Posted on 05/28/2003 7:35:01 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
With the passing years, it becomes ever more painful for me to read the preambles of legislation. Time and time again, the wonderful and inspiring words in those preambles have turned out to have no relationship whatsoever to the actual consequences that followed. The real issue is not what pious words you can come up with, but what incentives are you creating and what are the likely consequences of those incentives.
It is especially painful to read a proposal to create a "National Slave Memorial" on the Washington Mall. Supposedly this memorial will promote "reconciliation" and "healing," according to both the Republican and Democratic supporters of this proposal.
It is hard to imagine that any sane adult actually believes those words. You know and I know that a slave memorial will not reconcile anybody to anybody nor heal any racial divisions. Just the opposite.
A slave memorial is guaranteed to become a magnet for every race hustler from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton down to any local demagogue who can scare up a crowd to go stand in front of the slave memorial and spew venom at American society on TV. Some reconciliation, some healing!
As for whites, when a proposal was made some years ago by Congressman Tony Hall for a Congressional apology for slavery, so much hostile mail came in that the idea was killed. If a slave memorial is going to inflame both blacks and whites, who is going to be "healed" or "reconciled"?
Anyone whose IQ is not in single digits must know that, once a slave memorial is put on the Washington Mall, it will be politically impossible to remove it. Expediency-minded politicians of both parties may think of a slavery memorial as a cheap way to "throw a bone" to the black community, as someone put it, but it is in fact just a down payment on racial polarization that can cost this country dearly for years to come.
This proposal has bipartisan support in Congress -- as so many other disastrous policies have had. If the Democrats were to propose that all Americans leap off a thousand-foot cliff, moderate Republicans would come up with a compromise proposal that three-quarters of us leap off a 500-foot cliff. The slave memorial is apparently that kind of compromise proposal -- "reparations light," as it were.
None of this is affected in the slightest by whether the sponsors of this legislation are honest and earnest, or by whether their intentions are good or they write an inspiring preamble to the legislation. We all know what road is paved with good intentions. We don't need to have it proven one more time.
This is the kind of low-budget time bomb that can easily sneak into legislation in the last days before Congress adjourns, when everyone is too busy preparing to go home to read all the provisions of the bills they vote on.
The only way to prevent this from happening, either this year or in future years, is for the voting public to inform their Senators and Representatives loud and clear that they do not want any such memorial created by the federal government, whether on the Washington Mall or anywhere else.
Among the pious cant that we are being fed by those pushing this proposal is that a memorial will serve to remind future Americans that slavery was cruel and evil. Most Americans understood that in the 19th century!
What a memorial would do is perpetuate the fraud that slavery was something peculiar to the United States, when in fact it was one of the oldest and most widespread of all human institutions, existing for thousands of years on every inhabited continent, involving people of every race and color as both slaves and slaveowners. Even in the United States, there were thousands of black slaveowners, and in Africa many more.
The United States was one of many Western nations which turned against slavery in the 19th century -- while non-Western nations bitterly resisted efforts by the West to get them to abolish slavery. Only the fact that Western imperialists had more firepower enabled their revulsion against slavery to prevail.
Maybe we should have a monument to historical truth somewhere, though Washington hardly seems the place for it.
All of a sudden, reenactors and historical revisionists pop up everywhere, and it becomes suddenly important to revere Confederate ancestors, and to pretend that the slaves didn't exist. If it weren't for that fouling of the well, any race problems would be that much further behind.
My motto is that if you honor the rebel, you have to honor the slave, and you have to understand if the descendant of the slave is less than pleased by the honor paid the rebel.
And I say that with men who served under John Hunt Morgan in my direct family line.
Shhhh, Thomas!! It's a ploy, I tell you, a ploy!! Like the good Dr. Williams writing on the historical fact of Black Confederates, along with many other authors attesting to the authenticity of said brave gentlemen
then we can rip down Confederate monuments and the signs off schools named after prominent traitors all over the South
Chancey, you're more than welcome to come down here. Why don't you start in Fort Mill SC? You know, the monument dedicated to the loyal slaves who stayed behind to protect the women and children, and the even braver freed black men who fought side by side against a tyrant. Or the monument to the brave servant in Canton, MS. Come on down and ignore the names of Sam Anderson, Charles Dempsey, Willis Dove, Pvt. Everett Hayes, Will Linch and Frank Hunter, just a few of the brave black men from NC who fought defending their state first and their nation.
Come on, Chancey, you're more than welcome
I can't say as I mind the memorial - it steals a lot of thunder.
And I can say that, because I've bought a bunch of his stuff in the past and read it - but the fact is that he makes his living catering to fear, and writes his material with his customers in mind.
As to me coming down South, I'll be along the SC coast the week after next - so yes, when not sailing, I'll probably find some history to tour.
Well I suggest you stop in at Charleston then and ask to see the memorial paid to one dead mule. Never mind, it's all around us, a national government that doesn't know when to quit spending our money on memorials. Heck, when are we going to have an American Indian memorial to the hundreds hanged in MN? How about the sweatshops of NY? Might as well put a memorial up to that as well.
I'm sorry but I see no good that can come out of a memorial that is just going to be marginalized by the race baiters like Jackson and Sharpton. Were there injustices to blacks? Yes, but it wasn't just on our side. How about the Jewish peoples? Do you really want to go there? How I treat someone is based on their attitude and not on their skin color. My grandmother was raised by her grandparents and she had kin that fought bravely. I also agree there are some that use the flag of my ancestors to push their racist agenda. But I do not agree the best way to stop these racists is to destroy the memory of my family either
Please don't encourage him! It's annoying enough to put up with all those left wing banshee dykes from northeastern college campuses that the DNC busses down here every time one of their precious congressmen or senators has a tough reelection.
I swear, every last one of them thinks they are on another "freedom ride" to save Max Cleland/Mary Landrieu/Fritz Hollings/(insert southern democrat name of choice here) from evil backwoods white male republican confederate gun owning Christians. And from what he posts around here, Chance buys into that kind of stuff whole heartedly!
No. Paradoxically, it's why slavery was RIGHT, in some weird sense. It WAS. It's a condition of our existence, and in particular, a condition of black American's existence. To accept ourselves we have to accept the past.
... he spoke, and drank rapidly a glass of water.
Strange fruit.
You may be surprised, but I agree with that 100%.
And on that positive note, I bid you good night, in order to avoid rolling up and smoking one nicotine patch in this elusive bid to stop a bad habit.
Indeed...
A slave memorial is guaranteed to become a magnet for every race hustler from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton down to any local demagogue who can scare up a crowd to go stand in front of the slave memorial and spew venom at American society on TV. Some reconciliation, some healing!
This is a bad idea and it will lead to reparations for sure.
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