Reading Tom Sowell makes me wish more of us could discuss and think honestly about ethnic differences more openly without the knee-jerk dismissal and Reading Tom Sowell makes me wish more of us could discuss and think honestly about ethnic differences more openly without the knee-jerk dismissal and cancellation of "racism."
Not all meaningful distinctions between people from various parts of the world has to do with genetics and skin color. As a matter of fact, the most meaningful distinctions have far more to do with values and priorities.
However, in the words of Kermit the Frog, sipping iced tea, "But that's none of my business," is what most of us say, at best....more
"The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence o"The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon the down-trodden slave.
They do not give the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning.
Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess.
Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous, freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed: many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum.
So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,—feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, hack to the arms of slavery."
- Frederick Douglass, The Story of an American Slave (1849)...more
The reputation of Native American Indians would be irreversibly altered in the minds of many, and the reputation of Europeans who settled the United SThe reputation of Native American Indians would be irreversibly altered in the minds of many, and the reputation of Europeans who settled the United States would be at least partially salvaged, to know with what casual and regular violence the Ogalala Sioux dispatched and ate their puppies and dogs in soups.
Besides all this, the characterizations and descriptions in this work present themselves in orderly narrative fashion, without apparent animus, only relaying observed facts and experiences. Yet here we see how easily the conflict between the red man and the white man happened, and could not be wholly avoided, given the particulars, and the clash of worldviews that played out on the prairies.
Also - not as a complaint, just an observation - this work features a higher concentration of the word 'buxom' than I was expecting; moreover, it may include a higher concentration than I recall ever having encountered in any book. ...more
In ‘White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America’ by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, a disturbing and tragic tale is told of In ‘White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America’ by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, a disturbing and tragic tale is told of indentured servants in Great Britain’s colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The importation of black Africans as slaves early in American history gets a lot of attention – and rightly so. But all too often, the narrative seems to be both believed and repeated uncritically, and without closer examination, that black slavery in the colonies and Antebellum South was the only kind of slavery practiced in America, and certainly the only kind of slavery worth mentioning.
Before blacks were brought here en masse, however, the British Isles exported many white undesirables from their shores in a manner and mode actually more alike than different from the African slave trade.
Irish and Scots, convicted criminals, vagrants, unattended children, prostitutes and political dissidents – the British both brought them all into the colonies by the hundreds and disposed of them with much the same flippancy and contempt as we look with appropriate horror on in the case of chattel slavery of Africans.
Many “indentured servants” were pressed into contracts through lies, false promises, false pretenses, and even against their will with violence and threats of violence.
And as ‘White Cargo’ recounts from the historical record, many of those pressed into service were similarly whipped, beaten, abused, poorly fed, poorly clothed, poorly housed, and deprived of what we now regard as basic human rights, even to the point of early, tragic, and painful deaths hardly remarked on or mourned except as asset depreciation and lost investment.
All this is very controversial to admit and talk about, of course. Even a cursory glance at other reviews of this book make that abundantly clear. And the reason for this is simple, as I see it.
Many social justice warriors today are jealously committed to only recognizing white-on-black oppression, both real and perceived, whether in the present or in centuries past. And to talk about any other historical injustices would distract from black lives mattering, as they see it. So shut up already.
But two things can be true at the same time. It can be true that it was awful what was done to black Africans bought and sold and held as slaves here, and also true that black Americans have not always had a monopoly on being mistreated.
As it turns out, white people can be awful to white people too.
And this is true because people are people, born in sin rather than inherently good. Therefore we as a human race can be relied on to seize any excuse to justify our temptations and sins against one another – including but not limited to distinctions based on race, country or continent of origin, religion and politics, socioeconomic status, or the absence of powerful social connections to which an appeal could be made.
Be careful with this work, though. A certain strain runs through it which very much reminds me of Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ and a few reviewers at GoodReads.com have noted that the print copy of this book cites Zinn as a source throughout.
As is always the case regardless the author or work, it would be both unwise and dangerous to see our past and present circumstances as nothing more than class struggle pretending at higher ideals.
Thereby revolutionaries justify hollow and morally bankrupt calls for the workers of the world to unite in ripping up our founding documents and what vestiges of a free market remain so as to implement Marxism. We cannot afford to keep playing into their hands, and this work might just have been intended for us to do just that.
Such cautions notwithstanding, however, there is more than one important and worthwhile take-away to be had here. First of all, people can be awful to people, and find any and all excuses by which to justify their sins. They should not be allowed to do this for either their sake or for ours.
And that might not seem like much of a takeaway, but hear me out.
The fact of our sinful nature and what to do with it is actually the remarkable thing here. There is nothing especially new or surprising about discovering in our history that people hurt and oppress one another, nor that the strong and rich often prey on the weak and vulnerable when they think they can get away with it. The really rare thing is when there is a turning away from the kind of widespread and longstanding practices which are cataloged here by Jordan and Walsh.
That is to say, “indentured servitude” and slavery are entirely normal features of human history in all times and places, mild by comparison to other things which people sometimes do en masse to other people – straight up slaughtering and trying to exterminate their rivals and enemies, for instance.
The putting of an end to such practices, however, is very special, and bears closer examination. So why was slavery abolished in Great Britain and America? And why was the practice of indentured servitude stopped? That’s what we should be really curious about.
For that matter, if we have similar attitudes and ways of relating to one another creeping up again in our day – which we should actually expect to find, since there is no new thing under the sun, and the nature of man has not changed in all our history since Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden – the necessary question is what has proven to work in the past for defusing and disarming those attitudes, restraining the sinful nature of man more effectively and according to truer and more righteous principles.
When we ask these questions and search for their answers, what we find is that it was not from an abundance of Christianity that people treated each other the way we read about in ‘White Cargo’ and other such histories. Rather, it was a deficiency of Christian faith and practice.
On the other hand, it was not due to a reduction of Christianity in public life that these practices were abolished. No, it was a surge in Christian conviction and calls to repentance which spurred men of courage and clarity to campaign hard for repeal and emancipation, and to be both heard and joined in their causes by an upswell in righteous indignation that atrocities were being perpetrated by an ostensibly Christian nation and people, in their name and with their acquiescence and blessing.
Just so, we should definitely both read and study histories like this. But we should not get sucked in by the grievance industry which is always looking for fresh victims to enlist in Leftism and atheism. Rather, we should always humbly recognize that the history of people is just like the present circumstance of people – messy, and in desperate need of the grace of God.
But for that, there we go also.
For more assorted musings and reflections on 'White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America' you can check out this episode of The Garrett Ashley Mullet Show podcast.
Instead of viewing history as linear – either upward toward inevitably greater and greater human progress or else down toward devolution and destructiInstead of viewing history as linear – either upward toward inevitably greater and greater human progress or else down toward devolution and destruction – Neil Howe and William Strauss tackled history as cyclical.
It’s hard to believe ‘The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy’ was published in 1997. Yet it’s equally hard to believe the way of viewing history and current events and the predictions for the future found in this work has been so seldom employed or adopted elsewhere.
The Strauss-Howe Generational Theory Like the four seasons of a year – Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter – American history, for instance, looks very interesting when we see it in terms of the Strauss-Howe generational theory of four repeating generational personae.
According to the theory, each “saeculum,” or larger cycle, is comprised of a High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis period in succession.. Each of these periods lasts about 20-years each, and has a corresponding general archetypes of generational personality and mode – Artist, Prophet, Nomad, and Hero.
Each generation is born in one of the four repeating periods in the cycle, coming of age and having certain general characteristics in each of the four cycles based on five stages of life – Childhood, Young Adulthood, Midlife, Elderhood, and Late Elderhood.
Like so, our history begins to resemble a sine wave, much like the feature image I used for the post on this episode.
Naysayers will doubtless chide that any predictions derived from such a model have more to do with astrology and fortune cookies than good science or history.
If you ask me, however, ‘The Fourth Turning’ feels like a long-form application to our nation’s story of what wise King Solomon wrote in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes.
“A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.”
And also,
“Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.”
Or to use another Biblical example which comes to mind, remember Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream as seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine.
In light of examples such as these from God’s Word, would the Christian at least be surprised to learn that God has ordered repeating seasons for our generations in a similar way to how our climate changes four times in a year?
Of course this is a lot to take in, and it bears careful examination and consideration. But I am entirely fascinated with the premise of ‘The Fourth Turning,’ and certain I will be returning to its claims and predictions for quite some time.
Perhaps some fresh insight or helpful conclusion with regards to leaving a godly legacy will come from pondering the implications of the Strauss-Howe theory for my understanding of my grandparents, parents, self, wife, and children, particularly in light of the times we have lived through, are living in, and may yet live to see.
And maybe Robert Jordan was onto more than I appreciated with his epic fantasy series, ‘The Wheel of Time.’ The literal reincarnation business therein was nonsense, of course. But maybe histories and human events do indeed turn something like what Jordan portrayed. What if human affairs and general themes repeat over and over like that in something approaching a predictable pattern?
The more I think on it, the more convinced I am that such is the case.
And indeed, as Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts it, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."
For more reflections on 'The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy' by William Strauss and Neil Howe, check out this episode of The Garrett Ashley Mullet Show podcast.
In 1831, French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville traveled across the ocean to the United States and spent nine months traversing what is now the easteIn 1831, French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville traveled across the ocean to the United States and spent nine months traversing what is now the eastern half of our country. Observing, listening, engaging in conversation, Tocqueville studied our ways and manners. The end-result was an epic treatment of our society at that moment in history.
For years I have been reading more recent historians and political commentators as they make reference to Alexis de Tocqueville and his monumental work, ‘Democracy in America.’ For just as many years I have been impressed whenever the 19th century French observer is quoted.
This past weekend, I finally set myself down to listen to the audiobook. And it was a wonder indeed. This should be required reading for every American.
Being only a few decades removed from the founding of this great nation, Tocqueville was able to speak with men and women who had either some first-hand memory of the American Revolution, or else had been raised by parents who participated in it.
What is so refreshing about it all is that Tocqueville engages in neither hero worship of early America, nor in the demonizing revisionism which is so typical of our day. This lends his account powerful and compelling credibility.
Where America merits a chiding and just criticism, no punches are pulled. But where America deserves full marks for extraordinary and laudable qualities, these are not glossed over or ignored just because the nation is peopled by imperfect creatures who made mistakes.
In short, ‘Democracy in America’ is not just instructive to our nation’s history. It’s exemplary as a way of studying and discussing people and events. Give it a read with a view to personal growth, and you won’t be sorry you did.
For more reflections on 'Democracy in America' by Alexis de Tocqueville, listen to this episode of The Garrett Ashley Mullet Show podcast.
The 30th President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge often gets a bad wrap. Amity Shlaes makes clear in her excellently researched and written bioThe 30th President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge often gets a bad wrap. Amity Shlaes makes clear in her excellently researched and written biography of the man who held the highest office in the land from 1923-1929 that there is much more to admire than we have been led to believe.
Where too many conclude that Silent Cal was passive, I see him as Shlaes portrays him – respectfully and circumspectly restrained.
As almost an opposite in temperament and governing philosophy to my favorite president to study, Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge was always concerned with setting bad precedents and fostering undue dependence. In Coolidge’s mind, good intentions in the short-term were no excuse for causing potential trouble for future generations.
More concerned with removing bad laws than adding good laws to the books, Coolidge embodied the principle that ‘less is more.’ Less government from the top makes room for more self-government and self-sufficiency on the part of the common man. Less talk makes room for more listening. Less expense makes room for more saving for the future.
By not elevating himself as most men with power do, Coolidge in turn held up for America and the world an example of self-restraint at a time when technological innovation and political trends were promoting a more grandiose and ultimately illusory mindset about humanity’s prospects.
Understated Heroism Despite what you may have read or heard elsewhere, Coolidge was not to blame for the Great Depression having been so disastrous economically, socially, and politically. We can thank first Hoover and later FDR for that. If only they had possessed the humility and sobriety of Calvin, a normal and healthy market correction would have been much milder and short-lived rather than being protracted and exacerbated through intervention and experimentation.
Coolidge stands as an understatedly heroic figure for the ages precisely because he was endeavoring stubbornly not to impose his will left and right as most presidents in the past century have.
Even in his famous announcement, “I do not choose to run for President in 1928,” we have a mercifully contrasting vision of public service moderated by consideration of his and his family’s personal needs to lead a quiet life tending to their own private affairs.
Do yourself a favor, then. Check out this excellent biography by Amity Shlaes about an entirely underrated and underappreciated public servant we could all learn a thing or two from.
For more thoughts and reflections on 'Coolidge' by Amity Shlaes, check out this episode of The Garrett Ashley Mullet Show podcast.
This book is worth your time, and you should check it out.
After finishing it yesterday, I have some thoughts to share with you regarding the oft-repeaThis book is worth your time, and you should check it out.
After finishing it yesterday, I have some thoughts to share with you regarding the oft-repeated phrases of late - "trust the experts" and "follow the science."
These sentiments didn't come from nowhere, or arrive on our cultural scene without context or precedent with the rise of COVID. No, they've been a long time coming, and we're just reaping now the seeds of thought and sentiment which were planted decades ago.
The past is prologue, and we do well to understand our current condition as Americans in light of what Marsden lays out here.
For more thoughts and reflections on Marsden's The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, listen to this episode of my podcast - The Garrett Ashley Mullet Show - in which I talk about the book at greater length.
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