http://swtotd.blogspot.com/
There is so much in today’s news that is both silly and dangerous. The anti-democratic crowd in Britain, like their brethren in the United States, chose not to accept the outcome of an election. The vote three years ago was definitive, with 52% of the electorate voting to leave the European Union. For those of you who speak and write of the closeness of the vote, yes it was. Nevertheless, it was the will of the people. In the same vein there has been a refusal by many on the left in the U.S. not to accept the outcome of our 2016 election. We have corporate leaders who feel it is more important to be “woke” than to accept the reality that a corporation’s most important goal must be profitability. If a business is not profitable, employees, the community, suppliers and customers will not benefit. It seems the entire field of Democrats who would be President have chosen to end fracking and exit the fossil fuel industry – including natural gas, the commodity that has allowed us to come closer to global emission standards than any other industrial nation – and move quickly to renewables like wind and solar, no matter the costs or the effect on the environment. We have big-city politicians – the most prominent example being New York City – who would dumb-down public education to the lowest common denominator, in the name of equality. They would do so to the detriment of minorities and the impoverished, while sending their own children to private institutions.
The common thread running through all these tantrums posing as policies is hypocrisy. It is enough to make an old man wince. But, enough, on to the main message:
Slavery is barbaric, but to argue that it was the “foundation” on which our country was built is hyperbole and disingenuous. In 1619, Virginia was a colony of Britain. It would be 157 years before the American colonies revolted, and they did so to be free and independent. In that year 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” words, as we know, that did not capture the truth of slavery, but which suggested a road map for the banning of international slave trade, which was done in 1808; the freeing of slaves in 1863 under the Proclamation Emancipation, and for the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965. One might argue that 188 years is too long, but keep in mind slavery has been in existence since before written history. Also, remember, in 1776 slavery existed in all thirteen colonies and throughout Europe. And it persists today, enslaving forty million people, particularly in Asia, Africa and Central Asia.
