The Lost Cause (Wait ... Didn't We Win?)

While I always read BlueJersey.com, I approach it strictly for entertainment. Somewhat akin to The New York Times editorial page, it should be read for comic relief: do people, allegedly intelligent, really believe such things? (I was going to write "think like that", but, obviously, thought rarely enters into the exercise). I make such observations not to stoop to their level of gratuitously insulting their political adversaries, but to – yet again – lament the fact that most leftists (certainly those with access to computer keyboards) betray an astonishing lack civility -- or thought -- in political discourse.

Bluejersey’s contributors, apparently incapable of entering into a civil discussion with folks who hold contrary views, routinely resort to ad hominem attacks. Their arguments amount to little more than playground snits, befitting a ten year-old who knows no better, but impossible to credit as the product of any serious thought.

Apparently having nothing better to do with our time, the New Jersey Assembly intends to address a resolution officially apologizing for its role in slavery.

Now, normally, the mere fact that a resolution is profoundly silly merits little attention; much of what we do, alas, is profoundly silly. As a student of history, I strongly encourage its study. Although I get nervous around people with "causes", who nurse historic grievances for political purposes, I supported the formation of the Amistad Commission and profoundly wish that more people read ante-bellum history. Perhaps, if they did, they would discover the calamitous consequences when government attaches importance to race. Perhaps, if they did, they would understand the horrifying consequences of writing an entire group of people out of humanity, because you find them inconvenient.

But this resolution is not merely silly; it’s pernicious, for precisely the reasons that the Sponsor asserts it should pass. He contends that it would "give comfort" to Black people.

Oh? And why is that? Not a single one of them spent a minute in chains. In all likelihood, neither did their great-great-grandparents. (Depending upon which source one believes, the last former slave died in 1979 at the age of 137) Furthermore, not a single bondsman remains alive. If any present resident of New Jersey feels entitled to an apology, the possibility of securing one from any guilty party probably evaporated more than a century ago.

No one can "apologize" for history; we simply acknowledge it and study it for the lessons it might offer. This resolution is clearly aimed at nursing a sense of historic grievance, designed to support an agenda of racial victimization. Otherwise, it makes no sense to bother with it.

But, onto the merits of BlueJersey’s comments. I stand accused of "perversely racist" commentary because I averred that if slavery was the price one’s ancestors needed to pay to make one an American, one should be grateful they paid it. Had they not been dragged here against their wills, with the result that one would not be an American, that would be a personal calamity. Whatever price my ancestors paid – starvation, oppression, privation, discrimination – and, as Irish immigrants in the 1850s, they faced all of that, I’m happy they endured it. Not because it was desirable for them to do so, or that it was in any way justifiable, but because their confronting and overcoming evil gave me the chance to be an American. From my perspective, whatever they needed to endure to make me an American was worth the price they paid.

But, alas, apparently this argument passed over the heads of the BlueJersey folks. Invective represents their typical fare. Unable to meet the substance of an argument, they resort to insult. For the Left, charges of racism represent the first refuge of the scoundrel.

But let’s take Mr. Melli – a somewhat more sober commentator – at his word, and take the continuing enterprise theory of liability seriously. That is, NJ government took execrable actions and, as the successors of those who so acted, we, presently, should express remorse.

Government acts only through representatives and those representatives usually belong to a political party. NJ, from the ante-bellum period through the Civil War years, was, as today, reliably Blue. We have a word to describe the people who made those horrible policies: DEMOCRATS. Democrats were wholehearted and vociferous advocates of slavery and even attempted to undermine the abolition motivation of the war as late as 1864. Despite this shameful history, an internet search fails to reveal that the DNC or the Democratic State Committee ever officially apologized. Perhaps they should put their own house in order first.

As one correspondent pointed out when I raised that point, the parties are different today. Just so. It’s highly unlikely that Assemblyman Payne – or any Democrat – could be considered soft on slavery. Obviously, the Republican Party, founded on the principle of abolition, and consistently opposed to drawing any distinctions whatsoever based upon race, need offer no apology. So, precisely who would be offering the apology, and to whom would it be directed? Just as the parties are different, so, too, is the government.

Melli’s Galileo/Catholic Church analogy avails him not. From what I can gather, no Galileo family, nursing ancient grudges and muttering about "reparations" from the Church, exists. Were this proposal nothing more than a harmless, albeit frivolous, exercise, it would pass unremarked, no more substantively troubling than (say) a St. Patrick’s Day resolution.

But this resolution is NOT harmless. Instead, it panders to and encourages an unfortunate sense of racial oppression, encourages wholly inappropriate anger over historic grievances. Far from "comforting" anyone, it would simply encourage that culture of victimization. Indeed, it’s not much removed from the proposal in Congress – co-sponsored by Assemblyman Payne’s brother – setting up a commission to study whether the descendants of slaves are entitled to "reparations". If, after all, government is a "continuing enterprise" and, hence, should properly "apologize" – today – for historic wrongs, should it not also make recompense? Said Commission is expressly empowered to consider whether "... any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted."

Were such a commission ever formed, is there even the slightest doubt about the results at which it would arrive? Akin to the Death Penalty Study Commission here in NJ, it would be rigged from the start to arrive at the Politically Correct result.

No one alive today owes anyone else alive today anything for events 150 years removed from the present. Those events are HISTORY; no one alive today possesses the slightest right to take them personally. To the extent that America or NJ owed an "apology" for slavery, the 650,000 Federal soldiers who bled in a war fought to end slavery paid that debt in full. New Jersey contributed 52 regiments to that fight. That service, and that blood, conveys more remorse than any politically contrived "apology" 143 years after the final chains were broken.