Wednesday Writs for 6/24
A tale of two headlines: Why Trump Keeps Losing at the Supreme Court vs. How the Supreme Court is Quietly Enabling Trump and other law tidbits
Tagged: slavery
Confederate Monuments Are Everywhere in the South. Why?
Before you protest the removal of Confederate monuments, ask yourself if you know why they were erected in the first place?
The 1619 Project: Historians v Historians With Strongly Worded Letter
Over at The Atlantic, Adam Serwer wades into the debate, and pushback, regarding The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project” issue. What say you?
Slavery’s Legacies, Addiction’s Realities: Delicious Foods, by James Hannaham
Slavery, like the past, isn’t past. It ain’t even dead yet.
Andrew Napolitano and the Pollardism of Slave Condemnation
Could Abraham Lincoln really have sidestepped the entire American Civil War by using the government’s power of property condemnation to buy all of the slaves in the South and then free them?
Compensated Emancipation Was Tried — But Didn’t Work
Ta-Nehisi Coates takes the time to respond, with historical data, to the those who would claim the Civil War could have been avoided through a program of compensated emancipation. He’s certainly right that this...
Ideology is the Enemy: The Creeping Victory of “Consistent” over “Judicious”
Note: This is part of an ongoing series I’m doing on the growing dangers we face by becoming more ideologically rigid. They are not intended to go in any particular order, and would be...
American Process and Its “Occasional Services to Liberalism”
Liberals endure much teasing for their inability to articulate just what liberalism means. Even their best and brightest flounder at the task. “[T]here is something deep within liberalism,” Michael Tomasky attempts, “that prevents it...
What Makes a War?
In his writing on the Civil War and American slavery, Ta-Nehisi Coates frequently refers to a “war” on the slaves and/or America’s black populace. (The violence done to slaves — or at least the...
Vengeance is Clean; Vengeance is Cruel
Ta-Nehisi writes: When I think of Django Unchained all I see are rape scenes and scowling dudes. One of the problems, at least for me, is that I don’t actually hunger for a revenge flick about...
Foote’s Civil War, Volume II: Tragedy and Just Causes
I finished Volume II of Foote’s Civil War over the last two days of Passover, and returned to the internet this morning to find two posts at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog with the title and...
Abortion and Slavery again
Ta-Nehisi has pushed once again into the abortion and slavery debate, this time following the invocation of that analogy by Rick Santorum and Joe Klein’s subsequent defense of Santorum’s rhetoric. Now, I’ve admitted in...
Compassion & Knowledge
Good grief, but this is some extraordinary writing from Ta-Nehisi Coates: For an African-American like me, the upshot of all this gorgeous writing is bracing–one is forced to behold beauty in those who saw...
I’m not Harriet Tubman either
I don’t think the pro-choicers and the pro-lifers are going to agree on this one. But I do think that Ta-Nehisi is either missing what I’m trying to say here, or he – and...
No, I am not Frederick Douglass
[updated] Okay. Perhaps I stirred the pot a bit too vigorously. In any case, let me clarify a few things. Ta-Nehisi Coates – whose work I admire greatly, too!* – has quite a lot...
Abortion, slavery & personhood
So several of Andrew’s readers disagreed with my post on abortion and slavery. And at least one of my readers had some particularly colorful things to say to me in an email after it...
Against Progress
Provocative stuff from Robin Hanson: Social norms are slavery. Factory work is worse than farming is worse than foraging. “School, propaganda, mass media, and who knows what else have greatly changed human nature, enabling a...
Sometimes We’re Wrong
Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing on conservatism: But if you are the slave, that essentially conservative approach will always privilege your master over you. Conservatism, with its belief in institutions, traditions, and the past, will seemingly...
