On
Saturday, August 17 in Washington, D.C. this year, thousands
showed up for the Millions for Reparations Mass Rally.
As the name suggests, the attendees were trying to
provoke a transfer of wealth in their favor. But one
of the leaders threw them a curve.
"We're not asking white people [for reparations],"
said Louis Farrakhan, who headlined the event. "We are
demanding what is justly ours." [1] What
Farrakhan believes is justly theirs is massive amounts of
land, which the government should hand over to him and his
followers. "As a nation within a nation, we need
land as a basis of economic and political
independence," Farrakhan said. "We cannot settle
for some little jive token--we need millions of acres of
land that black people can build and use for
ourselves."
He said blacks need "payment for the destruction of our
minds; the robbery of our language, our culture, our
history, our religion, our God, our self-dignity, and our
self-worth." But, he added, in the most telling
moment of his 15-minute speech, "We cannot accept a
cash payment because a fool and his money will soon
part."
Farrakhan's followers should be worried. Not only does
their leader consider them dupes, he knows he can tell them
so to their faces without eliciting offense.
In a speech made for a different march seven years ago,
Farrakhan identified what he believes is the real problem
with the country: white supremacy. According to
Farrakhan, this is what our founders really founded. "The
[original Seal of the United States] and the Constitution
reflect the thinking of the founding fathers, that this was
to be a nation by White people and for White people. Native
Americans, Blacks, and all other non-White people were to be
the burden bearers for the real citizens of this
nation." [2]
The focus of his 1995 speech was a phrase he borrowed from
the Constitution's preamble. "When Jefferson
said, 'toward a more perfect union,' he was admitting that
the union was not perfect," Farrakhan declared,
attributing authorship to the wrong founder. "[W]e
are gathered here to collect ourselves for a responsibility
that God is placing on our shoulders to move this nation
toward a more perfect union."
Farrakhan believes the union will move closer to perfection
if it hands over a country's worth of land to his gang.
And the reason it has fallen short of perfection is
because our founders were racists who wanted to rule with an
aristocracy of white, slave-owning males.
Let's see what happens to this argument when we burden it
with facts.
We know many of the founders owned slaves. Does it
follow they were seeking to perpetuate the "peculiar
institution" or establish an elitist white plutocracy?
On the contrary, in spite of their inconsistency, the
founders created the legal system necessary to demolish
slavery and every other wrong that stood opposed to man's
rights. No one on earth had ever done this before.
The Declaration of Independence (the document Jefferson did
write) proclaimed that all men possess rights by virtue of
being alive, that the purpose of government was to secure
these rights. It was unanimously approved by the
Second Continental Congress, not carelessly, but after three
days of debate. Jefferson's original draft included an
antislavery passage that Congress deleted because it
misleadingly charged the king with maintaining the colonial
slave trade. Since it couldn't be included with the
litany of the king's "repeated injuries and
usurpations," the opening statement about man's rights
served as Congress's implied position on slavery. In
support of this Declaration, it forcefully concluded, all
members pledged to one another their lives, their fortunes,
and their sacred honor.
According to delegate John Adams, the mood of Congress was
somber and quiet as each man came forward to sign the
Declaration. They had no illusions about what they
were doing. Smiles broke out only once, when the
rotund Colonel Harrison of Virginia remarked to Elbridge
Gerry of Massachusetts: "I shall have a great advantage
over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are
now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall
die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body,
you will dance in the air for an hour or two before you are
dead." [3]
The 56 delegates believed they were signing their own death
warrants. This is not what we would expect of men
engaged in political subterfuge. White supremacists
with much to lose don't put their lives on the line for the
rights of man.
Many people then and since have claimed neither Jefferson
nor Congress included blacks in the phrase "all men are
created equal." Was Jefferson thinking of all
men when he wrote that phrase? In the excised passage
against slavery in his first draft, Jefferson wrote that the
king was determined "to keep open a market where MEN
should be bought and sold." [4] (Jefferson's
emphasis) If Jefferson believed blacks were not men,
his indictment would have been pointless.
But regardless of his view, the Declaration emerged from the
Pennsylvania State House with unanimous approval of
"all men" possessing inalienable rights. And
"all men," not surprisingly, was taken by most
people to mean everyone. And their rights were inalienable--not
a loan from the state. This interpretation fueled the
abolitionist and women's rights movements. Why would a
delegation of educated men bind themselves to such wording
if they were seeking a society of white male supremacy?
And why would another assembly of men approve a constitution
and bill of rights that limited the power of the rulers, if
these men were bigots, as Farrakhan charges? If you're
going to subjugate others, you want the sanction of
legitimacy--you want legal control of the police, courts,
military, and especially the press. Abolitionists were
seething, and under the Constitution they could continue
their crusade--and did.
What went wrong? The election of 1860.
After a 3,000-year run, slavery was disappearing from the
face of the earth during the first half of the 19th century,
thanks mostly to the Enlightenment philosophy of man's
rights. The free market, a product of the
Enlightenment, accelerated its demise. "[C]apital-intensive
agriculture and industry began to render labor-intensive
production, including slave labor, uncompetitive,"
notes economic historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo. "As
the economist Ludwig von Mises wrote, 'Servile labor
disappeared because it could not stand the competition of
free labor; its unprofitability sealed its doom in the
market economy.'" [5]
In most countries, slavery died with little or no violence.
But when a new American president took office in 1860,
rather than fight for peaceful emancipation, he baited the
South into a long and devastating war in what could be
described as an anti-American Revolution. When the war
ended, states' rights and the Constitution were among the
seriously injured. Reconstruction, far from healing
the wounds of the war, inflamed the animosity between the
races.
"The one unequivocal good that came of Lincoln's war
was the abolition of slavery," DiLorenzo writes. "But
the way in which Lincoln chose to end slavery could not
possibly have been more divisive." [6]
Today's student of history will certainly feel strong
indignation over the treatment accorded to politically
dispossessed groups in our past. But the past is gone,
along with the guilty parties and the victims. In
creating political freedom for all men in principle, our
founders provided the moral and legal foundation for freeing
all men in fact.
What is destroying us today is not slave-owning planters or
Jim Crow segregationists, but a government that claims
disposal rights to our lives, liberty, and property. It
robs us of all the things Farrakhan laments having lost and
just about everything else.* When one considers that
intrusive government was what our founders attempted to
extirpate, Farrakhan should be among the fathers' meanest
bulldogs.
* I urge people to savor the near-extinct feeling of
independence by growing their own tax-free,
regulation-free, mouth-watering tomatoes.
References
1.
Farrakhan
Rails Against 'White Supremacy', Michael
L. Betsch
2.
Minister
Farrakhan challenges black men, CNN.com, October 17,
1995,
3. Rosenfeld, Richard N. 1997. American Aurora: A
Democratic-Republican Returns. New York: St.
Martinšs Griffin. p. 282.
4. Jefferson's
Draft of the Declaration of Independence
5.
DiLorenzo, Thomas J. 2002. The
Real Lincoln: A New Look At Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and
an Unnecessary War. Roseville, California:
Prima Publishing. p. 47.
6. Ibid. p. 275.
