On Tuesday, July 12, 2022, Northwestern University hosted a webinar entitled, Implications of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Decision. Faculty members of Northwestern participated in the webinar: Dr. Cassing Hammond (abortion practitioner), Professor Paul Gowder, Professor Heidi Kitrosser, Professor Andrew M. Koppelman, Professor Doreen Weisenhaus, and Dean Hari Osofsky (she/her) moderated the event.
The lament from these esteemed members of the once Christian Northwestern University is to be expected. I want to call attention specifically to Prof. Andrew Koppelman who claimed that the right to abortion should be protected by the 13th amendment.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Scalia Scholar Ed Whelan in a recent tweet noted that by his count the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, 13th, 14th, and 19th Amendments have all been cited in support of the non-existent constitutional right to abortion. Like the astronomer Percival Lowell, who spent 15 years studying canals on Mars, progressive experts think they find abortion everywhere they look in the US Constitution.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and proclaimed in the final days of 1865. The text of this amendment has two sections.
Section 1.Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
It is interesting to recognize in these debates that those who advocate for killing unborn children proclaim themselves to be the compassionate abolitionists. Those who want to save children from being dismembered and vacuumed out of their mother’s wombs are the evil slave owners.
According to the perverse logic of these supposed abolitionists, pregnancy is slavery. If you “force” someone to carry a child to term, that would go against the Thirteenth Amendment. Really?
Now I should point out that Prof. Koppelman did not develop his argument in this webinar. He has written a 30-page paper on the subject. His abstract states, “The Thirteenth Amendment’s purpose is to end the specific institution of antebellum slavery. A ban on abortion would do to women what slavery did to the women who were enslaved: compel them to bear children against their will.”
Let’s accept this argument for just a moment. Where does it end? What about a distressed mother who has to provide care for her ornery two-year old who whines, demands, runs away, and never sleeps when the mother desires? Forcing a mother to care for this child sounds a lot like slavery to me. Or what about a son or daughter who provides care for an aging relative who suffers from dementia or Alzheimer’s? Without any thanks, care must be provided around the clock for someone who often has no resources to compensate for the care given. That sounds a lot like slavery to me, well, at least according to this perverse logic.
Stick with me as we finish off the illogic of this argument, if something appears to be slavery, the answer is to kill.
The mother is free to kill her unborn child to prevent a forced pregnancy. The mother or father is free to kill a born child because this precious one might be a burden. A son or daughter is free to kill a parent who needs round-the-clock care all in the name of the ending of slavery.
It is abhorrent and illogical to compare slavery with pregnancy. I recognize that not all who are pregnant made that choice. There are difficult cases, but to suggest that what slaves endured is what mothers face is perverse and wicked logic.
Dan McLaughlin, a senior writer at National Review Online, has written a very similar article on this very subject that I would also highly recommend.
The Mississippi Compromise of 2022
|
A Lawless Decision Finally About to Be Overruled
The U.S. Supreme Court appears to be poised, absent dereliction of duty or cowardice, to overrule one of the most wicked, unlawful, and murderous decisions it has ever issued.
In overturning (destroying, really) Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113), the Court will have done much to restore judicial integrity, but not enough.
In 1820, amid the attempt to end slavery in the United States, a compromise for admitting the State of Missouri to the Union was reached. While imposing some limits to official political support for slavery, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, in effect, continued the U.S. Government’s official endorsement of the systematic enslavement and forced servitude of large numbers of kidnapped Africans.
Likewise, in 1854, this compromise was replaced with another [1]; to let the States decide for themselves whether or not to allow the majority to enslave the minority. Opposition to this replacement (proposed by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas) was the basis for formation of the Republican Party and the rise in prominence of Abraham Lincoln.
Once again, the unalienable Right to Liberty of these People, was officially alienated from them with the explicit consent of The United States of America!
Today, according to the verified initial draft of Justice Samuel Alito‘s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center [2](better described as Jackson Unwanted Children’s Death Center), the Court rightly demolishes both Roe [3], and its descendant Planned Parenthood v. Casey (505 U.S. 833).
In the Dobbsdraft though, the Court continues to sanction the States’ unconstitutional denial of certain persons’ Right to Life at the hands of those more powerful. States may not lawfully do so. I call it the Mississippi Compromise of 2022.
According to one list of deaths at the hands of tyrannical dictators, the United States’ denial of the Right to Life of 63,000,000 children unwanted by their mothers since the Roe v. Wade decision—boys and girls whose only crime was being too small to be defended—places post-1973 America in second place (behind only Mao’s Communist China and ahead of Stalin’s Socialist Russia and Hitler’s National Socialist Germany) [4].
Justice Alito’s draft several times vaguely refers “the rule of law.”
The foundation of any American Rule of Law must be what we, the People of the United States, declared to all mankind to be “self-evident” truth, in support of our revolution from England, simply that:
All mankind is created, equal.
The Creator has given rights to man (endowed with) which cannot be removed (unalienable).
Governments, such as that we were about to form, are instituted for the purpose of securing those rights (which include Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness) deriving their power from the consent of the governed.
The governed have a right to overthrow governments which do not follow the Rule of Law.
The Court’s draft states, that abortion “presents a profound moral question,” but as Justice Alito proves, science has answered that question (i.e., “is there a human in a pregnant mother’s womb?”), in the affirmative.
The question therefore really becomes a profoundly immoral one, “will government permit the stronger Person (parent) to extinguish the life of the weaker (unborn child)?”
The draft purports to “return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.” This is tyranny of the majority.
Neither the U.S. Constitution, nor the Rule of the Law permits such injustice. Neither the People nor their representatives can ever possess such authority:
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:3-4)
According to the Rule of Law, every human being has a self-evident, God-given, unalienable Right to Life, which is to be secured by any legitimate government. From the moment of conception, we are now scientifically able to identify precisely, the existence of a human being. Therefore, we (i.e., all branches of government, and the governed, by whose consent they rule) must secure this right to every human being within our authority:
This will of his (mankind’s) Maker is called the law of nature … no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. (William Blackstone [5])
As the draft indicates, the U.S. Constitution most certainly does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion, as Roe and Casey did. Neither though, does it permit the citizens of each State to deny persons within their borders, their human Right to Life!
The unalienable Right to Life of every human being within the borders of the United States of America must be secured by the equal protection of the laws of all governments within the Union. The court has the duty under the U.S. Constitution (several places) and the American Rule of Law to so rule.
This is only a first draft. Let us continue to pray, more fervently than ever, that the Court will revise this draft and finally affirm the U.S. Constitution and American Rule of Law: that all States must, to the best of their ability, secure the Right to Life for all people within its jurisdiction.
[1] Note that these “compromises” occurred while the nation was still operating under the American Rule of Law, based upon the law of the Creator, and therefore came from Congress. The legal profession soon thereafter adopted positive law (foundation of law is judicial decisions, therefore improperly expanding role of judiciary), so this similar “compromise” is now coming from the Court.
[3] As demonstrated by the Court’s draft opinion, lawyers, including those who approve of the result, have always known Roe was a bad decision, but modern law schools leave no concept of a decision being ‘bad’ law, since cases determine the law.
First, they came for the George Washington mural in a school in San Francisco—because our first president had been a slaveowner. Later they came for his name on the same school, and as of last count, the name survived.
Then, they came for the statues of the father of our country during the summer of statue-toppling.
Now, the left wants to strip his name from his eponymous university.
Commentator Nick Nolte (not the actor) notes that The Washington Post, named after you-know-who, has published the opinion of a student at George Washington University, which is in the city of you-know-who, District of Columbia.
Nolte sums up the student’s article thusly: “This university is racist, and George Washington was racist, and while I didn’t find this offensive enough to pass up attending school here, harrumph, harrumph, harrumph, half-truth, half-truth, half-truth, I’m so virtuous, I’m so virtuous, I’m so virtuous…”
That student even wants Winston Churchill’s name removed from the library.
This is just another indication of how the left is at war with Western Civilization. If we continue down this path, there would be virtually nothing left of the great traditions of freedom and flourishing that the West has enjoyed, primarily because of our Judeo-Christian tradition.
Was George Washington a hero or a villain? Well, consider this. William Wilberforce was often called “The George Washington of Humanity.”
Alas, many don’t know who Wilberforce was. But he was a committed Christian statesman who served as a long-time Member of Parliament. With a team of colleagues and friends, he bitterly fought against slavery in the British Empire—and succeeded.
It took him more than half a century to accomplish this. And he did it in two stages. First, he fought against the slave trade itself. This stopped British ships from going to Africa, paying for slaves from Muslim slave-traders, who got them from other conquering African tribes.
Step one stopped the bleeding. Although they get virtually no credit for it, the founding fathers of America beat Britain in passing a law to stop the importation of slaves. As part of the original Constitution, they stipulated that in 20 years (1808) from the document being ratified (1788), there would be no more importation of slaves into the United States.
Step two in Wilberforce’s Christian crusade was to get all the slaves in the British Empire to be freed. He retired from Parliament in 1825, but others kept his crusade going through completion. Wilberforce received the news of the complete abolition of slavery in the British Empire on his deathbed in 1833.
Historian, retired professor, and bestselling author Dr. Paul L. Maier noted in our D. James Kennedy Ministries television special, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? that Wilberforce’s successful crusade helped ultimately lead to the end of slavery in America.
Maier says, “And then we also in our country on the basis of Christian principles, Abraham Lincoln and others, were able to do the same thing.”
William Wilberforce was one of history’s greatest heroes. And, again, this humanitarian leader was called “the George Washington of Humanity.”
What does that say about George Washington? That speaks volumes of our first president. He helped give birth to a nation that stands for freedom, under God. The Constitution he helped create had within it the seeds to one day overthrow the evil of slavery. And it happened.
At the cost of the lives of 700,000 men, but it happened.
Keep in mind a few facts about the father of our country. Washington voluntarily served his country when called on, relying on God to help him throughout.
Dr. Peter Lillback and I wrote a book many years ago about the faith of our first president, George Washington’s Sacred Fire.
Lillback, the founding president of Providence Forum (for which I now serve as executive director), notes that Washington was a fourth-generation Virginia gentleman farmer. Slavery was built into that system. Washington inherited slaves by birth and later by marriage. When he died, Washington freed his slaves and made provision for them. He broke the cycle.
Both Washington and Wilberforce saw Jesus Christ as the ultimate hero. George Washington said in a famous letter that what America needs most is to imitate Jesus, “the Divine Author of our blessed Religion.” If we don’t, he warned, we can never hope to be a “happy nation.”
The Marxist iconoclasts of today, such as the triggered student at George Washington University, or the editors at TheWashington Post, who promulgated such ideas to a wider audience, have no appreciation for the sacrificial contributions of those who went before us, that we might be free.
First, they came to remove Washington murals, then topple his statues. Now they want to rename the university named in his honor. What’s next? A call to rename the capital city?
This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.
School-Approved Racism in Western Suburb of Chicago
|
It appears the racism identified as “anti-racism” and being endorsed all across America is bearing rotten fruit at ever younger ages and in ever more perverse ways.
Just last week, administrators at Edison Middle School in Wheaton, Illinois allowed student members of the blacks-only “Panthers in Black” school club to lecture peers on the intricacies of using various forms of the “n”-word. Students learned who is permitted to use the “n”-word and which “n”-word suffix is appropriate in what context. Parents of students forced to listen to this non-voluntary lecture were not notified ahead of time or asked to sign a permission slip.
Eighteen slides were included in the lecture addressing topics like the importance of Black History Month. This slide was notable for its vagueness. The Panthers in Black advocate for “recognizing” and “promoting” appreciation of African American “achievement, culture, heritage, sacrifices, and accomplishments, including past and current events.” Several things are unclear.
Should those goals serve as pedagogical criteria for determining what is included and excluded in history classes?
Should every racial and ethnic group have their own month or just blacks? Excluding winter and spring breaks, there are only eight months in a school year, not nearly enough to give every racial and ethnic group their own month.
Is “promoting appreciation” of one racial group even an appropriate goal for government schools?
Will the goal of “promoting appreciation” of African American achievement, culture, heritage, sacrifices, and accomplishments in the past and present determine what will be included and excluded in the limited time schools have to teach American and world history? For example, will greater achievements by non-blacks be jettisoned for lesser achievement by blacks?
When discussing the past history of blacks, will the sordid history of the involvement of Africans in enslaving other Africans be shared?
In the slide on the etiquette of using the “n”-word, the Panthers in Black shared the differences between the suffixes “er” and “a” when appended to the “n”-word. According to the Black Panthers, when blacks use the “n”-word with the “a” suffix among themselves, it’s a “term of endearment.” All other races are forbidden from using it.
The black Panthers claimed emphatically that,
African Americans DO NOT use the n-word with the ending of “-er”
But then they also acknowledge that although students “may listen to music or read books that have those two endings of the n-word, it is NOT OKAY to say if you are not African American.” So, do African Americans use the “er” ending or not?
The Panthers in Black moved on to establishing joke rules for all their middle school peers:
“joking around” about race is not a joke and it’s not okay.
The black Panthers say this means no jokes about “past events,” Black Lives Matter, slavery, skin tone differences, and George Floyd. Imagine if someone had issued this diktat to Richard Pryor. And imagine if Key and Peele, Chris Rock, and Eddie Murphy were prohibited by the censors among us from “joking around about race.”
Are blacks allowed to joke about race? Are they allowed to joke about whites or Asians?
Come to think of it, since all jokes center on some group or some behavior humans engage in, maybe we should ban all jokes.
Most important, since leftists continually appeal to hurt feelings to control what others say and do, shouldn’t there be discussions about the critical importance of free speech in a free society and the concomitant need to tolerate expressions of diverse ideas, some of which make us uncomfortable?
In the two slides about “Race,” the Panthers in Black focused on biracial identities, saying that it’s “not okay” to ask any questions about the race of biracial students’ parents. Ironically, this slide also says,
Race shouldn’t be a reason to treat anyone differently.
Isn’t that the whole point of their club and their lecture? Aren’t they treating whites different from blacks?
In two slides about hair, the black Panthers explained all the different hair styles blacks use to express themselves and how “big a part of the African American culture” hair is. But non-blacks are commanded by the Panthers not to ask any questions about this important part of their identities. Seems like a recommendation for cultural insensitivity to me.
The black Panthers also assert that it’s “offensive!” to ask Muslim girls if they’re hot wearing a hijab or why they’re wearing a dress in the summer. The Panthers don’t demonstrate much tolerance for the innocent curiosity of 11-year-olds.
The second to last slide was an invitation to African American students only to join the exclusive Panthers in Black club, assuring non-blacks that they are willing to talk to them.
The presentation concluded with a slide showing the Black Power raised fist accompanied by these words:
THANK YOU
We appreciate you for listening to our presentation!
“Thanks” are not in order, since listening to their lecture was compulsory.
Yes, this is racism and it’s dividing a society that was moving steadily toward a more unified country until leftist ideas spawned in colleges and universities made their malignant way into every corner of America. And now the cancer is systemic.
Watch this video clip of a parent responding to the racist presentation at the District 200 School Board meeting. (H/T Break-Through Ideas):
Nikole Hannah-Jones is the New York Times Magazine reporter who wrote the 1619 Project which is being used in many schools across the country. The 1619 Project postulates that America began in 1619, when the first black slaves were brought here—not 1776, when the founders declared independence.
Hannah-Jones made an historical faux pas in a tweet the other day, in which she said that the U.S. Civil War began in 1865. She later apologized, claiming that her tweet was just “poorly worded.” She said she knows the conflict that ultimately ended slavery in America began in 1861 and ended in 1865.
We all make mistakes, but I can’t help but feel her historical error reveals her lack of a true grasp of our history. We’re all entitled to our own opinions, but we’re not entitled to our own facts.
Hannah-Jones coincidentally doesn’t have a firm grasp on the concept of parental rights, either. She recently toldChuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught. I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science….I think we should leave that to the educators.”
Gary Bauer, former Under Secretary of Education for President Reagan, reacts to her remarks: “She admits that she’s not a professional educator. She’s right about that. She’s a professional left-wing agitator.”
Bauer adds, “Parents, policymakers and state legislators are right to ban the 1619 Project. It’s garbage! Numerous professional historians have thoroughly debunked it. It has no business in our schools. But she thinks banning her radical screed is a sign of oppression.”
Dr. Carol M. Swain is a prominent black scholar who has taught at Vanderbilt Law School and at Princeton. I spoke with her on my radio show about the ongoing battle over American history.
She told me the 1619 Project presents a “revisionist history. [It postulates that] the country is racist to the core. Black people built the country. Racism defines who we are as a nation.” Swain would remind us: “When slavery was introduced into America, we were British colonists.”
When I asked her about the idea of America being “systemically racist” today, she said that the passage of the Civil Rights laws in the 1960s, “really ended systemic racism under the law. And any racism that continues is not because of our national structure.”
It pains her to see the distortion of our history which is propagandizing whole new generations against America. She said, “I care about America. And I care about race relations, and anything [the Left] pushes takes us backwards.”
Swain also notes that this America-is-and-always-was-racist message has a “crippling” effect to underprivileged children because “they give up before they ever get started.” What a tragedy.
Nonetheless, the “historian” peddling this false narrative of American history is feted today by the left. Fox News notes that Hannah-Jones “was named to TIME’s list of the ‘100 most influential people’ in 2021.” That is scary since she peddles this false narrative that America began because of slavery.
America became America despite the evil practice of slavery. The American founders created the framework whereby slavery could one day be uprooted. And it was—at the cost of about 700,000 lives.
Civil rights leader Bob Woodson of the Woodson Center created the group 1776 Unites, which aims to address our history in an accurate way. He has recently compiled a book entitled, Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers.
I’ve interviewed Woodson on a couple of occasions. He told me in reference to the 1619 Project, “There are all kinds of historical inaccuracies. We at the Woodson center organized 23-plus scholars and activists to confront this 1619. We called ourselves the 1776 Unites.” Many of these scholars are African-American.
There is a battle over history today. But there are a few historical resources that I would point people to. I have a set of The Annals of America, which is a series of volumes put together by the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1976. The first three volumes in this 20-or so book set focus on the settling and the founding eras of America. It provides the text (and context) of the leading documents in American history. God and the Christian faith can be found all over in many of these original sources.
Meanwhile, Yale University has put such key documents on-line as part of their Avalon Project. This is much more trustworthy—since it’s the original sources—than revisionist claptrap sold to us today by the likes of Nikole Hannah-Jones.
There’s a battle over history in our time. And this battle has big implications as to what our nation was, is, and ever will be.
With Kinks Every 6 Feet: What Romans 13 Means In America
Introduction
What many pastors and Christians are twisting Romans 13 and 1 Pet. 2 to mean is laughable, I mean, literally. That’s what God does with kings and nations that use their power to plot against God and His anointed (and that includes His people and their freedom). God laughs (Ps. 2:4). So Christians should laugh too.
But it’s also sad that many pastors and Christians have become so dull in their thinking, so biblically illiterate that they have virtually no clue how radically freedom-loving the Founding Fathers were and the Bible actually is. Well, they likely know the passages and stories that are meant to shock us into the fresh air of Christian liberty, but we’ve been marinating in the hot house of bad seminaries and worse preaching for so long, we wouldn’t know Christian liberty if she dumped a bunch of tea in the Boston Harbor while singing the Star-Spangled Banner.
Stand Fast
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1). God commands Christians to resist every form of slavery and tyranny. Why? Because Christ has set you free.
But many Christians think this freedom is almost nothing. They think it is freedom in their hearts, freedom to go to heaven when they die, freedom to have emotional orgasms on Sunday mornings during that one chord progression and all the hands go up. But that isn’t freedom. That’s like calling a kiddie sticker with a palm tree “Hawaii.” That’s like calling grape juice “wine.” Oh. Wait. Heh. Yeah…
But the Bible opens with God creating the universe, setting one tree in all of creation off limits, and firing the starting gun with enthusiasm. Go! The world belongs to men to rule, to enjoy, to glorify. Yes, sin has slowed us down and interrupted this mission, this dominion mandate, but it has never been set aside. Every man has a direct commission from God to explore the world, to invent, to discover, and in Christ we are sons of the King of the Universe. We don’t need no stinking permits. Building codes? Heh.
And somebody somewhere is hyperventilating, worried that I’m condoning shoddy work and irresponsibility, but I’m actually not. Working in this world as free men and women under the blessing of God is not irresponsible and must not be shoddy. It strives for excellence in every direction.
Neutered Bible Stories
One of the ways we have neutered Biblical freedom is by butchering Bible stories. Abraham lies his head off not once but twice to the “magistrates” in Canaan to protect his wife, and what does God do? God blesses his socks off. What do we do? We shake our heads condescendingly and make up moralistic myths about how God can even use liars like Abraham, weak in faith. Except the Bible says that Abraham was God’s friend and the father of all the faithful. The Bible says that when Abraham and Isaac and Jacob lied to tyrants and tricked their unfaithful superiors, God blessed them. Do we want that blessing?
Jacob gets the worst treatment of all, with our Bible translators playing along, twisting Scripture at the outset calling Jacob a “quiet” or “plain” man who dwelt in tents (Gen. 25:27), when the word is “perfect,” the same word used to describe Job, the righteous. But we just can’t bring ourselves to see in Jacob what God sees in Jacob, a faithful man, a man who wrestles with God and defies imperious men, hungry for blessing. There’s that blessing again. Do we want God to bless America like He blessed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
Time would fail us to tell of Moses defying Pharaoh, of Gideon and Samson and the judges running black markets and underground operations, David’s mighty men like Robin Hood in the Cave of Adullam, Paul walking around the Roman Empire like he served the One who owns the world, and Jesus coming like He didn’t even care about Herod or the Pharisees or the High Priests.
For liberty Christ has set you free.
If Jephthah Was American and the Church was the Tribe of Ephraim
What if you could start a government from scratch? OK, not from scratch, but almost from scratch? What if you had inherited 5,000 plus years of cautionary tales about tyrants, mobs, oligarchs, anarchy, and the slimy, sinful condition of every man’s fallen heart – and you could structure a new constitution? Well, that’s kind of what America was.
The American experiment, the US Constitution and our state constitutions, encrusted with many humanistic barnacles and much corrupt corrosion, was nevertheless established with a suspicious, steely eye staring directly at the tendency in man to corruption. They knew the truth of Lord Acton’s creed in their bones: “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So they set about to establish a Republic, not a democracy, not a monarchy, not an aristocracy – “a Republic, if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin famously quipped. But not just any Republic, a Republic particularly skeptical, cynical, and leery of political power.
We often use the phrase “checks and balances,” but I’m not sure we realize how thoroughly the Founding Fathers thought of this. While the Bureaucratic Administrative State has become a massive, oozing cucumber-shaped tumor out the side of the Federal Head, the Constitution itself is a short, iron-clad document, primarily full of limiting features. Let us call them chains and locks and cinder block walls with barbed wire and broken glass scattered generously across the top.
While there would be an executive, he would only serve four year terms and can be over-ridden by the legislature and even kicked out of office. But the legislature is broken into two houses, one leaning more towards popular vote, giving the people an almost direct say every two years, the other, the senate, representing the states, standing for election every six years, but staggered every two years to slow the turnover of its members. And a judicial branch of courts meant to check all of those, and Ten Amendments, Ten Titanium Locks meant to keep the government in its cage. But the chains and locks of this mixed government run all the way down into the states, counties, cities, and people.
And the point of it all was to flatten all political power, to spread it out and tangle it up in as many different directions as possible, with multiple gates, multiple switchbacks and hairpin turns to slow everything down because not to put too fine a point on it: men do bad things with power. And then to put an exclamation point on all of it, the Constitution forbade all honorific, hierarchical titles. No lords. No political nobility. No political royalty. No magisterial class. We’re all just men made in the magisterial image of God.
In other words, our Founding Fathers wanted to establish a nation of limited government where everyone participated, not democratically, not like a giant mob, but covenantally, feudally, federally, with multiple, overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities, overlaid loyalties, mixed and sometimes competing as a way to spread out the temptations to power, with kinks in the hose every six feet.
In other words, we the people, we the families, we the cities, we the churches, we the counties, we the businesses, we the states, we the free associations and denominations, we the representatives, we the civil servants are all magistrates in America, or else we have no magistrates. When someone is elected to be the chairman of the school board, nobody starts citing Romans 13 if he starts getting snippy at meetings. We tell him to cool it or we give him the boot. America was set up as a complex and intricate system of interweaving boards and chairmen, and maybe that will be our undoing, but America was designed to try keep everyone from getting uppity.
Romans 13 in America
Romans 13 in America means honoring our Fathers who set up that system, that vast system of checks and padlocks, our Fathers who forbade us, the people and our representatives, from allowing power to accumulate in the hands of one man, one branch of government, or one class of people. You cannot cite Romans 13 divorced from the actual form of government established by our constitution. You cannot cite Romans 13 divorced from what our Fathers commanded us to do and that was to keep our freedom.
Citing Romans 13 in its Roman Empire context and applying it straight across to the American project is like citing instructions to slaves to submit to their masters and applying it straight across to employees. Everyone understands (or should understand) that there are analogous lessons and principles in play, but they must be applied differently to a situation where chattel slavery has been abolished. And it makes absolutely no sense to tell an employee with an abusive boss that now she can apply what Peter says about abusive slave masters. Well, yes, there is application there, but it’s not like she’s trapped and has to lay down and take it.
Likewise, when Christianity has permeated a culture to such an extent that the founders of a nation do everything they can think of to pile bricks on the tendency of magistrates to abuse their power, you cannot appeal to Romans 13 and tut-tut American Christians that Paul wrote that during Nero’s reign. Right, but America is not the Roman Empire, and it is nothing resembling Christian in the slightest to passively let such an empire develop. And there is no necessary contradiction between humbly recognizing God’s just judgment in the loss of our freedom on the one hand and fighting to keep and retain and gain true Christian freedom on the other. The Midianites were God’s judgment on Israel for her idolatry, and it was still faithful to join up with Gideon.
Other nations with different civil polities have to do a slightly different calculus, applying the principles of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 to their political circumstances. But in general, Paul would urge all of us to honor legitimate authority and that if we can get freedom from tyranny we should go for it. When American Christians defy stupid mask rules, ignore inane health and safety regulations, and generally live like free men and women, especially in their own homes and businesses and places of worship, they honor the fathers who established this nation, they obey Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2, and they honor the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who set us free that we might be free indeed.
Conclusion
One final word on this notion of radical freedom that must be underlined multiple times: this freedom must not be used for the flesh. This freedom is not for smoking pot, getting drunk (or very tipsy), or messing around with your girlfriend or the secretary at work. This freedom is not for looking at pornography. This freedom is not for feeding any hint of wrath or vengeance in your heart or on social media or blowing up at your family or the lady with the potty mouth in the checkout aisle who wants to know why you’re not wearing your woke burka.
This freedom is for obedience to Christ. This freedom is for taking dominion and ruling the world under God’s blessing for the good of our families and neighbors. This freedom is for proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus for the freedom and salvation of the world. This freedom is for obeying lawful and godly authority.
The freedom of Christ is full of love, joy, and peace. This freedom is full of forgiveness and mercy, even for enemies and tyrants, praying and hoping for their salvation and repentance. It is precisely because of this peace and joy and grace that it will not voluntarily relinquish its responsibilities. We must obey God rather than man. And when we do that, we must take responsibility for the fallout. We must count the cost. But there is immense blessing for those who are hungry for it.
This article was originally posted at TobyJSumpter.com
Drew Brees, the Mob, and the Poisonous Doctrine of Collective Guilt
|
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, a committed Christian, and, before last week, deeply admired and liked by people of all colors and no color, committed an almost unforgivable sin. He said this in response to a specific question about athletes kneeling during the national anthem:
I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country. Let me just tell you what I see or what I feel when the national anthem is played, and when I look at the flag of the United States. I envision my two grandfathers, who fought for this country during World War II, one in the Army and one in the Marine Corp, both risking their lives to protect our country and to try to make our country and this world a better place. Every time I stand with my hand over my heart, looking at that flag, and singing the national anthem, that’s what I think about, and in many cases, it brings me to tears thinking about all that has been sacrificed, not just [by] those in the military, but … those throughout the civil rights movements of the ’60s, and everyone, and all that has been endured by so many people up until this point. And is everything right with our country right now? No, it’s not. We still have a long way to go, but I think what you do by standing there and showing respect to the flag with your hand over your heart, is it shows unity. It shows that we are all in this together, we can all do better and that we are all part of the solution.” (emphasis added)
“Progressives” became apoplectic and splenetic. Judging from their attacks, one would think Brees had publicly celebrated Derek Chauvin.
Under withering attacks, Brees offered two apologies because the mob hated his first one. Then his wife, Brittany Brees, issued an apology in which she said,
Somehow we as white America … can feel good about not being racist, feel good about loving one another as God loves us. We can feel good about educating our children about the horrors of slavery and history. We can read books to our children about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X., Hank Aaron, Barack Obama, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman.. and feel like we are doing our part to raise our children to love, be unbiased and with no prejudice. To teach them about all of the African Americans that have fought for and risked their lives against racial injustice. Somehow as white Americans we feel like that checks the box of doing the right thing. Not until this week did Drew and I realize THAT THIS IS THE PROBLEM. To say “I don’t agree with disrespecting the flag” .. I now understand was also saying I don’t understand what the problem really is, I don’t understand what you’re fighting for, and I’m not willing to hear you because of our preconceived notions of what that flag means to us. That’s the problem we are not listening, white America is not hearing. We’re not actively LOOKING for racial prejudice.
If saying “I don’t agree with disrespecting the flag” also says “I don’t understand what the problem really is,” then does kneeling during the national anthem mean both “America is systemically racist” and “I don’t understand why you value the flag and national anthem. I don’t understand what you see that’s good in America. I’m not willing to hear you because of our view of America as pervasively evil and whites as oppressors”?
Unlike Brittany Brees, I can’t speak for all of white America. I don’t know what all of white America feels. But I do know that for a lot of white Americans, teaching our children about the horrors of slavery and lynchings, about Jim Crow laws, and about Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Hank Aaron, Jesse Owens, and the Tuskegee Airmen is not about “feeling good.” Raising our children to love others, to hate bigotry, and to stand up for mistreated friends is not about “feeling good” or “checking boxes.” It’s not about virtue-signaling or pride. It’s about serving Christ. It’s about loving our neighbors as ourselves. It’s about truth.
“Progressives” argue that people who explicitly condemn police brutality and all forms of bigotry and who have never said or done anything racist are the problem if they don’t endorse kneeling during the national anthem. Just curious, does that principle of collective guilt apply to all egregious sin? Are people who explicitly oppose the sexual exploitation of women and children in pornography, strip clubs, prostitution, and sex trafficking, and who have never viewed porn, visited a strip club, hired a prostitute, or trafficked women and children a problem? Should they kneel during the national anthem as a protest against the many Americans who watch porn, leer at women in strip clubs, hire prostitutes, and/or traffic in women and children? Are our flag and national anthem now symbols of the poisonous systemic abuse of women and children that colleges and universities promote through courses that celebrate porn? Are Americans who explicitly oppose the sexual exploitation of women and children, who are pro-actively teaching their children about its evil, and who have never been complicit in it via using porn, visiting strip clubs, hiring prostitutes, or sex-trafficking, the problem if they are not “actively” looking for the sexual exploitation of women and children?
Former NFL player Shannon Sharpe said this about Drew Brees’s response to an interviewer’s question about the knee-taking of athletes:
[Drew] issued an apology … but it’s meaningless because the guys know he spoke his heart the very first time around. I don’t know what Drew’s going to do, but he probably should just go ahead and retire now. He will never be the same. Take it from a guy that has been a leader in the locker room for a number of years. What he said, they will never look at him the same because he spoke his heart. It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it. He was defiant. I will NEVER [yes, Sharpe shouted that defiantly] respect the man.
BTW, Brees did not speak defiantly as Sharpe falsely claimed—making Sharpe, therefore, a slanderer. Don’t believe me? Well, watch it yourself and see if you think Brees was “defiant”:
Sharpe expresses the “progressive” view of “tolerance,” and this is why “progressivism” will destroy both freedom and the country. Brees saying that he disagrees with knee-taking during the national anthem while at the same time saying the flag represents the sacrifices made during the Civil Rights era and acknowledging that right now we have a lot of work yet to do renders him—in Sharpe’s repugnant view—unsuitable for employment or respect.
Brees’s teammate Malcolm Jenkins castigated him too saying,
Drew Brees, if you don’t understand how hurtful, how insensitive your comments are, you are part of the problem. To think that because your grandfathers served in this country and you have a great respect for the flag that everybody else should have the same ideals and thoughts that you do is ridiculous. And it shows that you don’t know history. Because when our grandfathers fought for this country and served and they came back, they didn’t come back to a hero’s welcome. They came back and got attacked for wearing their uniforms. They came back to people, to racism, to complete violence.”
Brees never said anything like “everybody else should have the same ideals and thoughts” that he does. Moreover, Brees is justified in valuing the service of his grandfathers, and he is justified in his respect and love for America—the country to which emigrants the world over seek entry. He’s justified in loving America for her founding—though imperfectly realized—principles. He’s justified in celebrating the incredible integration of peoples of diverse races, ethnicities, and religions in America. He’s justified in appreciating how far we’ve come since slavery and Jim Crow laws.
It is possible for whites both to value the sacrifice and service of their fathers and grandfathers and to feel contempt for the injustice of black fathers and grandfathers being ill-treated following their service and sacrifice.
Vietnam war veterans—both black and white—were spit on by liberals when they returned home. Do we hold liberals who, not only didn’t engage in such behavior but also condemn it, accountable for that injustice? Do we blame such ugly behavior committed by some liberals fifty years ago on all of America? Does the American flag and national anthem symbolize their repugnant acts?
Jenkins continued,
And then here we are in 2020, with the whole country on fire, everybody witnessing a black man dying—being murdered—at the hands of the police, just in cold blood for everybody to see. The whole country’s on fire, and the first thing that you do is criticize one’s peaceful protest that was years ago when we were trying to signal a sign for help and signal for our allies and our white brothers and sisters, the people we consider to be friends, to get involved? It was ignored. And here we are now with the world on fire and you still continue to first criticize how we peacefully protest because it doesn’t fit in what you do and your beliefs without ever acknowledging that the fact that a man was murdered at the hands of police in front of us all and that it’s been continuing for centuries, that the same brothers that you break the huddle down with before every single game, the same guys that you bleed with and go into battle with every single day go home to communities that have been decimated.
Brees didn’t “continue to first criticize.” He has not been continually criticizing the kneeling protests. He didn’t initiate discussion of the topic. Brees was asked by an interviewer what he would do if teammates kneeled during the national anthem.
And while Brees didn’t mention George Floyd, he did acknowledge the suffering of the black community. To remind Jenkins, this is what Brees said:
[I]t brings me to tears, thinking about all that has been sacrificed, not just [by] those in the military, but … [by] those throughout the civil rights movements of the ’60s, and everyone, and all that has been endured by so many people up until this point. And is everything right with our country right now? No, it’s not. We still have a long way to go. … we can all do better and … we are all part of the solution.
What exactly did Jenkins mean when he said the kneeling protests were “ignored”? Likely he meant that there were many people who didn’t participate or support the protest. In other words, in Jenkins’ view, the only acceptable way to help decimated black communities is to protest the national anthem. But then isn’t Jenkins doing exactly what he accuses Brees of doing? Isn’t he demanding that everyone believe what he believes about the protests, the flag, and the national anthem?
Jenkins is ignoring that there are white people and black people trying to help decimated black communities. They’ve been trying for years, but they’re shouted down and called bigots for having different views than white and black liberals on how to solve the problems of racism and urban blight. Here are some of their ideas:
How should we address actual racism committed by racist individuals in police departments—most of which are controlled by liberals? Punish them and/or get rid of them. How do we do that? Revisit/reform “qualified immunity” and policies that conceal police misconduct and protect brutal cops.
How should we address crime in black communities? Work on transforming society by getting rid of no-fault divorce and using every resource available to promote true marriage and discourage out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Intact families with a mother and a father are the greatest protections against poverty and crime. And when crime is reduced in communities, businesses will move in.
How do we improve education? Offer impoverished families school choice and end teachers’ unions that promote destructive policies and protect lousy teachers. And stop teaching divisive and false ideas from organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center’s education arm Teaching Tolerance, or Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, or The 1619 Project that present imbalanced views of American history and teach children of color that because of white oppression, they have no hope of moving up in the world.
How do we help blacks improve their financial position? Deregulate businesses and reduce taxes in order to grow the economy, thereby providing jobs.
How do we help eradicate bigotry, bitterness, and hatred? We preach the gospel—the whole gospel.
If Jenkins is concerned about the decimation in his community, why attack Brees? Why not attack “progressives” who have run the cities in which those decimated communities subsist? Why not attack the racism profiteers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who make bank by fomenting racial division? Why not attack liberal leaders who deny school choice to poor black families? Why not attack teachers’ unions that protect lousy teachers in failing schools? Why not attack fatherlessness that results in criminality? Why not attack Black Lives Matter (BLM) that seeks to dismantle families, which are the single best hope for black children?
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.
Note that mothers and parents are mentioned but not fathers.
Are those principles and goals helpful to black children? Are they unifying? Are they good?
Jenkins was not done with his accusatory screed:
Drew, unfortunately, you’re somebody who doesn’t understand their privilege. You don’t understand the potential that you have to actually be an advocate for the people that you call brothers.
Will Jenkins stand behind whites who advocate for school choice, true marriage, and the end of teachers’ unions? Will Jenkins cheer whites who advocate against premarital sex and out-of-wedlock births? Will Jenkins cheer whites who advocate for the end of divisive, destructive diversity training and The 1619 Project that teach lies and foster division? Will Jenkins cheer for whites who advocate the ideas of Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, Ben Carson, Bob Woodson and “1776 Unites” project? Or are whites expected to advocate for only ideas and policies that Jenkins, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nikole Hannah-Jones and her 1619 Project scam promulgate?
Liberals have had fifty years to solve the problems endemic to urban communities of color—including eight years with a black president whose presidency saw black unemployment and racial division surge. Is Jenkins willing to listen to the ideas of others on how to help, how to advocate, how to get involved? Is he willing to listen to diverse ideas on how to rebuild suffering communities? Or will he say to black conservatives what he said to Brees: “you should shut the f–k up.”
It’s ironic that progressives have controlled most major cities for decades and have been forcing Americans in government schools and the corporate world to endure years of “diversity training,” “sensitivity” sessions, and “social justice” indoctrination, and yet we just suffered through the worst race riots since 1968 when Boomers and their rotten ideas began corrupting academia.
Their rotten ideas have—as expected and predicted—produced rotten fruit that is poisoning the hearts and minds of Americans. Race relations had been improving slowly but surely until the Boomers’ ideas seeped from sullied towers in bastions of idiocy like Berkeley to countless colleges and universities and then into high schools. Peggy McIntosh, White Privilege Conferences, and Howard Zinn’s revisionist history of the United States turned young teens’ minds into burbling cauldrons of contempt for America and its founding principles—those very principles that had brought us so far from the days of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and red-lining. With an erroneous understanding of American history, young Americans falsely believe that America was and remains a wholly evil country that must be destroyed and rebuilt in the recriminatory image of “progressives.”
Former NFL coach and Christian Tony Dungy, who likes and respects Drew Brees, expressed disappointment with his initial comments. Dungy said that “we need unifying voices, not divisive voices.” Dungy’s comments were disappointing in that he didn’t address the divisiveness of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, The 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory, or people like Al Sharpton. He didn’t address the divisiveness of the attacks on Drew Brees for saying—when asked—that he doesn’t agree with kneeling during the national anthem. But you see, Dungy wasn’t asked about any of that, just like Brees was not asked specifically about George Floyd.
Two apologies from Drew Brees and one long one from Mrs. Brees, all of which suggest they have joined BLM. These apologies bring to mind Winston Smith at the end of 1984. Sadly, it doesn’t take torture to get grown men (and women) to capitulate to a destructive ideology. All it takes today is a barrage of insults.
Every day, we see across America signs of hope and progress. We see interracial couples, multi-racial churches, multi-racial groups of friends, and upwardly mobile black families. Is America perfect? Of course not. No society can ever be perfect because humans are fallen creatures. Fallen creatures hate. People of all colors hate. But our founding principles are good, and they are guiding us toward better.
Over a dozen years ago, while working at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, I was helping a high school junior on her paper for American Studies (still co-taught by the same two teachers today). She cheerily told me that by the end of first semester in American Studies, she hated America and hated being an American. “Social justice” mission accomplished.
We take very seriously the trust you place in Illinois Family Institute when you send a gift. We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust.
IFI is supported by voluntary donations from good people like you.
In Chicago, Schools Re-Write History With “1619” Lies
|
In Chicago Public Schools, captive students are being indoctrinated to believe that one of the very first societies in the world to end slavery was actually a monster defined by the evils of slavery — almost as if this monstrous nation had invented it.
This narrative is peddled despite the fact that the nation in question sacrificed hundreds of thousands of its finest men to eradicate slavery — not only ending it domestically, but eventually, worldwide, too.
And this slanderous lie is peddled despite the fact that institution of slavery has been ubiquitous throughout human history — at least until America and the Christian West put an end to it.
Indeed, in the African nation of Mauritania, slavery did not even become a crime until 2007, and the institution remains firmly entrenched there, as it does across broad swaths of Africa and the Middle East.
But supposedly, it’s America that is evil.
Welcome to the upside world of America’s “progressives” — the post-modernist absurdity where good is evil, evil is good, up is down, and truth does not even really exist.
During a recent visit to Chicago, self-styled “journalist” Nikole Hannah-Jones, a fringe left-wing race-monger, argued that the real history of America begins not with the Pilgrims in 1620, but with the almost unknown arrival of a slave ship the year before.
“It is a moment that is really at the basis for so much of American life, the very definition of American freedom, our culture, our politics,” claimed Hannah-Jones, founder of the so-called “1619 Project” and a prominent propagandist for the racist New York Times.
This absurd narrative has now been embedded into government schools in Chicago, with Hannah-Jones giving a “shout out” to CPS CEO Janice Jackson for forcing it on the child inmates under her control.
During an interview with the tax-funded “Chicago Tonight” show on WTTW, Hannah-Jones admitted that this is a “radical re-framing” of history.
Of course, it is also an absurd and shameful re-writing of history that turns reality upside down and deliberately misleads innocent children.
But in Chicago and beyond, radical anti-American activists have been working for decades to completely re-write U.S. history, literally flipping reality on its head for the purpose of undermining liberty and the United States.
In reality, America is a unique and special nation — perhaps the first to be founded on the biblical principles brought over by the Pilgrims.
This would lead directly to the creation of the first self-governing Godly republic since ancient Israel.
And eventually, this would lead to the ending of legal slavery worldwide and the near-universal acceptance of what America’s Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence was a “self-evident” truth: the idea that “all men are created equal.”
Like virtually every society throughout all of human history, some Americans originally tolerated slavery.
However, it was because of America’s founding, and the biblical principles and worldview upon which it was founded, that this ubiquitous scourge was practically eradicated from the face of the Earth, beginning in the Christian West and then slowly spreading around the globe.
Before William Wilberforce in Britain would use God’s Word to explain why slavery was evil in the sight of God, many of America’s Founding Fathers were plotting to systematically end slavery for the first time in human history.
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, for instance, was one of the original and most fervent anti-slavery crusaders to ever walk on the planet up until that time.
Calling slavery a “national evil” and blasting the slave trade as “criminal conduct” and a “violation of the laws of humanity,” Madison demanded in 1810 that Congress devise “further means of suppressing the evil.”
This “1619 Project,” though, wants Americans — and especially children in government schools who don’t know any better — to believe that the great Christians who made this all possible are actually the culprits for the evils they helped eradicate.
Naturally, the half-baked project is being spearheaded by the New York Times.
Ironically, though, the Times has a long and sordid history of this sort of racism and deadly dishonesty.
In 2018, for instance, the Times hired virulent racist Sarah Jeong to serve on its editorial board. Among other outrages, Jeong admitted it was “kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” She also argued that “white people” are “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” The raw, seething hatred shocked America, but the Times saw no problem with it.
Before that, Times “journalist” and Soviet apologist Walter Duranty helped the mass-murdering Bolshevik regime conceal its ghastly genocide of Ukrainian people via deliberate starvation. An estimated 10 million people were murdered while Duranty deceived Americans into believing everything was just fine.
Another Times “journalist,” Herbert Matthews, marketed mass-murdering communist butcher Fidel Castro to America as an “anti-Communist” so-called “freedom fighter,” even referring to him as the “George Washington” of Cuba. As a result, the nation of Cuba was enslaved and destroyed.
It is bad enough that a dying newspaper would peddle this sort of disgusting and dishonest propaganda to gullible “progressive” adults who pay to read that garbage.
But forcing these twisted lies on captive school children at taxpayer expense should be considered a crime. It is time for the people of Illinois to speak out.
TheNew York Timeshas embarked on an effort to rewrite the history of the United States as a nation built upon slavery. Calling it the “1619 Project,” the opening article is a whopping 7,600-word effort to look at 18th Century history through a liberal 21stcentury lens. Joshua Lawson has written an excellent rebuttal to this effort in The Federalist. Because much of the NYT’s ideology is already being inserted into the narrative of schools and universities, I wanted to pass along some portions of this important article for your consideration.
No, America Wasn’t Built On Slavery, But Faith That All Men Are Created Equal
The year 1619 was chosen for the Times’ “re-founding” to mark when the first slaves arrived in the English settlement of Jamestown.
Slavery was a heart-wrenching, obstacle during America’s birth, but by no objective analysis was it the central factor of the founding as the 1619 Project claims.
Slavery was and is an abomination. It is an evil part of America’s past—as well as that of nearly every nation on earth. The fact that slavery has a universal heritage does not absolve American slave owners, but it does provide a necessary historical context.
During the 17th century, slavery was, sadly, an accepted part of life throughout the world. By A.D. 1619, slavery had existed for more than 5000 years, dating back at least to Mesopotamia.
Written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the 7,600-word flagship essay of the 1619 Project asserts that “our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.” Hannah-Jones claims, “white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst.” She provides no evidence or examples for this sweeping assertion.
Jefferson’s original final draft of the Declaration explicitly referred to black slaves not as property but as men. Letters written to John Jay show Alexander Hamilton hoping the Revolutionary War could lead to the emancipation of blacks and appraising them equal to whites in their abilities. Additional examples are plentiful.
The Founders were painfully aware of the cognitive dissonance of forming a nation under the proclamation that all were created equal while maintaining slavery. They also had to face the political reality that the 13 colonies could not be united in a new nation if they immediately abolished slavery.
With no other way to obtain the necessary support for unity and ratification, the Founders spitefully tolerated slavery’s existence, while also placing it on a path to extinction. Once the nation secured independence, American statesman of the Founding Era slashed away at slavery as quickly as prudence and political reality would allow.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the territory that would become the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. In 1794, Congress barred American ships from engaging in the slave trade. Additional legislation in 1780 banned Americans from employment or investment in the international slave trade. Finally, the U.S. Congress officially banned the importation of slaves beginning on January 1, 1808, the earliest date allowed under the deal made to ratify the Constitution.
Far from the bastion of racism, hate and pro-slavery sentiment that the 1619 Project portrays, much of the United States was ahead of the world in ending the horror of slavery. Shortly after the signing of the Declaration, northern states took the lead. By 1804, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had passed laws that immediately or gradually abolished slavery.
If the American Founding was grounded in slavery, and the Founders didn’t believe a word of the opening of the Declaration, how does one account for these actions?
According to Hannah-Jones, one of the “primary reasons” Americans declared independence was to preserve slavery, fearful of the “growing calls” to abolish the slave trade in London. However, a closer look shows the abolitionist movement didn’t have a truly organized presence in England until 1783 when the first petition was filed by Quakers. It wasn’t until 1787 that the influential Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded.
The 1619 Project is politically driven 2020 posturing dressed in the veneer of a historical “exposé.” By warping history, it hopes that dopamine hits of anger and injustice will prevent readers from engaging in objective analysis. Just in time to paint America as racist for the upcoming presidential election.
Leftists are banking that the outrage caused by the 1619 Project will provide them the political capital required to move to the next stage: a full reconfiguration of America into their image.
America does not need further tribal rhetoric tearing up what little societal cohesion remains. The nation certainly doesn’t benefit from Times writers conducting a growing chorus of anger and grievance.
This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.
The Scourge of Human Trafficking Demands Another Appomattox
|
The bloodiest war that the United States ever fought did not take place on a foreign battlefield but raged on American soil, as brother took up arms against brother over the issue of slavery. The war began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861, and ended in the Spring of 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. The modest brick structure standing forlornly in a field in central Virginia belies the magnitude of the human tragedy, with an estimated 620,000 killed—almost as many as in all foreign wars combined.
The war led to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. But while the facts of this violent conflict are familiar to students of American history, what is less-known is that the practice of slavery continues unabated. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), every year millions of men, women, and children are the victims of trafficking, which involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel an individual against their will to perform some type of labor or commercial sex act. The DHS estimates that many billions of dollars per year are generated by human trafficking, which is second only to drug trafficking as the most profitable transnational crime.
Traffickers seek those who are susceptible because of psychological or emotional vulnerability, economic hardship, or in many cases children who are unable to protect themselves against predators. Doctors Without Borders reports that two-thirds of migrants traveling through Mexico to the United States experience violence, including theft, torture, and rape. As the DHS notes, “The trauma caused by the traffickers can be so great that many may not identify themselves as victims or ask for help.”
Responding to the crisis, President Donald Trump has proclaimed January as “National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.” Referring to human trafficking as “a modern form of slavery,” the president pledged to “actively work to prevent and end this barbaric exploitation of innocent victims.”
The president noted that the lack of an impregnable barrier has enabled traffickers to transport their victims into the United States with virtual impunity. Accordingly, “I have made it a top priority to fully secure our Nation’s Southwest border, including through the continued construction of a physical wall, so that we can stop human trafficking and stem the flow of deadly drugs and criminals into our country.”
Trump refuses to sign a spending bill that does not contain funding for a border wall. Seemingly oblivious to the dangers of an unsecured border, Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calls a wall “an immorality between countries; it’s an old way of thinking.” U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) agreed, stating: “This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis (and) stoke fear.” Meanwhile, in 2018 almost 400,000 people were apprehended after illegally crossing the border.
The battle is also raging in cyberspace, as human traffickers recruit their victims through websites. In April 2018, the FBI shut down the nation’s largest child-sex trafficking website, Backpage.com. The FBI alleged that Backpage.com encouraged the posting of ads for prostitution and the human trafficking of minors. As a result, Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer was convicted on charges of facilitating prostitution and money laundering.
While the bill signed in April led to the closing of an estimated 87 percent of human trafficking sites, the demand is such that other players in the lucrative online sex-for-hire market have since moved in to fill the void. The software company Marinus Analytics reports that in a one-month period after Backpage.com was shut down, 146,000 online sex ads were posted every day.
The horrors of human trafficking in our day rival the slavery of a bygone era. One can only hope that sufficient numbers of those who possess the determination of an Abraham Lincoln will arise to at long last bring the horrors of human trafficking to an end at a modern-day Appomattox.
Take ACTION:Click HERE to contact U.S. Senators Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth and your own U.S. Reprsenative to ask them to support federal legislation – including a border wall – to help combat this horrific practice of human trafficking into the United States.
Alternatively, you may phone the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. An operator will connect you directly with the legislative office you request.
Subscribe to the IFI YouTube channel
and never miss a video report or special program!
Most College Students Think America Invented Slavery
|
Written by Kate Hardiman
For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.
The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.
“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”
Pesta, currently an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, has taught the gamut of Western literature—from the Classics to the modern—at seven different universities, ranging from large research institutions to small liberal arts colleges to branch campuses. He said he has given the quizzes to students at Purdue University, University of Tennessee Martin, Ursinus College, Oklahoma State University, and University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
The origin of these quizzes, which Pesta calls “cultural literacy markers,” was his increasing discomfort with gaps in his students’ foundational knowledge.
“They came to college without the basic rudiments of American history or Western culture and their reading level was pretty low,” Pesta told The Fix.
Before even distributing the syllabus for his courses, Pesta administered his short quizzes with basic questions about American history, economics and Western culture. For instance, the questions asked students to circle which of three historical figures was a president of the United States, or to name three slave-holding countries over the last 2,000 years, or define “capitalism” and “socialism” in one sentence each.
Often, more students connected Thomas Jefferson to slavery than could identify him as president, according to Pesta. On one quiz, 29 out of 32 students responding knew that Jefferson owned slaves, but only three out of the 32 correctly identified him as president. Interestingly, more students— six of 32—actually believed Ben Franklin had been president.
Pesta said he believes these students were given an overwhelmingly negative view of American history in high school, perpetuated by scholars such as Howard Zinn in “A People’s History of the United States,” a frequently assigned textbook.
What’s more, he began to observe a shift in his students’ quiz responses in the early 2000s. Before that time, Pesta described his students as “often historically ignorant, but not politicized.” Since the early 2000s, Pesta has found that “many students come to college preprogrammed in certain ways.”
“They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets,” Pesta said. “Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as ‘fairness.’”
Pesta also noted that, early on, his students’ “blissful ignorance was accompanied by a basic humility about what they did not know.” But over time he said he increasingly saw “a sense of moral superiority in not knowing anything about our ‘racist and sexist’ history and our ‘biased’ institutions.”
“As we now see on campus,” Pesta said, “social justice warriors are arguing that even reading the great books of Western culture is at best a micro-aggression, and at worst an insidious form of cultural imperialism and indoctrination.”
Pesta, an outspoken critic of Common Core, said he believes that these attitudes will become more pronounced moving forward, due to Common Core architect David Coleman’s rewrite of Advanced Placement American and European history standards.
Pesta argues that Coleman, now president of the College Board, “has further politicized the teaching of history, reducing the story of Western culture to little more than a litany of crimes, exploitations, and genocides, while simultaneously whitewashing the history of ideologies like socialism and communism.”
Despite no longer giving the quizzes, Pesta told The Fix that he continues “to seek effective ways to teach students the literature of Western culture, which it is not only alien and complex, but often condemned by students before it is truly encountered.”
“We must absolutely teach those areas where Western culture has fallen short, but always with the recognition that such criticism is possible because of the freedoms and advantages offered by Western culture,” he said.
This article was originally posted at TheCollegeFix.com
