Posted on 08/15/2015 1:22:09 PM PDT by kathsua
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Remember Muhammad Ali, who when asked how he liked Africa, said "Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat."
At least the Muzzzies had the good sense to whack off the reproductive parts on the males they sold to the Arabs. Most soon died from the operation or died digging wells around Arabia.
Europeans wanted the ones they bought whole.
The brilliant Dr. Walter E. Williams is fond of saying that he is much better off today because his ancestors were brought here as slaves.
Would Dr. Williams have traded places with them?
I don’t think Columbus intent was to find new markets for slaves, at least initially he was bent on the riches of the Orient. However slavery was a part of the settlement of portions of the Americas. Pizarro and Cortez were out to rob the locals and discover gold and silver in the rocks. They brought slaves but that was an incident of the times.
Millions murdered and many of the enslaved were worked to death. The Spanish and Portuguese were far more brutal and vicious than were Americans regarding slaves, but their horrible viciousness is forgotten because it serves no one's interest in bringing it up. Nobody ransacked their countries and needed a justification for doing so.
You see, the Slave holders in American need to be "otherized" because it is the only fig leaf to which those who wish to justify the massive destruction and bloodshed which the Union perpetrated upon the south, can cling.
Focusing on Southern Slavery is a necessary propaganda tool to justify what was done to those people.
The point here is that they didn't really care about slavery, and in fact far more vicious and brutal slavery then what they objected to in this country, because the war really wasn't about slavery. If it were, they would have sent fleets and Armies to South America, or at least the Caribbean, to destroy the far larger institution of slavery on those Islands and that continent.
It was about who was going to control the South. Nothing else. The slavery dodge is just ex post facto propaganda to justify the brutality of what they did.
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>> “Focusing on Southern Slavery is a necessary propaganda tool to justify what was done to those people.” <<
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It was done to all of us.
The total destruction of our constitutional protections remains a gaping, bleeding gash today.
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Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Haley, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.Mr. Haley intoned in a low, serious voice, “Every time an American black sees a story like that they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”
I don't know if it's actually true, but if it is it is certainly a very surprising perspective.
I can’t imagine any history teacher actually teaching what this guy says he learned. But, I guess anything is possible.
I mention that from time to time in various discussions. Many of the laws that are absolutely killing us now are a consequence of the Civil War.
The 14th amendment has become the most abused, the most twisted, and the most damaging amendment ever added to the Constitution. They tried to do too much with it, they didn't write it clearly and unambiguously, and the courts have used it ever since to enact judicial activism as it suits their fancy with whatever meaning they can wring out of the words used to compose it.
Abortion, Gay Marriage, "Anchor Babies", The assault on Religion, all are consequences of the badly written, passed through extortion, 14th amendment.
For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure he pulled that out of his @$$.
One of my wife’s Italian ancestors was captured and sold into slavery by Muslims from North Africa in the early 17th Century. He was put to work as a galley slave, managed to escape, was rescued by an English merchant vessel en route to the New World. Arriving in Virginia, he was sold to pay for his passage on terms of a 7 year indenture. At the end of his indenture, he became a free man. Indenture vice slavery were used for Christians, since enslavement of Christians in the Western World had been outlawed for Centuries.
Slavery was a global practice until very slowly prohibited by a few cultures. Christendom was among the first to curb slavery in some form. Long after slavery was ended in the New World, the practice continued throughout the Muslim world and is still practiced in fact if not in law.
You can take almost any historical event that people feel was horrific and find that the event led to some benefits for somebody. For example, wages went up after the Black Death (labor shortage). In what country would Californians be living if there had been no war with Mexico? And, would there be a state of Israel had there not been a Holocaust?
And now you've stumbled onto a manner of thinking that I have long been contemplating. This is how you get a better understanding of the dynamics of social change. Generally when things are made worse for one group of people, it usually, as a consequence, makes things better for another group of people.
We all compete for food, resources, mates and land.
You sort of gloss over the connection between "cause" and "effect" in some of your examples, but you certainly seem to get that there often is such a connection.
The only Ottoman commander who came out of the battle of Lepanto with an enhanced reputation, Uluz Ali, was an Italian who had been captured as a young man and made a galley slave, but later converted to Islam and eventually was commander of the entire Ottoman navy.
Yep, a convertible with a 327. It’ll pass just about anything but a gas station, but it’s fun to drive.
I’ve owned 4 corvette’s with 327’s. They were a hoot to drive.
Of Course this doesn't fit the narrative so,never mind.
Also, at the time of the War of Secession, some of the slave owners with the largest holdings were black.
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