As part of this recent race reconciliation “dialogue” we have been having, “Juneteenth” has gotten publicity, so I looked into it. Juneteenth commemorates June 19th, 1865, when slaves in Texas were proclaimed free. Earlier that year the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, was passed, and it was ratified in December, 1865. Since then it has been illegal to buy anyone in America who is not a U.S. Congressman or a state representative.
Tumult grips our country. We are about to fight another civil war — over our last Civil War.
Americans do love to fight. With no football on TV, which usually distracts us from watching political squabbles, we are at war over all of this mess. Psychologists say, and politicians know, that football satisfies man’s primal thirst for war. But just to be on the safe side, they have us in a bunch of real wars, too.
Somehow this racial strife over slavery is portrayed as just a U.S. problem. But almost all countries on Earth have been involved in slavery at some point in their history. America has not had slaves for 150 years, unless you count Amazon employees and CNN interns. Now, somehow, those who were never slaves want reparations from those who never owned slaves?
We need to reason through the recurring demand by a few to rid our nation of any history that does not fit their worldview. Totalitarian regimes like the Nazis, Bolsheviks, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, North Korea’s Kim family, the Taliban, etc., all tore down statues relating to any history they did not like. Then they rewrote all narratives to make themselves look good.
“Woke” entertainers cower and ceremoniously change their names: Lady Antebellum to “Lady A,” and Dixie Chicks to “The Chicks” (but not for long because that annoys feminists). I feel sorry for the rock band The Police, because you know it’s getting defunded soon.
The tired article of faith among the media and the left is that anyone who disagrees with them politically is a racist. This is particularly acute for us Southerners. Northerners deflect their racism on the South. They think we all watch “Gone With the Wind” backwards so it has a happy ending. They also think we have Nathan Bedford Forrest bobble-head doll night at Braves games. In reality, most of these police brutality and racial issues are in Northern — and very blue — states.
In my home state of Tennessee, legislators voted to take down a Confederate statue and replace it with one of Dolly Parton. This is not bad; at least the homeless near the State Capitol can sleep under it and be out of the rain.
Racial issues are intensifying. You have to be “woke” to realize what you can and cannot say about race anymore. For example, whites can listen to rap music but we cannot sing along.
When does this path to totalitarianism end? Trump is right: Robert E. Lee is targeted now, but will Jefferson and Washington be next? I told my Washington and Lee University grad buddies that, at this rate, they will have to repeat college.
I fall into the “contextualizing about our history” camp. But get your context right. Friends who were Constitutional lawyers on Facebook during the Russian hoax/impeachment, then epidemiologists during COVID-19 and now Civil War historians, should not be trusted.
Great men in history fall short of the 20/20 hindsight scrutiny of modern political correctness. Many were racist. They enslaved people, killed rivals, orchestrated wars, colonized, sabotaged, plundered and philandered. But fortune favors the bold and they created this great country — one the meek millennials of today never could and, thus, one which they do not value.
Consider Joe Biden’s track record. He opposed Anita Hill (a new tenet of the left is that we must believe every woman’s accusations against a political opponent, facts or proof be damned). He opposed integration (said it would be a “jungle”), voted for the Defense of Marriage Act banning gay marriage, and the crime bill. Biden bragged about Delaware’s history as a slave state. If Joe Biden had a statue, the Dems would want to tear it down.
His theme was that we need to have “uncomfortable talks about race” with each other. First, any talk with Biden these days is uncomfortable. Second, Biden applauded the looting and riots. He essentially paraphrased himself as if to say, “If you paid for your flat screen TV, you ain’t black.”
Biden has done his part to quell racial strife. No one has done more to dispel the myth of white intellectual supremacy than Joe Biden.
Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.