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Hail to the Vision,<br><br>
Just in from the News Observer, Raleigh NC, Dec. 11, 2004<br><br>
Slavery's delights illusory<br><br>
By DENNIS ROGERS, Staff Writer<br><br>
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. <br>
"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." <br>
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. <br>
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. <br>
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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." <br>
I can just hear the happy slaves serenading Ol' Massa now, can't you?
Have another mint julep, Miss Scarlett. <br>
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. <br>
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. <br>
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. <br>
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. <br>
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.
<br>
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. <br>
Any takers?<br><br>
Dennis Rogers can be reached at 829-4750 or
<font color="#0000FF"><u>drogers@newsobserver.com.</u></font> <br><br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=2>"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<br><br>
</font>Nicholas F. Gier<br>
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho<br>
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843<br>
<a href="http://users.moscow.com/ngier/home/index.htm" eudora="autourl">http://users.moscow.com/ngier/home/index.htm</a><br>
208-883-3360/882-9212/FAX 885-8950<br>
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO<br>
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/ift/index.htm" eudora="autourl">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/ift/index.htm</a><br><br>
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