[Vision2020] Slavery's Delights are Illusory (from North Carolina)

[Nick Gier]

Hail to the Vision,

Just in from the News Observer, Raleigh NC, Dec. 11, 2004

Slavery's delights illusory

By DENNIS ROGERS, Staff Writer

It's clear where my ancestors went wrong. Instead of working hard to keep a 
roof over their heads and the babies fed by farming a few acres of North 
Carolina dirt, they should have been slaves.
"Nearly every slave in the South enjoyed a higher standard of living than 
the poor whites of the South -- and had a much easier existence."
So says a ridiculous propaganda pamphlet called "Southern Slavery, As It 
Was" that claims to present the truth about slavery. The booklet was being 
used at a Wake County private school until the principal wisely called a 
halt to such silliness this week.
This kind of trash masquerading as historical fact shows how far some 
people will go to excuse the inexcusable. That its authors are closely 
involved with the goofy League of the South tells you all you need to know. 
The league, among other things, still advocates seceding from the United 
States. It is the same kind of revisionist pap being peddled by those 
wackos who claim the Holocaust wasn't all that bad.
A sample of the booklet's lunacy is this jewel of fractured history: 
"Slavery ... was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial 
animosity. ... It was a relationship based upon mutual affection and 
confidence."
I can just hear the happy slaves serenading Ol' Massa now, can't you? Have 
another mint julep, Miss Scarlett.
Mutual affection and confidence? I don't know about you, but if someone 
came to my village, put me in chains, crammed me into a ship and hauled me 
halfway around the world to a land where I, my wife and my children could 
be auctioned like cows, I think I'd be pretty darned adversarial and not at 
all affectionate.
Sounds to me like someone has watched "Gone With The Wind" a few too many 
times. Great movie, bad history. The truth is, slavery was the great sin, 
shame and ruination of my beloved South.
I love the South. I love Southern people, Southern food, Southern music, 
Southern women, Southern weather (except for August) and Southern history. 
I'm proud my great-great grandfather Warren Biggs served with the 1st and 
10th North Carolina Artillery at Fort Fisher. I am proud that when his 
remains were reinterred in 2000, he was laid to rest with full Confederate 
Army honors.
But I am not proud of slavery. It was inhuman. It turned innocent people 
into chattel and shamed all who profited from it, whether they were 
Southern slave owners or Yankee slave traders. That it is condoned in the 
Bible, as the writers of the pamphlet labor to point out, is no excuse. 
Stoning is in the Bible and it's wrong, too.
Such twaddle as "slave life was ... a life of plenty, of simple pleasures" 
is profoundly embarrassing to those of us who have proudly defended our 
Southern heritage. There is much about our Southern history that we can be 
proud of -- including fighting an invading army -- but slavery, in all its 
forms and in all its times, is indefensible.
To those who claim to find even a flicker of decency in slavery, I have an 
offer: I'll feed, clothe and work you humanely. But first I'll sell your 
spouse and your children. And if you cause a fuss, I'll sell you, too.
Any takers?

Dennis Rogers can be reached at 829-4750 or drogers at newsobserver.com.


"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part 
by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the 
interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual 
life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and 
art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." 
--Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://users.moscow.com/ngier/home/index.htm
208-883-3360/882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/ift/index.htm

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