SF public schools pres. to remove slaveholders' names from schools
Yes, many of the national founders were slave owners, but they were pivotal in moving away from the societal precepts in which they themselves were trapped. They founded the nation that would not only eventually make slavery illegal but would serve as a political inspiration to millions to overthrow tyrants and dictators holding entire societies in conditions surely no better than those of black slaves in post-colonial America.
To focus on only one aspect of their lives and deny their contribution to American history is more than an injustice--it is a conniving attempt to destroy and facilitate the reversal of their accomplishments. Only by destroying their memory can the constitutional, free society they helped create be replaced by a dictatorship of the proletariat--i.e. virtual and practical slavery of nearly everyone to socialist dictators capable only of mouthing demands of sacrifice to the socialist state or king à la Venezuela or Stalinist Russia at the point of a Gulag or firing squad, precisely what the founders pledged their lives and sacred honor to resist.
Rather than a step forward, SF Marxians now propose an attempt to erase our national roots from memory to more completely and rapidly effect a transition to abject socialist dictatorship. Small wonder that such an attempt should take root in the bullying environment appropriate to compulsory "education."
To focus on only one aspect of their lives and deny their contribution to American history is more than an injustice--it is a conniving attempt to destroy and facilitate the reversal of their accomplishments. Only by destroying their memory can the constitutional, free society they helped create be replaced by a dictatorship of the proletariat--i.e. virtual and practical slavery of nearly everyone to socialist dictators capable only of mouthing demands of sacrifice to the socialist state or king à la Venezuela or Stalinist Russia at the point of a Gulag or firing squad, precisely what the founders pledged their lives and sacred honor to resist.
Rather than a step forward, SF Marxians now propose an attempt to erase our national roots from memory to more completely and rapidly effect a transition to abject socialist dictatorship. Small wonder that such an attempt should take root in the bullying environment appropriate to compulsory "education."
Next the "Ministry of Truth' (Orwell 1984) will remove any mention of them from the history books and have their images replaced on our money.
Respectfully,
O.A.
But why waste Neuman's famed name on some dinky little school?
How about pouring more millions of money we don't have into a big fat marble building in the middle of Washington D.C. that honors leaders of the Progressive cause?
Our public schools teach - and many if not most students believe - that the Constitution is racist because it regarded a black as only 3/5 of a person.
What they don't tell students is that this provision was for "indentured servants," not blacks, and that it was for purposes of the census in order to limit representation of the south in congress. In this way they snookered the slave-holding south into supporting ratification of the Constitution while nudging the nation toward the eventual abolition of slavery. What they should have done, in my opinion, is allow the south to form their own nation, die its natural death and eventually be assimilated. But who knows?
Only economic realities at that time already being brought to light by capitalism and free trade-- the prospect of economic success or failure (the freedom to choose and pursue either prosperity or destitution)-- constituted the forces of reason capable of altering/obliterating what should have become abundantly visible anachronisms.
Had the civil war not been fought, had legal tender laws, a military draft, and other trappings of statism not come into effect, capitalism would have destroyed not only slavery but the suppressed racism that has perpetuated two separate cultures-- one essentially white and one essentially black.
Thomas Jefferson owned slaves while president.
James Madison owned slaves while president.
James Monroe owned slaves while president.
Andrew Jackson owned slaves while president.
Martin Van Buren owned slaves, but not while he was president.
William Henry Harrison owned slaves, but not while he was president.
John Tyler owned slaves while president.
James K. Polk owned slaves while president.
Zachary Taylor was the last president who owned slaves during his presidency.
Andrew Johnson owned slaves, but not while he was president.
Ulysses S Grant owned slaves, but not while he was president.
And that is just the list of slave owning presidents.
Heck yes!. I find it so amazing to get into their mindset of making this big leap forward, taking ideas people had talked about thousands of years ago, and trying to turn it into something real.
When you're reverse engineering something, it always looks easier than actually getting to something that works, lasts, and has a reasonable number of bugs.
So I look at them and am amazed they took the first step, took great personal risk, for something that might fail and be a joke. But then I'm amazed they couldn't take the next obvious steps. It's always easier looking back with hindsight.
This is important not b/c I want to force kids to hold Washington in high regard. Rather, I want them to realize that humankind has not finally reached the pinnacle of justice, and if they are involved with making one step forward one day, that won't be the last step.