Posted on 09/22/2006 11:50:10 PM PDT by LouAvul
Edited on 09/23/2006 2:12:09 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Bill Cosby on Friday called on each American to contribute $8 to help build a national slavery museum amid the battlefields of the Civil War.
Cosby, who already has committed $1 million to the project, joined Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder on Friday in launching a new campaign to raise $100 million toward the Fredericksburg museum's $200 million price tag.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
...not again.
But consider the possibilities for endless grievance mongering -- the entire point of the effort.
I wonder if that great population of white Americans realizes just how much Cosby despises them. The man may be a voice in the wilderness when he explains to black people what is wrong with their thoughts and actions, but he is still a bigot.
Right On!
I agree with you - and I'm not black.
Anybody who ever watched the movie the Amistad probably would feel the same way.
Slavery was the one evil which outlived the document which should have killed it - the Declaration of Independence, and which nearly killed the nation nearly 100 years later.
Hey Bill , loan me $8 pleeze!
How about we just deport all Americans of Polish descent. You can sit next to Martha Stewart on the boat ride back to Old Europe.
That's your reply? Whatastinker.
Ya....almost stinks as much as Wacka's ridiculous plan.
Interesting thought, but that $8 dollars would be better spent on bullets to slaughter those who still engage in the slave trade in foreign nations today. In fact, I think Cosby could do more good in engaging the debate on the current slave trade rather than rub salt in the festering wounds of race-relations as the rats have cultivated between poor black minorities addicted to government subsidies and the working nation.
If he could focus their attention upon the injustices perpetuated against people held as slaves in other nations, perhaps he might motivate those who simply feel persecuted towards self reflection. It might change the way they see their lives and stir them into action, perhaps grasping for the first time, the opportunities afforded to them by this great nation.
A slave museum? We cannot forget the past, however to move forward, we must heal. Focusing our attention on our wounds rather than what works does not seem like a positive direction to go in.
I also believe in the U.S. Constitution. That's why I served.
www.jenerette.com
$8 per American X 300 million Americans = $2.4 billion
That would be quite a museum, and it would have many opportunities to add new materials since slavery is far from extinct in the world, or even in the United States.
As a migrant from the Midwest to the South whose ancestors arrived in the late 19th century, I had no dogs in this fight (the fratricidal war of 1861-64), but a considerable interest in how the federated republic of united states before that war became the unitary north American empire which fulfilled its "manifest destiny" to rule "from sea to sea", and ended the century by tearing up the Spanish Empire and establishing imperial outposts in the western Pacific approaches to Asia.
In the following century it grew into a global empire as three European empires and the Ottoman Empire disintegrated in the Great War of 1914-18, and expanded further with the defeat of the Japanese Empire and the German Reich, and the ensuing collapse of the British, French, and Dutch empires who struggled alongside it in the second inning of the Great War (1939-1945), and triumphed in the third round (1946-1992) over the communist reincarnation of the Russian empire.
Looking back at how our welfare-warfare empire came into being, it is regretable that the contenders in the fratricdal war of the 1860s (not as bloody as the much longer and costlier Taiping rebellion which lasted twice as long and killed 10 times as many people, see, e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion , but bloody enough) defended a mixture of admirable and detestable principles that resulted in the overthrow of the federated state that preceded the war and replaced it with an increasingly centralized state governed from "Rome-on-the-Potomac", which has ever since been extending its grip on power at the expense of its consitituent states which increasingly resemble tributary provinces.
The southern contenders fought at least in part to preserve their "peculiar institution", but also to resist their financial enslavement by the manufacturing and financial interests of the north, who sought to preserve their vampire like grip on the agricultural economy of the south with a system of protective tariffs. The paradox of both practicing slavery while withdrawing from the union as a means of resisting enslavement, of defending their liberty to enslave others, seriously weakened the southern cause in its efforts to gain international support for its case for independence. The paradox of mustering invading armies to impose a centralized oligarchic order in the name of freedom and "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" tainted the northern triumph, and set the stage for the Gilded age of the oligarchs of the last quarter of the 19th century, and the financially unstable warfare-welfare state in which we live today.
That's how it looks to me, admittedly a late arrival on the scene (or at least my ancestors came late). It will be interesting to see how the story plays out for the rest of my tenure among this people. It has been a great blessing living here, so I hope for the best in the future. There are both bleak and encouraging signs in the air and, as Peggy Noonan notes, just now:
The World Is as Hot as the Devil
By PEGGY NOONAN
September 23, 2006; Page P12
This is what I was thinking as I walked this week along the siren-filled streets of New York: The temperature of the world is very high.
We have a global warming problem, and maybe it's due to an increase in the output of heated words. And they too can, in the end, melt icecaps.
"The Pope must die." "The Holocaust is a lie." "I can still smell the sulfur."
The last of course from the democratically elected president of the republic of Venezuela, population 26 million, which helps keep America going economically by selling it, at significant profit, oil.
His remarks were startling. No one wants to dignify them with a response. But that's a mistake. Because the world heard them.
- - - - - - - - -
Harsh words inspire the unstable.
Coolants are needed. Here is an idea. Don't try to ignore Chávez, answer him. With the humility that comes with deep confidence, with facts, and with some humor, too.
There is an opportunity for the Democratic Party. Some Democrats responded with spirited indignation the day after Chávez spoke, and it was rousing. But Chávez's charges were grave, and he claimed America's abuses could be tracked back a century. If the Democrats seek to speak for America, why not start with a serious and textured response, one that isn't a political blast-back but a high-minded putting forward of facts? This would take guts, and farsightedness. Rebutting a wild-eyed man who says you can find redemption reading Noam Chomsky is a little too much like rebutting a part of your base.
As for the administration, it is so in the habit of asserting, defending and repeating, it barely remembers how to persuade and appeal. It speaks starkly and carries a big stick. It feels so beleaguered on a daily basis, and so snakebit, that even its mildest players have taken refuge in gritting their teeth and tunneling on. They take comfort in this: They think Chávez helps them. See what we're up against? But that's not a response, it's a way not to respond. It doesn't help, because it doesn't even try to cool things down. Which is no good, because the temperature of the world is very high.
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB115895665254671591.html
How about the museum of the people who died in the war against slavery?
No money from me for this.
An odd complaint. The country is full of museums that celebrate the combatants in that war. You could spend several years of your life visiting them all.
http://www.homepages.dsu.edu/jankej/civilwar/museums.htm
"Blacks only or will it include whites, hispanics, asians..."
How about a museum for the white working men & women that have been funding the many social programs, welfare, food stamps, free medical, free college etc?
A "Slavery Museum" would become nothing more than a center for demonstrations against "whitey" and the evils he has done to the black community.
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