Tag: slavery

DeVos compares abortion rights debate to slavery

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos compared the abortion rights debate to the battle to eliminate slavery during remarks at a Colorado Christian University event in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night, and her comments are drawing angry responses from Democrats.

DeVos, a Christian conservative, discussed the Trump administration’s record of opposition to abortion, and said she was reminded of President Abraham Lincoln. “He, too, contended with the ‘pro-choice’ arguments of his day,” she said, according to prepared remarks shared Thursday by the department with POLITICO. “They suggested that a state’s ‘choice’ to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it.”

She said Lincoln reminded “those pro-choicers” that a vast majority of Americans viewed slavery as a vast moral evil. “Lincoln was right about the slavery ‘choice’ then, and he would be right about the life ‘choice’ today,” she said. “Because as it’s been said: Freedom is not about doing what we want. Freedom is about having the right to do what we ought.” Continue reading.

St. Paul police chief vows to get slavery language lifted from state Constitution

After Police Chief Todd Axtell’s Facebook post, legislators were publicly talking about holding hearings to launch a constitutional amendment.

A New Year’s resolution made on Facebook by St. Paul’s police chief could lead to the elimination of language in the Minnesota Constitution that says slavery is acceptable when it’s used as a criminal punishment.

The phrase, among the very first sentences in the 14-article Constitution that ushered Minnesota into statehood in 1858, drew the attention of St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell a few months ago when he read about other states confronting slavery passages in their constitutions.

“For some time now, I’ve been troubled by a clause in the Minnesota State Constitution,” Axtell wrote Tuesday morning on Facebook, sharing with his followers that his 2020 resolution was to “ignite a movement” to have it removed. Continue reading

Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s defense of John Kelly’s Confederacy comments makes no sense

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website October 31, 2017:

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded on Oct. 31 to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly calling Robert E. Lee “an honorable man.” (Reuters)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders knew she would be asked Tuesday about John Kelly’s controversial comments about how Robert E. Lee was an “honorable man” and how the Civil War was the result of a lack of “compromise.” And she came prepared for the question.

“Look: All of our leaders have flaws,” Sanders began, reading from notes. “Washington, Jefferson, JFK, Roosevelt, Kennedy. That doesn’t diminish their contributions to our country. It certainly can’t erase them from our history. And General Kelly was simply making the point that just because history isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it’s not our history.” Continue reading “Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s defense of John Kelly’s Confederacy comments makes no sense”

It Has Always Been About Slavery

The following article by Cynthia Tucker was posed on the National Memo website August 18, 2017:

“Our new government is founded upon … the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”
— Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, 1861

Credit: Reuters

As if he had not already dumped enough fuel on a raging inferno, President Donald Trump has now taken up common cause with the Lost Cause: the historically inaccurate, myth-driven campaign to sanctify the Confederacy. The president was apparently not satisfied with merely showing his sympathy for white supremacists, insisting that their ranks include some “very fine people.”

A day or so later, he went on Twitter to bash the movement to take down Confederate monuments and statues — though he had previously said those decisions should be left to local authorities. Trump tweeted that he was “sad” to see the “history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.” Continue reading “It Has Always Been About Slavery”