slavery

Getting It Right At 250

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, Uncategorized , , , ,

We always get to see numerous replays of the New Year’s Eve Times Square Ball drop, but this year was different. Instead of the Ball staying grounded, it went right back up, proclaiming the U.S.’s impending 250th birthday, to drop again on July 3. This coming event can’t help but shine a bright light on one of history’s most extraordinary groups-our founding fathers.

Sadly, the people with the loudest megaphones on both the right and the left have chosen to present a distorted view of these remarkable people. The New York Times’ much-debunked 1619 Project portrayed the Founding Fathers as pro-slavery and the Revolution fought to preserve it. While historians and economists pointed out the project’s numerous errors, it lives on in progressive circles along with the nonsensical idea “Slavery is America’s original sin.”

The only thing original about slavery in colonial America was the Quakers, along with their co-religionists in England, calling for the abolition of the eons-old practice. Before Quakers, no religion, not the Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or any other religion considered slavery a sin. From the Quakers’ shared spaces with other congregationalist Protestants, the idea that slavery is an abomination spread. Slavery was hardly original here, but the abolitionist cause was.

In a world of hereditary caste systems, with people as chattels at the bottom, whether we called them slaves, serfs, coolies, or untouchables, their lives were controlled by those above them. Challenging this system was genuinely original.

It is telling that for all his achievements, Ben Franklin could never sit in the House of Lords. No wonder self-made Americans weren’t keen on the British class system.

It is, therefore, discouraging to see what many consider the beginning of the impending birthday celebration: Ken Burns’ six-part PBS series “The American Revolution” repeats the popular messaging in progressive circles that the founding fathers were pro-slavery.

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Challenging Bad Info

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, Uncategorized , , , ,

When you think you can move on from a personal crusade against faulty workplaces, such as the media, academia, and the sciences, an article appears in a prominent publication that is misleading at best or presents poor work in support of a particular point of view—Richard Fryer’s “The Economics of Slavery, an op-ed in the Wall Sreet Journal June 18th, in anticipation of the Juneteenth Holiday the next day. I join the masses of humanity in celebrating the end of chattel servitude anywhere in the world. My upset isn’t with the holiday but rather with someone using it as an opportunity to mislead.

My criticism is similar to what I wrote when I first read “The 1619 Project.” Both are tracts that consist of desired conclusions based on questionable data and straw men.

In Roland Fryer’s case, he claims to refute the idea that slavery was unprofitable. He mentions the “Woodson Center’s “1776 Unites.” However, the center notes Adam Smith’s idea that slavery was inefficient in comparison to his free trade principles. The fact that slavery exists nowhere capitalism is dominant is proof that Smith is correct. However, that has nothing to do with the rewards that owners of human chattels have received through the ages. Smith never said that British Caribbean island sugar plantation owners didn’t benefit. Home weaving was “profitable” for centuries, but hardly exists today because it’s uncompetitive in today’s mass market. Apples and oranges.

Has any of the millions of people who read or saw the movie “Gone With The Wind” concluded that Tara was unprofitable? Could an institution dating back to the Sumerians and practiced across the world in some form for thousands of years last if it was “unprofitable.?’

The author then supports his attack on this straw man with evidence he presents as well-founded scholarly work by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman; however, their work is highly contentious regarding both facts and methods. What is the shock in finding that plantations keep production data? Similarly, Roman and Greek slave-owning large landowners did the same. Hammurapi’s Babylon had cuneiform tally clay tablets. What would be enlightening would be comparisons of methods.

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A Crack Appears

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, Uncategorized , , , ,

Within hours of my last post, Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned under fire. I hoped for this first sign of national change, and it happened. Unfortunately, it’s a small step unless her successor brings real change.

Larry Summers, an ex-president of the school, is an obvious candidate. Forced out for noticing differences between men and women by a woke board, his reinstatement signals that the University is moving away from the soup it’s now in. However, he is unlikely to accept an offer from a Harvard Corporation (the Governing Board), composed of the same type of politically correct members that previously kicked him out.

So long as Penny Pritzker leads the corporation as the senior fellow, any reform candidate will unlikely accept the post. The Hyatt Hotel Heiress was behind Gay’s selection. She kept her in place for over a month in the face of the same horrible congressional testimony that caused the immediate ouster of the Brown president. The sister of progressive Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker is loyal to the policies of landing the University in its present fix.

These policies, such as “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (D.E.I.)” and “Critical Race Theory (C.R.T.),” are seen by many as responsible for the rise of anti-Semitism and other ills on the campus. Unless changed, the board can’t attract the needed change agent.  

The job is significant and essential because the rot in academia extends to the humanities and even to the hard sciences. Harvard does considerable research and provides much material to “relevant journals.” We now find out that things other than pure science affect the research in these digests.

Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krause recently looked at how bad the corrosion has become in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. Like the Harvard motto, Veritas (truth), science’s goal is facts we can rely on without extraneous stuff getting in the way. Presently, in many academic fields, this is different. With things such as “Observing whiteness in introductory Physics” published in significant journals, one can only fear for our future progress.

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