As the comments point out, this comes on the heels of Tim Kaine declaring -- on the floor of the US Senate -- that the United States invented slavery, which is itself of a piece with the argument that the states had invented 'marriage' by passing laws to regulate the immemorial practice.
I don't follow Twitter, but please tell me they had the good sense to delete the tweet and apologize that they let the 18 year-old intern write it in the first place.
ReplyDeleteNot so far.
Delete@ MikeD - I had the same thought. Someone there must know this is insane.
ReplyDeleteWHY am I not surprised?
ReplyDeleteThey--not the twitterer, not the Tim Kaine, not anyone of the Left--won't apologize for their deliberate dishonesty. It's their modus operandi.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
I guess not opening a bible, like the one Trump outragously held up just a week ago, Tim Kaine would not know what was in it.
ReplyDeleteIn historical circles, I have heard the argument that slavery in the US was unique. All that other slavery was kinder and gentler and not really the same thing at all. So, maybe that's the source of Kaine's idiotic statement.
ReplyDeleteWhatever.
Coates makes a version of that argument, although it's not very persuasive. The way it goes is that, unlike in the rest of the New World, slaves in the United States naturally increased in population until the slave trade could be banned. Coates reads that as evidence that, unlike elsewhere, American slaves were bred like animals.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, what is really going on is that slaves who went to the rest of the New World were worked to death. (This is also why the Arab world, which had a similarly-scaled slave trade from Africa, has no appreciable black population today.) Conditions in the USA were materially better, so people survived and multiplied. It would be hard to see materially better treatment as worse; but if you are operating from the premise that you have to prove that it was worse, well, you have to find a way to get there. It's like working backwards in a Fitch-style natural deduction.
There is also the distinction that slavery by Europeans was commodified, which was a significant increase in sinfulness. I suggest it just means they kept better records. But it's fun to say.
ReplyDeleteThere was a significant worsening in America after the invention of the cotton gin, which was supposed to make everyone's life better. But it meant that in the newer territories like Mississippi, where the land had not had all the nutrients necessary for cotton sucked out of it, young black males that could be worked to death - as in all the Caribbean and South American countries - now fetched an amazingly high price. Many were sold from East Coast plantations and homes, or "Down the Mississippi" as Mark Twain reported. That was likely the lowest of low points for us.
Castration had more effect for islam.
ReplyDeleteImport of slaves became harder in usa, creating reason for breeding. But also blacks as servants in family became more normal.
The ACLU was dead the moment they said they'd no longer defend all free speech.
ReplyDeleteThat they've devolved into a parody of their former selves is, I suppose, telling of the quality of their new direction.