Posted on 07/06/2015 2:56:49 PM PDT by jazusamo
Discussions of racial problems almost invariably bring out the cliche of "a legacy of slavery." But anyone who is being serious, as distinguished from being political, would surely want to know if whatever he is talking about — whether fatherless children, crime or whatever — is in fact a legacy of slavery or of some of the many other things that have been done in the century and a half since slavery ended.
Another cliche that has come into vogue is that slavery is "America's original sin." The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catch phrase could stop thinking for fifty years. Catch phrases about slavery have stopped people from thinking, even longer than that.
Today the moral horror of slavery is so widely condemned that it is hard to realize that there were thousands of years when slavery was practiced around the world by people of virtually every race. Even the leading moral and religious thinkers in different societies accepted slavery as just a fact of life.
No one wanted to be a slave. But their rejection of slavery as a fate for themselves in no way meant that they were unwilling to enslave others. It was just not an issue — until the 18th century, and then it became an issue only in Western civilization.
Neither Africans, Asians, Polynesians nor the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere saw anything wrong with slavery, even after small segments of British and American societies began to condemn slavery as morally wrong in the 18th century.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
His clear thinking and wonderful writing have to be ignored by the leftist media. To address it, answer it or to discuss it in any form scares them to death.
Thankfully his books and columns are out there and circulate independently of the leftist media.
But that's to be expected when one seeks a discussion on race with the Champions of Tolerance.
Agreed...It’s a shame that leftists have ignored his intellect and clear thinking through the years as well as many black Americans.
Finally a voice of reason about slavery. It is very much alive today and has little to do with race.
God bless him and may he live 120 happy healthy years!
“Google” (I use Ixquick, but “Google” is the generic term for “look it up on the Internet”) “Slavery in the 21st Century.”
The first entry will be: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0309/feature1/, 21st-Century Slaves @ National Geographic Magazine By Andrew Cockburn, Photographs by Jodi Cobb.
Here is the “attention getter” paragraph:
“There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach—and in the destruction of lives.”
America led the way to the world-wide criminalization and abolition of slavery!
If American Blacks want to fight slavery, rather than fighing an 1860 war, they should fight a 2015 war!
And, not in America!
The only slaves in America are taxpayers, and we have not yet begun to fight, apparently!
EVERY BLACK IN AMERICA SHOULD THANK THE LORD GOD THEY LIVE HERE!
Amen, My FRiend!
Very well said and exactly true.
Well, that should easily cover my remaining time, but what about the kids?
They'll need him around even longer. ;-)
But that is not how it ended elsewhere.
What happened in the rest of the world was that all of Western civilization eventually turned against slavery in the 19th century. This meant the end of slavery in European empires around the world...
I told this to a young liberal years ago... she couldn't believe slavery had ended here... in this United States... She was so steeped in the liberal mantra about the US being soooooooo racist..
Thanks.
I think England was earlier than the U.S., although they might have been influenced by our abolitionists, who screamed for a long time before the Civil War. The England that our president loves to hate.
You are right. “. . . Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, with exceptions provided for the East India Company, Ceylon, and Saint Helena. These exceptions were eliminated in 1843.[2]”
The above quoted FRom a Wikipedia article on the subject at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_British_Isles.
“Agreed...It’s a shame that leftists have ignored his intellect and clear thinking through the years as well as many black Americans.”
Leftists in our era celebrate all that is evil, and castigate and villify all that is good in society. How could they possibly do anything but ignore Sowell ?
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