[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]SHREDTODEATH wrote:
Like rascism was created [/quote]
Anyone that says this shouldn’t be teaching a college course.
Slavery was a means for “wealthy” to produce goods to bring to market. Nothing more, nothing less. Some saw it is a dying economic tools until things like the cotton gin came along and made the costs out weight the benefit. (Don’t know if I totally agree with that, read it in passing.)
Well, this is sort of true, but not in the context you put it. USofA was founded by educated smuggliers and tax evaders that were willing to risk life and limb to keep the fruits of their labor and be left alone/have more say by/in government. [/quote]
WTF. srsly W-T-F.
Slavery existed everywhere in human history and is one of the few bona fide culturally independent institutions that you could find. There were more slaves in India, e.g., in 1800 alone than had been in the US during the entire history of slavery. In 1865 about one-third of slave owners in New Orleans were black. Thomas Sowell wrote a very illuminating history of slavery which should be required reading for everyone.
You immediate charge that slavery was created for economic benefit smacks of Socialist theorizing, not history. No. Historically, slavery was a form of indentured servitude that lasted about 7 years. The rise of Mercantilism and quasi-state run enterprises in the 17th century gave rise to vast plantations in French and Spanish colonies. The British decided to get into the act and imposed heriditary slavery starting the 1670’s in its US possessions. At first they tried Indians, who ran off. The Irish (most slaves in the British Empire were Irish in the early 1600’s) died. Blacks were seen as premium workers and that is why they were imported.
It should be noted that Commerce, the conducting of business by mutually agreed contracts, was an Enlightenment concept. “Capitalism” was a term brought into general usage by the (National) Socialists during the 20’s to describe any non-state run business. Yes, when you use the word “capitalist” you are using textbook Nazi terminology and economic theories. You probably don’t intend this or realize it, but during the 1930’s it got embedded into the popular mindset as being progressive and the province of educated people. In point of fact too, the Gulag system in the USSR and later the forced labor camps in Germany were an attempt to recreate the state-run enterprises of the 17th century. Their avowed aim was to destroy the “Liberal” economic system that was taking root internationally.
North America was first settled by Puritans who had been brutally oppressed by the Crown, fled to the Netherlands and saw Europe descending into the Hell that was the Thirty Year’s War. (Half of the population of central Europe died between 1618 and 1648, btw.) They decided that European politics, religious strife and unrelenting warfare were repugnant and decided in what was a vaguely suicidal move to “make haste from Babylon”, so they could just live their lives. Later immigrants were of the same mindset. This tended to attract all the trash from Europe, such as the Catholics from Protestant lands, the Protestants from Catholic countries, Jews, Anabaptists and grimly oppressed minorities.
The result is that Europeans, especially more aristocratic ones (or wannabe aristocrats) “know” all sorts of stuff about Americans and anti-American philosophizing has been part of the intellectual landscape there for over 200 years. Even Jefferson and Franklin were extremely exasperated at the complete obtuseness of the Europeans. Our own intellectuals in the US parrot a lot of this and are in point of fact, shockingly ignorant of the most basic facts of American politics and history. Most of them even think that there are Left and Right Wings to politics here, the Socialists (Nazis) are the Liberals and the “liberals” are actually some form of Euro-socialist. For those of us that pay attention to History, the entire effect is Orwellian and surreal.
The OP just ran into this in college, where careers are made by writing up claptrap for academic journals that other peers sign off on. I work at a university as a researcher and the stupidity I deal with from the supposedly educated simply beggars belief. I have said before and will state again that some of the hands down dumbest people I have ever met had Ph. D. after their names.
– jj