Posted on 10/02/2007 12:41:30 PM PDT by SJackson
Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation. Along with the displacement and mistreatment of Native Americans, the enslavement of literally millions of Africans counts as one of our two founding crimes—and an obvious rebuttal to any claims that this Republic truly represents “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” According to America-bashers at home and abroad, open-minded students of our history ought to feel more guilt than pride, and strive for “reparations” or other restitution to overcome the nation’s uniquely cruel, racist and rapacious legacy.
Unfortunately, the current mania for exaggerating America’s culpability for the horrors of slavery bears no more connection to reality than the old, discredited tendency to deny that the U.S. bore any blame at all. No, it’s not true that the “peculiar institution” featured kind-hearted, paternalistic masters and happy, dancing field-hands, any more than it’s true that America displayed unparalleled barbarity or enjoyed disproportionate benefit from kidnapping and exploiting innocent Africans.
An honest and balanced understanding of the position of slavery in the American experience requires a serious attempt to place the institution in historical context and to clear-away some of the common myths and distortions.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
More good info:
Was the American Founding Unjust? (The Case of Slavery)
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a377e2d151100.htm
Bingo! BTTT
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"It's must be true, Oh, so true/'Cause I saw it on TV"
Definitely.
Involuntarily yoking the productivity of one individual to supply the needs and wants of another individual is none other than slavery.
Just think, all of their offspring could be enjoying the freedom and prosperity of their home continent instead of America.
Yes, slavery was an awful legacy of America, but we’ve done more to make up for it than any other entity in the world ever has.
Conquered nations were carried into slavery.
Most people have not embraced it as the central feature of their identity.
That belief is common among whites and blacks now . . . and held as an article of faith by the "Black Jews" crowd that I remember preaching in the vacinity of Times Square and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in the 80s and 90s.
If all slaves were Africans and ancient Hebrews were slaves therefore descendants of ancient Hebrews are Africans
White men hardly survived long enough on the Guinea coast to run slave-trapping expeditions. If I remember correctly, the average lifespan of a white man was about six months. The reason was tropical disease.
Note that European colonization of Africa didn’t really get going till the late 19th century, long after colonies in much of the rest of the world, when medicine was finally able to actually treat some of these diseases.
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ping
The thing is that slavery was here long before this country was here. This piece of land was not the USA until 1776 or 1789; Take your choice. And this country abolished it in less than 100 years. In the context of history, that’s a very short time.
Bull-puckey. Latin for slave was "servus," which of course is where we get the words "serf" and "servant."
The term "slave" comes from the Middle Ages, when Germans, Byzantines, Venetians, Vikings, Magyars and Muslims all raided the Slavs for slaves.
Incomplete. This was true of the North American colonies and states, farthest from Africa, where slaves were most expensive.
In Brazil and the Caribbean, it was cheaper through most of the slave period to work male slaves to death and buy new ones. They generally didn't want female slaves and a lot fewer were imported to these areas. Slaves in these areas were treated far more brutally than those in the American south.
Dr. Walter E. Williams always points out that he is much better off because his ancestors were brought oer here as slaves than he would be if tehy had not been brought over here.
Even Eldridge Cleaver noted this, in a different way. When he returned to the US after several years out of country on the lam, a reporter asked him why he had returned. “I’d rather be in jail in the United States of America,” h said, “than free in any of those countries.”
That is still happening. Now we are on the receiving end. We are being overrun be aliens who speak a strange tongue and take our resources and the fruits of our labor. We may not fare as well as the pre Columbian inhabitants. We may be made physically extinct.
BTTT
Slavery was inevitable in the western hemisphere's pre-Industrial societies, for the soil was rich, the distances vast, and laborers few and of uncertain dependably.
After all, people did not immigrate to the New World for the chance to work as another man's field hand.
This isn’t the half of it.
In the Ottoman Empire, the only work Jews were allowed to practice was that of slave trading and slave raiding. The richest area for slaves was Serbia, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia - Slavic peoples.
Slavs. That is where we get the word, slaves. And the reason Europeans hate Jews.
Both ultimately victims of Islam.
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