"Her family owned a 100-acre farm."
Can you not at least admit that being a SLAVE, or coming from a family who had been slaves, would be a horrible thing?
They may have a 100 acre farm NOW, but that wasn't always the case.
Slavery is a national scar and it always will be.
“Slavery was horrible for all slaves” is a liberal myth.
Many slaves lived absolutely normal lives, and were treated well.
The horrible part was that they were “owned” and thus de-valued as human beings. This is no different in modern day communism where the “state” owns the citizens.
This “ownership” did not affect most of their day-to-day lives. They worked, played, ate and were comfortably housed for the most part. Many slave children learned to read, write and do maths right along with their owners’ children.
The “suffering” you speak of was limited to a very few.
In reality, the “suffering” that resulted from freedom was much greater: There was no more guaranteed food, no more guaranteed shelter and no safety.
Many plantations were nothing more than communist-style communes with the owner as the (usually benevolent) dictator/leader and the slaves as the workers working for the “greater good”.
It sounds like her family was actually well off.
Do you realize that after the Civil War many of the freed slaves did have a horrible time trying to survive. They didn't have the skills to farm and some petitioned the courts to become slaves again.
Do you realize most, perhaps all, of us have ancestors who suffered a great deal, e.g., Armenians, Roma, Jews, Indians, Irish, on and on.
Yes, slavery is a terrible thing. Some people choose slavery because they don't have the skills or the motivation to support themselves. Look at the inner cities today.
Like the taste of that koolaid do ya? IF America was the only country to ever have been a slaveholding nation, then yes, it would be a national scar, BUT slavery has existed since time immemorial. Slavery has crossed every national, ethnic, social, racial and historic boundary. Your statement infers that Americans are unique in having had slaves. We are not in the least unique in that regard, but the whites in this country fought a war amongst themselves to decide the fate of those held as slaves in their midst, and in that, we are unique.
Further, prior to the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, there was no nation called the United States, only a collection of colonies of the British Empire. When the Civil War started in 1861, the nation had only existed for 80 years. From the end of the Civil War in 1865 to 2008 is 143 years giving the USA a life span of 227 years, so slavery was only a part of America's history for barely one third of its existence. When you are willing to hold the rest of the world and all previous eras of time to the same standards you are judging America by, then you might have a point, but until then, you are just spewing worthless angst, and you can take that kind of unjustified spittle elsewhere. I hear that the DU and the KOSkiddies share your position on slavery.