A dose of their own medicine

In the New York Post, Michael Goodwin writes in part,

It’s far worse than I thought. In addition to the many links between the family that owns The New York Times and the Civil War Confederacy, new evidence shows that members of the extended family were slaveholders.

Last Sunday, I recounted that Bertha Levy Ochs, the mother of Times patriarch Adolph S. Ochs, supported the South and slavery. She was caught smuggling medicine to Confederates in a baby carriage and her brother Oscar joined the rebel army.

I have since learned that, according to a family history, Oscar Levy fought alongside two Mississippi cousins, meaning at least three members of Bertha’s family fought for secession.

Adolph Ochs’ own “Southern sympathies” were reflected in the content of the Chattanooga Times, the first newspaper he owned, and then The New York Times. The latter published an editorial in 1900 saying the Democratic Party, which Ochs supported, “may justly insist that the evils of negro suffrage were wantonly inflicted on them.”

Six years later, the Times published a glowing profile of Confederate President Jefferson Davis on the 100th anniversary of his birth, calling him “the great Southern leader.”

Ochs reportedly made contributions to rebel memorials, including $1,000 to the enormous Stone Mountain Memorial in Georgia that celebrates Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. He made the donation in 1924 so his mother, who died 16 years earlier, could be on the founders’ roll, adding in a letter that “Robert E. Lee was her idol.”

In the years before his death in 1931, Ochs’ brother George was simultaneously an officer of The New York Times Company and a leader of the New York Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

...Handcuff the cops, tear down the statues, rewrite the textbooks, make America the world’s bad guy — that’s what today’s Times is selling.

Anyone with such an activist agenda better be purer than Caesar’s wife. The Times clearly fails that test and owes its staff, stockholders and readers a full account of the slave holders and Confederates in its past.

My hope is that after taking a dose of their own medicine, the owner and editors will focus their efforts where they belong: on making The New York Times a great newspaper again.

Read more here.

The woke mob goes after the Guardian!

In News Thud, Paul Goldberg brings us news from Britain.

Many on the right saw this day coming as the mainstream media celebrated those on the far-left censoring and “canceling” right-wing outlets but, now the same mob has turned its sights on the mainstream media.

One of Britain’s flagship newspapers The Guardian is facing calls to shut down after thousand sign a petition calling for the newspapers to cease operating over its stance during the 19th century supporting the Confederate states during the American Civil War.

...Despite the Guardian being a huge supporter of Black Lives Matter a petition launched on change.org to the Independent Press Standards Organization has been signed by more than 12,000 people – growing by the hour – calling for the paper to shut down over its view on slavery during the 19th century.

The paper was founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor, who made money off cotton plantation slavery. When he died in 1844, the paper continued to making money off slave backing cotton mill owners who paid to advertise in the paper.

In one instance, The Guardian had published an article that said working-class mill workers who went on strike because they refused to touch plantation cotton – in support of black American slaves – should be forced back to work and made slaves themselves.

Read more here.

"It's unfair to criticize the whole thing!"

From the Babylon Bee:

U.S.—In a televised interview, Bernie Sanders has praised slave owners for their free housing program offered to all slaves working the plantations.

"Of course, the slavery was bad, but the slaves were housed, for free I might add, for their entire employment," Sanders said in an interview with 60 Minutes. "So it's unfair to criticize the whole thing. Also, the slaveowners were pretty impressive guys. The plantations were very clean, very nice buildings. I actually honeymooned at one in Virginia back in 1845, and it was an eye-opener for me as to how much propaganda has been used to malign slaveowners and their healthcare, housing, and literacy programs."

At publishing time, sources had also confirmed that Bernie Sanders had defended hell itself, saying the place of eternal torment has "gotten a bad rap" and "isn't such a bad place."

"Harriet"

Daniel John Sobieski writes in the American Thinker,

...It is Democrats who owned the slaves, founded the KKK, and wrote the Jim Crow laws. It is Democrats who stood in the schoolhouse door and still do, opposing school choice. It is Democrats who turned on the fire hoses and unleashed the dogs. It was Democrats who blocked the bridge in Selma. A higher percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats The improvement of black lives under Trump and a free market economy is no mirage but a portent of things to come that has the Democratic Party running scared.

Harriet Tubman supported the Republican Party because it opposed slavery. She carried a gun because it protected the liberty and freedom of herself and those she delivered to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Just as Democrats sought to enslave and disarm blacks back then, they now seek to entrap them in high-crime urban areas run by liberal Democrats who seek to deny them, and the rest of us, the right to keep and bear arms.

Read more here.

Things not going well for Democrats

"We drift in a sea of historical fraud."

Fred Reid corrects historical inaccuracies regarding slavery in the US here.

It's time to let Michelle's slaves go free

Daniel Greenfield writes,

...As the Democrats continue their circus of hate in Philly, it ought to be remembered that this was where Thomas Jefferson wrote that “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” were inalienable rights and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Governments do not gain their authority from any innate superiority, but from consent. The Obama theory that government gains power in proportion to its historical moral superiority is slavery wrapped in hypocrisy. The attempt to perpetuate a new slavery by invoking 19th century slavery, as Michelle Obama did, is a moral obscenity.

It is time to end slavery all over again. It is time to free Michelle Obama’s taxpaying slaves.

The first step to ending slavery is to recognize its fundamental injustice. It is unjust that a working family ought to work its fingers to the bone so that Michelle Obama can enjoy yet another sightseeing tour. It is unjust that a class of parasites claiming to be public servants can draw unlimited amounts of money on the credit of people trying to make ends meet. It is unjust that Michelle Obama can own hundreds of millions of people as slaves.

And it is an injustice that must end.

Nineteenth century slavery ceased to be an issue in the nineteenth century. Twenty-first century slavery is the issue that we must tackle today. Scarlett O’Hara’s slaves have been freed. It’s time to let Michelle’s slaves go free.

Read more here.

Do you know anyone who is in slavery?

Do we still have slaves today? Ann Althouse links to the Walk Free Foundation, which says there are 45.8 million.

Unlike historical definitions of slavery in which people were held as legal property, a practice that has been universally outlawed, modern slavery is generally defined as human trafficking, forced labor, bondage from indebtedness, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation.

According to this definition, even the United States has slaves — 57,700 (0.02% of the population).
[In the United States,] the most reported venues/industries for labour trafficking included domestic work, agriculture, traveling sales crews, restaurants/food service, and health and beauty services. In 2015, the most reported venues/industries for sex trafficking included commercial-front brothels, hotel/motel-based trafficking, online advertisements with unknown locations, residential brothels, and street-based sex trafficking.

Stop lying about race!

David Horowitz writes in Front Page Magazine,

The historically accurate view of what happened is this: Black Africans were enslaved by other black Africans and sold at slave markets to western slavers. America inherited this slave system from the British Empire, and once it was independent, ended the slave trade and almost all slavery in the northern states within twenty years of its birth. America then risked its survival as a nation and sacrificed 350,000 mostly white Union lives, to end slavery in the south as well. In other words, as far as blacks are concerned, America’s true legacy is not slavery, but freedom. As noted, American blacks today have more freedom, rights and privileges than blacks in any black nation in the world.

Read more here.

Lincoln was a dictator? The camera is the new gun. We the people have to be vigilant about our loss of freedom.

The Barrister at Maggie's Farm posts this interview of Judge Andrew Napolitano that was conducted in 2010. Here are some portions of it that interested me. (Actually, I found every word of it to be interesting.)

Daily Bell: What is justice in your opinion – having sat on the bench?

Judge Napolitano: I don’t think I can answer that in a simple paragraph. But justice is the enforcement of the fair response to human behavior consistent with natural law and consistent with the rule of law. So that means that you have to accept that the Declaration of Independence is not just a Jeffersonian musing, but is fundamental to American values. Our rights come from our humanity, which is a gift from God; they don’t come from the government, so they can’t be taken away by the government. You have to accept the role of government as an arbiter with respect to the infringement of those rights whether by an executive or legislative branch, or whether by a private person. Really there is no formula other than recognizing natural rights, accepting the fundamental law of the land, being fair and being brutally honest and having no interest in the outcome.

Daily Bell: Does President Barack Obama understand the Constitution in your opinion?

Judge Napolitano: I don’t think so, unless the Barack Obama that we witness in the White House is putting on an act. I mean to him the Constitution is no impediment to the exercise of judicial power. I have to modify this by saying rarely have we had a President who understood the Constitution. Grover Cleveland understood the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson for the most part of it understood the Constitution; Andrew Jackson partially understood the Constitution but very few others have.

Daily Bell: You served as an adjunct professor of Constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School, where you provided instruction and jurisprudence. Is the law constitutional these days? What does that mean?

Judge Napolitano: Yes, I did that for 11 years. You mean are laws written to the Constitution? The answer is no. Most members of Congress couldn’t care less what the Constitution says. Even though they have taken an oath to uphold it, preserve it, protect it and defend it, which was the same oath I took when I became a judge. I was interviewing a Congressman from South Carolina, Jim Clyburn, who’s the number three ranking Democrat in the house, and I asked him quite simply and plainly where in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to manage health care? He told me, “Judge, most of what we do down here, (referring to Washington) is not authorized by the Constitution.” The torturing and twisting of the plain language of the Constitution in order to permit the expansion of the federal powers has resulted in the loss of liberty and freedom of choice.

Daily Bell: Tell us about your book, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History.

Judge Napolitano: It is a rollicking tour from 1776 to 2008 about the classic lies the government has perpetrated on the people and the political, legal and moral effect of accepting those lies. I argue that the dirty, little secret of American history is that the Constitution is rarely enforced and the government gets away with its violation of the Constitution in the most explicit ways. It basically seeks to point out government’s myth-making when it comes to such constitutional points as, “all men are created equal,” or “Congress shall make no law abridging a freedom of speech,” or “all persons shall be secure in their property, houses, possessions.” I argue that FDR caused Pearl Harbor, that Lyndon Johnson created out of thin air the Gulf of Tonkin, that George Bush knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and was in fact authorizing his agents to torture people. I catalogue these and government lying about them in the book.

Daily Bell: What do you think of the Constitution and how it was written and the principles it espouses?

Judge Napolitano: When it was written it had some defects in it. It permitted slavery; it even permitted the slave trade. So one can love the restraint to impose on government, and one can love the bill of rights. One can appreciate the separation of powers within the federal government and the federal system as it relates to sovereign states that can act as a check to the federal government. But once we overcame things like discrimination based on race, and discrimination based on gender, it is a brilliant document that guarantees liberty and ensures the separation of power. Now unfortunately it has been harmed by at least two amendments that are unconstitutional. Now here is an interesting question: Can a part of the Constitution be unconstitutional? The answer is yes. The 16th amendment and the 17th amendment encapsulate the income tax and the changing of the manner in which the US Senate is elected. So the Constitution we have today is nowhere near the beautiful balanced instrument of limited government that the framers gave us. It’s barely a shadow of it’s original self.

Daily Bell: Some say the Constitution was a step backward from a less structured federation of states. Agree or disagree – and why?

Judge Napolitano: I agree. I do agree. I think that we would be far happier today under the Articles of Confederation than under the current Constitution, but we would also be happier today under the Constitution were it interpreted as it was intended to be. Unfortunately, almost from the beginning, and certainly with Chief Justice John Marshall, we bear witness to the march away from state sovereignty, the march away from individual liberty and the march toward federal dominance. This march has accelerated and decelerated at various times in our history. Usually at wartime it becomes more accelerated. But from the end of the Civil War and certainly from and after the FDR era, the march has consistently been away from state sovereignty away, from individual liberty and toward federal dominance.

Daily Bell: Did the Constitution lay the foundation for the War Between the States?

Judge Napolitano: I think War Between the States was fought over the issue of federal dominance. I think slavery was not the reason for the War Between the States. I think that Lincoln was a dictator who was terrified that by the loss of tariffs from southern ports – about 55 million dollars a year in 1860. it was a huge portion of the federal government’s income, which consisted at the time of tariffs, user fees and land sales. It was the loss of those ports that caused Lincoln to wage war against the states. I don’t think it was the Constitution that facilitated war. I think it was monster government that facilitated the War Between the States. I think slavery would have been eradicated on its own, much as it had been in Puerto Rico and Brazil and Portugal and Great Britain and even years earlier in western Europe.

Daily Bell: Would America have been better off without a Constitution?

Judge Napolitano: No, I don’t think so. America is better off with a Constitution if it meant what is said and interpreted as written. Because it does say, on its face, that there are certain guarantees. Regrettably, the government has rarely upheld those guarantees. The beauty of the Constitution was the idea of checks and balances. Men, as Madison said, “are not angels.” They will be drawn more toward power than toward liberty if there isn’t something to check the drive toward power.

Daily Bell: Why doesn’t current public law pay attention to economic laws – specifically the law of supply and demand and marginal utility?

Judge Napolitano: I wish I knew the answer to that. For some reasons, some of the fiercest defenders of civil liberties are also some of the fiercest adversaries to commercial liberties. I would argue that my fellow libertarians are the only people in the country who truly defend freedom because we defend civil liberties and commercial liberties. Even the flip side of this is deplorable. The Republicans, which from time to time have acted as if they defend commercial liberties, have assaulted civil liberties as well. We have migrated from a two-party system into a one-party system, the big-government party. There’s a democratic wing that likes taxes and wealth transfers and assaults on commercial liberties and there’s a republican wing that likes war and deficits and assaults uncivil liberties. Neither of them is interested in true freedom. The separation of civil liberties from commercial liberties is what has enabled this to happen.

Daily Bell: Do you have any final thoughts? Anything you want to say to readers that we didn’t ask about?

Judge Napolitano: I have enjoyed this interview. I hope the readers enjoy it as well. The people have to be vigilant about the loss of freedom. They have to press representatives in Congress to justify their behavior. And the camera is the new gun. Whenever you deal with the government, whether it’s a janitor or school teacher or a police office or a legislator, you want to film it because that will scare the daylights out of them. The government hates transparency and it hates fresh air and light and fresh air and light is a way to scare it back into its confines.

Read more here.

Follow the money!

The Civil War was all about freeing the slaves, right? Not according to Walter Williams, who writes at Front Page,

We call the war of 1861 the Civil War. But is that right? A civil war is a struggle between two or more entities trying to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more sought to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington sought to take over London in 1776. Both wars, those of 1776 and 1861, were wars of independence. Such a recognition does not require one to sanction the horrors of slavery. We might ask, How much of the war was about slavery?

Was President Abraham Lincoln really for outlawing slavery? Let's look at his words. In an 1858 letter, Lincoln said, "I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists." In a Springfield, Illinois, speech, he explained: "My declarations upon this subject of Negro slavery may be misrepresented but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the Declaration (of Independence) to mean that all men were created equal in all respects." Debating Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said, "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

What about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation? Here are his words: "I view the matter (of slaves' emancipation) as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion." He also wrote: "I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition." When Lincoln first drafted the proclamation, war was going badly for the Union.

London and Paris were considering recognizing the Confederacy and assisting it in its war against the Union.

The Emancipation Proclamation was not a universal declaration. It specifically detailed where slaves were to be freed: only in those states "in rebellion against the United States." Slaves remained slaves in states not in rebellion — such as Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. The hypocrisy of the Emancipation Proclamation came in for heavy criticism. Lincoln's own secretary of state, William Seward, sarcastically said, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."

Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been heartily endorsed by the Confederacy: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. ... Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." Lincoln expressed that view in an 1848 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives, supporting the war with Mexico and the secession of Texas.

Why didn't Lincoln share the same feelings about Southern secession? Following the money might help with an answer. Throughout most of our nation's history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859. What "responsible" politician would let that much revenue go?

Debt

Seth Godin writes today about debt.

Greece. Puerto Rico. Student loans. Mortgages.

The forces of debt are reshaping the world, creating dislocations and crises on a regular basis. And yet, few of us really understand how debt works.

Not the debt of, "can I borrow five dollars?" but the debt of corporations, nations and bureaucratic bodies. What's debt, really? What is money, and which came first?

The most fascinating book I've read all year is Debt, by David Graeber. (The audio is highly recommended).

Debt is older than money, and money was probably invented not to help the imaginary harried merchant who is struggling with barter (what? you want to trade your sheep for my muffins? but I don't need sheep!) but instead to enable nation states to feed their armies, and for individuals to trade debts with one another.

[His army insight: The easiest way to feed an army is to invent a coin, then require all your citizens to pay taxes in that coin, a coin they can only get by trading. Then give a bunch of coins to your soldiers. Bingo.]

From this surprising beginning, Graeber takes us on a tour that covers 10,000 years. He talks about the origins of slavery as well as the inequities caused by the World Bank and the IMF. One simple example: If a dictator runs up a huge debt and then absconds with the money, are the citizens of that nation responsible? For how much? For how long? Should they be put into peonage, they and their children and all of their descendants?

If a mortgage is overdue, is it better to kick people out of the house and watch the neighborhood descend into rubble?

If 10 million Americans are overwhelmed with student debt they can't repay, what should we do then?

If the purpose of inter-country loans is to foster growth as well as international relations and trade, how does bankrupting and isolating an entire country when they can't pay accomplish this?

Or consider a much smaller example of how the world's most profitable profession can change even simple elements of user experience and customer satisfaction: Every time I pay for something with Paypal, I'm interrupted by a window insisting that I should pay for this item on credit, instead of using my balance. And every time, I close this window. Paypal knows this. And yet, they continue to interrupt millions of people a day, intentionally breaking their already weak user experience, because the idea of putting more people into more credit card debt is so financially seductive.

A key tenet of our culture is, "you must pay your debts." Debt makes us think about what this simple sentence means. Even if your instinct is to answer with, "of course everyone should pay their debts," the next question is obvious: How should we deal with nations and peoples who can't? How far do we go?

I can't do Graeber's book justice in a blog post, but I want to point it out to anyone who wants to understand the acceptance and future of bitcoin, the changing wealth of nations or why countries still own tons and tons of gold. Mostly, knowing how we got here makes it a lot easier to figure out where we might head next.

Depraved Islamic State

Jay Akbar writes for Mailonline,

ISIS is sending the 'prettiest virgins' they capture to slave markets in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where they are sold as sexual objects to the highest bidder, the United Nation's Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict has said.

After the depraved militants attack their villages, they strip the girls naked, conduct virginity tests, evaluate their bodies and send them to twisted auctions, Zainab Bangura claims.

She discovered the gruesome extent of Islamic State's sexual crimes against young women - particularly from Iraq's Yazidi minority community - after collecting information from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

ISIS has released several gruesome images and videos from the city which show armed militants parading the streets, public executions and the extremists' all-female brigade which enforces its strict interpretation of Sharia Law.

Heart of darkness: UN's envoy claims ISIS is taking girls to its adopted capital in Raqqa (pictured), Syria, where the militants have carried out many beheadings (pictured)


Brutal: Raqqa is patrolled by Islamic State's fearsome all-female Al-Khanssaa Brigade (pictured) who violently impose the group's twisted interpretation of Sharia Law
Read more here.

The fabric

At PJ Media Robert Spencer writes:

Last Sunday, in his message congratulating Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, Barack Obama wrote: “Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.”

What are some of those contributions? Spencer can think of five.

5. Getting us here in the first place
Every schoolchild knows, or used to know, that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America while searching for a new, westward sea route to Asia. But why was he searching for a new route to Asia? Because the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453 closed the trade routes to the East. This was devastating for European tradesmen, who had until then traveled to Asia for spices and other goods by land. Columbus’s voyage was trying to ease the plight of these merchants by bypassing the Muslims altogether and making it possible for Europeans to reach India by sea.

4. Slavery
... if it weren’t for the Islamic slave industry on the African continent, there would have been no slavery in the New World, and none of the attendant national traumas that reverberate down to this day. This means, of course, that one way that Muslims have contributed to building the very fabric of our nation is by setting in motion the chain of events that led to ongoing racial tensions in the U.S., and ultimately to the election to the presidency of Barack Obama.

3. The Marines
...“From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” The line from the Marines’ hymn commemorates the Marines’ actions during the First Barbary War (1801-1805), the first war the United States fought against Islamic jihadists. The war came about because President Thomas Jefferson refused to accede to the Barbary states’ demands for tribute payments – demands made in accord with the Qur’an’s dictum that the “People of the Book” must be made to “pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). The Barbary pirates, also acting in accord with Islamic law regarding the kidnapping, enslaving and ransoming of non-Muslims, were seizing American ships and enslaving the crews, demanding exorbitant ransoms for their release.

The Marines put a stop to all that, and the line from the Marines’ hymn shows how pivotal their actions on the Barbary coast were to forming the Marine ethos. So for the Marines, too, we have Muslims to thank.

2. A drastically weakened economy
...Osama bin Laden explained that he mounted the 9/11 jihad terror attacks in order to weaken the American economy. In October 2004 he exulted: “Al-Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost — according to the lowest estimate — more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars.” Then there are the further billions lost since 2004, and the billions wasted on the nation-building misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan – such that if he were alive today, bin Laden could look with satisfaction on an America with a severely weakened economy, high unemployment, and no imminent prospects for genuine recovery.

We experience the effects of this every day in a thousand ways, large and small – in an America that is poorer, uglier, meaner, more dangerous, less productive and less efficient than it was on September 10, 2001. A veritable contribution to the fabric of our nation indeed.

1. The TSA
Once romantic and even glamorous, air travel today is an uncomfortable, uncertain, unpleasant, inhospitable, cramped affair involving intrusive and inefficient security procedures that annoy and humiliate travelers. At least everyone is humiliated equally. Passengers are poked, prodded, threatened, herded like cattle, beleaguered with delays, and treated as if they were criminals in a politically correct attempt to avoid focusing on the true source of the problem.

Meanwhile, the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security are two new bloated and ever-growing bureaucracies, further draining the already depleted American taxpayer.

And that, surely, is the crowning contribution that Muslims have made to “building the very fabric of our nation” as it stands today.

Read more here.