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Activists steal monument
SoreShoulder
Member Posts: 3,148 ✭✭✭
The activists who stole this monument were claiming this nation was built with their ancestors' blood.
There are two facets to reparation: first, to repay the wrong done, and second, to repay the value stolen. I am not talking about repaying them for the wrong done but for the value that was obtained by their work.
The Treaty Of Paris relinquished all British territory in our possession so the slaves were not used to pay for buying the land we took from Britain. Suppose, though, the planters were buying up land from small Southern farmers and were in debt up to their ears to get more land, then the war and emancipation cut the value of the land by making it illegal to operate with the same profit margin. Boom, value gone.
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You gotta wonder whether there's ever been a sober, competent economic analysis of whether it would have been economically better for the nation not to have slavery. Which would mean we're not all still reaping the rewards of slavery.
The war destroyed a good deal of the value obtained. And, it cost the nation a great deal to raise and equip and feed a military to defeat the holders of the profits of slavery.
The government was being funded by the tariffs largely on Southern goods, but they more than made up for the revenue during the Civil war by raising a paltry income tax, and had enough left over to fund a major war effort.
The US chose to allow mainly the South to have slavery but the wealthy landowners of the South had often been descended from Tories and their loyalty was far from guaranteed. The US had to keep these marginally loyal rich Southerners in the fold because our geopolitical situation was far from secure. It may be argued that the independence of the United States wasn't doing the slaves any good but had the South or even the whole nation not succeeded in obtaining independence, then emancipation in 1807 may have been followed by immediate deportation to a far less desirable place. It would have been far more overcrowded than it actually was if the emancipated people from the American colonies (had they not become independent) had had to go.
It may be that it would have been much better for the country if businesses had been forced to pay workers wages which would have then been spent on locally manufactured goods and food. Slavery's profits were not necessarily a massive windfall for the nation as a whole whose value survives to this day.
Before 1794, it was probably very difficult to raise cotton profitably without a lot of free labor, but except for a little more than a decade, Great Britain taxed away a sizable portion of the profits. After the cotton gin and after Emancipation, people did raise cotton for money without having to use slaves. After 1794, then, it may be the case that slavery only profited the big landowners and the US would have done better if the cash crops had been grown by independent, profit making farmers.
It's just a public relations ploy to get attention.Either positive or negative does not matter. What if just plays into their argument. Seems to be working for them and MajorCorporations are funding their endeavors .
The latest push against restrictions on voting requirements is done for one reason. To win votes valid or not. This is also why Biden is allowing hundred of thousands of illegals soon to be voters in the country to offset this push back from Republicans if they win on this issue.
The Democrats have more power to turn the tide with the race card and they know it.
serf
so if some one takes a MLK statue or even took a dump on it how much you want to bet it would be national news for days / weeks on end . but since its a southerner declared raciest well we get crickets