Tucker Carlson (video below): “Slavery is undoubtedly evil. But remember George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and 41 of the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. Should we no longer preserve our institutions and just dismiss them as evil?”
Yes, slavery is evil…. TODAY! 200 years ago our culture was much different. What is abhorrent today was accepted as commonplace then. Smoking, for example. Way taboo today for a variety of reasons, most notably health, but the push against smoking didn’t start in earnest until a few decades ago.
What we do today may be considered abhorrent in 200 years, and the politically correct will condemn our behavior and culture because they can’t understand it in juxtaposition to their own.
Take, for example, the advancing agenda of animal rights. Many of us today, including most leftists, love a great steak or cheeseburger. In 200 years, Colonel Sanders may be the Robert E. Lee of today. Ridiculous? I can see it happening just as easily as today’s stupidity over Civil War monuments and statues.
Let’s take the stupidity a step further. Many leftists own dogs and cats. Heck, some own horses or exotic animals. The word “own” may be generally sickening in 200 years. Fences and leashes may be outlawed. “No less than humans, all animals deserve to be freed from their slavery” may be the popular mantra of that future culture. Imagine cattle roaming freely in your yard (you are going to need a bigger pooper scooper for that). Imagine being attacked by a dog, and if you fight back and kill it, being arrested, charged with “voluntary slaughter” (there will be no such charge as “manslaughter,” as we will have advanced well beyond species identity), convicted, and sent to prison.
Sounds like a swell world, right? Well, it could certainly happen. My point is that what is seen as perfectly acceptable by one culture, may be abhorrent in the eyes of future cultures. To judge those who lived 200 years ago through the lens of today’s culture is wrong.
How about medicine? Ever hear of Hirudotherapy? It is the practice of using leeches to suck the blood out of patients in an effort to cure them of all sorts of physical and mental disorders. What is thought of the practice in today’s medical world? It is ridiculous, stupid, sickening. Saturday Night Live wrote comedy skits around the medieval medicinal practice of bloodletting. But, in its day, it was cutting edge technology, considered the best method of curing people of serious illnesses. My point: What was considered perfectly acceptable 200 years ago is considered abhorrent today. We should not condemn those who practiced it. Without their contributions to medical science, we would not have advanced as far as we have in the field of medicine.
Now, the toxic topic of slavery and the American Civil War, which was not begun over slavery at all. It was begun over money, taxes. The Confederates were not fighting to preserve slavery. They were fighting for the right to govern themselves. Lincoln couldn’t allow it as he desperately needed the South’s tax money and was willing to lose 600,000 American lives to get it, all of which I explain in greater detail beneath the video, below.
The entire cause du jour of attacking all things Confederate is the result of revisionist history and its resulting mass ignorance.
Two years ago, leftists were goose-stepping through the door of political correctness, demanding the banning of what they believed was THE Confederate flag. It wasn’t, as I explained here. The flag they believe was THE Confederate flag was actually a battle flag of the Army of Tennessee. There is a reason that that particular flag has become the symbol they hate so much, but I will bet that you can’t find one foaming-at-the-mouth leftist hater who can tell you where their hatred for that particular flag came from. They don’t know, they don’t care. They just HATE without knowing exactly what they are hating or why.
The fact is the banner they hate so much is connected to the DEMOCRATS who began the Ku Klux Klan as an enforcement branch of the DEMOCRAT Party to oppress blacks and prevent them from voting. But, let’s not allow facts to get in the way of a good lynching.
In a June, 2015 Powdered Wig article, I described the REAL cause of the Civil War. It wasn’t slavery. Here are the Cliff Notes….
- The Civil War was begun over the Morrill Tariff of 1861, not slavery.
- The federal government could not operate without the South’s massive tax (tariff) contribution. Thus, Lincoln had no choice, in his opinion, but to FORCE the southern states to remain in the Union.
- The southern states were responsible for the vast majority of tax revenue used to keep the federal government operating. Most of that revenue was used to build infrastructure in the industrial north, certainly an iniquitous tax situation and the cause for war.
- Lincoln had promised to not interfere with slavery in states where it already existed, like all southern states. Why would the South go to war over a non-issue?
- Slavery was not an issue until 1863 when the North was losing the war badly, morale was in the toilet, desertion in the Army was rampant, and support for the war was waning rapidly. Many northerners were demanding Lincoln allow the South to separate, bringing an end to the war.
- Lincoln’s last ditch effort was the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, freeing all southern slaves. He did this to fire up the abolitionists, gin up civilian support for the war, and draw hundreds of thousands more young men into the Army. It worked.
