Posted by
KsReaganite on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 7:21:49 PM
Quirky as it may seem, it puts some closure on collective shame that Virginia’s legislature, the organic voice of the Commonwealth and her people past and present, has finally apologized for slavery. Lest many of us forget it was not just the subjugation of man by man, but an entire edifice of brutality that today’s Americans find shocking. The slaveocracy defended not only the right to reduce a human being to something else (property) but vilified, crucified, mocked, and demonized those who spoke up against the barbarity of a ‘civilization’ denying the humanity of humans by the fiat of mere definition. There were long ‘scientific’ essays written as to how the black man was not really ‘human’; the American Bar Association and other elites scoffed at abolitionists as ‘extremists’; good respectable ‘moderate’ folks, who themselves would never engage in owning slaves did not talk about interfering with the ‘right’ of others to do so. Even the sovereign rights of individual states to protect the basic right to life and liberty of the black man were denied by the United States Supreme Court in its infamous
Dred Scott decision of 1857.
Protect the Dred Scot decision became the rallying cry of an entire generation of pro-slavery rights people. It was well said that in those days all three branches of the American government were controlled by those nice respectable individuals who would not deny someone else his moral right to own a slave..it was an issue that was between a slaveowner and his God, reasoned Chief Justice Roger Taney in writing for the pro-slavery rights Supreme Court. The minutest state regulation (or federal one) to limit, let alone prohibit, the reach of slavery was resisted by the press and trampled upon by unelected ‘enlightened’ federal judges. There was a party that supported this scheme of things and drew electoral support by pandering to the slaveocracy. Even in that party there were men and women of conscience though. Then there was a party that was born to combat it and whose manifesto said ‘if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong’. But even amongst the highest councils of the anti-slavery party, there were ‘moderates’ who were ‘personally against’ slavery, but did not want to oppose it as a public policy.
Both parties are in existence today. The same moderates are still there making the same arguments. And there are still those of us who steadfastly believe that denying the humanity of another human being is a right not granted to us, a choice not given to us, a prerogative not up to the whims of any Court or council, no matter how august its appearance, how majestic its verdict. The ‘moderates’ were wrong then, they are wrong today for their moderation is nothing more than moral cowardice just like that of their political ancestors of the slavery era.
Someday in the future, perhaps long after you and I are gone, there will be another legislature of Virginia that will apologize for denying the humanity of another group of people, that the Supreme Court dare not even allow us to call 'people'. Not only Virginia, but every state will do that as will Congress. Not today, not tomorrow, not even in a decade...but it will happen for I have faith in the ultimate redemptive goodness of the American soul. And what will be history's judgment on the 'moderates' of today be? Only history itself can answer that quesiton.
We will obey the law, we will work hard, we will pray, and victory will be ours, if not in our lifetimes then someday after that..so said the late Joan Finney, a liberal Democrat governor of my state who was as conscientious, as courageous, and as fiesty as they come. I will take a conscientious Joan Finney over a moderate Rudy Guiliani anyday.