NRA: America’s Longest-Standing Civil Rights Organization

Published November 26, 2021November 26, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

African-American leaders speaking out against proposals to restrict gun rights at a Feb. 22, 2013 news conference in Washington, D.C. Among them: Harry Alford, president and chief executive officer of the D.C.-based National Black Chamber of Commerce.

Alford, who spoke in Milwaukee in 2008, said at one point:

“I want to thank the Lord for our Constitution. I also want to thank the NRA for its legacy. The National Rifle Association was started, founded by religious leaders who wanted to protect freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan.”

Well known as a defender of the right to bear arms, the 5 million-member NRA does describe itself as “America’s Longest-Standing Civil Rights Organization.”

KILLING BLACK & WHITE REPUBLICANS

This made me think of a connection to the Democrat Party’s historical past. Here is my comment on that part of the group on Facebook:

You know, this reminds me of something from the Democrats past. What this is is a “hit card” that the violent arm [the KKK] of the Democrat Party use to carry around with them. They would use it as an identifier to kill or harass members of the “radical group” (Republicans who thought color did not matter) in order to affect voting outcomes. While we hear of the lynchings of black persons (who did make up a larger percentage of lynchings), there were quite a few white “radicals” lynched for supporting the black vote and arming ex-slaves. It is also ironic that the current Democrat melee is focused on racial differences.

I could go on, but I won’t.

Here is a short video discussing the matter:

“…virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.” — Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), ix;
“…not every Democrat was a KKK’er, but every KKK’er was a Democrat.” — Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (New York, NY: Sentinel [Penguin], 2012), 19.

MORE GUN-CONTROL HISTORY

Today’s gun control advocates tend to paint themselves as concerned with the plight of minorities in America. What they don’t want you to know is that their movement originated as an initiative to deprive African-Americans of the means to defend themselves. In this episode of The DL, Dana Loesch is joined by NRA personalities and gun-rights advocates to delve into the deeply racist history of gun control and to explain how it continues to disproportionately affect minority communities.

Dinesh D’Souza’s 5-Part Prager U Series: Making America

Published October 16, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. You’ve heard their names. You may have even heard them referred to as the Founding Fathers. But what exactly does that mean? In this five-part series, Dinesh D’Souza examines how each of them, in their own particular way, helped to create the great enterprise that is America.

Dennis Prager Interviews Howard Zinn (2006)

Published September 16, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

A comment on my YouTube regarding the full interview by Dennis Prager of Howard Zinn prompted me to do a search. I isolated a small portion of it for the purpose of accentuating a post on the topic… but this interview was widely available. Until – apparently – very recently. Here is my RUMBLE description:

Dennis speaks with Howard Zinn, leading leftist, professor emeritus at Boston University and college campus icon. His newest book is Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics. Best of Prager Hour. This has gone away from most video sites, even CONSERVATIVE UNIVERISTY’S version is truncated a bit. So I am making the entire interview available. This interview dates from Sept of 2006.

Did the United States Practice Genocide Against Native-Americans?

Published July 5, 2021July 5, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

(Originally Posted March of 2015 — Updated Today – July 5th, 2021)

ALSO SEE:

SOME PREVIOUS POSTS ON THE NATIVE-AMERICAN MANTRAS:

Native American History In Public School (Howard Zinn Refuted)
Johnny Depp & Disney vs. History (h/t ~ Brad Thor);
A Rebuttal Of The Lefts View of Columbus and the New World;
Mayan and Aztec “Terrorism” Vs. Christopher Columbus
Smallpox Blanket Myths and Truths
Trail of Tears, Death Toll Myths Dispelled (This is a link elsewhere, to which the following is the main premise):

1. (Editor’s note: A recent federal bill memorializing as a National Historic Trail what has come to be known as the Cherokee Indian Trail of Tears is based on false history, argues William R. Higginbotham. In this article, the Texas-based writer delves into the historic record and concludes that about 840 Indians not the 4,000 figure commonly accepted died in the 1837-38 trek west; that the government-financed march was conducted by the Indians themselves; and that the phrase “Trail of Tears” was a label that was added 70 years later under questionable circumstances.) The problem with some of our accounts of history is that they have been manipulated to fit conclusions not borne out by facts. Nothing could be more intellectually dishonest. This is about a vivid case in point.

As you read this, keep in mind this is not a polemic saying these United States were in the right in all their dealings with the American Indian. What I am saying is that when looking at history, one needs to do so in full, and not in part.

The book mentioned in the above video is PLAGUES AND PEOPLES, by William H. McNeill. Here is the video description of the above:

Here is a quick blurb by Dinesh D’Souza discussing the genocide claim against the American Indian by Settlers. Much like the Black Plague killing an “up-to” estimated 60% of the European population, so to a LARGE percentage (some say 90%) died of contact with traders whom the Native-Populations had no immunities to. Just like when Western traders came into contact with the Asian continent. We don’t say this was an Asian genocide perpetrated on Westerners. Just like we do not say this (well, rational people) of Native-American contact with the West.

“Kill every buffalo you can,” he said; “every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.” ~ Colonel Richard Irving Dodge (1827 – June 16, 1895), United States Army.

I came across the above quote that got me thinking — due to the source… a left leaning website — that the quote was connected to a more complicated history than just simply “genocide” against Native-Americans (N-A from now on). Which the website was implying the quote meant. (BTW, if you are like my wife and can do without all my pomp-and-circumstance and want the bottom line ~ read this quote.) The original hat-tip came from a conservative website Gateway Pundit, referencing a call for Buffalo [New York] to change it’s racist name. (I know, EVERYTHING is racist nowadays.)

See other attempts to remove names from other things:

Washington Redskins:

Apache Helicopter:

PC Police Versus the Racist Apache Helicopter

One of the graphics Gateway used in his story was this one, note the quote by Col. Dodge:

As I continued my search… this quote from Col. Dodge showed up quite a bit. So I did a Google book search, found some promising books that would lead to the origins of the quote. I subsequently ordered used versions (pictured below).

The American West book led me ultimately to two online resources: one a book from 1911 (the original source of the quote by Col. Dodge used in many resources), Sir William Butler: An Autobiography (London, England: Constable And Company Ltd., 1911); the other resource was an article in the official Journal of the Western History Association entitled, “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883“

In these four resources as well as previous posts, I will unravel a fuller picture of the history/ethos behind such a statement. FIRST, however, here is the fuller quote as remembered by Gen. Butler:

At North Platte we found a distinguished officer of the army in command, Colonel Dodge, one of the foremost frontier men of his time, and the descendant of officers who had prepared the road for the army of settlement in the West. He was a mighty hunter too, and had killed every variety of big game from the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri. We told him of the week’s hunting we had had on the Platte prairies. More than thirty buffalo bulls had been shot by us, and I could not but feel some qualms of conscience at the thought of the destruction of so much animal life ; but Colonel Dodge held different views. “Kill every buffalo you can,” he said; “every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.” It sounded hard then, and it seems hard now ; but seven years after this time I crossed by railway from California to New York, and looking out at this same Platte valley I saw it a-smilin’ plain of farms, waving crops, and neat homesteads. The hungry crowd from overcharged Europe had surged into settlement over the old buffalo pastures of the Platte. ‘ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ It was right. These Crows, Cheyennes, Sioux, and Blackfeet Indians were no doubt splendid hunters, and fierce raiders, and crafty foemen, but no man could say they were meek.

[Lieut. General The Rt. Hon, G.G.B.] Sir W. F. Butler, Sir William Butler: An Autobiography (London, England: Constable And Company Ltd., 1911), 97.

When I read this fuller quote something stood out: “splendid hunters,” “fierce raiders,” “crafty foemen” [an enemy in war], and “‘not’ meek.” This brought to mind a previous discussion with a person on Facebook about the same issue. Daniel made a similar point that was one-sided… as if the American Indians were angels. I made the following historical point:

One of the most brutal raids of the American Revolution, a Loyalist-Iroquois coalition massacred more than 200 unsuspecting Patriot militiamen. Having raided and scorched dozens of frontier towns in upstate New York and Pennsylvania, the British arrived in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, on July 3rd. The Patriots, inexperienced and outnumbered, were ambushed and subsequently routed following a forty-five minute close combat battle. As the Patriot line crumbled, the Iroquois began brutally hunting down survivors. Only sixty Americans survived to see another day, and only five were taken prisoner. Fleeing soldiers who had surrendered, were tortured to death by Loyalists and Iroquois. It was reported that 227 Patriot scalps were collected. Dozens of bodies were found on the line of retreat, which were all buried in a common grave. In retaliation, the Sullivan Expedition, commissioned by General George Washington, systematically destroyed at least forty Iroquois villages throughout upstate New York, in 1779. Another gruesome massacre would take place against the Continental Army at Cherry Valley.

This is an important distinction coming up, and is worthy to note. There were massacres from both sides… this is the most basic understanding of this period (“boiling” it down). Now, reports of the massacres of prisoners at Wyoming and atrocities at Cherry Valley enraged the American public.

Did you catch that Daniel? Were the Iroquois ever “enraged” over it’s own actions? Were the French? Understanding history and the ethical foundations of the people involved is key to grasping these very complicated things well.

(Battle of Wyoming 1778)

Another point I pushed with Daniel in this discussion was that after the War of Independence, the Revolutionary War that is, the relationship between the people in this fledgling nation and the American Indian changed dramatically. You see, the Big Five (Five Nation League), the biggest Indian nations, ALL sided with the British.

CHEROKEES and CREEKS (among other TRIBES) in the southern interior and most IROQUOIS nations in the northern interior provided crucial support to the British war effort. With remarkably few exceptions, N-A support for the British was close to universal.

[….]

The MOHAWK chief THAYENDANEGEA (known to Anglo-Americans as JOSEPH BRANT) was the most important Iroquois leader in the Revolutionary Era. He convinced four of the six Iroquois nations to join him in an alliance with the British and was instrumental in leading combined Indian, British, and Loyalist forces on punishing raids in western New York and Pennsylvania in 1778 and 1779. These were countered by a devastating Patriot campaign into Iroquois country that was explicitly directed by General Washington to both engage warriors in battle and to destroy all Indian towns and crops so as to limit the military threat posed by the Indian-British alliance.

When British General John Burgoyne marched from Canada to Albany,

some of the Native American warriors he enlisted began killing settlers.

When the news of Jane McCrea’s murder reached major cities,

many young Americans enlisted to fight.

In spite of significant Native American aid to the British, the European treaty negotiations that concluded the war in 1783 had no native representatives. Although Ohio and Iroquois Indians had not surrendered nor suffered a final military defeat, the United States claimed that its victory over the British meant a victory over Indians as well. Not surprisingly, due to their lack of representation during treaty negotiations, Native Americans received very poor treatment in the diplomatic arrangements. The British retained their North American holdings north and west of the Great Lakes, but granted the new American republic all land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. In fact, this region was largely unsettled by whites and mostly inhabited by Native Americans. As a Wea Indian complained about the failed military alliance with the British, “In endeavoring to assist you it seems we have wrought our own ruin.” Even groups like the ONEIDA, one of the Iroquois nations that allied with the Americans, were forced to give up TRADITIONAL LANDS with other native groups.

(Revolutionary Limits: Native Americans)

This was an interesting dynamic when we beat the British and the Big Five. While the British warriors were sent-a-packin’, the American Indian combatants stayed. This was a tough situation, to say the least. History is tough.

Continuing.

Similarly, the near extinction of the Buffalo had many reasons and participants from both sides. In Settler and the N-A side participated in their demise. These American Indians were NOT angels. When trading routes and goods started to be established, we find that greed and power are a universal trait in all people of the world. The Beaver Wars exemplified just how non-angelic these American Indians were:

When the Mohawks attacked Metacomet instead of supporting him, they were motivated by self-interest. Casting themselves in the role of powerful intermediaries between neighboring Indians and the English colonies, the Mohawks and the other tribes of the Five Nation League of the Iroquois sought to place themselves in a dominant position.

European trade goods first began to reach the peoples of the Five Nations through indirect means as early as the mid-fifteenth century. In many Iroquois graves dating to that period archaeologists find brass, iron, and glass items. Their first direct access to these valuable goods came when Dutch traders established posts along the Hudson River in the 1610s. But the Iroquois had a problem. The best source of beaver pelts came from colder climes to the north. To supply themselves with the means to trade, the Mohawks, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Senecas thus began to raid their northern neighbors, plundering their stores of furs and bringing the pelts south to trade with the Dutch. These raids began a long series of seventeenth-century conflicts known as the Beaver Wars in which warriors of the Five Nations attacked other Indian peoples as far west as the Illinois country, making themselves into the most powerful Indian confederacy on the North American continent.

But the Beaver Wars were spurred by another factor besides economics. Imported European diseases had hit the Iroquois hard. By the 1640s the population of the Five Nations had been cut nearly in half. Warfare against their neighbors not only gave the Iroquois access to the great fur grounds of the northern Great Lakes but offered the opportunity to take captives.

The Iroquois directed their most furious attacks against the Hurons, allies of the French. [The Hurons were one of the more peaceful tribes] … unlike “So far as I can divine,” one Jesuit missionary wrote, “it is the design of the Iroquois to capture all the Hurons, if it is possible; to put the chiefs and great part of the nation to death, and with the rest to form one nation and one country.” In 1647 and 1648 the Mohawks and Senecas massed a brutal attack against the Hurons, destroying both Indian towns and Jesuit missionary stations. The Iroquois suffered enormous losses, but they inflicted even greater ones on the Hurons, and they so demoralized their enemies that those who were not killed or captured dispersed and fled westward. Hundreds of Hurons were marched south to the Seneca and Mohawk towns and were adopted into the villages.

Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faracher, The American West: A New Interpretive History (New Haven, CT, 2000), 67-69.

And in a very recent article (July 4th, 2021), the POST MILLENNIAL counters a bit NPR’s attack on history in this regard:

…The Ojibway were a loose confederation of states which, at their peak, had a massive extension throughout North America. They roughly paralleled the Celts in ancient times, preferring to merge peacefully with neighboring civilizations.

Most historians would agree indeed that they were very different from the Iroquois, who at the time were allied with the British Crown, and were very warlike and absolutely feared for their prowess on the battlefield by Europeans and other Indigenous cultures alike.

Choctaws, Chicasaws, Cherokee, Creeks, Mohawks, Iroquois, and Seminoles to name just a few that were in states of war with each-other in some fashion before-and-after the white-man every step foot on the continent.

Here for instance are the killing, scalping, putting into slavery those captured ~ FIGHT over the Black Hills (via: America: Imagine the World Without Her)

Now, however, as the Beaver Wars exemplified… there was a larger “monetary” benefit to these raids, land grabs, and the like.

To wit, *JUST LIKE* with the buffalo.

Here is what I mean.

While there was a concerted effort to get American Indians to become less nomadic (and thus less liable to be: “fierce raiders,” “crafty foemen” [an enemy in war], and “‘not’ meek”), the Indians THEMSELVES played a large roll in this “de-nomaditisation”! American Indians THEMSELVES sought to make a buck off of these new techniques of leather making (see especially the second large quote below):

Until 1871 the fur buffalo robe was the main marketable item, the leather being a far more limited commodity. Leather was used by the British Army in the Crimean War (1854-1856), but only after 1871 did an English firm provide a mass market for the buffalo hides. Previously, when the robes were the main item of value, commercial hunting was confined mainly to the winter when the fur was thick, but with leather as the mass product, the buffalo hunter could kill with profit all year round (Vestal, 1952, 40). The railroads, too, were glad to have the business. Their progress westward had been stopped by the long depression of the 1870s; with almost no traffic, carrying buffalo meat, hides, and bones to eastern markets was a valued business opportunity. Merchants and freighters welcomed the business that came from buffalo hunting (Vestal, 1952, 38).

Hardly had the market for buffalo hides become widely known than the panic of 1873 began which lasted for five years. During those years most of the buffalo on the southern plains were destroyed [Vestal, 1952, 451]. In 1871 the buffalo were estimated in the millions. Many of the hunters entered the profession expecting it to prove a life work and despaired of killing off more than the annual increase of the herd. Hunters encamped by water holes and rivers where the animals came to drink, built watch fires at night so that the slaughter could go on for twenty-four hours a day [Vestal, 1952, 46].

For maximum efficiency some hunters used the Big Fifty, a gun produced by Sharps to the hunter’s specifications, made to load and fire eight times a minute (Sandoz, 1954, 97; Vestal, 1952, 41). “In a brief two years (1873-1875), where there had been myriads of buffalo, there were only myriads of rotting carcasses. The air was filled with the sickening stench of death. . . .” [Vestal, 1952, 46].

The meat rotted, the bones remained, and then they, too, became a source of commercial profit. They were used in making fertilizer or in making bone china. They brought good prices. A man driving to town to trade would fill his wagon bed with bones and sell them on Front Street, Dodge City (Kansas). There were bones piled up as high as a man’s head, extending all along the track for many yards awaiting shipment. Many of the settlers managed to keep going by selling bones when drought and depression again struck the plains and destroyed their corn crop (Vestal, 1952, 50), before wheat had become a major crop of the area. One bone-buying firm estimated that over seven years (1884-1891) they bought the bones of approximately 5,950,000 buffalo skeletons. This firm was only one of many (Sandoz, 1954, 358).

Eleanor Burke Leacock and Nancy Oestreich Lurie, North American Indians In Historical Perspective (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1971), 219-220.

Supply-and-demand. This doesn’t make the near extinction an ideal goal… but it opened up the Plains for a large movement of settlers. AS WELL AS pointing out that the real push for Buffalo hides was profit during a slow times after the Civil War; not “genocide. Nor was the goal “death” of N-A’s, directly. Indirectly, anything subsidized writ-large is known to cause death in greater numbers.[icon name=”arrow-circle-o-down” class=””] In similar fashion, authors Hine and Faracher make the same historical statement:

Plains Indians had long hunted the buffalo, and the level of their hunting greatly increased with the development of the equestrian Indian tradition in the eighteenth century. From a peak of perhaps thirty million, the number of buffalo had declined to perhaps ten million by the mid-nineteenth century, partly as a result of commercial over-hunting by Indians, but also because of environmental competition from growing herds of wild horses and the spread of bovine diseases introduced by cattle crossing with settlers on the Overland Trail. By overgrazing, cutting timber, and fouling water sources, overland migrants also contributed significantly to the degeneration of habitats crucial for the health and survival of the buffalo. The confluence of these factors created a crisis for buffalo-hunting Indians by the 1860s. Tribal spokesmen protested the practice of hunters who killed for robes, leaving the meat to rot on the plains. “Has the white man become a child,” the Comanche chief Santana complained to an army officer in 1867, “that he should recklessly kill and not eat?” But it was less a case of childish whim than cynical guile. “Kill every buffalo you can!” Colonel Richard Dodge urged a sport hunter in 1867. “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”

The extension of railroad lines onto the Great Plains and the development in 1870 of a technique for converting buffalo hide into commercial leather sealed the buffalo’s fate. Lured by the profits to be made in hides, swarms of hunters invaded western Kansas. Using a high-powered rifle, a skilled hunter could kill dozens of animals in an afternoon. And unlike the hunter of buffalo robes, who was limited to taking his catch in the winter when the coat was thick, hide hunting was a year-round business. General Philip Sheridan applauded their work. “They are destroying the Indians’ commissary,” he declared. “Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are ex terminated.” As the buffalo hunters did their work, Indians also accelerated their kills, attempting to capture their share of the market. At the Santa Fe depot in Dodge City mountainous stacks of buffalo hides awaited shipment to eastern tanneries. Historians estimate that in the five years between 1870 and 1875 five or six million buffalo died on the southern plains, wiping out the southern herds. The war on the animals then shifted to the northern plains, following the advancing tracks of the Northern Pacific. “If I could learn that every Buffalo in the northern herd were killed I would be glad,” Sheridan declared in 1881. “Since the destruction of the southern herd . . . the Indians in that section have given us no trouble.” His hopes were soon fulfilled. “It was in the summer of my twentieth year (1883),” the Sioux holy man Black Elk later testified, that “the last of the bison herds was slaughtered by the Wa-sichus,” the Lakota term for white men. With the exception of a small wild herd in northern Alberta and a few remnant individuals preserved by sentimental ranch-men like Charlie Goodnight, the North American buffalo had been destroyed. “The Wasichus did not kill them to eat,” said Black Elk incredulously. “They killed them for the metal that makes them crazy, and they took only the hides to sell. . . . And when there was nothing left but heaps of bones, the Wasichus came and gathered up even the bones and sold them.” This shameful campaign of extinction remains unmatched in the American annals of nature’s conquest.

Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faracher, The American West: A New Interpretive History (New Haven, CT, 2000), 317-318.

One needs to also keep in historical perspective that yes, these buffalo killed were done so primarily for their skin. And a lot of waste was involved. But even the Plains Indians are no angels in “waste.”

For instance, I wrote a response to an in-class assignment to my sons elementary class lesson about HOW the Settlers treated the New World versus how the Indians treated it. Here is a quote from that post:

From James Fenimore Cooper to Dances with Wolves and Disney’s Pocahontas, American Indians have been mythologized as noble beings with a “spiritual, sacred attitude towards land and animals, not a practical utilitarian one.”^[16] Small children are taught that the Plains Indians never wasted any part of the buffalo. They grow up certain that the Indians lived as one with nature, and that white European settlers were the rapists who destroyed it.

In The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, Shepard Krech III, an anthropologist at Brown University, strips away the myth to show that American Indians behaved pretty much like everyone else. When times were bad they used the whole buffalo. When times were good, “whole herds” of buffalo might be killed only for their tongues or their fetuses.^[17] Although American Indians adapted to their environment and were intimately familiar with it, they had no qualms about shaping it to their needs.

Indians set fires to promote the growth of grasses and make land more productive for the game and plants that they preferred. Sometimes fire was used carefully. Sometimes it was not. Along with the evidence that Indians used fire to improve habitat are abundant descriptions of carelessly started fires that destroyed all plant life and entire buffalo herds.^[18]

Nor were American Indians particularly interested in conserving resources for the future. In the East, they practiced slash and burn agriculture. When soils became infertile, wood for fuel was exhausted, and game depleted, whole villages moved.^[19] The Cherokee, along with the other Indians who participated in the Southern deerskin trade, helped decimate white-tailed deer populations.^[20] Cherokee mythology believed that deer that were killed in a hunt were reanimated.

In all, contemporary accounts suggest that many Indians treated game as an inexhaustible resource. Despite vague hints in the historical records that some Crees may have tried to conserve beaver populations by allocating hunting territories and sparing young animals, Krech concludes that it was “market forces in combination with the Hudchild’s Bay Company policies [which actively promoted conservation]” that “led to the eventual recovery of beaver populations.”^[21]

Those who blame European settlers for genocide because they introduced microbes that ravaged native populations might as well call the Mongols genocidal for creating the plague reservoirs that led to the Black Death in Europe.^[22] Microbes travel with their hosts. Trade, desired by Indians as well as whites, created the pathways for disease.

[16] Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, W.W. Norton & Company; New York: NY (1999), p. 22.

[17] Ibid., p. 135.

[18] Ibid., p. 119.

[19] Ibid., p. 76.

[20] Ibid., p. 171.

[21] Ibid., p. 188.

[22] For a discussion of the effect of the Mongol invasions and their effect on European epidemiology see, William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, Doubleday; New York, NY (1977)

You see… when history is looked at in total and not in isolation, a theme comes out. Man is fallen. All men. Indians, Aborigines, Africans, Native-Americans, etc, etc. For history to be twisted, it needs to be viewed in isolation from other parts. History is not pretty, and the good things that come from it should be lauded… because they are rare. And this is not a polemic saying these United States were in the right in all their dealings with N-As. Reading through pages 176-184 in The American West book is heartbreaking. Moving whole groups of people by force has awful consequences, period. In this graphic from page 179 of the aforementioned book shows the undertaking started in this respect ~ even keeping in mind most fought against us in the Revolution. It doesn’t mean innocent men, women, and children were affected:

Alternatively, it is tough to argue that genocide or racism was involved as well. For instance, Colonel Dodge could be said to hate the Buffalo more than Indians. An insightful quote is this one, and, can be argued to be “speciesism” more strongly if Indian genocide is argued from his earlier solitary quote, via the official Journal of the Western History Association:

Lieutenant Colonel Dodge, who fancied himself a bona fide sportsman, regarded buffalo as “the most unwieldy, sluggish, and stupid of all plains animals.” To the hunter on foot, buffalo were by no means difficult to kill in large numbers. “If not alarmed at sight or smell of a foe,” wrote Dodge, “he will stand stupidly gazing at his companions in their death throes until the whole herd is shot down.” To be sure, Dodge regarded buffalo hunting on horseback as exciting and dangerous. But though chasing buffalo was thrilling to the novice, Dodge thought that “frequent repetition is like eating quail on toast every day for a month–monotonous.”

The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883 Author(s): David D. Smits Source: The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 325-326; Published by: Western Historical Quarterly, Utah State University on behalf of the The Western History Association.

As Christians we look at all history as providential, run by a “higher hand.” In doing research for this subject something stood out to me.

And it is the idea that God works to make Good out of horrible.

Referring back to the quote above with the Iroquois would battle other tribes for dominance and control, those they didn’t kill and scalp, they would “adopt. Makes slaves, but these slaves would become part of their new found tribe. I will pick up where I left off in that quote:

Hundreds of Hurons were marched south to the Seneca and Mohawk towns and were adopted into the villages. Many of these Hurons were Christians, and they were the first to introduce European religion among the Five Nations. So dependent were the Iroquois on keeping their adoptees happy that eventually they were forced to invite Jesuits into their homeland to minister to these Christian Hurons, thus giving the missionaries an opportunity to work among the Five Nations. Experiencing the same disruption and cultural trauma that had made the Hurons vulnerable to the Jesuit appeal, many Iroquois converted to Catholicism. Rates of conversion were especially high among the Mohawks—the people most directly affected by their contact with European traders on the Hudson River. By the 1660s there were strong factions of pro-French Christians in all the Iroquois towns of the Five Nations.

WOW! God is good. I also wish to note an early “Republican” American Indian I came across in that 1911 autobiography of In General Butler where he recalls one Native American being pressured by the Canadian government to go live on a reserve as saying this… and note, this Indian sounds like a Tea Partier!

“Why should I go into one place?” he used to ask the Hudson Bay officer and Mr. Dickens. “Do I not see all the Indians who go into one place die off faster than ever they died by the guns and knives of the Blackfeet! Are they not all starving?” They would tell him then that he was old, and that that was the reason why the Canadian Government wished him to be easy and comfortable on a reserve. To which Big Bear would reply, “It is true that I am old, but I have fed myself for seventy years. I can still hunt and feed myself, and I will stay in the open country till I die; then, when I am dead, you can put me into some one place if you like.”

[Lieut. General The Rt. Hon, G.G.B.] Sir W. F. Butler, Sir William Butler: An Autobiography (London, England: Constable And Company Ltd., 1911), 258. [back]

He understood what many years later C.S. Lewis and then The Gipper stated:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” ~ C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock, p. 292.

Also, it must be kept in mind that Republicans rejected the bills and legislation leading to the Trail of Tears. The Democrats were the one’s who put forward legislation to remove by force Native Americans from their land and move them to Federal land for subsistence off the State. Here is a smaller excerpt for a great chapter via D’Souza:

…Back to our story. Eventually the Jackson Democrats found a small faction of Cherokee who were willing, in exchange for bribes, to sign a removal agreement. This was called the Treaty of New Echota. The leaders of this group were the true Uncle Toms. They were not the recognized leaders of the Cherokee, and more than fifteen thousand Cherokee—led by Ross—signed a petition of protest. Ignoring their pleas, the U.S. government gave the Cherokee two years to migrate voluntarily.

The deadline of 1838 came and went, and most Cherokee had not moved. The Democrats at this point did not hesitate to use force. Those who refused to move were compelled. “The soldiers cleared out one farm at a time, one valley at a time,” Inskeep writes. “Approaching a house, the troops would surround it so that no one would escape, then order out the occupants with no more than they could carry.”

Native Indians unable to travel were rounded up in internment camps, a policy reminiscent of the Japanese internments that a later Democratic administration would enforce during World War II. Reports differ about how bad conditions in the camps were; what no one disputes is that around four thousand Indians died from malnourishment and disease. The Trail of Tears has gone down in American history as cruel and infamous. It certainly was, although its actual perpetrator was not “America” but rather the Jackson Democrats.

The Trail of Tears occurred after Jackson had left the presidency. He was by this time back at his plantation, the Hermitage. His handpicked successor, Martin Van Buren, was president. Yet Van Buren was only continuing the policies of his mentor. From a safe distance, Jackson approvingly watched his Democratic Party carry out his handiwork.

For Jackson, the Trail of Tears represented the culmination of his lifelong efforts. Far from being a disaster, this ugly chapter in U.S. history was one of the original “achievements” of the newly formed Democratic Party. Moreover, the way the Jackson Democrats treated the Indians was not an aberration. Rather, it was only the beginning of a long subsequent Democratic Party history of dispossession, cruelty, bigotry, and theft.

Dinesh D’Souza, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2016), 63-64.

An Olympian Should Be Honored to Represent the USA (Fireside Chat)

Published July 5, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

Folks, this might be the most important Independence Day to celebrate than ever before. It doesn’t (and never did) mean that you agree with every single thing that America has done. But what this country HAS gotten right is a miraculous achievement, and we are all unfathomably lucky beneficiaries. Have a happy and reflective Fourth!

A Tale of Two Revolutions

Published July 5, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

There is besides something special in this malady of the French Revolution that I feel without being able to describe it well or to analyze its causes. It is a virus of a new and unknown kind. There were violent revolutions in the world, but the immoderate, violent, radical, desperate, audacious, almost mad, and nonetheless powerful and effective character of these revolutionaries is without precedent, it seems to me, in the great social agitations of past centuries. From whence came this new race? What produced it? What made it so effective? What is perpetuating it? For we are still faced with the same men, although the circumstances are different, and they have founded a family in the whole civilized world. My mind is worn out with forming a clear notion of this object and with looking for ways of painting it well. Independent of every thing that is accounted for in the French Revolution, there is something unaccounted for in its spirit and its acts. I sense where the unknown object is, but try as I may, I cannot raise the veil that covers it. I feel this object as if through a strange body, preventing me from either touching it well or seeing it.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Selected Letters on Politics and Society, ed. Roger Boesche, trans. James Toupin and Roger Boesche (Berkeley, CA: The Regents of the University of California, 1985), 373 (SITE TO ACCESS)

This weekend we celebrate America’s birthday. But how many more will she have? We Christians will have to make some clear choices if the founders’ vision for America is to continue into the future. Discover the tale of two incompatible visions, on this week’s Truths That Transform.

Dialogue, debate, reasonableness… versus anarchy

Ezra Levant of TheRebel.media and Andrew Klavan, of the Daily Wire, compare the American and French Revolution. Not a “radical break with the past or history/tradition”

This following excerpt from Liberty’s Secrets is one that squarely displaces the typical secular attack on Jefferson being a man of faith to some degree. In this excerpt Thomas Paine’s position on Christianity and God is dealt with as an extra bonus, as well as some of the Founders predictions of the then young French Revolution. This is a really good read, and I highly recommend the book.

Before the excerpt, I want to share a favorite sentence that I think best defines the Founders accomplishments in the Constitution. Here it is:

The Constitution is the integration of ideals with reality, the ideal being human liberty, the reality being human nature. (p. 69)

If that isn’t the best definition in one sentence of the Constitution, I don’t know what is!

GOD AND THE HUMAN SOUL: THE EXISTENCE OF THE UNIVERSE AND MORALITY

Belief in God and the immortality of the human soul was universal among the Founders, which is incontrovertibly evident from the most cursory review of their writings. While not all of them were orthodox Christians, their thoughts on atheism ranged from extreme caution to outright disdain. For them, belief in God was natural to man because it was in accordance with his nature, and they agreed with Tocqueville when he noted (while describing the virtual absence of atheism in America) that “men cannot detach themselves from religious beliefs except by some wrong-headed thinking, and by a sort of moral violence inflicted upon their true nature… Unbelief is an accident; faith is the only permanent state of mankind.”

They saw the fingerprints of God everywhere they looked, and their conclusion that He existed was not even necessarily dependent on the Bible or any specific set of religious dogma but on the very nature of the cosmos. Writing to his friend John Adams toward the end of his life, Jefferson explained his views:

I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and the indefinite power in every atom of its composition… We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order… So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed through all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of a few in the other hypothesis Even Thomas Paine, who in the second half of his life was an ardent opponent of orthodox Christianity (mostly Catholicism) and the clergy and did not believe the Bible was divinely inspired, wrote at the same time, “All the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make or invent or contrive principles. He can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.”

Paine criticized any teaching of “natural philosophy” (i.e., science) that asserted that the universe was simply “an accomplishment” (i.e., self-existent). He also criticized those teachers who “labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they behold to innate properties of matter and jump over all the rest by saying that matter is eternal” and thereby encouraged the “evil” of atheism. “Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence,” he lamented. “When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly-finished painting… our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God?”

For these reasons, among others, Jefferson rejected being an atheist, “which,” as he put it, “I can never be.” His friend John Adams noted, “I never heard of an irreligious character in Greek or Roman history, nor in any other history, nor have I known one in life who was not a rascal. Name one if you can, living or dead.”” Nor did the Founders see science and religion as opposed to one another, as is all too common today. Rather, as President Adams asserted in a letter to university students, they were not only mutually compatible, but mutually necessary for one another: “When you look up to me with confidence as the patron of science, liberty, and religion, you melt my heart. These are the choicest blessings of humanity; they have an inseparable union. Without their joint influence no society can be great, flourishing, or happy.”

Just as much as the existence of God was essential to their understanding of the physical constitution of the universe, its combination with their belief in the immortality of the soul was crucial to their understanding of the moral constitution of the world, as it was the means by which God judged the good and evil acts committed in this life, whether noticed by man or not. Tocqueville ascribed a great deal of the accomplishments of the Puritans/Pilgrims and their progeny (the Founders) to this belief, which he described as so “indispensable to man’s greatness that its effects are striking,” for it kept him morally anchored, never able to escape ultimate justice. It was for this reason that the Founders considered belief in God as the cornerstone of all morality, but not because man could do no good apart from God commanding him to do so. Quite the contrary: part of their conception of the “law of nature and nature’s God” was the idea that all men had at least portions of this law inscribed into their very being, and that most men knew the basics of right and wrong because God had given them a conscience. The problem was that, because of their fallen nature, they did not obey their consciences as they should. Adams elaborated:

The law of nature would be sufficient for the government of men if they would consult their reason and obey their consciences. It is not the fault of the law of nature, but of themselves, that it is not obeyed; it is not the fault of the law of nature that men are obliged to have recourse to civil government at all, but of themselves; it is not the fault of the ten commandments, but of themselves, that Jews or Christians are ever known to steal, murder, covet, or blaspheme. But the legislator who should say the law of nature is enough, if you do not obey it, it will be your own fault, therefore no other government is necessary, would be thought to trifle.

This brings us to a very important fact that we must remember when it comes to the Founders: they did not believe that religion made men good, but rather that it provided the best encouragement and incentive to be good, for it taught them that their choices had consequences in eternity, not just in the moment. Even if consequences could be avoided in the now, God would exact justice in the hereafter.

This had been a Judeo-Christian teaching from time immemorial and was well known to the Founders. The problem was not that man had no knowledge of good and evil and therefore needed a religious commandment to tell him, but rather that human nature commonly bowed to the dictates of the passions, rather than reason, and thereby abandoned conscience and committed evil anyway. The Founders realized that our human nature could, and often did, pervert the plain dictates of conscience, allowing us to convince ourselves that right is wrong and wrong is right if it suits our own desires. As Adams noted, “Human reason and human conscience, though I believe there are such things, are not a match for human passions, human imaginations, and human enthusiasm.” Our passions would corrupt our minds, our minds would justify our passions, and in turn our passions would become even more corrupt, a deadly cycle with horrific consequences for individuals and society. “Our passions, ambition, avarice, love, resentment, etc. possess so much metaphysical subtlety and so much overpowering eloquence that they insinuate themselves into the understanding and the conscience and convert both to their party,” Adams wrote. “And I may be deceived as much as any of them when I say that power must never be trusted without a check.”

That “check,” at least as far as voluntary self-restraint was concerned, was religion. The Founders understood that mankind’s capacity for self-delusion was boundless; therefore, moral obligations must be placed on a divine rather than a humanistic footing if anyone could assert any truth or notion of right and wrong at all. It was for this reason that religious commandments such as “do not murder,” “do not steal,” and “do not commit adultery” were necessary, not because man was completely incapable of avoiding these sins without God commanding him to, but because, since He had commanded them, man had no intellectual excuse for ever allowing his passions or personal desires to blind his judgment and excuse him of his moral obligations. Religion thus anchored the definition of morality on God and asserted its obligations on man by acting as a powerful regulator of the inherently negative aspects of human nature. James Madison explained the importance of this truth: “The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.”

Adams asserted the same thing and specifically acknowledged that Judaism, through the Bible, had bequeathed to the world what he considered the most essential ingredient of human civilization:

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

For the Founders, the most effective catalyst of virtue was religion, for it reminded man that he is not God and he therefore cannot shape morality according to his own selfish desires. It was the subversion of this principle that they identified as the cause behind the American and French Revolutions taking such radically different courses: it was ultimately a difference of theology.

GOD AND THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS

The Founders believed in the existence of a God, which they deemed the most rational basis for the existence of the universe, morality, and reason itself. The French Revolution was predicated on almost the exact opposite idea.

While many today assume that the notion of blind chance being the operative force in the universe’s creation and development arrived on the scene with Charles Darwin, this is not the case. In fact, it was a notion quite popular among many of the continental European intellectuals of the time, most of whom were French, and most of whom tended to be atheists and/or materialists (which were practically the same). They contended that the universe had not been created but had either existed eternally or was the result of inherent properties in matter itself. But among the French intelligentsia, the one who had the most profound effect on the Founders, Montesquieu, directly contradicted this position in his famous work, The Spirit of the Laws: “Those who have said that a blind fate has produced all the effects that we see in the world have said a great absurdity,” he wrote, “for what greater absurdity is there than a blind fate that could have produced intelligent beings?”

For Montesquieu and the Founders, the universe was simply too full of information, order, and harmony to ascribe it to blind chance. “What is chance?” asked Adams. “It is motion; it is action; it is event; it is phenomenon without cause. Chance is no cause at all; it is nothing.”

In addition to their denial, or at least extreme doubt of the existence of a Creator, many of the French intellectuals in like manner either doubted or denied the existence and immortality of the human soul. They therefore denied the two theological pillars upon which the Founders based their ideas of virtue, and as such, it was no surprise that the French Revolution, which claimed to be the heir of the American Revolution, devolved into a bloodbath of violence and oppression unrestrained by any religious principle.

While both revolutions were similar in their assertion of human rights, they offered fundamentally different explanations of the origin of such rights. The American Revolution was premised on men being “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” while the French Revolution asserted man’s rights were based purely on reason, apart from any notions of divinity or religion. A statue of a deified “Reason” was erected in the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, and the revolution was predicated upon principles that were explicitly and directly opposed to religion, Christianity in particular. Adams noted the differences between the two revolutions when he wrote to his friend Richard Price that “Diderot and D’Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau,” all French atheists and materialists, “have contributed to this great event more than Sidney, Locke, or Hoadly,” English political philosophers who explicitly asserted that the “laws of nature and nature’s God” were the foundation of man’s rights and moral obligations, and who had a profound impact on the American Revolution. The French, on the other hand, based man’s rights on the consensus of “the nation.” The rights of man were what man, through the nation, had decided they would be. For this reason, Adams admitted to Price as early as 1790, “I own to you, I know not what to make of a republic of thirty million atheists,” and he predicted there would be rampant violence and bloodshed.

But that was not all. Several of the Founders, Adams in particular, believed that the principles of the French Revolution not only directly undermined the basis of human rights and obligations but also destroyed the very idea of human liberty. If man was simply matter in motion, then his entire destiny had already been determined by physical laws and constants (today known as “determinism”), making liberty a meaningless idea. And yet, this was the view of many of the leading French intellectuals. “And what was their philosophy?” Adams inquired:

Atheism—pure, unadulterated atheism…. The universe was matter only, and eternal. Spirit was a word without a meaning. Liberty was a word without a meaning. There was no liberty in the universe; liberty was a word void of sense. Every thought, word, passion, sentiment, feeling, all motion and action was necessary [determinism]. All beings and attributes were of eternal necessity; conscience, morality, were all nothing but fate. This was their creed, and this was to perfect human nature, and convert the earth into a paradise of pleasure… Why, then, should we abhor the word “God,” and fall in love with the word “fate”? We know there exists energy and intellect enough to produce such a world as this, which is a sublime and beautiful one, and a very benevolent one, notwithstanding all our snarling; and a happy one, if it is not made otherwise by our own fault.

Alexander Hamilton, who described the French Revolution as “the most cruel, sanguinary, and violent that ever stained the annals of mankind,” also predicted its failure due to the fact that it was explicitly

opposed to Christianity, “a state of things which annihilates the foundations of social order and true liberty, confounds all moral distinctions and substitutes to the mild and beneficent religion of the Gospel a gloomy, persecuting, and desolating atheism:’

It was precisely because the French Revolution rejected the Judeo-Christian notion of the fallen nature of man in exchange for the idea that he could be perfected by reason that they engaged in the wanton violence and cruelty of the guillotine: it was all worth it because they were creating a new, ideal world that had to be purged of its impure elements.

The French Revolution was thereby founded on principles that fundamentally contradicted the divine basis of the existence of the universe, man’s rights, his moral obligations, and his very liberty, upon which the Founders, partaking of both the classical and Judeo-Christian tradition, asserted them. With God removed, several of the Founders, Adams in particular, predicted the French Revolution would operate according to the bloody principles of “might makes right.” “A nation of atheists,” he had warned, would likely lead to “the destruction of a million of human beings.” Adams explained his prophecy of a forthcoming deluge of blood in biblical terms and ascribed it to the utter rejection of religion by the leaders of the French Revolution:

The temper and principles prevailing at present in that quarter of the world have a tendency to as general and total a destruction as ever befell Tyre and Sidon[,] Sodom and Gomorrah. If all religion and governments, all arts and sciences are destroyed, the trees will grow up, cities will molder into common earth, and a few human beings may be left naked to chase the wild beasts with bows and arrows…. I hope in all events that religion and learning will find an asylum in America.

In this, he disagreed (at the time) with Jefferson. But even Jefferson was forced to admit decades later, after the Reign of Terror, the Napoleonic Wars, and the other violent outbursts that came out of the French Revolution, that Adams had been completely right in his assessment, acknowledging, “Your prophecies… proved truer than mine.” When Jefferson asked Adams why he had predicted what he did, Adams explained that the power of God had been replaced by the arrogant, usurping power of man, and conscience was thereby disconnected from its transcendent anchors. Thus, those in power believed whatever they did was moral: “Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de tres bon foi [“in very good faith”], believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service, when it is violating all his laws.” It was for this reason that, as much as religion had been abused for centuries in European history, Adams argued it could not compare with the atrocities committed in the name of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” during the French Revolution: “It is a serious problem to resolve whether all the abuses of Christianity, even in the darkest ages when the Pope deposed princes and laid nations under his interdict, were ever so bloody and cruel, ever bore down the independence of the human mind with such terror and intolerance, or taught doctrines which required such implicit credulity to believe, as the present reign of pretended philosophy in France.”

As president, Adams had to deal directly with the revolutionary French government and easily noted the difference between an American society that assented to general religious principles and a French society that rejected them:

You may find the moral principles, sanctified and sanctioned by religion, are the only bond of union, the only ground of confidence of the people in one another, of the people in the government, and the government in the people. Avarice, ambition, and pleasure, can never be the foundations of reformations or revolutions for the better. These passions have dictated the aim at universal domination, trampled on the rights of neutrality, despised the faith of solemn contracts, insulted ambassadors, and rejected offers of friendship.

For the Founders, the purpose of reason—which Adams referred to as “a revelation from its maker” and Jefferson as an “oracle given you by heaven”-was to better align human actions with the “law of nature and nature’s God” by the taming of human passions and the application of knowledge. The leaders of the French Revolution believed precisely the opposite, that God didn’t really exist (and if He did, He was largely irrelevant), and that reason was man’s alone, and thus his to utilize toward whatever ends he himself determined. Though the Founders knew perfection “falls not to the share of mortals,” the French believed that man could be perfected through reason, and therefore any barriers to creating the world of their dreams needed to be destroyed, for this was tantamount to obstructing man’s perfection. The differences between the two revolutions thus turned out to be theological at root, and for this reason, while on the surface they were superficially similar, they were in fact fundamentally different, as Adams prophesied, other Founders criticized, and the facts of history verified.

Joshua Charles, Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 82-91.

Dennis Prager interviews Ann Coulter in regards to her new book, Demonic.” Ann points out a fact I wasn’t aware of in regards to the mob mentality that set the standard for the French Revolution. Much like the misunderstanding in regards to the Crusades, the witch trials, and the like, numbers are not the forte of the left. Nor is putting into context meaning behind them.

America’s Godly Heritage (David Barton)

Published July 4, 2021July 4, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

Is The National Anthem Racist? (Prager U Update)

Published July 3, 2021July 5, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

(Updated 7-3-2021)

I figured this recent “Anthem Protest” would be a good update for the post. This comes to me via RIGHT SCOOP:

Gwen Berry explained today why she reacted with such contempt for the National Anthem over the weekend and it’s absolutely ridiculous (video at Twitter… click pic):

Berry claims that “If you know your history, you know the full song of the National Anthem. The third paragraph speaks to slaves in America, our blood being slang and piltered all over the floor. It’s disrespectful and it does not speak for black Americans. It’s obvious. There’s no question.”

I found this explanation unbelievable. But because I don’t know the verse, I went back and read it anyway:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

So it turns out she’s an idiot. Yes, it uses the world ‘slave’, but it doesn’t remotely mean what she claims it means. It’s referring to the British, which is clear from the context. Not American slaves.

Erick Erickson provides us more insight here:

[….]

…the third verse of the National Anthem has nothing to do with slave labor. She’s taking language out of context by using a modern day definition and applying it to a 17th century statement. — Kenny Webster

. . . . . .

(Originally Posted Sep 29, 2017)

✩✩✩ OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM ✩✩✩

(Above video description: The original file AND description can be found here in full — HOWEVER, the audio was horrible. I tried to raise the DBs but couldn’t get rid of the hiss… but it is a must watch!)

UPDATED VIDEO ADDED

The Star-Spangled Banner, long a treasured symbol of national unity, has suddenly become “one of the most racist, pro-slavery songs” in American culture. Why is this happening? And more importantly, is it true? USA Today columnist James Robbins explores the history of the song and its author to answer these questions.

A friend asked a question about a challenge via “The Root” about the National Anthem. This is the “verse” said to be “racist”

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

It is said our (yes, OUR) anthem glories in black slaves dying. Here is how it is encapsulated in the NEW YORK TIMES:

The journalist Jon Schwarz, writing in The Intercept, argued yes, denouncing the lyrics, written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812, as “a celebration of slavery.” How could black players, Mr. Schwarz asked, be expected to stand for a song whose rarely sung third stanza — which includes the lines “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave” — “literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans”?

Here is another sport figure’s comments on the flag:

“And stop trying to sweep it under the rug. But, see, as long as you paint that narrative, oh, it’s the Anthem, I can’t — no — anybody that does something to the Anthem — well, we know what the anthem was originally written for and who it was written by, okay? The flag, okay? We understand what the flag? What does it represent? — SHANNON SHARPE

Here, the SMITHSONIAN helps set the scene for us and how the Anthem came to be:

…A week earlier, Francis Scott Key, a 35-year-old American lawyer, had boarded the flagship of the British fleet on the Chesapeake Bay in hopes of persuading the British to release a friend who had recently been arrested. Key’s tactics were successful, but because he and his companions had gained knowledge of the impending attack on Baltimore, the British did not let them go. They allowed the Americans to return to their own vessel but continued guarding them. Under their scrutiny, Key watched on September 13 as the barrage of Fort McHenry began eight miles away.

“It seemed as though mother earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone,” Key wrote later. But when darkness arrived, Key saw only red erupting in the night sky. Given the scale of the attack, he was certain the British would win. The hours passed slowly, but in the clearing smoke of “the dawn’s early light” on September 14, he saw the American flag—not the British Union Jack—flying over the fort, announcing an American victory.

Key put his thoughts on paper while still on board the ship, setting his words to the tune of a popular English song. His brother-in-law, commander of a militia at Fort McHenry, read Key’s work and had it distributed under the name “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” The Baltimore Patriot newspaper soon printed it, and within weeks, Key’s poem, now called “The Star-Spangled Banner,” appeared in print across the country, immortalizing his words—and forever naming the flag it celebrated….

THE DAILY CALLER notes (and so does SNOPES) that this verse was in reference to slaves and mercenaries that fought on the British side:

Francis Scott Key wrote the song the morning after the British bombarded Fort McHenry toward the end of the War of 1812, when he saw the American flag still waving. In these lines of the third verse he’s celebrating the death of slaves and mercenaries who opted to fight for the British in exchange for their freedom following the war.

INDEPENDENT JOURNAL REVIEW puts the idea to bullet points:

The Star Spangled Banner lyrics “the hireling ” refers to the British use of Mercenaries (German Hessians) in the American War of Independence
The Star Spangled Banner lyrics “…and slave” is a direct reference to the British practice of Impressment (kidnapping American seamen and forcing them into service on British man-of war ships). This was a Important cause of the War of 1812
Francis Scott Key then describes the Star Spangled Banner as a symbol of triumph over all adversity

The U.S. CAPITAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY also comments on the added “fifth verse” by Oliver Wendell Holmes at the start of the Civil War:

Fifty years later, in 1861, poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. would write a fifth verse to the National Anthem, reflecting the nation’s strife and looking toward a more peaceable future:

When our land is illum’d with Liberty’s smile,

If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,

Down, down, with the traitor that dares to defile

The flag of her stars and the page of her story!

By the millions unchain’d who our birthright have gained

We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!

And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave

While the land of the free is the home of the brave.

Here, Wendell, unlike Key, foresaw not only the inevitable emancipation of the nation’s slaves, but also the freed African Americans gaining full citizen rights and ensuring the country’s preservation. Today, this verse is not considered an official part of the National Anthem, but during the Civil War, it was printed in song books throughout the northern United States as an extension of Key’s lyrics. In this way, Francis Scott Key and the War of 1812 bequeathed to the nation not just a song, but a step toward the perpetuating of liberty—just as the Revolutionary War and Civil War did.

Again, the Left views complex history through the lens of a historical Marxist view. Something that Howard Zinn tried to do as well, but did so by rewriting history… as the Modern Left still does.

Francis Scott Key, like many during that time, had a varied history on slavery. He fought for slaves to be free in court – pro bono. But, he also fought to return runaway slaves to owners at some point in his life – probably for money. So he was an opportunistic lawyer to pay bills… nothing has changed. WIKI continues with this:

Key publicly criticized slavery’s cruelties, so much that after his death a newspaper editorial stated “So actively hostile was he to the peculiar institution that he was called ‘The Nigger Lawyer’ …. because he often volunteered to defend the downtrodden sons and daughters of Africa. Mr. Key convinced me that slavery was wrong—radically wrong.” In June 1842, Key attended the funeral of William Costin, a free, mixed race resident who had challenged Washington’s surety bond laws.

The SMITHSONIAN again notes that Key was a founding member and active leader of the American Colonization, of which the primary goal was to send free African-Americans back to Africa. Keys, even though he abhorred slavery, and fought to free slaves at times, was removed from the board in 1833 as its policies shifted toward abolitionist. The mood of the nation as a whole was shifting. While Keys couldn’t envision a multi-ethnic nation, others could. But Keys position wasn’t necessarily “racist,” as some ex-slaves wanted the same. To recall a portion of the above quote from the Capital Historical Society, “…Wendell, unlike Key, foresaw not only the inevitable emancipation of the nation’s slaves, but also the freed African Americans gaining full citizen rights and ensuring the country’s preservation.”

YOU SEE, people change… as do nations (because they, like corporations, are made up of people). I make this point in my post on AUGUSTINE, who is often used to support old-earth positions… but little know that later in his life he rejected the old-earth view and wrote quite a bit on the young earth (creationist) viewpoint.

A man needs to be judged by his life’s journey. As do nations.

Likewise, conservatives believe that Robert Byrd may have sincerely changed his formerly racist beliefs. But when Democrats accuse Republicans of racism because they went to Strom Thurmond’s (one of the only major Dixiecrats to change to Republican – watch here and here) funeral and gave him praise, even though he changed his views on race/racism. All we point out is that if praising an ex Dixiecrat at a funeral makes one racist… then what does lauding a KKK Grand Kleagle at his funeral make Democrats?

A man needs to be judged by his life’s journey.

So does a nation.

Here is the rest of the SMITHSONIAN piece I wish to excerpt:

A religious man, Key believed slavery sinful; he campaigned for suppression of the slave trade. “Where else, except in slavery,” he asked, “was ever such a bed of torture prepared?” Yet the same man, who coined the expression “the land of the free,” was himself an owner of slaves who defended in court slaveholders’ rights to own human property.

Key believed that the best solution was for African-Americans to “return” to Africa—although by then most had been born in the United States. He was a founding member of the American Colonization Society, the organization dedicated to that objective; its efforts led to the creation of an independent Liberia on the west coast of Africa in 1847. Although the society’s efforts were directed at the small percentage of free blacks, Key believed that the great majority of slaves would eventually join the exodus. That assumption, of course, proved to be a delusion. “Ultimately,” says historian Egerton, “the proponents of colonization represent a failure of imagination. They simply cannot envision a multiracial society. The concept of moving people around as a solution was widespread and being applied to Indians as well.”

You see, Americans’ belief then was “not merely in themselves [shocker to millennials] but also in their future…. lying just beyond the western horizon” (ibid). And that is key. As Paul Johnson rightly notes in his history book on America:

“…can a nation rise above the injustices of its origins and, by its moral purpose and performance, atone for them? All nations are born in war, conquest, and crime, usually concealed by the obscurity of a distant past. The United States, from its earliest colonial times, won its title-deeds in the full blaze of recorded history, and the stains on them are there for all to see and censure: the dispossession of a indigenous people, and the securing of self-sufficiency through the sweat and pain of an enslaved race. In the judgmental scales of history, such grievous wrongs must be balanced by the erection of a society dedicated to justice and fairness.”

Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (New York, NY: Harper Perenial, 1997), 3.

Is the Constitution and It’s Signers… Secular? (Fraudulent Memes)

Published June 30, 2021July 4, 2022 by Papa Giorgio

A Facebook friend posts a lot of stuff from the Left. And while I could spend all day refuting in similar fashion much of it (like the below), this topic caught my eye. Here is the FB graphic she posted on her wall:

So, let’s deal with these in order, shall we?

THOMAS JEFFERSON

This is the headline at THE JEFFERSON MONTICELLO site: “Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man (Spurious Quotation)” — spurious indeed. They follow this with the fuller quote:

This comment on Christianity is a somewhat paraphrased excerpt from the following letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley:

“this was the real ground of all the attacks on you: those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy, the most sublime & benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man, endeavored to crush your well earnt, & well deserved fame.” – Jefferson to Priestley, March 21, 18011 (entire letter)

There are other useful links at MONTICELLO’S link to this topic. Even CHECK YOUR FACT has this regarding the Jefferson quote:

Verdict: False

There is no evidence that Jefferson ever said or wrote this. His estate at Monticello includes the saying on its list of “spurious quotations.”

Fact Check:

The quote has been frequently attributed to Jefferson on social media, appearing in numerous memes and posts on Facebook.

However, the Daily Caller found no record of Jefferson ever saying or writing this expression. A search of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson returned no results matching the alleged saying. It doesn’t appear in a collection of his quotes and letters either.

His estate at Monticello also includes the statement on its list of “spurious quotations.” The first known appearance in print dates back to 1996, according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation…..

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

The fuller quote reads… and note, many say this about their youth as well. I say similar things — as I stayed out of the church as a youth when I could.

“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”

Later in life however, Franklin (and I would say myself) wrestled with religious matters well, and came out on the theistic end of life. Here, for example, is a letter from Benjamin Franklin to the “atheist” Thomas Paine:

TO THOMAS PAINE.
[Date uncertain.]

DEAR SIR,

I have read your manuscript with some attention. By the argument it contains against a particular Providence, though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the foundations of all religion. For without the belief of a Providence, that takes cognizance of, guards, and guides, and may favor particular persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear his displeasure, or to pray for his protection. I will not enter into any discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. At present I shall only give you my opinion, that, though your reasonings are subtile and may prevail with some readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of mankind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece will be, a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face.

But, were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.

I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person; whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it. I intend this letter itself as a proof of my friendship, and therefore add no professions to it; but subscribe simply yours,

B. Franklin

Other interesting items of Mr. Franklin’s faith in God can be found here: “Benjamin Franklin Was Not A Secularist“

I start out this upload with a call into the show this week… after a little back-n-forth it ends. BUT, I include a bit of the show Dennis Prager speaks about during the call. That is from late February. A great topic covered well. Here is the creed spoken of:

✦ I believe in one God, the creator of the universe.
✦ That he governs by his providence.
✦ That he ought to be worshipped.
✦ That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.
✦ That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.

For a very good discussion of the influence of the Calvinistic tradition on the thinking of Benjamin, see:

John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 191-213.

JOHN ADAMS

The fuller quote from Adam’s sheds some light on Calvinism’ influence on the founders. The quote was taken out of context from a letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 19 April 1817 (entire letter):

Twenty times, in the course of my late Reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it”!!! But in this exclamati[on] I Should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell. So far from believing in the total and universal depravity on human Nature; I believe there is no Individual totally depraved.

A slightly more English friendly version is this:

“Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it!!!’ But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company – I mean hell.” (Charles Francis Adams [ed.], The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. [Boston, 1856], X, p. 254.)

Taken from They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, p. 3.

Adam’s was using the quote as a hyperbolic analogy to make a larger point. The opposite point as displayed in the meme. And the point was the depravity of mankind in a VERY Calvinistic structure. Here, as a way to drive the point home that this topic — that is, religious influences on the founding of America — is a topic I have for seminary studied well. Here is a bibliography of books used for a class. Books that sit on my shelves, I will highlight one in particular I recommend:

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atkinson, James. The Great Light: Luther and the Reformation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006).

Barton, David. America’s Godly Heritage (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilders Press, 1993).

___________. Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, 3rd ed. (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilders Press, 2000).

Belloc, Hilaire. The Protestant Reformation (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1928).

___________. Characters of the Reformation: Historical Portraits of 23 Men and Women and Their Place in the Great Religious Revolution of the 16^th Century (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1936).

Berman, Harold J. Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

_____________. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

Eidsmoe, John. Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987).

Esolen, Anthony. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2008).

Estep, William R. Renaissance and Reformation (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986).

Evans, M. Stanton. The Theme is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1994).

George, Timothy. Theology of the Reformers (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1988).

Hannah, John D. Charts of Reformation and Enlightenment Church History (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2004).

Hillerbrand, Hans J. The Reformation: A Narrative History Related by Contemporary Observances and Participants (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1964).

___________. How the Reformation Happened (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1968).

Hoffecker, W. Andrew. Revolutions in Worldviews: Understanding the Flow of Western Thought (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2007).

House, Wayne H. Charts of Christian Theology & Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992).

_____________. Charts on Systematic Theology ( Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2006).

Lowenthal, David. No Liberty for License: the Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment (Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing, 1997).

MacCullouch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History (New York, NY: Penguin, 2004).

Marshall, Paul. God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

McGrath, Alister E. Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1999).

______________, ed. The Christian Theology Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1995).

Nichols, Stephen J. The Reformation: How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007).

Noll, Mark A. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York, NY: Oxford University Press).

Olberman, Heiko A. The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992).

Parker, G.W.H. The Morning Star: Wycliffe and the Dawn of the Reformation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006).

Pelikan, Jaroslav, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700), vol. 4 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Sandoz, Ellis, ed. Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805 (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991).

Sharansky, Natan. Defending Identity: It’s Indispensible Role In Protecting Democracy (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2008).

Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Age of Reformation, vol. 2 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

_____________. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Renaissance, vol. 1 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

_____________. Liberty Before Liberalism (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Spellman, W.M. John Locke and the Problem of Depravity (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988).

Stark, Rodney. The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (, New York, NY: Random House, 2006).

_____________. For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton university Press, 2004)

Tomkins, Stephen. A Short History of Christianity (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005).

Walton, Robert C. Chronological and Background Charts of Church History: Revised and Expanded (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2005).

Witte, John Jr. Religion and American Constitutional Experiment (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2005).

___________. The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

___________., and Frank s. Alexander, eds. Christianity and Law: An Introduction (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

___________. From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Louisville, KY: WJK, 1997)

___________. God’s Joust, God’s Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006).

___________. Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Woods, Thomas J. Jr. The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004).

Later in life, Adams wrote:

“I love and revere the memories of Huss, Wickliff, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melancton, and all the other Reformers, how muchsoever I may differ from them all in many theological metaphysical & philosophical points. As you justly observe, without their great exertions & severe sufferings, the USA had never existed.” — John Adams to F. C. Schaeffer, November 25, 1821, in James Hutson, ed., The Founders on Religion: A Book of Quotations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 15–16.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

The quote by our first official President does not even hint at secular thought? The entire letter in fact does not. An excellent site recording the non-secular events surrounding the Constitution, also note the following — to use just one example from the many via Is the Constitution a “Secular Document?”

…After being sworn in, George Washington delivered his “Inaugural Address” to a joint session of Congress. In it Washington declared:

[I]t would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves . . . . In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and . . . can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.

[W]e ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained….

- Messages and Papers of the Presidents, George Washington, Richardson, ed., vol. 1, p.44-45

Following his address, the Annals of Congress reported that:

The President, the Vice-President, the Senate, and House of Representatives, &c., then proceeded to St. Paul’s Chapel, where Divine service was performed by the chaplain of Congress.

These people obviously didn’t get the memo about the Constitution creating a secular government…..

More on Washington can be found HERE.

Larry Elder Lambasts Joy Reid’s Historical Ineptitude!

Published June 16, 2021June 16, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

Larry sets the record straight. Joy Reid effectively lied to her viewers. Let’s look at the actual history here.

PART ONE

Larry corrects Joy Reid’s ridiculous tirade where she inaccurately accuses Mitch McConnell and the Republicans of engaging in immoral, rotten behavior and blowing up the Filibuster Rule.

PART TWO

“Racist” Filibuster vs. Minimum Wage and Gun Control

Published April 6, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

Larry Elder made a good point about Democrat’s “concerns” about the origins of something being racist means getting rid of it — which he nor Dems really believe the filibuster to be, rather, just a convenient argument in the use of the race-card in order to grab power. BUT, if the concern is genuine, then we should do away with gun control as well as the minimum wage.

— I use a video from the NRA (The DL l S1 E3: “Gun Control’s Racist History”) and recommend their article: Jim Crow and the Racist Roots of Gun Control

SEE AS WELL:

Democrats Claim Filibuster Is A Racist Tool — But Only When Republicans Use It (NEW YORK POST)
Biden’s Argument Against the Filibuster Gets Eviscerated by…Biden, Obama, and a Few Inconvenient Facts (RED STATE)

Was Land “Seized” [stolen] From a Black Family 97-Years Ago?

Published March 13, 2021March 13, 2021 by Papa Giorgio

Larry Elder updates an earlier story about the Manhattan Beach Mayor possibly giving back land acquired through eminent domain from a black family 97 years ago. Here is a story on the matter:

Manhattan Beach Land Seized From Black Family May Be Returned To Descendants Nearly A Century Later

Here is the “Letter to the Editor” Larry reads from:

RE: “Bruce’s Beach compensation,” The Beach Reporter, 2/25/21

There is so much “fiction” fanning the flames of the Bruce’s Beach legend and emotions. Last week’s letter to the editor stated the Bruces were 1) “driven out,” 2) “under-compensated,” and 3) “restricted from buying elsewhere in MB.” The facts found by MB’s multi-ethnicity commission on Bruce’s Beach are:

1) the NAACP lawyer representing the Bruce family stated the Bruce’s were “willing to sell the property …for a fair price at any time;”

2) the LA Times documented how the families were “over-compensated,” not under-compensated. Further, MB residents were up in arms against the MB Board of Trustees for giving excessive payments to the families;

3) the majority of Black families impacted bought and relocated elsewhere in MB. And, other Black families stayed in MB, too.

Maybe for effect, the writer of the letter concluded, “the park is a monument to racial hatred … because white supremacists won.” Wow! I concluded, from reading/researching subject, that prejudice played a key role in the eminent domain action and can/should be realized. However, this park should not be a monument for that. Remember, many White families owned 25 of the 30 parcels in the eminent domain action and were impacted. Lastly, the location now is a park and two blocks away from the beach. So, it is NOT a Beach and should not be named “… Beach.” It should have a “park” name. Maybe “Reflection Park.” That could suggest giving serious thought to our lives, other people and more.

—Jon Chaykowski, Manhattan Beach

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Religio-Political Talk (RPT)

"I never discuss anything except politics and religion. There is nothing else to discuss." ~ G.K. Chesterton

US History