Slavery
Walter E. Williams ~ July 19, 2017
Too many people believe that slavery is a “peculiar institution.” That’s what Kenneth Stampp called slavery in his book, “Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South.” But slavery is by no means peculiar, odd or unusual. It was common among ancient peoples such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Greeks, Persians, Armenians and many others. Large numbers of Christians were enslaved during the Ottoman wars in Europe. White slaves were common in Europe from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages. It was only after A.D. 1600 that Europeans joined with Arabs and Africans and started the Atlantic slave trade. As David P. Forsythe wrote in his book, “The Globalist,” “The fact remained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.”
While slavery constitutes one of the grossest encroachments on human liberty, it is by no means unique or restricted to the Western world or United States, as many liberal academics would have us believe. Much of their indoctrination of our young people, at all levels of education, paints our nation’s founders as racist adherents to slavery, but the story is not so simple.
At the time of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, slaves were about 40 percent of the population of the southern colonies. Apportionment in the House of Representatives and the number of electoral votes each state would have in presidential elections would be based upon population. Southern delegates to the convention wanted slaves to be counted as one person. Northern delegates to the convention, and those opposed to slavery, wanted only free persons of each state to be counted for the purposes of apportionment in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. The compromise reached was that each slave would be counted as only three-fifths of a person.
Many criticize this compromise as proof of racism. My question to these grossly uninformed critics is whether they would have found it more preferable for slaves to be counted as whole persons? Slaves counted as whole persons would have given slave-holding southern states much more political power. Or, would the critics of the founders prefer that the northern delegates not compromise and not allow slaves to be counted at all? If they did, it is likely that the Constitution would have not been ratified. Thus, the question that emerges is whether blacks would be better off with northern states having gone their way and southern states having gone theirs, resulting in no U.S. Constitution and no Union? Unlike today’s pseudointellectuals, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass understood the compromise, saying that the three-fifths clause was “a downright disability laid upon the slave-holding states” that deprived them of “two-fifths of their natural basis of representation.”
Douglass’ vision was shared by Patrick Henry and others. Henry said, expressing the reality of the three-fifths compromise, “As much as I deplore slavery, I see that prudence forbids its abolition.” With this union, Congress at least had the power to abolish slave trade by 1808. According to delegate James Wilson, many believed the anti-slave-trade clause laid “the foundation for banishing slavery out of this country.” Many of the founders abhorred slavery. Their statements can be read on my website, walterewilliams.com.
The most unique aspect of slavery in the Western world was the moral outrage against it, which began to emerge in the 18th century and led to massive elimination efforts. It was Britain’s military sea power that put an end to the slave trade. And our country fought a costly war that brought an end to slavery. Unfortunately, these facts about slavery are not in the lessons taught in our schools and colleges. Instead, there is gross misrepresentation and suggestion that slavery was a uniquely American practice.
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/50231Liberal Values Are Bankrupting Us
Star Parker ~ July 19, 2017
Recently, Gallup published the results of its annual Values and Beliefs poll.
The headline of the report speaks for itself: “Americans Hold Record Liberal Views on Most Moral Issues.”
Gallup has been doing this poll since 2001, and the change in public opinion on the moral issues surveyed has been in one direction — more liberal.
Of 19 issues surveyed in this latest poll, responses on 10 are the most liberal since the survey started.
Sixty-three percent say gay/lesbian relations are morally acceptable — up 23 points from the first year the question was asked. Sixty-two percent say having a baby outside of marriage is OK — up 17 points. Unmarried sex, 69 percent — up 16 points. Divorce, 73 percent — up 14 points.
More interesting, and of greater consequence, is what people actually do, rather than what they think. And, not surprisingly, the behavior we observe in our society at large reflects these trends in values.
Hence, the institution of traditional marriage is crumbling, Americans are having fewer children, and, compared with years gone by, the likelihood that children are born out of the framework of marriage has dramatically increased.
Undoubtedly, the liberals in academia, in the media, in politics, see this as good news. After all, doesn’t removing the “thou shalt not’s” that limit life’s options liberate us?
Isn’t the idea of freedom supposed to be, according to them, that you have a green light to do whatever you want, as long as you’re not hurting someone else?
But here’s the rub. How do you measure if you are hurting someone else?
No one lives in a vacuum. We all live in a country, in communities. We are social beings as well as individuals, no matter what your political philosophy happens to be. Everyone’s behavior has consequences for others.
For instance, more and more research shows the correlation between the breakdown of the traditional family and poverty.
In 2009, Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution published his “success sequence.” According to Haskins, someone who completes high school, works full time, and doesn’t have children until after marriage has only a 2 percent chance of being poor.
A new study from the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies focuses on Millennials — those born between 1980-1984. And this study reaches conclusions similar to those of Haskins.
According to this study, only 3 percent of Millennials who have a high school diploma, who are working full time, and who are married before having children are poor. On the other hand, 53 percent of Millennials who have not done these three things are poor.
Behavior increasing the likelihood of poverty does have consequences on others. American taxpayers spend almost a trillion dollars a year to help those in poverty, a portion of whom would not be in this situation if they lived their lives differently.
But the same liberals who scream when Republicans look for ways to streamline spending on antipoverty programs like Medicaid scream just as loudly at any attempt to expose young people to biblical values that teach traditional marriage and chastity outside of marriage.
The percent of American adults that are married dropped from 72 percent in 1960 to 52 percent in 2008. The percentage of our babies born to unmarried women increased from 5 percent in 1960 to 41 percent by 2008.
This occurred against a backdrop of court orders removing all vestiges of religion from our public spaces, beginning with banning school prayer in 1962, and then the legalization of abortion in 1973. In 2015, the Supreme Court redefined marriage.
Losing all recognition that personal and social responsibility matters, that the biblical tradition that existed in the cradle of our national founding is still relevant, is bankrupting us morally and fiscally.
We are long overdue for a new, grand awakening.
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/50261