In New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy
won’t say if he’ll pardon lockdown violators, Brent Johnson reported for NJ.com
Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday would not say whether he’d pardon anyone who has
been cited for violating his coronavirus lockdown orders after he himself defied those orders by marching
in a pair of Black Lives Matter protests Sunday.
And as Republicans continue to criticize him over the move, Murphy
denied he set a bad example by participating in the demonstrations during the
ongoing pandemic.
“I don’t think anyone who stands up and joins others with great
passion and speaks out against the stain of racism in this country, which is
now clocking in at 401 years, is setting any kind of bad example,” the
Democratic governor said during his daily coronavirus briefing
in Trenton. “We need leaders, we
need rank-and-file, we need people all over this country ... to stand up
peacefully and demand action.”
In a Juneteenth Day speech reported on by the New Jersey Star-Ledger, Murphy referred to “The
401-year history of slavery and racism in the nation.” In his speech,
Murphy talks a good collectivist line as he pushes his (and the Democratic
Party economic and Environmental) agenda:
[W]e can no longer ignore the 401-year history of slavery and
systemic racism – 401 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived on the
shores of this continent – a history that is writ-large in the inequalities in
wages and wealth, health care, in housing, in education, in economic
opportunity, and on and on down the line, and, including in treatment by law
enforcement.
Note what’s missing; any mention of the
Declaration of Independence, as if the birth of America was an inconsequential
technicality--or never happened.
The emphasized portions refer to the 1619
Project, which claims that the start of the United States of America was not
1776, but 1619, when the first African slaves arrived on the shores of the British colony, Jamestown, Virginia. Slavery, according to the Project, defines the United States of America, despite the fact that the U.S. was Founded157 years later, based on The Enlightenment, which commenced in the late 17th Century, decades after 1619. Protecting
slavery, not equality based on universal inalenable individual rights, the 1619 Project claims, is America’s reason for being and its Original Sin.
Appropriating one of mankind’s most vicious and unjust doctrines,
Christianity’s Original Sin, the 1619 Project declares America perpetually
guilty, meaning everything Americans do is tainted with the crime of slavery,
forever, no matter what. Americans, it logically follows, are perpetually
obligated to pay penance for their sin, usually in the form of abandoning its
individualism, liberty rights, and capitalism in favor of policies of
collectivism and criminal
socialist statism.
Murphy’s comments are clearly lies. The basic
premise of the 401 years is a complete fraud.
“This country”—the nation of the United
States of America—didn’t exist 401 years ago. The Enlightenment ideals that
spawned the creation of America were barely seedlings. The Enlightenment
thinker who had the greatest influence on the Founding Fathers was John Locke,
who wasn’t even born until 1632. The individualist--viz. anti-collectivist.
anti-racist, anti-slavery, anti-socialist, anti-statist--ideals of universal
equality based on reason and free will, individual rights, and equality before
the law didn’t start to congeal until the middle of the 18th Century.
Slavery and racism (actually, color tribalism,
or colorism, since there is only one race, the human race) were ubiquitous
throughout human history. The Virginia slaves were imported to a British
colony, not an American state. Slavery, including the African slave trade,
existed for thousands of years. Slavery didn’t spring up in 1619 on the shores
of Virginia--and neither did America. America was born of the Enlightenment
ideals of reason and individualism, the antipodes of racism and slavery. By the
time America was actually created, anti-slavery sentiment, for the
first time in history, was already gaining
steam. America was born of a radical individualist, abolitionist
philosophy.
Yes, the sin of slavery existed in early
America. But America inherited slavery. It is no accident that the
abolition of slavery began immediately after America declared Independence.
Pennsylvania was first to abolish slavery, in 1780, and by 1804, every state in
the North was free of slavery. The ideals of the Enlightenment embodied in the
Declaration of Independence were taking hold. Even so, the reactionaries
regrouped and counterattacked, defending slavery in what would become the
treasonous Confederacy. The fight to end slavery would not be over for another
61 years, and only after a Civil War to end slavery and save the United
States of America--a nation united by the Declaration’s anti-collectivist.
anti-racist, anti-slavery, anti-socialist, anti-statist ideals. And of course
racism persisted in defiance of the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence is an
Enlightenment document, and could not have been written in 1619. 1619 Virginia
was a British colony, not an American state. Racism is not the same as slavery,
of course. And slavery, including tthe African slave trade, originated in the
old world and were imported here. The ideals that run directly opposed to
racism and slavery are quintisentially American. America is not “stained” by
“the Original Sin” of slavery. Collectivism is among mankind’s darkest evils.
Slavery and racism spring from collectivism, the idea that the Declaration of
Independence consigns to the dustbin of history. The birth of America is
blessed by an Original Virtue--the anti-slavery ideal of individualism and
political equality. The fact that slavery and racism existed/exists within the
borders of the United States beyond 1776 does not taint Americanism. It taints
those who failed to live up to Americanism.
So, what will the folly of the 1619 Project
accomplish? The Declaration of Independence, America’s philosophic blueprint,
is also anti-criminal
socialist and anti-statist. But
if everything about America is tainted by Original Sin, then so is America’s
philosophic blueprint. As Christianity condemns every human to unearned guilt
for sins that were committed before they were born, so America, and Americans,
is burdened with unearned guilt for the sin of slavery that ended 155 years
ago. The government can do whatever it wants to whomever it wants in the name
of atoning for that guilt. It basically obliterates limited government, and
unleashes totalitarian government. Who will oppose it? Americans whose heads
are perpetually bowed in unearned guilt for crimes committed long before they
were born, the way genuine Christians believe we all are today? Everything any
American achieves, great or modest, is suspect because tainted by the Original
Sin of being an American. This dovetails seamlessly with “You didn’t build
that.” Inalienable individual rights? If you espouse the ideals of inalienable
individual rights and equal justice that formed the United States of America,
you and thus those ideals are discredited by Original Sin. Just as Christians
declare every human is guilty simply for being human, an American is guilty of
the vicious crime of slavery, simply for being an American. If all of the good
that defines America is tainted, what wins in a game of this kind? The
anti-Americanism, democratic
criminal socialism.
Genuine Americans don’t need to bow down to the
treasonous, counter-Revolutionary reactionaries of the 1619 Project ilk. We
don’t need to apologize for America. We don’t need to give up our liberty
rights. We need to stand up and say America is defined by individualism and capitalism.
We need to demand that everyone live up to America’s Original Virtue. As the
Gay Pride activist Harvey
Milk famously reminded us:
In the Declaration of Independence it is written “All men
are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable
rights . . . .”
That’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot
erase those
words from the Declaration of Independence.
Are you listening, Governor Murphy? Or are you
genuinely anti-American?
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