 |
| Jim Demint, embracing his ignorance. |
Jim DeMint, the former Republican senator from South Carolina, told a religious broadcaster last week that liberals were fundamentally wrong about everything – even demonstrable historical facts.
“No liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves,” DeMint said during an appearance on Vocal Point.
In fact, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the rebellious Confederate States of America, and Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery originally permitted by the founding document.
These federal government policies were enacted during and after federal troops fought and won the Civil War, which began in DeMint’s home state.
“The reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people,” DeMint told host Jerry Newcombe, of Truth In Action Ministries. “Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God.”
DeMint insisted the end of slavery was the result of a grass-roots movement driven by Christians.
I believe the grass roots Christian movement was typically referred to as the Rebel Army, and it was not exactly working to so much end slavery, as to fight against anybody who wanted to take the human beings they owned away from them.
Interesting that the guy born in the state that started the Civil War is now arguing that it was unnecessary. It's almost as if he is in denial as to what crimes were committed by his people.
As for that whole Christian grass roots movement, well there WAS one, but it was not exactly how Demint is describing it.
This from Civil War Baptists:
In the South, meanwhile, many white Baptist leaders in the pre-war years defended slavery as ordained and blessed of God. Legally established as an explicitly slaveholding nation claiming God’s favor and guidance constitutionally (contrary to the secular constitution of the United States), the Confederate States of America from the beginning officially wrapped itself in the mantle of God’s chosen nation and people. The official motto of the CSA – Deo Vindice, translated “Under God, Our Vindicator” or “With God as [our] Champion” – reinforced the nation’s Christian identity.
Revisionist history, the only kind they teach in the South.
American Exceptionalism: Everything except the facts.
ReplyDeleteWell, with folks like Sarah Palin telling America's youth to aim low with vocational certificates after years in charter schools that only teach creationism, we won't have an Exceptional Nation, no shining city on a hill (unless it's by radiation.)
Delete"Revisionist history the only kind they teach in the South."
ReplyDeleteToday.
While it wasn't my best subject in high school in the 60's, at least there were few attempts at revisionist history other than th usual idiots who were usually shot down unmercifully. (Figuratively speaking, of course.) Generally speaking they were laughed right out of any audience.
Unfortunately, a LOT has changed.
Well, there were Christian groups deeply involved in the anti-slavery movement, but they were liberal Christians, such as the Quakers. I don't believe a lot of conservatives, within their narrow, evangelical/fundamentalist worldview, would even consider such people Christian.
ReplyDeleteRight, and the LIBERAL NORTHERN Christians worked to get Lincoln elected because they wanted to work within the law to end slavery. It was the southerners who reacted to his democratic election like big babies and started the war.
DeleteA real center for the Movement to Abolish slavery came out of Boston churches. Oh, those East Coast liberals. And remember, women didn't have the vote then, either. That took even longer.
DeleteWell first they tried to rewrite history about the Jim Crow south. Haley Barbour said that he never saw African-Americans being mistreated when he was growing up. The White Citizens Council kept the peace in his town. Of course the White Citizens Council was actually the KKK. Then Phil Robertson said that all the African Americans he saw growing up in Louisiana were always happy. Well that rewrite didn't work so now Demint is trying go further back in history and do a rewrite. He sounds as bad as Michelle Bachman who said that our founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery. Tell that to Sally Hemings.
ReplyDeleteOr Rosa Parks. Or G. W. Carver. Or....
DeleteWe recently visited Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, located on a former rice plantation. While the gardens and statues are beautiful I felt haunted by the history of the place - the suffering of the slaves who worked from sunrise to sunset to make their owners wealthier. The African American whose voice is heard in recordings describing the lives of those who lived on the plantation never referred to the slaves as men or women, only as "male" or "female" as if they were caged laboratory animals. I also noticed that there were no African Americans touring the place. it was much like visiting the site of a concentration camp in Europe - horrifying and shaming.
DeleteWhenever I hear a Southerner talk about how "happy" the African Americans of their childhoods were or how well treated they were while held in slavery, I think that they are lying to cover up their shame. If only they had the courage to face the truth of their region's past. Even their strident hypocritical "Christianity" is symptomatic of their refusal to face the reality of their history.
Beaglemom
Beaglemom, I live in SC and love to visit Brookgreen Gardens. It IS a beautiful place and home to one of the so-called Constitution Oaks (They were alive at the signing of the Constitution).
DeleteYou are quite correct. They are gorgeous. But they do demonstrate the ignorance and stupidity of the white man. The slavery DOES haunt the place. And the diseases caused by white man.
Had they not created all those rice ponds that held still waters the malaria that suddenly appeared probably wouldn't have appeared and the plantation owners wouldn't have been "forced" to go away for the warm seasons - of course, leaving the slaves to get infected and die.
But at least now the area is being used for something beautiful. It isn't much, but it certainly helps a little.
Oh. And I don't know when you visited, but every time I have been there I have seen many blacks. And spanish descent. And oriental. And....
Hmmm. So by his logic “Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Citizen United and others that defined some corporations as people, and that grass-roots movement by Christians try to reduce gays and women to property"
ReplyDeleteHe should check with Michele Bachmann, who thinks that our Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to eradicate slavery, and they did-- so there you go.
ReplyDeleteWas there ever even one single plantation owner in the antebellum Deep South that wasn't a Christian?
ReplyDeleteAnd Demint is claiming that these good, God-fearing plantation owners banded together and fought nasty old A-Blinkin in order to let their poor old slaves go?
Because Jesus told them to?
Is THAT the line of horse shit he's trying to sell?
They justified their treatment of slaves because the slaves were not Christians. When the slaves wanted to convert, they were not allowed to become Christians, or the whole basis for slavery would have fallen apart. This was true in England, too.
DeleteThe Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation[1] issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, as a war measure during the American Civil War, directed to all areas in rebellion and all segments of the Executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States. It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states that were still in rebellion,[2] thus applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time. The Proclamation was based on the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces;[3] it was not a law passed by Congress.
ReplyDeleteThe Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States[4] that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.[5] It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (known as "public accommodations").
If these issues, emancipation and civil rights were put to a popular referendum, they never would have passed. Sometimes the executive and/or the legislature has to make proclamations or pass laws that are right. In time, people will go along with them. They have to.
Look how far marriage equality has come, state by state. If a state allows gay marriage, the federal government will recognize it if they move to other states. They have to, for the sake of a joint filed income tax report, issues involving inheritance, visiting in a hospital, responsibility for their children. No, marriage equality won't pass a popular vote, but it is also happening. And about that slavery and civil rights stuff-- some people still won't accept it. They do not accept President Obama because he is African American. They don't see the half that is white. Civil rights, human rights? They still won't pass equality in the workplace.
This boob is either lying or ignorant.
ReplyDelete"but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God.”
He's conflating the Declaration Of Independence and the Constitution. Nothing in the Declaration has the force of law. The Constitution specifically states that a slave is 3/5 of a person.
Until the 13th Amendment.
Delete"This boob is either lying or ignorant."
DeleteIt's BOTH! His mouth is open, which proves he is lying, and his opinions prove he is ignorant AND stupid!
Typical repube.
Either? Clearly, both.
Delete"the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights" Huh?? I don't think that's in the Constitution but came from the Declaration of Independence, did it not?
ReplyDeleteAnd is not either the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence part of our "big government"? The guy's too dumb to walk; he hasn't, as they say around here "the sense God gave a goose". He's an embarrassment, that's what he is, and no more. Unfortunately there seem to be a lot of those in his neck of the woods.
Jim Demint, DBS, proud graduate of the Glenn Beck University. Mr. Demint received the David Barton Scholar in American Exceptionalism award.
ReplyDelete*sigh* because, Double BS, in the name of GOTP politicking.
dowl
His name should be Jim "Dimwit." Isn't is a shame that Republicans always have to lie about history? It's because they have nothing to be proud of in the 21st century, now that they have rejected the party of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower. To be a "modern" Republican, one who adheres to the far right and to the Koch Brothers, a person has to think that slavery was a good thing and that the slaves were happy to be held in bondage while living in a flat world in a universe created over a six day period only a few thousand years ago. And these people want to be in charge of everything???
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
Your description made me laugh because it sounds almost exactly like Terry Pratchett's Discworld, except that the flat Disc is carried on the back of an elephant standing on a turtle....but yes, while Pratchett is being tongue-in-cheek ridiculous, the Republicans are dead serious, and that isn't funny at all.
ReplyDeleteRightwingers have established a very clear pattern of mental illness. They treat everything the same way; politics/religion/history/education are all about whatever they decide they're about, entirely free of any actual investigation or understanding of the topics at hand.
ReplyDeleteThey just say what they want the answer to be, and if some other like-minded people agree, then that's the answer. All gutsy-feely horse sense makin' stuff up as they go along approach to reality.
There needs to be a study. And maybe some funding for finding a cure.