The Complex Story of Slavery and Abolition

Next time someone tells you the simple story of slavery, suggest that they read this article by myth-buster Edward Campbell. The title: "The West Didn’t Invent Slavery: But It Fought to End It: Abolition and the birth of moral restraint."  Here's an excerpt:

Slavery was the norm for over 5,000 years. Abolition was the rupture.

In this essay, I challenge the comforting myth that history bends naturally toward justice. Instead, I trace the global story of slavery and argue that the real anomaly wasn’t oppression—it was restraint. The West didn’t invent slavery, but parts of it did something almost no civilization had done before: use power to end it.

Featuring the West Africa Squadron, the Haitian Revolution, and moral crusaders from Wilberforce to Tubman—this is a story about conscience, power, and the rare moments when they align.

Slavery is as old as civilization—dating back over 5,000 years. It was present in the earliest empires of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. For millennia, it was accepted as natural, necessary—even sacred. Every society practiced it; few questioned it. From pharaohs to emperors, slavery was a pillar of power. v Then—within barely a century—it virtually vanished from the earth. This essay is about the exception that proved the rule.

Slavery was the norm. Abolition was the rupture.

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Status and Power Seeking on the Backs of the Unfortunate

The elites portray themselves as good-doers. The could be some of that, of course, but there is a Machiavellian side to such displays too. Rob Henderson explains:

Elite overproduction happens when a society produces too many people who believe they deserve high status. To get there, they often try to align themselves with genuinely marginalized groups in order to unseat the current elites and replace them. A lot of the time, when you hear someone loudly criticizing elites, what you’re really hearing is an audition to join them—an attempt to co-opt the suffering of people who are actually mistreated.

Even if someone has never personally experienced hardship, they can point to history or to the struggles of people who share their traits and say: they suffered, I’m like them, therefore you should give me power. That might mean a spot at a university, a job at a prestigious firm, or some other coveted position.

What’s interesting is how this shift away from individualism and toward group identity makes it possible for someone who’s only ever known affluence and comfort to be rewarded, so long as they share something in common with a historically marginalized group. Meanwhile, the people who really have been mistreated may get nothing. And yet people seem surprisingly willing to go along with it.

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The Culture Wars Are Not Organic

The culture wars are not organic. They were inflicted on us in a systematic way by powerful monied elites who simultaneously and systematically censored dissent to the official narratives. They did this to distract us and pit us against each other, as Dave Smith explains:

Dave Smith:

Go track how many times the word racism was mentioned. Around 2012 it shoots up. "Social justice" shoots up. Transgenderism shoots up, white privilege shoots up. This was forced on the American people. Why are we having these conversations now? The people did not wake up one day and decide we want to have a national conversation about chicks with dicks. That didn't happen. This wasn't an organic movement.

It was all of the most powerful people decided this is what we're going to talk about. And why was that? Look, when you're failing on policy, you pivot to a culture war. You pit people against each other, so they're fighting each other. We had in this country, we had an Occupy Wall Street movement where leftists were standing outside of big banks, screaming, we are the 99% right wingers had a populist movement called the Tea Party, where they were outraged about the bailouts of big banks, unsustainable debt, government spending. They all like that. That's not what the powers that be like. Look, they like you fighting about issues like abortion. Now, I'm not saying abortion isn't a very important issue. It's a very important issue. But us fighting about that issue doesn't scare anyone at the Federal Reserve. It doesn't scare anyone in the CIA. They don't care if you fight about that issue. They love you fighting over transgender bathrooms.

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It’s Time for NPR to Earn Its Own Funding With Respectable Reporting

I don't want to forced to fund NPR any more than want to be forced to fund Fox News. Uri Berliner served as the senior business editor at NPR from 1999 until his resignation in April 2024. What follows is an excerpt from his article, "Happy Independence Day, NPR." Anyone who has been paying attention knows that he not exaggerating the far-left slide of NPR:

Once fairly evenly divided between liberals, moderates, and conservatives, NPR’s news audience shifted sharply to the left. And by 2023, liberals outnumbered conservatives more than six to one. True to the tote bag cliché, NPR became an accessory for Whole Foods shoppers. Which is sad, because in another era, NPR, and public radio more broadly, developed some of the most creative and entertaining programming anywhere, from Car Talk to This American Life, Planet Money, Radiolab and A Prairie Home Companion.

Thanks in part to this ideological transformation, NPR botched major stories—and damaged its bond with the American people.

To name a couple of prominent examples: It repeatedly insisted that the lab leak theory of Covid had been debunked and it refused to cover Hunter Biden’s laptop. NPR’s reporting on the most contentious issues of the day—climate change, youth gender medicine, and the war in Gaza—leaned on moralizing and emotional certitude more than on rigorous factual analysis.

Embracing the mantras of the Great Awokening, NPR became a caricature of itself with headlines like these:

Microfeminism: The Next Big Thing in Fighting the Patriarchy

Which Skin Color Emoji Should You Use? The Answer Can Be More Complex than You Think

Black Women’s Groups Find Health and Healing on Hikes, But Sometimes Racism, Too

Bringing Diversity to Maine’s Nearly All-White Lobster Fleet

Diet Culture Can Hurt Kids. This Author Advises Parents to Reclaim the Word ‘Fat’

These Drag Artists Know How to Turn Climate Activism into a Joyful Blowout

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