Michael Medved Defends Slavery

Yep, that's right. Here's the link.

He says he's exposing myths about slavery. Here are his six talking points, which Medved actually calls his Six Inconvenient Truths.

1. Slavery was an ancient and universal institution, not a distinctively American innovation.
2. Slavery existed only briefly, and in limited locales, in the history of the republic - involving only a tiny percentage of the ancestors of today’s Americans.
3. Though brutal, slavery wasn’t genocidal: live slaves were valuable but dead captives brought no profit.
4. It’s not true that the U.S. became a wealthy nation through the abuse of slave labor: the most prosperous states in the country were those that first freed their slaves.
5. While America deserves no unique blame for the existence of slavery, the United States merits special credit for its rapid abolition.
6. There is no reason to believe that today’s African Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained behind in Africa.

I hate to waste my time, and God knows I have other things I should be doing this evening. But I can't let this slide. So here we go.

1. Slavery was an ancient and universal institution, not a distinctively American innovation.

And that makes it OK? Fine, let's see where this game takes us. Oh, here's one! "Anti-Semitism was an ancient and universal institution, not a distinctively German innovation." Hell, why don't we just kill all our Jews? I mean, everyone else once did it!!!

2. Slavery existed only briefly, and in limited locales, in the history of the republic - involving only a tiny percentage of the ancestors of today’s Americans.

Medved simply has no understanding of American history. First, slavery was very common in the North at the time of the Revolution. There were slaves in New York as late as the mid 1830s. He plays a tricky little game too. By claiming that slavery existed only "briefly" in the history of the republic, he's trying to marginalize it in American history. But of course, his definition of "briefly" happens to be a mere 79 years (1776-1865). Plus, he simply ignores the 147 years before that. Totally irrelevant of course.

The idea of slavery existed only in "limited locales" made me laugh out loud. Oh, you mean only the entire American South? Is that all? And not the South narrowly defined like today, but also Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware. And again, there were many slaves in the North.

The argument that only a tiny percentage of the ancestors of today's Americans gets thrown out all the time by right-wingers. It serves to deny the existence of white privilege that even today makes life easier for whites. Medved says, " Of course, a hundred years of Jim Crow laws, economic oppression and indefensible discrimination followed the theoretical emancipation of the slaves, but those harsh realities raise different issues from those connected to the long-ago history of bondage. " Well, not really. They are closely related. Medved uses this to sever the history of racism in America from the issue of reparations, which is at least part of what he's trying to attack here. Is reparations even an issue these days? I think Medved is trying to relive the Republican glory days of the late 90s.

3. Though brutal, slavery wasn’t genocidal: live slaves were valuable but dead captives brought no profit. Like Point 1, I say, so what? It's entirely unclear to me what point Medved is trying to make. But what he doesn't say is that this was not the choice of American slaveholders. Rather, they had to keep their slaves alive because they were too poor to afford more. In other parts of the New World, particularly in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and Brazil, slaves were so cheap that they were treated like dogs. If they died, no one cared. Plantation owners could just buy another boatload. All that makes Americans different is that they lived in an economic backwater of the New World and could not grow a product that made them enough money to treat slaves like they really wanted. Where North Americans got the closest, on the rice plantations of South Carolina, slaves were treated worse than in Virginia and the tobacco regions.

4. It’s not true that the U.S. became a wealthy nation through the abuse of slave labor: the most prosperous states in the country were those that first freed their slaves.

Now this is just stupid. Medved either is ignorant of US history or is just lying. First of all, there was great wealth in the South. It may have been concentrated in a few hands, but those with lots of slaves made a tremendous amount of money for the time. Second, he completely ignores American economic history and the first years of the Industrial Revolution. For the North made tons of money off slave labor too. It's just that they bought the cotton that southern slaves grew and turned it into profits in their textile mills. They could not have done so without those big cotton plantations in the South and they made few if any complaints over the fact that their profits came from slave labor. The North and South were intricately connected in these years. They were far from the two distinct societies many claim. I could go on about northern owned slave ships or yet again discuss slaves in the North, but I'm going to scream if I write about this much longer.

5. While America deserves no unique blame for the existence of slavery, the United States merits special credit for its rapid abolition.

Ha Ha Ha Ha. That's really funny. This comes from the AMERICA IS THE GREATEST NATION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT YOU ARE A DIRTY COMMIE theory of American history. While I agree that the US does not deserve "unique blame for the existence of slavery," it does deserve some blame for allowing an institution to flourish that directly contradicted its founding principle. But the idea that the US "merits special credit for its rapid abolition just makes no sense." I would say the nation that deserves said credit in Britain. The British abolished slavery 32 years before the US. The British went out of their way to suppress the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Meanwhile, Americans were trying all they could to smuggle fresh slaves into the country to get around the 1808 constitutional abolition of the slave trade that Southerners bitterly regretted soon after they agreed to it.

6. There is no reason to believe that today’s African Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained behind in Africa.

Wow. I have nothing but contempt for Medved, but even I'm surprised he pulled this out. This is nothing but racism. Medved is rehashing the old slavery-is-good-for-the-savages argument that was really popular during the years of slavery. Of course, it remained popular after too, just with "colonialism" replacing "slavery." Medved is a racist. I really wonder if Medved would do anything but wave the flag if the United States or Europe were to recolonize Africa. This is just disgusting.

It's a real wonder the Republican Party is increasingly strictly the party of white people with characters like Medved speaking for them. Racism runs in a powerful current through the heart of the Republican Party. The fact is that lots of right-wingers are reading this and loving it. They agree with everything Medved, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Colter, Malkin, and the rest say. Thank God history and demographics are against these racists. I would like to personally thank all of these people for driving every non-white person in this nation into the hands of the Democratic Party.

Via Nicole Belle.