On Sunday, I marked an awful event in our history: The official beginning of chattel slavery as such in Britain’s American colonies.
At first, John Casor, an African indentured servant, had gained some control of his life. He charged his master, Anthony Johnson, a free black, with having forced him to labor longer than the term of his indentureship. He won, was freed, and then indentured himself to one Robert Parker.
But Johnson sued, and, on March 8, 1655, won Casor back — as a slave for life.
The case established a civil ground for slavery, also enabling free blacks to own slaves. Even as late as the Civil War, the South harbored families of obvious African descent who themselves owned African-Americans as slaves.
On the surface, American slavery wasn’t about race. But in the 1640 case of John Punch, sentenced to a life of slavery as criminal punishment for running away from his indentured servitude, his fellow escapees — whites — merely got longer terms of forced labor.
Racism, Thomas Sowell explains, became increasingly important to “the peculiar institution” as time went on. If you exaltthe notion that “all men are created equal,” how do you square that with your slave-holding?
By denigrating the humanity of blacks.
This vile ugliness of racism is still with us, to some degree … and slavery, too — at least, in small pockets around the globe and in a much bigger way in the Muslim world. An estimated eleven million slaves are held in Africa and the Middle East. And black Africans are still the main victims.
Sunday was also the 240th anniversary of Tom Paine’s first American call for slavery’s abolition.
Apparently, it takes a federal government to move a village.
Thinning ice sheets have made it hard for the people of Kivalina, a seaside village in Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle. The Iñupiats who live there have lived off the sea, especially bowhead whales, for a mighty long time. And climate change, town officials say, has raised havoc with their traditional occupation.
Worse yet, the federal government suspects that soon Kivalina will become uninhabitable. “The question nowfacing the town, the state of Alaska, and the nation,” Chris Mooney writes in the Washington Post, “is whether tomove the people of Kivalina to a safer location nearby, either inland or further down the coast — and who would pay upwards of a hundred million dollars to do it.”
If you look at the sandbar upon which Kivalina rests, you can see why it might be subject to erosion and the vagaries of the weather.
But does that make it a government concern? Really?
In times past, it wasn’t up to taxpayers to guarantee every outpost of humanity’s continued existence. When a way of life became untenable in a given place, the people moved.
Now, folks tend to look to governments, seeing their “communities” as something others owe them, rather than something they must work to keep.
A bad sign if climate change proves real and massive.
If it takes over a $100 million to move a village with 400 people, what happens when whole cities must be abandoned? I’m sure government will be involved, but if a million Americans must move, we cannot afford to spend the Kivalina ratio: $250 trillion is quite a price tag.
I don’t know if Juan Williams is right about who qualifies as America’s most influential thinker on race. But I hope he is.
In a Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed, Fox News’s liberal-leaning political analyst and author of Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (1998), argues that our country’s most important influencer of thought on race is neither some current and trendy academic writer nor our current president (or his outgoing attorney general). Instead, it is none other than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
While more famous figures of African-American descent have dominated the news talk shows and airwaves and popular consciousness, Justice Thomas has gone about “reshaping the law and government policy on race by virtue of the power of his opinions from the bench.” While previous African-American racial activists and thinkers have striven to defend the rights of black people, Justice Thomas, “the second black man on the court, takes a different tack. He stands up for individual rights as a sure blanket of legal protection for everyone, including minorities.”
Opposed to “perpetual racial tinkering,” Thomas has marshaled Frederick Douglass’s words to make his case: “What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.” And justice, in Clarence Thomas’s judgment, does not entail a constant rescue-worker attitude towards minorities, or other disadvantaged folks. It requires nothing other than equality of rights before the law.
And perhaps some hard work on the part of the disadvantaged.
Hats off, then, to Juan Williams for recognizing the importance of Thomas’s common sense contention that “black people deserve to be treated as independent, competent, self-sufficient citizens.”
We are beginning our library, starting out with the obvious entry, Tom Paine’s “Common Sense.” Right now we have this book available for you in HTML, on this website. Soon we will produce PDF and ePub editions as well. Happy reading!
More important than which party controls the U.S. Senate, or which nine people don Supreme Court robes, or even who will be elected president of these United States come 2016, is something much more within our individual and collective control: what you and I do to protect and advance liberty.
From this date — January 1, 2015 — forward, let us never wait for a political savior to ride in on a white horse. We cannot wait.
And we don’t have to.
In fact, only through “We the People” taking the leadership role can a pro-liberty agenda be established. Politicians won’t do it for us, not consistently.
Yet, the few might follow our good lead.
And we can hopefully make all politicians respond to the issues that define the future of freedom.
Starting right now, as president of the Liberty Initiative Fund, I ask you: join me in placing a three-plank pro-liberty platform on state and local ballots and, thereby into law and government policy across the country, between now and November 8, 2016.
Hold government accountable. Pass term limits in more cities and states. Fix out-of-control public employee pensions. Enact ethics reforms.
Fight crony capitalism. Create a voter check on public subsidies. Protect citizens from eminent domain abuse. Open up business entry.
Protect our liberties. Clean up law enforcement with measures that stop the highway robbery known as civil asset forfeiture, require police to wear lapel cameras, and mandate independent prosecutors in fatal or violent incidents involving police.
We can create better government, a freer marketplace and a safer society.
Gandhi said: “We must become the changes we seek in the world.”
I say, “At least, let’s put our changes on the ballot and give them a fighting chance.”
There will never be a patronage army for liberty. But there is you and me. And since we agree . . . we might be able do something about it.
We’re strong enough to start.
These battles appeal to libertarians, conservatives, liberals, progressives.
I’m reminded of Patrick Henry’s 1775 “Give Me Liberty” speech:
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? …
Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
Mr. Henry was talking about cataclysmic historical forces, the defeat of the world’s foremost empire. So are we, in a way.
This nation of shopkeepers, the common folks with common sense and common decency, must again battle the Empire of Big Government. And let me advance the notion that we are up to that awesome task.
Every New Year’s Day I reflect on the words of author and politician, Marianne Williamson, who in her book, Return to Love, wrote:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Let’s work together to make 2015 the year we helped create an America more free. Call me (571 – 659-2320) or email me (paul@libertyifund.org) if you want to take action in your city or state.
Oh, wait! Don’t call me today; I’m watching college football. But please call me (or email) tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 2, 2015. If I’m busy, or talking to someone who dialed me a minute earlier, leave a message (that’s just, ahem, common sense) — I’ll call you back.
Let’s take charge and usher in change together, at the grassroots, this year.
