Monday, October 1, 2007

Hey, c'mon! Slavery wasn't so bad!


That's what right-wing blatherer Michael Medved (who occasionally fills in for Rush Limbaugh) says here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know where to begin. That Medved column is so full of distortion, arrogance and outright lies it's hard to believe anyone could write such garbage. To begin with, slavery in the United States was entirely unique and has no historical precedent. It's referred to as "chattel' slavery in that blacks were treated like animals. Slavery did exist in Africa before it was brought to the United States, but slave families lived together, were allowed to practice their own religion and did not have their language and culture destroyed. What Medved also conveniently ignores is the economic motivation of slavery in the United States. In the north, where there was little economic advantage to slavery, it was abolished. As you move farther south, it became more entrenched as it became more profitable. It proliferated even more with the invention of the cotton gin which called for vast amounts of cheap labor. The lack of a profit motive made it much easier for the north to call abolition. And to credit the founding fathers and people like Jefferson with being so moral and upright on this issue is laughable. Jefferson and most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. If they were so righteous, why did they cave in to the southerners when it came to founding this country? The end of the revolution marked the one time in our nation's history that slavery could have been abolished without a war. The fact that these brave men lacked the backbone to stand up for what they supposedly believed is supremely hypocritical.
Medved's most outrageous argument is that at least slavery wasn't as bad as genocide. That's like me saying, while I pound your hand with a hammer, that at least I didn't kill you.
We have a lot to be proud of in this country and throughout our history people have done courageous things to preserve our liberties and protect our freedoms. Slavery is not one of the high points.

The Rascal said...

Amen to all that, brother.