Not so long ago we had a national initiative sponsored by the then first lady to eradicate bullying. We passed laws, created programs, funded groups, made television commercials with prominent Hollywood personalities and engaged in all sorts of messaging about the damage bullying does to our society. And now the very same people who told you how bad bullying is are themselves bullies attacking the very fabric of the society they said they wanted to save. They seek to denigrate people by the color of their skin or their regional background. They want to remove the names and deeds of the very people who created the nation of laws that allows them to engage in such destructive and revisionist behavior.
But why attack history? Well, it goes with being a bully; you attack people and ideas that can’t fight back. History cannot defend itself nor can it change itself, thus making it an easy target. Slavery is bad, pure and simple, it is bad. BUT every successful society in the history of the world before 1860 had slavery as part and parcel of its societal infrastructure. Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Hyksoks, Persians, you name it they had slaves. In North America the indigenous tribes enslaved one another. In Meso-America the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs all had slaves. Thus, all history, to use the emotion of the mob, is wicked and should be erased.
They attack history and seek redress but completely ignore that today there continue to be slaves all over the world. There are slaves in New York City, London, Paris, Nairobi, Cairo, Damascus, Moscow and these slaves are every bit as at risk as those of history. Whether they are Ibo children held by Nigerian diplomats as house slaves, abducted or run away children kidnapped into child prostitution, Filipina or Sri Lanka housemaids unable to leave Saudi Arabia because their “employers” hold their passports, children sold to work in the mines and fields of Africa; or young women from every corner of the globe trafficked by sex slavers.
Fighting today’s slavery would be a just cause, fighting history is just being a bully.
Your thoughts?????
You could not be more right! These protestors today are nothing more than terroists! How dare a gun toting thus put a gun in a tourist’s face heading to Stone Mountain, GA. and try to argue with him about reparations! And tell him that he owns him, or something like that.
THAT IS A TERROIST! Having worked with some of the finest blacks in the world, I’m just ashamed that these fine, honorable blacks have to deal with the other terroist blacks.
In my opinion, as long as we have to deal with the instigators like Sharpton, Barack, and many more, things are only going to get worse! Why can’t these instigators just admit to the facts and history of slavery that you just talked about. You can’t change history! You can, and should, learn from it!
“Sweep your own doorstep first.”
Well said, Tony! As a historian by training, I would note that one of the greatest historical fallacies is ‘presentism’–explicitly assessing historical figures, events, and cultures through the prism of the present (mores, culture, etc.). Frequently, manipulating history in this way is most frequently (and cynically) done in order to influence the present. For example, it’s long been a favorite of propagandists of various ilks.