?
Fearmongerers among what some Southern newspapers unblushingly called “the white community” certainly stepped forward with warnings. They insisted that America’s founding documents, politics, and economy weren’t really built for equal treatment under the law. That our system had been founded to ensure white supremacy, whatever our founders had said in 1776 to win over the gullible French. White supremacy was not just a bug of the United States, nor even a feature. It was part of the motherboard, which ran the operating system. Rip it out and everything would crash and burn.
Back in 1960, this was the rhetoric of segregationists. Today we know it as the creed of embittered white nationalists. That’s no great surprise. What is a bit of a shock? The “Woke” left now parroting the very same talking points. Niche suburban presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, for instance. He said this month that the U.S. "was founded on white supremacy, and every single institution and structure that we have in our country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression, even in our democracy."
Richard Spencer says almost exactly the same thing. Maybe he and Beto should work together. They agree on our country’s history, purpose and essence. And they further agree that efforts to uproot racism would entail destroying the America we know, ripping up most of our institutions, root and branch. They only differ on a single point: Whether it’s worth it to do that.
Richard Spencer says almost exactly the same thing as Beto O’Rourke. Maybe they should work together. They agree on our country’s history, purpose and essence. And they further agree that efforts to uproot racism would entail destroying the America we know, ripping up most of our institutions, root and branch.
And indeed, if O’Rourke and Spencer were right about America, we’d have to step back and ask ourselves: Is it?
Is the promise of eliminating racial inequality worth the cost of blowing up … pretty much everything and starting our country from scratch? Do we have any guarantees that the new regime would turn out like happy, diverse, decentralized Switzerland and not … Yugoslavia or Zimbabwe?
No wonder white nationalist groups are growing in tandem as “Wokeness” converts elites. They’re feeding off the same set of theories, just drawing opposed conclusions. Rehabilitating Slavery?
In the same way, on a much larger scale, The New York Times is almost rehabilitating slavery. To mark the anniversary of slavery’s spread from Africa to North America, it launched the ambitious 1619 Project. Now there’s surely some validity to examining something as massive and criminal as slavery, which thoughtful Americans have called our country’s “original sin.” (American Indians might cavil at that.)
But the Times series seems devoted to proving a special polemical point. Namely, that the founders of the Confederacy were right on their central claim. Slavery wasn’t an ugly anomaly, an evil which the West had largely purged before 1492 under Christian auspices, then borrowed back from Islam.
Slavery wasn’t the inefficient, costly, alien institution that America’s founders and later the abolitionists would claim. It wasn’t on its last legs when the cotton gin gave it new life for a few more decades. It’s not true that America was bound to abolish slavery sooner or later, even without the Civil War. (As every other Christian country did, right down to Brazil.)
No, slavery was profitable, sustainable, adaptable, and at the very heart of capitalism, the Times series asserts. And the maintenance of slavery and white supremacy were part of America’s very DNA. The Times went so far as to call the introduction of slavery in 1619 America’s “true founding.”
I have to say I’m not all that surprised to see The Times take a sunny view of slavery’s value in building up a country. The last equally ambitious series The Times launched it called Red Century. That project entailed commissioning pieces that looked past the cruelties of Communism, both in China and Russia, and highlighted its achievements. Modernization, dam-building, canal-dredging, and all that.
And wouldn’t you know it, both the Soviet Union and Communist China did that the same way the South grew its cotton: through slave labor. It’s good, upon reading this, to remember what happened as Stalin enslaved and starved the peasants of Ukraine. The New York Times was publishing story after story that denied what he was doing. The famine was just a propaganda myth, The Times assured us. But in fact, the “collectivization” of agriculture was simply and purely the enslavement of Russia’s farmers, to feed the elites in the cities and fund their armaments projects.
Somebody up high at The Times sure seems fascinated by massive projects achieved through slavery. (See Paul Kengor’s sobering book Dupes for the long list of progressives who oohed and awed at the brutal projects launched by the Soviets, using enslaved and starving political dissidents.)
That’s not really too surprising. The New York Times has shown itself enamored of the Green New Deal, which would use a climate pretext to collectivize much of our economy. In the 19th century, men proved clear-eyed enough to see the convergence of socialism and slavery. Read slavery apologist George Fitzhugh. In his signature work, Cannibals All!, he argued that free labor in a free market was brutal and exploitative. Much worse than slavery, he claimed, which at least was paternalistic. It cared for elderly slaves, instead of casting them aside. Rather than abolishing slavery in the South, he called for the North to enslave its industrial workers. That would win workers better treatment. Some 70 years later, the Soviet Union would embark on that very experiment.
Maybe Fitzhugh wasn’t a paternalist crank. He was just Woke well before his time.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration.
Class, discuss.
Never go “Full Beto”
I do not know why “Beto O’Rourke” is discussed as if he actually even exists.
He is no one.
"Then we can say that we give to every man, woman and child the benefit of our free institutions, giving all the benefits of our common school and the freedom to worship God under their own vine and fig tree. Then will we see written, on the banner of our free, redeemed and disenthralled country, the sublime words written, not in the blood of men, but in the sun-light of truth, that "Righteousness exalteth a nation." It will fall like the morning dew on the lowly; it will descend like the showers of May on the poor; and like the sun it will shine on the good and bad, dispensing from the hand of plenty the blessings of a government founded on the principle of justice and equality.Link to Original Library of Congress Copy of Dr. Benjamin W. Arnett's "Centennial Thanksgiving Sermon" delivered in 1876, here."Standing on the threshold of the second century of the nation's life, with the experience of the past lying at our feet, we are saluted by the shout of triumph from the millions who left their homes and business and attended the Great Exposition of the skill and genius of the world, collected at Philadelphia. We were permitted to receive the greetings from the oldest to the youngest nation of the earth. Egypt and the United States clasped hands over the waste of 5,000 years, and lay their treasures at the feet of our civilization. The material, intellectual and mechanical deterioration of the one, and the unprecedented progress of the other, stand in great contrast; in all that makes the nation great,—morally, religiously and socially, the young nation is ahead.
"Following the tracks of righteousness throughout the centuries and along the way of nations, we are prepared to recommend it to all and assert without a shadow of doubt, that "Righteousness exalted a nation"; but on the other hand following the foot-prints of sin amid the ruins of Empires and remains of cities, we will say that "sin is a reproach to any people." But we call on all American citizens to love their country, and look not on the sins of the past, but arming ourselves for the conflict of the future, girding ourselves in the habiliments of Righteousness, march forth with the courage of a Numidian lion and with the confidence of a Roman Gladiator, and meet the demands of the age, and satisfy the duties of the hour. Let us be encouraged in our work, for we have found the moccasin track of Righteousness all along the shore of the stream of life, constantly advancing, holding humanity with a firm hand. We have seen it “through” all the confusion of rising and falling States, of battle, siege and slaughter, of victory and defeat; through the varying fortunes and ultimate extinctions of Monarchies, Republics and Empires; through barbaric irruption and desolation, feudal isolation, spiritual supremacy, the heroic rush and conflict of the Cross and Crescent; amid the busy hum of industry, through the marts of trade and behind the gliding keels of commerce.”
"And in America, the battle-field of modern thought, we can trace the foot-prints of the one and the tracks of the other. So let us use all of our available forces, and especially our young men, and throw them into the conflict of the Right against the Wrong.
"Then let the grand Centennial Thanksgiving song be heard and sung in every house of God; and in every home may thanksgiving sounds be heard, for our race has been emancipated, enfranchised and are now educating, and have the gospel preached to them!"
The following is a special excerpt from an earlier section of Dr. Arnett's Centennial:
"Withdraw from Christendom the Bible, the Church with its sacraments and ministry, and Christian morality and hopes, and aspirations for time and eternity; repeal all the laws that are founded in the Christian Scriptures; remove the Christian humanities in the form of hospitals and asylums, and reformatories and institutions of mercy utterly unknown to unchristian countries; destroy the literature, the culture, the institutions of learning, the art, the refinement, the place of woman in her home and in society, which owe their origin and power to Christianity; blot out all faith in Divine Providence, love, and righteousness; turn back every believer in Christ to his former state; remove all thought or hope of the forgiveness of sins by a just but gracious God; erase the name of Christ from every register it sanctifies—in a word annihilate all the legitimate and logical effects of Christianity in Christendom—just accomplish in fact what multitudes of gifted and learned minds are wishing and trying to accomplish by their science, philosophy, and criticism, and what multitudes of the common people desire and seek, and not only would all progress toward and unto perfection cease, but not one of the shining lights of infidelity would shine much longer. Yes, the bitterest enemies of this holy and blessed religion, owe their ability to be enemies to its sacred revelations - to the inspiration and sublimity of that faith which reflects its glories on their hostile natures. They live in the strength of that which they would destroy. They are raised to their seats of opportunity and power by the grace of Him they would crucify afresh; and is it to be thought that they are stronger than that which gives them strength? Can it be supposed that a religion which civilizes and subdues, and elevates and blesses will succumb to the enmities it may arouse and quicken in its onward march? Are we to tremble for the ark of God when God is its upholder, and protector, and preserver?” - Dr. Benjaming W. Arnett, St. Paul A.M.E. Church, Urbana, Ohio, Centennial Thanksgiving Sermon, November 1876
Both Nazism and Communism come from the same roots, Leftism. They have the same ideas of government control of all, with no room for limited government.
I would have like the author to elaborate more on the minimal contributions of Slavery to the U.S. economy. As he notes, it was on its way out.
It is bizarre to read leftists and black activist today, claim that slavery built America. Economically, it held America back. America, without slavery, boomed after the Civil war, except in the deep South, where slavery was attempted to be recreated with new institutions.
Very strong essay!!
Kind of supports the idea that political philosophy is less of a spectrum than it is a circle.
As one moves far enough ‘left’, they resemble more and more the folks that have moved really far ‘right’.
I hold this view myself. A portion of the circle being complete Libertarian damned near anarchy (or anarchy itself) and on the opposite side of the circle, cradle to grave, the state is everything totalitarianism.
Who is Richard Spencer?
King's path of non-violence succeeded. Segregation seemed well-entrenched and immutable in much of the South in the 1950s but it had collapsed by the late 1960s with only a handful of people killed (I don't know the total but I think it's in the low double digits), compared with over 600,000 dead in the Civil War. A lot more people died in race riots in the 1960s in parts of the country which had not had government-sanctioned racial discrimination.
Legally enforced segregation was ended.
However, the facts on the ground are _very_ different.
Here in the north our cities are heavily black and our suburbs and rural areas are almost entirely white.
Just saying....
Jimmy Carter in Why Not the Best? (ironic title of his campaign autobiography) talks about how white kids and black kids played together growing up in rural Georgia--until they were about 12 years old. Probably most of the Yankees who looked down on him for being a Southerner had never experienced that growing up.
I was told once by a white Southerner that the difference between whites in the North and in the South (pre-Civil Rights revolution) was in the South they didn't care how close blacks got as long as they didn't get too high, while in the North they didn't care how high blacks got as long as they didn't get too close.
My guess is that he has 100 followers, half of whom are FBI and half of whom are ANTIFA false-flaggers and provocateurs. Just my guess.
If Richard Spencer didn't exist, ANTIFA would have to invent him.
Maybe they did.
His children have got to be turkey baster babies. No offense to the innocent chidren, but their is NO way someone would willingly sleep with Bob.
There
My northern suburban elementary school (well after the Brown decision) was 100% white—the entire school—all grades.
When my parents allowed me to drive they handed me a map of the metro area and drew a red circle. They said if they ever found out about me driving the car anywhere within the circle I was grounded—permanently.
Now _that_ is segregation.
“Never go “Full Beto””
But if Type 2 diabetic, “Full Keto” may well get you off drugs, and almost certainly, at least off of Insulin. Anyway, each person has a choice.
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