-By Warner Todd Huston
I thought liberals were always congratulating themselves on how they are so mentally superior that they see “nuances” everywhere? Now a halfwit liberal is making the lie to that by equating U.S. slavery to ISIS rape culture thereby proving he is an utter simpleton.
A pinheaded Harvard professor is now out there insisting that we shouldn’t get too upset over the fact that ISIS terrorists are using rape and sexual slavery as a weapon of war because, gosh darn it, the U.S.A. had slavery 150 years ago, too. You heard that right, that is exactly what Bloomberg columnist and Harvard professor Noah Feldman is saying. He is saying that U.S. slavery is exactly the same as ISIS using rape as a tool.
Feldman starts his facile piece with a lie on his lips right at the outset.
It’s been 150 years since U.S. law allowed masters to rape enslaved girls and women. Almost all modern Muslim societies banned slavery in the last century. So why is Islamic State turning back the clock, actively embracing and promoting enslavement of Yazidi women, thereby enabling them to be raped under one interpretation of classical Islamic law?
The first half of that is essentially a lie. U.S. law did not excuse rape of slave women in direct terms in the same way that ISIS is using rape as a tool of war and religious supremacy.
Yes, it was true that negro slave women had no standing in American law during that time period, sure, but it is not true that rape was actually ensconced in that law in certain terms. On the other hand, ISIS is making rape and sexual slavery a directly espoused practice that they are trying to back up via sharia law and interpretations of the Koran. So, the case of early 1800s American law turning a blind eye to the ravaging of slave women and ISIS directly entering sexual slavery into its political and legal codes are not at all the same thing.
There is that “nuance” of which the left claims to have sole ownership. If this nitwit “professor” can’t see the truth I just stated, the “nuance” between then and now, then he truly is a simpleton.
On top of all that, our antebellum society looked down upon slave owners raping their female slaves. Slave masters tried very hard to hide from polite society the fact that they had sexual relations with slaves.
So, it is utterly illegitimate for this professor to equate the complicated and usually undercover sexual history of U.S. slavery to the open boasting of rape by ISIS, and only a simpleton would say they are equally the same. Sex with slaves was thought dirty and shameful in antebellum America. Not so for ISIS today.
Feldman also seriously misleads when he says, “Almost all modern Muslim societies banned slavery in the last century.” In fact, Saudi Arabia and many other “modern Muslim societies” didn’t officially ban slavery until the 1960s, fully 100 years after out civil war ended slavery here. The way Feldman states this it is as if those so-called “modern Muslim societies” had banned slavery a long time ago. But in fact it was quite recent.
Feldman also trots out the lie that Thomas Jefferson had sexual relations with one of his slaves. There is absolutely no reliable proof that Thomas Jefferson had sex with Sally Hemings. None.
Naturally, like all good leftists, this pinhead says that the problems of slavery in the U.S.A. have never gone away and that slavery is still here today despite that it was eliminated over 150 years ago, despite that we have explicitly had equal civil rights for the last 50 years.
Then he says THIS lie:
And we would do well not to forget that American slavery, particularly in its last half-century before abolition, was one of the most brutal slave systems in recorded human history. In comparison, the history of Islamic slavery is relatively mild.
American slavery was never ever one of “the most brutal slave systems in recorded human history.” Slavery is certainly always wrong, but compared to other systems throughout history, the U.S. system was one of the more mild systems in history, not the “most brutal.” It is just factually incorrect to say the American system was worse than all others. As bad as it was, it just plan wasn’t as bad as that of other eras, other nations, other peoples.
And just as he essentially lied about and softened the late abolition of slavery by those “modern Muslim societies” he is so impressed with, he then swings the opposite way for the U.S.A. saying, “What we in the U.S. recently sanctioned, we now find repulsive.”
So, he doesn’t find it necessary to scold those “modern Muslim societies” for abolishing slavery a mere 50 years ago, but he DOES find it hypocritical of the U.S.A. to stand against slavery because of its “recent” acceptance of slavery… as “recent” as 150 years ago!
This shows that his hatred for the our country trumps his hatred of slavery and terrorism both.
Next, this idiot reveals that he knows nothing about the U.S. Constitution.
“The U.S. Constitution acknowledged and sanctioned slavery created by state laws,” he says. Actually, no. The U.S. Constitution did not “sanction” slavery.
In fact, the framers were pretty careful to neither outlaw nor sanction slavery. The reason was that all involved in creating the Constitution–even the southerners–imagined that slavery would be gotten rid of in a short time (they were wrong about that, sadly) and they didn’t want to permanently enshrine slavery in the document. They even put an incentive in the document to get rid of slavery by creating the three fifths clause which penalized the south by not allowing slave owners to count their slaves as a “whole” person in order to assign representation in Congress.
So, while the Constitution was often misused to allow slavery (The Dred Scott decision being a perfect example) it never gave anything like a full throated sanction of slavery.
Once again Feldman shows he lacks the left’s supposed supremacy at “nuance.”
Next he belches out another lie about the Constitution:
An unchanging Constitution would include and enshrine the racism and sexism of the founding generation.
We already addressed his lie about “racism,” but the “sexism” he notes is an obvious allusion to the fact that women didn’t have the right to vote during the founder’s time. But, by tying “sexism” to the Constitution, he lies again because the Constitution never mentions any sexism. Not once. Not at all.
And finally he lies about and speaks for Muslims who he insists have accepted modernity.
Islamic State is enslaving women to trumpet to the world that it refuses to accept the idea of contemporary progress, an idea that has, in fact, been accepted by the vast majority of Muslims.
This is a nice little white lie that liberals tell each other in order to pretend that ISIS and its ilk aren’t made up of “real” Muslims.
The truth is that the majority of Muslims have in no way “accepted” modernity. Poll after poll finds that Muslims the world over don’t want women to have rights, that they approve of harsh treatment for gays, that they agree with eliminating the free speech of “infidels,” they want laws to prevent “blasphemy,” and that they generally like the actions and goals of the most radical terrorists even if they are squeamish about all the killing, raping, and mass murder.
This entire steaming piece of garbage by this “professor” is nothing but an excuse for a leftist to claim that the U.S.A. is “just as bad” as ISIS. And that is an outright lie.
Sadly, this creep is a teacher of students and is indoctrinating American young people with his peculiar brand of self-hate.
Finally, let me say this. If after reading this whole thing your little pea brain decides that I am somehow condoning slavery, then you are a moron not worth my time to address and you are wasting valuable oxygen the rest of us could be using.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Wizbang.com, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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