Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   7/15/2014

Leftist anti-American grudge

Independence Day seemed like the right time to write some thoughts about “America: Imagine the World Without Her,” by author Dinesh D’Souza, based on his book of the same name. I saw it on July 2^nd in Anderson (it may still there and Redding) and recommend sharing in the applause and National Anthem sing-along at end. Columns are often written prior to traveling, so you’re reading it today.

Watching a movie called “Belle Starr” from 1941, set in the aftermath of the Civil War, gave me pause to consider one of the “shame on America” arguments advanced by the political, academic and cultural left, that Mr. D’Souza disputes. Those devoted to the anti-American narrative cite, magnify and obsess over slavery, segregation and “racial disparity” to this day.

Consider that 1) liberals on the Supreme Court actually believed it illegal for the people of a state to attach firm non-discrimination language to their constitution abolishing the use of race in college admissions, etc; 2) part of the Obama administration agenda for so-called “fair housing” and “race-neutral” lending involves ascertaining the racial and economic make-up of suburban areas. They then make federal loan guarantees contingent on planners implementing low-cost, subsidized developments carved into existing areas—i.e. the type of urban density and under-classes that people voted with their feet, moving vans and money to get away from. It matters not that lower middle class minority families have also fled the crime, drugs, gangs and welfare of cities—the Obamacrat left will tell us, based on race, how to live.

The leftist elites’ obsession with race stems greatly from narratives that consider no counter-factual evidence to the “America: forever evil because of slavery” paradigm. Conservatives such as D’Souza don’t ever deny the inherent evil of slavery. The “Belle Starr” movie only reinforced the human, economic, political and national devastation associated with fighting a war to end slavery—the only such conflict in world history that I know of. I also know that white, English-speaking people are the primary, if not singular, abolishers of slavery, which exists throughout recorded history, and to this day in primitive third-world cultures, and through human trafficking.

Just to expand on things we might have forgotten, D’Souza reminds us: Many thousands of white slaves were either forced to come here, or saw the “indentured servant” option as a risky but worthwhile chance for a better life. They weren’t treated any better than African slaves; having an ostensible 7-year term was no guarantee of freedom or of being alive in year 8. It is also useful to find out that there were hundreds of free African-Americans who held (owned) thousands of their own slaves to work their fields.

Two historical vignettes highlighted in “America” were 1) the first female millionaire business owner was a freed black woman who built a thriving hair and personal care empire marketed to other black women throughout the North. 2) It was eminently obvious to fair-minded, informed citizens in non-slave states, and observers like French traveler and writer Alexis de Tocqueville, that economies built around the institution of slavery were weak. Denying the fruits of labor to slaves undermined the work ethic. Economic activity and commerce outside of the slave-labor segment suffered due to perceived unfairness and tipped scales. Tocqueville had only to stand on the Ohio shore of the Kentucky River and see behind him a thriving economy and, across the river, a stagnant, slave-owning economy.

Another of the complaints over which the left holds America in shame: the idea that the Southwest was “stolen” from Mexico and should, from Texas to Southern California, be returned. Most readers find it preposterous, in all likelihood, but it is yet another condemnable “fact” in the anti-American arsenal: America is the greatest thief of other people’s wealth and land in, like, forever, dude!

You’re probably not going to be surprised to learn that the Zinn/Chompsky (two hard left anti-American professors peddling this bovine waste) narrative is in great demand and popularity on many American campuses. There, young heads emptied of pro-American knowledge in their high school civics and history classes become spongy vessels for said waste.

In this case, the left relies, as usual, on simplified, one-sided arguments that fall apart upon closer examination. In D’Souza’s telling, the residents of Texas, for instance, rebelled against Mexican rule for many of the same reasons that the colonists fought against British rule. This precipitated a war with Mexico that Mexico lost—and lost big when their entire country was effectively subjugated through conquest on the battlefield. The United States gave Mexico back about half, kept the area that became the American Southwest, and paid Mexico billions of dollars.

The Mexicans absorbed into the U.S. after the war lost nothing—property, rights, nor livelihoods. None of their descendants appear eager to cross that border, legally or otherwise, back to Mexico. Interviewing a young man who legally immigrated and described his life in America, D’Souza heard him glowingly contrast his achieved life here compared with the life he would likely have had in Mexico. I’m not feeling any guilt over it, honestly.