The much heralded “slavery apology” voted on Tuesday by the House of Representatives is far worse than a meaningless gesture. This illiterate and mendacious resolution also constitutes an assault on history and a vicious anti-American smear.

The problem with the resolution isn’t its condemnation of the institution of slavery or its denunciation of the brutal discrimination of Jim Crow; obviously, the oppression and exploitation of millions of African captives represented a monstrous and indefensible crime against humanity.

The resolution, however, makes a specific point that America bears unique guilt for the enslavement of Africans and suggests that slavery in the United States proved the worst in history, amounting to an unprecedented degradation of its victims.

The resolution (written, in obvious haste, by the fatuous freshman Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee) includes the following wildly misleading “whereas” clause as its deeply embarrassing third paragraph:

“Whereas slavery in America resembled no other form of involuntary servitude known in history, as Africans were captured and sold at auction like inanimate objects or animals...”

No reputable historian – no, not one – would agree with this outrageous statement.

The House suggests that slavery in America represents some horrible innovation, achieving incomparable levels of degradation? Actually, slavery in the United States strongly resembled all the most common forms of involuntary servitude that have constituted a universal human institution since the beginnings of recorded history. Yale professor David Brion Davis (author of the magisterial and definitive book Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World) suggests that in its very essence, slavery treats its victims like animals. In fact, the practice of enslaving humans began in the mists of pre-history at the same time as the domestication of beasts and pointedly used some of the same cruel techniques to secure unquestioning obedience from man as well as animal.

Davis writes of the hideous abuse of slaves by the Brazilian tribe, the Tupinamba, long before first contact with the Europeans: “It is crucial to realize that such slaves were being treated essentially as animals, a fact symbolized by their ritualistic slaughter and the final cannibal feast. This behavior dramatizes the point that, wholly apart from later economic functions, slaves from the very beginning were perceived as dehumanized humans – humans deprived of precisely those traits and faculties that are prerequisites for human dignity, respect and honor.”

Even among the famously civilized Greeks (more than two-thousand years before the emergence of the United States) Aristotle said the ox was the poor man’s slave and Xenophon “compared the teaching of slaves, unlike that of free workers, with the training of wild animals.”

None of this absolves from guilt the United States (or the British colonies that preceded independence): the institution of slavery wrecked the lives of millions. But the out-of context consideration of that guilt amounts to an irresponsible distortion of its essential nature and its extent. Of the estimated eleven to thirteen million human beings kidnapped from Africa and brought to the New World in the 400 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, less than 5% of them went to the British colonies in mainland North America. In other words, some nineteen out of twenty slaves were shipped to the West Indies and Latin America, not to the future United States.

The idea that the House of Representatives now officially endorses the claim that “slavery in America resembled no other form of involuntary servitude in history” is an embarrassment—one more shameful demonstration that preening politicians are willing to assault history, the truth, and even their own country in their mad, headlong pre-adjournment rush to serve the stern gods of brain-dead, America-hating political correctness.   

Every school day, the federal government feeds lunch to more than 30 million children --- nearly 60% of all school kids in the United States. In Atlanta, 79% of public school children get federally funded lunch. In New York City, the figure is 72%. And in the state of Texas, more than 70% of school children at every level eat midday meals entirely at taxpayer expense.  

How did distant bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. take on responsibility for feeding at least one meal a day to the majority of school age children in the country? 

In the nineteenth century, private (generally religious) charities like the Children’s Aid Society operated extensive programs to bring food to malnourished kids in schools. During the Depression, FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) began operating federally funded school lunch programs in 35,000 schools, using surplus food purchased from struggling farmers. In 1946, President Truman signed the National School Lunch Act, which Lyndon Johnson greatly expanded as part of his “War on Poverty.” LBJ added a free breakfast program (which now serves 7 million kids daily) and a summer meal program (now reaching 2 million more) to feed children even when school is out of session. 

Despite the massive investment of public money over the course of sixty years, poor children continue to suffer from inadequate nutrition and, increasingly, a devastating and crippling epidemic of obesity. The “free” lunches provided by the federal government actually cost $8.7 billion (in 2007), compelling taxpayers to provide daily meals for a majority of their neighbors’ kids.

In 1964, as a cornerstone of his ambitious “War on Poverty”, President Lyndon Johnson launched “The Job Corps” to train disadvantaged young people for productive employment. Based on FDR’s fondly-remembered Civilian Conservation Corps, the Job Corps offers room and board to applicants between ages 16 and 24 at one of its 122 residential centers across the country, as well as providing payments that increase the longer participants choose to remain. In 44 years, more than two million Americans have taken part in the Job Corps so naturally, the Labor Department authorized several studies to prove the effectiveness. Unfortunately, the 2001 “outcome study” showed only trivial benefits to Job Corps graduates compared to non-participants: a weekly income difference of $25.20 four years after finishing the program. A 2003 report produced even more discouraging conclusions – so much so that the Labor Department waited until 2006 to make its findings public. Using official government data, the 2003 analysis showed “statistically insignificant” result for most Job Corps participants, but an unexpectedly negative impact for one key group: female participants without children who earned less than non-participants. Nevertheless, Congress continues to authorize and re-authorize this dubious undertaking, with many Democrats calling for its expansion. Currently, 62,000 young Americans take part in the Job Corps at a cost to the taxpayer of $21,500 for each enrollee in the eight month program. 

Appalled by frightening rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases, in 1993 a Nashville-based ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention launched an ambitious new program called “True Love Waits.” Participating youngsters took a public pledge, and signed a card, making “a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.” Within a year, more than a hundred thousand young people took the pledge, often in ecstatic and joyful public gatherings. A 2008 study by the RAND Corporation published in the Journal of Adolescent Health showed that those adolescents who joined the TLW program, or committed themselves to similar virginity pledges, “were less likely to be sexually active over the three-year study period than other youth who were similar to them, but who did not make a virginity pledge.” While other researchers questioned the efficacy of such public commitments, the author of the RAND study, psychologist Steven Martino, said that his research showed the impact of pledges: “If it’s your intention as a teen to not have sex, it’s perhaps a good idea to make a pledge because you’re more likely to delay sex if you do so and not more likely to engage in other sexual behaviors as a substitute.”  The report in the Journal of Adolescent Health suggested a surprisingly significant percentage of adolescents had taken virginity pledges: among all Americans between the ages of 12 and 17, an impressive 23% of females and 16% of males made public commitments to avoid sex before marriage.  

"Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship."

Dr. John Hagelin, a physicist trained at Dartmouth and Harvard, ran for president three times as the nominee of the Natural Law Party. He reached his political zenith in 1996, appearing on the ballot in 44 states and persuading 113,668 of his fellow citizens to vote for him. The Natural Law Party promoted Transcendtal Meditation as solution to all the world’s problems and, in fact, Dr. Hagelin has been a prominent member of the faculty at Mahirishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. One of his areas of scientific specialization involves “the Maharishi Effect” that uses “advanced meditation techniques” to solve social problems. Dr. Hagelin once imported 4,000 meditators to Washington, D.C. and then cited crime records to show the beneficial result. Along with Dr. Hagelin’s presidential runs, the NLP offered some 400 local candidates between 1992 and 2002. Though most of the country never embraced the meditation platform, Hagelin nearly carried his home county (Jefferson) in Iowa—drawing 23.94% of the vote against Clinton, Bush and Perot. In  2004, the Natural Law Party endorsed the Democratic presidential juggernaut of leftist firebrand Dennis Kucinich. Dr, Hagelin himself returned to teaching, and to an esteemed position as Minister of Science and Technology of the Global Country of World Peace, a project authorized by the Maharishi before his death in 2008 “for preventive, invincible administration for the whole world.”

The new head of the national teacher’s union describes a dream for education that sounds more like a socialist nightmare.  

Randi Weingarten, incoming president of the American Federation of Teachers, wants schools to become community centers for medical care and social services as well as classes. She called for a “federal law” promoting “schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance”, plus “medical dental and counseling clinics.”  

In other words, she sees schools as big city versions of all-encompassing collective farms, with students their prize crop. Maybe such schools should also offer barracks for the kids, eliminating any need at all for parents or home. Ms. Weingarten forgot to mention that her vision involved a huge expansion of government and a crushing burden for taxpayers.

Economists and statisticians may argue over whether the American middle class is, in fact, shrinking, but if it is, there’s little doubt as to why: more middle income people become more comfortable and prosperous, not impoverished. In fact, the official poverty rate has  declined dramatically since the 1950’s (remembered as a the “golden age” of Middle America) with the percentage dwelling in poverty declining from 22.4% to well below 13% in recent years.

Meanwhile, two other news items provided important perspective on the status and future of middle income Americans---

-In 2007, a total of 9.57 million Americans took cruise vacations. In a 2008 national survey for the Cruise Lines International Association, 34 million of our fellow citizens say they plan a cruise vacation within the next three years.

-With the foreclosure crisis sweeping the country, numerous news reports noted second homes were disproportionately hard hit—that’s the bad news. But the good news from the Federal Reserve is that a stunning 12.5% of all households still own a second home. Among families between ages 55-75, that figure rises to 20%.

These numbers provide re-enforcement for the idea that when Americans no longer qualify as middle class, they usually leave that designation for the world of vacation homes and luxury cruises, not hunger and homelessness.

Twenty-nine years ago, Samir Kutar broke into an apartment in Naharya to attack a young Israeli family. After murdering the father, he killed the four year old by crushing her skull against a rock. As the mother hid from the terrorist, she stifled the screams of her two-year-old, accidentally suffocating the child.  

Now the killer has been released from his life-sentence in return for the bodies of two kidnapped, murdered Israeli soldiers—and the unrepentant killer is welcomed as a triumphant hero by Hezbollah.  

The episode shows the value of the death penalty, especially in cases of terrorism: an executed killer can’t be freed and then honored for his ghastly crimes. Second, the incident exposes the true nature of Islamic extremism, which glorifies a vicious monster whose only accomplishment in life brought death to three innocents in their own home. 

In terms of strategic importance, Iraq is vastly more significant than Afghanistan – both for its keystone location in the heart of the Middle East and its enormous oil reserves. Why, then, do liberals say Iraq’s fate isn’t our concern, while simultaneously insisting we can’t afford to lose in Afghanistan ?

Yes, the terrorists who attacked us trained at Afghan bases – which is why we struck the Taliban before going after Saddam, destroying those vast al Qaeda facilities long ago. A total withdrawal from Iraq could enable terrorists to reconstitute their bases in that far more strategic location. John McCain is right that it’s no either/or proposition – success in Afghanistan requires securing, not abandoning Iraq , and we can’t afford to lose either country. Success breeds success and failure breeds failure, so the two struggles are inevitably interconnected.

Senator Barack Obama is making a point of invoking the memory of John Kennedy in his campaign. Like JFK, he’s breaking precedent by making his acceptance speech at a big sports stadium, not at the convention hall. He’s also planning a dramatic speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin – site of one of Kennedy’s greatest oratorical triumphs. Obama could shatter barriers as the first African-American president—just as Kennedy broke tradition as the first Catholic president. Both men also wrote acclaimed bestsellers, and won admiration for their cool elegance and their fashionable wives. Obama’s handlers want the public to believe that with his Kennedyesque charisma, he’ll win in a landslide—but they should reconsider history. For all his gifts as a candidate, Jack Kennedy barely squeaked through to victory in 1960 against the charismatically challenged Richard Nixon: his 49.7% to 49.5% popular vote margin made the election one of the closest in history. If Nixon hadn’t suffered a knee injury requiring hospital treatment, and lost ten crucial days of campaigning in September, he might easily have won. For Barack Obama and his supporters, the lesson of 1960 ought to be clear: no matter how effectively the candidate channels JFK, that's no assurance of victory – especially against an opponent vastly more appealing than the dour Dick Nixon.

On Tuesday, at the Washington meeting of LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens), Barack Obama invoked his own life story (as he always does) as an inspiring example of patriotism and commitment, citing specifically "my twenty years of public service."

Why doesn't anyone in the mainstream media jump on this claim as an outrageous example of resume padding?

Twenty years ago – July, 1988—he was traveling the world in an extended vacation to Europe and Kenya, before packing up to move to Cambridge to attend Harvard Law School. Does Senator Obama consider his three years at Harvard (where he did well academically and seems to have enjoyed an active social life) part of his career of "public service"? Were his undergraduate years at Occidental College and Columbia also part of that service? I know that "progressives" tend to exaggerate the value of academic experience, but to raise your years in lecture halls and seminars to a kind of "service" to anyone (except yourself) amounts to the most ridiculous sort of solipsistic inflation.

What about the several years Obama concentrated on writing his first book "Dreams from My Father" (published in 1995) – do those years also comprise his "record of public service"? Barack even spent several months in Bali so he could complete his manuscript without distractions. I know that every author considers his work a special gift to the world (I'm just finishing my eleventh book, for publication this November, so I understand) but if literary endeavors amount to public service, then does that include even conservative books – or diet books, children's literature, and trashy novels?

Or maybe the Illinois Senator believes that in his case, summer jobs at prestigious law firms, or three years ('93 to '96) as an associate at a twelve-attorney firm in Chicago (Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland) amounts to public service.

One could argue that teaching troubled kids – as an inner city high school teacher, for instance, or working in special ed – constitutes an important sort of public service. But would you say the same about a well-paid part-time job as a lecturer at one of the nation's elite law schools (University of Chicago), speaking to students already guaranteed successful careers? Obama continued as a lecturer at the U of C Law School during the six years he served in the state senate in Illinois – so maybe he's counting those years as double.

Giving Senator Obama the benefit of the doubt, how did he ever come up with the figure of "twenty years of public service"? For the sake of argument, let's accept the dubious notion that his three years (June '85 to May '88) as a "community organizer" (for the "Developing Communities Project") count as public service. That's three years there, six years in the state senate in Illinois, and three-and-a-half-years so far in the U.S. Senate.

Unless you apply some sort of radical "new math," that amounts to 12-and-a-half years of "service."

Senator Obama has made the need for "universal service" an important plan in his campaign platform--demanding, for instance, that high school kids, and even middle school students, log hours a week of service as a requirement for graduation, or else their school districts would be cut off from all federal aid.

Does this mean that other young people will get service credit for writing books, working at law firms, teaching law school, or traveling in Europe – or do those sorts of "service" only count for Obama himself?

Or do his claims about "twenty years" merely amount to another example of old-fashioned fudging and braggadocio, typical of a preening politician with more aptitude for posing than policy?

Any other public figure would be questioned on this distortion of his own background. For those who say we can't question the Hope Pope in the same way that we'd challenge other politicos, I offer only three words: "Yes we can."

Bret Stephens made an excellent point in today’s Wall Street Journal, comparing Senator Obama’s deliberate equivocations on Iraq with Richard Nixon’s notorious “secret plan to end the war” when he won the presidency in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam era. In both cases, the candidates for the party out of power wanted to exploit the unpopular nature of an ongoing conflict without committing themselves to any specific policy for terminating or continuing the war. Stephens points out that the chair of Obama’s “Working Group” on Iraq has even written a paper anticipating a semi-permanent contingent of  60,000 to 80,000 American soldiers as an “overwatch force” after Obama has “withdrawn” all combat troops, as he’s repeatedly promised. The big question, of course, is how you define combat troops.

But beyond the similarity to Nixon in his slippery handling of the issue of the war, there’s another haunting resemblance with the late leader that Democrats loved to deride as “Tricky Dick.”

Nixon became famous – notorious, really --- for beginning his most earnest, sweaty-jowled statements with the laughable phrase, “Let me make one thing perfectly clear.” This silly verbal tic alerted listeners that what followed wasn’t clear – or honest – at all. It served as a warning to expect obfuscation, not clarity.

So, too, Obama – in adopting, almost verbatim, one of the late President’s oddest quirks of communication.

On July 3^rd, after telling reporters he’d be open to “refining” his Iraq position based on conversation with generals, he called his second press conference of the day (in Fargo, North Dakota) to try to correct the impression of waffling. “We're going to try this again,” he said. “Apparently I wasn't clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq."

Then came the wonderful Nixonism, delivered in the same solemn, rumbling baritone favored on such occasions by the late President:

"Let me be as clear as I can be,” growled the candidate, and then proceeded to provide further confusion and dodging. Not even his most ardent admirers could take much encouragement from this dismal performance – complete with at least two more declarations about making his position “clear” and “completely clear.”

Well, Barack has made one thing perfectly clear: he’s not yet ready to disclose his “secret plan to end the war.”.  

“WHAT HE DID TO GET THAT MONEY”

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) earned universal praise with his prodigious philanthropy – building more than 3,000 public libraries in 47 states (and nations around the world), founding Carnegie-Mellon University and the Carnegie Institute of Technology (C.I.T.), establishing Carnegie Hall in New York, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and much more. Anti-business bias, however, leads many observers to speculate that he turned to charity in order to assuage his guilt over his success as a Captain of Industry. For a 1999 PBS “American Experience” program about the impoverished Scottish immigrant who became “The Richest Man in the World,” his biographer, Joseph Frazier Wall suggested: “Maybe with the giving away of his money, he would justify what he had done to get that money.”

And what had he done, exactly?

When Carnegie retired at age 66 (and sold his business to J.P. Morgan and associates to create the vast new company “U.S. Steel”) he employed 31,162 full-time workers at three major mills. His organizational genius helped create the steel business that played a crucial role in American industrialization and prosperity. However laudable his charitable endeavors (he managed to give away nearly all his money before he died at 83), the creation of jobs and wealth in his business career benefited his countrymen even more.  

Striking Constrast in These Brief Bulletins from LBN News Alerts---

First, a PROFILE IN JELLO
 

LBN-PRESIDENTIAL BACK ROOM:   ***Senator Barack Obama said he might "refine" his Iraq policies after meeting with military commanders there later this summer. But hours later he held a second news conference to emphasize his commitment to the withdrawing of all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.  

And then, a PROFILE IN COURAGE

CONDOLEEZZA RICE SAYS SHE'S 'PROUD' OF DECISION TO INVADE IRAQ": Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she's "proud" of the U.S. decision to wage the Iraq war and insisted that the world is not more dangerous than it was when George W. Bush took office. "We're now beginning to see that perhaps it's not so popular to be a suicide bomber. We're beginning to see that perhaps people are questioning whether Osama Bin Laden ought to really be the face of Islam," Rice, 53, said in an interview to be broadcast this weekend on Bloomberg Television's "Conversations with Judy Woodruff.

Let’s leave aside for a moment General Weasley Clark’s increasingly embarrassing attempts to defend his “Face the Nation” claim that “his hero” John McCain is actually unqualified for the presidency. 

When asked by a half-dozen interviewers to specify one area in which his candidate, Barack Obama, is actually MORE qualified than McCain, the Weasley One always returns to the same word – “judgment.” Obama’s qualified, in other words, because he displayed better judgment than McCain on the issue of the Iraq War. 

But there’s an obvious follow-up to this argument that General Clark hasn’t yet faced.. 

He suggests that “judgment” is more important than military experience, or political background or anything else, and that Barack deserves support because he opposed the war that McCain favored.

Okay, Weasel Man, then the unavoidable question is ---

Why did you support HILLARY CLINTON for the Democratic nomination?

If judgment is the key issue, and the main measure of judgment involves the decision on going to war in Iraq, then how could you support Hillary over Barack?

By the standard you use today – supporting the war showed horrible judgment, and opposing it showed wisdom and courage --- wasn’t Hillary every bit as “wrong” as McCain in her support of the President’s decision to go to war?

But you supported her. Why? Her superior military experience? Her unalloyed heroism in dodging that Bosnian sniper fire?

And one more question, Weasley, while we’re at it---

You say you back Barack over McCain because of his superior qualifications as evidenced by his judgment on the war.

But on what basis did you back Hillary over McCain—given that they showed the same judgment on the war?

The real answer is obvious: the Weasel Man wants to get a place on the ticket as a candidate for Vice President and Hillary looked like his best bet. He shifted his allegiance to Obama in time to make that candidate’s short list.

He might even have preserved his chances had he simply and immediately acknowledged that he “misspoke” on Face the Nation in belittling McCain’s military service (23 years in uniform, including eight years after he returned from ‘Nam).

Yup, the Weasley One might have saved his shot for the Vice Presidency by a timely, open-hearted apology and correction. But that kind of sincere, direct acknowledgement of an obvious mistake (see “Jindal, Bobby”) requires a bit of class, smarts and grace, qualities which General Clark in no way possesses.

Even by the low standards of slippery and silly Democrats, the ol’ Weasler is an outright embarrassment.