Another letter writer wrote that Bush is trying to democratize the Middle East and give those people freedom and once they will taste freedom like we have, they will renounce terrorism and be nice, nice.
I had to point out that democracy is not for everyone and in the case of Iraq it’s not ever going to work and we were stupid and naïve for ever trying to make them into a democracy.
The letter writer continued by compare our setting the Iraqi people free to our setting the Negro free from slavery during the American Civil War. He pointed out that many of our local boys gave their lives during the Civil War just to win them their freedom.
Well this is a sore point with me going all the way back to college days in the late 1960s and early 1970s. My teacher in American History was an old man that kept insisting that the American Civil War was primarily a war for or against slavery.
I challenged the old man and was joined by a fellow classmate that happened to be black. He obviously did his homework and could not abide by the teaching of revisionist history. This is what they do in Japan. Their textbooks gloss over WWII and the atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers.
I realize that many in the United States were taught and believe that the War Between the States was mainly and in some cases, only about slavery but that does not make it OK in my eyes. Just because our text books created this false impression does not mean we have to let it continue.
I told the letter writer that it was naïve to think our civil war was fought just because of slavery. I also mentioned that the northern boys were not risking their lives to free Negroes from slavery; they were risking their lives to preserve the union (central government) and to continue the expanding northern industrial economy.
The southern rural boys were also not risking their lives just to keep slavery legal in the south; they were fighting for their independence from the overbearing (tariffs) North and to preserve their way of life (State’s Rights).
I am not saying that slavery was not a factor; it was but mostly as an economic tool (slave labor) without which the South could not prosper and in fact, economically perish. In fact, the South did economically perish and it has taken quite a while for the South to rise again, economically that is.
Both North and South were racist. Some in the North as well as in the South despised the institution of slavery but did not consider the races equal or that they could ever co-exist.
My friend from Texas sent me an “Address on Colonization to a Committee of Colored Men”, Abraham Lincoln, Washington, D.C. (1862). In this address, Lincoln is urging the freed slaves to emigrate to Central America and there start a fresh life since Lincoln felt the two races could not and should not live side by side in the United States.
I will have more comments on the Lincoln attitude towards race in a separate blog.
You may call this nit-picking but if a person is basing their thinking on some historic event they may as well know what really happened and how people at that time really felt instead of basing their thinking on another misconception!
I had to point out that democracy is not for everyone and in the case of Iraq it’s not ever going to work and we were stupid and naïve for ever trying to make them into a democracy.
The letter writer continued by compare our setting the Iraqi people free to our setting the Negro free from slavery during the American Civil War. He pointed out that many of our local boys gave their lives during the Civil War just to win them their freedom.
Well this is a sore point with me going all the way back to college days in the late 1960s and early 1970s. My teacher in American History was an old man that kept insisting that the American Civil War was primarily a war for or against slavery.
I challenged the old man and was joined by a fellow classmate that happened to be black. He obviously did his homework and could not abide by the teaching of revisionist history. This is what they do in Japan. Their textbooks gloss over WWII and the atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers.
I realize that many in the United States were taught and believe that the War Between the States was mainly and in some cases, only about slavery but that does not make it OK in my eyes. Just because our text books created this false impression does not mean we have to let it continue.
I told the letter writer that it was naïve to think our civil war was fought just because of slavery. I also mentioned that the northern boys were not risking their lives to free Negroes from slavery; they were risking their lives to preserve the union (central government) and to continue the expanding northern industrial economy.
The southern rural boys were also not risking their lives just to keep slavery legal in the south; they were fighting for their independence from the overbearing (tariffs) North and to preserve their way of life (State’s Rights).
I am not saying that slavery was not a factor; it was but mostly as an economic tool (slave labor) without which the South could not prosper and in fact, economically perish. In fact, the South did economically perish and it has taken quite a while for the South to rise again, economically that is.
Both North and South were racist. Some in the North as well as in the South despised the institution of slavery but did not consider the races equal or that they could ever co-exist.
My friend from Texas sent me an “Address on Colonization to a Committee of Colored Men”, Abraham Lincoln, Washington, D.C. (1862). In this address, Lincoln is urging the freed slaves to emigrate to Central America and there start a fresh life since Lincoln felt the two races could not and should not live side by side in the United States.
I will have more comments on the Lincoln attitude towards race in a separate blog.
You may call this nit-picking but if a person is basing their thinking on some historic event they may as well know what really happened and how people at that time really felt instead of basing their thinking on another misconception!
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