One of the reasons our children do not measure up academically to children in other countries is that so much time is spent in American classrooms twisting our history for ideological purposes.

"How would you feel if you were a Native American who saw the European invaders taking away your land?" is the kind of question our children are likely to be confronted with in our schools. It is a classic example of trying to look at the past with the assumptions -- and the ignorance -- of the present.

One of the things we take for granted today is that it is wrong to take other people's land by force. Neither American Indians nor the European invaders believed that.

Both took other people's land by force -- as did Asians, Africans and others. The Indians no doubt regretted losing so many battles. But that is wholly different from saying that they thought battles were the wrong way to settle ownership of land.

Today's child cannot possibly put himself or herself in the mindset of Indians centuries ago, without infinitely more knowledge of history than our schools have ever taught.

Nor is understanding history the purpose of such questions. The purpose is to score points against Western society. In short, propaganda has replaced education as the goal of too many "educators."

Schools are not the only institutions that twist history to score ideological points. "Never Forget That They Owned Lots of Slaves" is the huge headline across the front page of the New York Times' book review section in its December 14th issue. Inside is an indictment of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century.

People of every race and color were enslaved -- and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.

Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others. Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century -- and then only in Western civilization.

Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there.

But who is singled out for scathing criticism today? American leaders of the 18th century.

Deciding that slavery was wrong was much easier than deciding what to do with millions of people from another continent, of another race, and without any historical preparation for living as free citizens in a society like that of the United States, where they were 20 percent of the total population.

It is clear from the private correspondence of Washington, Jefferson, and many others that their moral rejection of slavery was unambiguous, but the practical question of what to do now had them baffled. That would remain so for more than half a century.

In 1862, a ship carrying slaves from Africa to America, in violation of a ban on the international slave trade, was captured. The crew were imprisoned and the captain was hanged in the United States -- despite the fact that slavery itself was still legal in both Africa and the U.S. at the time.

What does this tell us? That enslaving people was considered an abomination but what to do with millions of people who were already enslaved was not equally clear.

That question was finally answered by a war in which one life was lost for every six people freed. Maybe that was the only answer. But don't pretend today that it was an easy answer -- or that those who grappled with the dilemma in the 18th century were some special villains, when most leaders and most people around the world at that time saw nothing wrong with slavery.

Incidentally, the September issue of National Geographic had an article about the millions of people enslaved around the world right now. But where is the moral indignation about that?

Personally, I'm tired of being held responsible for an action that neither I not my anscestors ever committed.

Yet, somehow, it's my fault because I'm of European descent.

Like the whole reparations hogwash:

I fully support repartions for those descended from slaves..but with some caveats:

1. Each person who applies for reparations must prove that he/she would even exist had their anscestors not been enslaved.

2. If condition #1 is satisfied, each person must prove that his/her quality of life is significantly lower than had theri anscestors not been enslaved.

In other words, everyone descended from slaves today would NOT EVEN EXIST had their anscestors not been enslaved.

nonanarchist

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... and then if the person who received the reparation EVER whined about how the man is keeping him/her down, then the money would be confiscated. After all, the flipside of reparation is total forgiveness.

HIS story...

"We are not responsible! I'm so tired of being blamed for what others did so long ago."

Sorry to inform you buddy, but.... you continue to benefit from the crimes others committed long ago (and are still committing today). The Red people were murdered and their lands stolen.... you now live on those lands, and the ancestors of the victims are still around living in dire poverty. Ask the surviving Hopi and Navajo nations, whose lands are right now being taken by U.S. energy companies. You... in all of your arrogance deny that you owe anything to anyone. It is "your land" after all.

A "twisted history" indeed. The blood of the Vietnamese people has not yet been washed off your hands. Those gentle rice farmers are still dying in the rice paddies... they die everyday when stepping on un-exploded U.S. munitions. Vietnamese still give birth to malformed or dead children thanks to the hundreds of tons of dioxins Uncle Ham dropped on their country. But you don't owe them anything. Your hands are clean. Your conscious is clean. You are an American.

Now you've brought your demockracy to Iraq. Your sanctions killed a million Iraqis over the last ten years, mostly children. Bush Sr. bombed Iraq back to the stone age, destroying the country's water system... so Iraqis have been drinking contaminated water all these years. America's sanctions had forbidden chlorine from being shipped to Iraq... chlorine could have made the water safe to drink and it would have saved the lives of tens of thousands of children. But the U.S. government said chlorine was a "dual purpose" substance that could have been used to produce "weapons of mass destruction", which we now know Iraq DID NOT POSSESS.

There's so much blood on your hands. It stains all your clothes. You leave bloody footprints. You reek of gore... yet you can't smell it, can you good German?! Even the red stripes on your holy banner seem to be expanding and dripping.

God help us all. May God bless America... because surely, American needs to be blessed more than any other.

I've seen a few stories on this very site. I have not yet seen a story on a conservative site.

Contemporary slavery affects mostly African, Asian, and Latin people who are trafficked around the world. An estimated 50,000 slaves live in the USA. Their main work is agricultural labor, domestic work, sweatshop labor, and sex work.

The most prominent group on the left that's brought attention to contemporary slavery is the CIW, who exposed the Sweatshops in the Fields for tomato pickers who are underpaid and abused, who pick tomatos for Taco Bell. For this, three of the principal worker/organizers received the RFK humanitarian award.

They have it relatively good, for abused slave workers. There are people who work as domestics on the East Coast who are unable to leave their work residences. There were dozens of Thai workers found in El Monte (an LA suburb) sewing clothes behind bars in slave conditions. Across the country, Asian, Eastern European, Black, and Latin women are smuggled into the USA to work in brothels, "massage parlors", and as "escorts."

Religious, union, and progressive groups have consistently advocated on these people's behalf. The number of conservatives expressing outrage, and taking concrete action against conteporary slavery is alarmingly low.

Perhaps it makes sense. Business interests benefit from slavery to the tune of billions of dollars. Women are not considered a conservative voting bloc. Conservatives seem to accept racism with aplomb. These things, combined, create a right-wing conspiracy of silence that helps perpetuate slavery today.

Last year, I wrote a few letters to different politicians bringing this issue up. How many conservatives here can say the same?

You say:

The number of conservatives expressing outrage, and taking concrete action against conteporary slavery is alarmingly low.

You should remember conservative Ronald Reagan's outrage at communism and his concrete actions to bring an end to that system.

Communism is, of course, state sponsored slavery. Everyone works and no one gets to keep the fruits of their labors.

Free, you should know a few things.

You should know that the Hopi took lands from the Sioux and the Sioux from the Cree etc.

You should know that Native Americans live in every American city, free of all discrimination. No one is forced to live on the res. The hunter gather culture some cling to is dead. It was an anachronism in its own time. The wise Native Americans recognized this in the 1700's and adopted the new wave of development.

You should know that Vietnamese do suffer terribly today -- at the hands of one of the most repressive governments on Earth. Such a pity we didn't have the courage to protect them.

You should know that it was Saddam who put the sanctions in place. The US dealt with him in the 80's, and would have still, if he had only complied with the will of the international community. He would not, and now the US has imposed this will upon him, and liberated those who suffered under his sadistic rule.

Q: Why will the left not offer a single word of criticism for Saddam's role in pertpetuating the sanctions or the war?

A: Because from Stalin to Castro, the Left loves a despot.

Well, slavery is business-sponsored slavery.

When you create something for your employer, you don't own it either. You work, and don't get to keep the fruits of your labor. It just feels like you do, because, generally, you can afford to buy something you've made, unless it's a really expensive boat or a big building or something like that.

Of course, if you're in Indonesia, you might be making a $130 pair of Nike Air Boredoms or whatever, and you'll never get to own them, because you're paid in chickens or stacks of seaweed or something like that, and not very many either!

Put that in your stovepipe hat and smoke it, A. Lincoln.

"The Left" criticized Saddam plenty. They also criticized Clinton about the sanctions too. You have to really pay attention to know this. Don't lie about what "The Left" does or doesn't do, when you don't even know what "The Left" is about, and the go and attack that lie.

"The Left" (okay, the human rights community, which is not Left but liberal) has a good site about repression in Vietnam. The government of Vietnam is repressing the indigenous people there. These are not the people who escaped in the 1970s.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/vietnam/

Native Americans face discrimination if they are full blooded and look it, and the city they're in has a significant population of Indians.

Now, Armstrong, if were going to be rational, you can't have it both ways about indigenous folks. Either indigenous rights to land and culture exists, globally, or it does not. Did the colonists, be they Vietnamese, Chinese, European, or whatever, legitimately seize the land in a conflict, or did they take it unfairly? Did the colonists effectively integrate the indigenous into the culture, or are these pronouncements a cover for racism? (Read that HRW site about Vietnam.)

Sowell actually makes a good point that slavery was not controversial until the Enlightenment. (He mistakenly said Western Civilization. Western Civ had plenty of slavery it was okay with. I think it took until the 18th century before it became controversial with many people.) Slavery in the 18th century was an anachronism that was supplanted by feudalism, and was being replaced by landed farmers. The fact that, in America, it was almost exclusively a Black phenomenon -- it's the roots of racism in America.

Slavery today is far worse than it was in colonial America. And in colonial America, it was worse than in the Roman Empire. And before then, slavery was simply the way work got done. There were pyramids to build, and, slaves did it -- it's not like there was a temp agency the pharoah could contract with to get the pyramids built. The kings went to war, and part of the deal was that you acquired slaves (aka POWs) who'd help build your empire. They'd work for a while, and buy their freedom, and that was that.

In comparison, slavery today is usually enforced by keeping it completely underground, moving people around so they have no social contact, and threatening the slave/worker with physical hard (as well as regularly abusing them mentally). This is worse than the terrorism experienced by Black slaves, who were only raped, abused, and sold off; they weren't denied social contact and moved around constantly. They even had a social relationship with their masters, which is unimaginable with, say, Korean sex workers enslaved at massage parlors, or Hatian nannies smuggled into the Hamptons.

Slavery in Africa today is also a controversy, but, I can imagine it integrating a little better with their societies, though, there is really no purpose for it anymore. (Slavery there is usually described as religious tradition.)

Slavery in Asia is still practiced as the selling of babies. The most overt form is in the sex business, where children of the poor are sold into prostitution. Also, though it's not quite the same thing, there is a thriving business in selling babies to Americans.

Slavery today is probably more lucrative than ever before, simply because it's gone underground. Global labor standards and wages have risen since the 1700s, so today, if you can drop labor costs to "slavery" you're going to have better profit margins than the competition.

For more information, search for the following terms on google:

Human Trafficking
Contemporary Slavery

It's creepy how racist that anti-reparation talk above sounds.

First of all, of course you'll have to prove your lineage to slaves. This isn't that hard, because there are detailed records. Slaves were property, and were insured as such. Accounting records will list slave families in great detail.

Second, there's this thing called capital, and it accumulates value. If you establish that a slave was due, say, 5% of the value of the property he improved, that could get pretty expensive. Slaves built the White House. What's a tiny fraction of that house worth? Jeeeeez.

Here's what I mean: let's say I bought land for 20k, and built a tiny house on it, and it is worth 120k. I added 100k of value to it. Minus materials and other stuff, maybe my labor is valued at 30k (because I did it all myself :-) ). If I were a laborer, maybe I'd get paid 5k for my work, or 5%. Fair enough right?

Now, suppose I was a slave, and you said I'm due that 5%. Well, one way to calculate my reparation check is to say I am owed $5k in adjusted dollars. A fairer way would be to say I'm owed $5k plus interest on possible savings... say $500 worth of savings... over the course of 200 years. Uh oh!

My spreadsheet says 2 billion dollars are owed after 200 years. Ay ay ay, the magic of compounding interest at 8%. If I were white and descended from slaveowners, I'd prefer to live with that uneasy guilty feeling than fork over 2 billion dollars I probably don't have.

(I recalculated at 1%, in which case only around $8500 is owed. Phew... but remember that this is only for one job, which probably lasted a few months. Slaves worked all the time.)

Perhaps reparations are a pipe dream... but speculative accounting about the value of slavery would be a great field of study in amateur economics. A detailed study of old accounting information about slavery would reveal a lot about how we got to where we are.

My long lost relatives were injured by the British imperialists. The Brits owe me big time. Every Brit alive today owes at least part of his/her well being to the suffering of my long lost relatives.

Partly because of the 60's protests against the vietnam war, I was denied my life long ambition: Full combat experience. My unit was withdrawn as soon as we hit the beach, and we were shipped back, without a shot.
I figure the protestors are responsible for ~50% of my subsequent denial of promotions, depression and family problems.
go reparations go!!

If you use any of these inventions created or improved by African-Americans (many of whom are undoubtedly decended from or were slaves), you, too, are "benefitting from the crimes others committed long ago."

From http://www.detroit.lib.mi.us/glptc/aaid_table.asp

Folding chair
Fitted bed sheets
Cotton planter (to make your "Free Mumia" T-shirts)
Ironing board (to iron said T-shirt)
Disposable syringe
Train car coupler (by a former slave)
Paint and stain and process of producing the same (GW Carver)
Velocipede (bicycle)
Golf tee
Supersoaker
Air conditioning
Two-cycle gas engine
Reciprocal ferrite waveguide phase shifter having means to rotate the magnetic field about an axis transverse to the longitudinal axis of the ferrite rod (Wow!)
Seatbelts
Bathroom tissue holder
Electric lamp
Printing press
Photographic film and processing
Aircraft
Elevator
Traffic signal
Numerous agricultural inventions
Lawn mower
Toilet
Helicopter
Electrical generation and distribution

Now, free, if you can convince me you don't use ANY of these (and many, many other) devices, products, and processes, than you might have reason for your holier-than-thou attitude.

But you can't, because you benefit from this stuff just as much as us eeeevil white folk.

So spare me the whole "only white people benefit from slavery" routine. It's a lie.

nonanarchist

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Reparations are good

That is, they're good if it's Fidel Castro paying them to the American Corporations whose property he stole.

Slave owning rapist Thomas Jeffereson had it right --
"The only fear that America has is if there really is a God."
Sex between a master and slave is RAPE.