The 1619 Project “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

Naturally, that reframing has enjoyed quite a bit of pushback, much of which amounts to wrestling over whether the US Constitution, as originally written and ratified, was designed around the goal of protecting the institution of slavery.

“Nikole Hannah-Jones and other 1619 acolytes,” Dr. Brion McClanahan writes at the Tenth Amendment Center, “have been consistently pushing the idea that the Constitution was a ‘pro-slavery’ document.”

McClanahan disagrees — and not just with Hannah-Jones, but also with the namesake of the institution I write for. American abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison referred to “the pro-slavery” Constitution as “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell,” calling for “no Union with slaveholders.”

“The Constitution,” McClanahan claims, “was neither proslavery nor anti-slavery. It was neutral. … slavery was left up to the constituent members of the Union.”

There’s no kind way to put this: McClanahan manages to get it completely wrong even while mentioning the evidence of his error and admitting that that evidence (“the 3/5 clause, the fugitive slave clause, the 20 year lease [sic] on the international slave trade”) “at least seem[s]” to disprove his claim.

It doesn’t “seem” to disprove his claim. It disproves his claim, completely and beyond redemption.

A document which specifically gives additional representation to slave owners based on how many slaves they own is not “neutral” where slavery is concerned. It’s not just pro-slavery, it’s foundational social engineering in favor of giving slavery’s supporters a permanent extra measure of political power.

A document which singles out fugitive slaves as the only “stolen property” specifically required be returned  (from states where that property ISN’T legally property) is not “neutral” where slavery is concerned. It’s exactly the opposite of the “states’ rights” doctrine McClanahan invokes (without naming) on his “neutrality” argument’s behalf. It’s a federal intervention against such “states’ rights.”

The Constitution offered one, and only one, temporary exception to Congress’s power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations.” Want to guess what that one exception was? It wasn’t importation of coffee or linen or foie gras. It was importation of slaves. That’s not “neutral,” that’s pro-slavery.

There are worthwhile arguments to be had over the extent and longevity of institutional racism in American history, and we’re certainly having those arguments in a big way right now.  But this isn’t one of those worthwhile arguments.

Where the Constitution touches on slavery, it was, irrefutably and beyond a shadow of doubt, crafted for the benefit of slave owners and with the goal of perpetuating slavery.

Falsifying our history isn’t a sound way of improving our future.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

In a rare moment of moral clarity, US Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) points out that “America’s daughters shouldn’t be drafted against their will.”

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the usually bellicose Cotton voted against advancing the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act after committee chair Jack Reed (D-RI) added an amendment requiring women between the ages of 18 and 25 to register with the Selective Service System.

It’s good to see Cotton on the right side of an issue, as happens occasionally (very occasionally). And the NDAA, being mostly unrelated to anything resembling actual “national defense,” deserves to go down hard for many, many reasons.

But where’s Cotton’s opposition to requiring MEN to register for the draft?

In the early 1970s, the US armed forces transitioned to an “all-volunteer force” after drafting 2.2 million men into its Vietnam war machine between 1964 and 1973. About 1.5 million Americans were drafted for the Korean War, 10 million for World War 2, and 2.8 million for World War 1. Draft registration ended in 1975, but resumed in 1980.

Fortunately, even during the darkest days of the “nation-building” fiasco in Afghanistan and the naked aggression of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, Congress quailed from reinstating the draft and allowed the military to lower recruitment standards instead (perhaps explaining how a sociopath like Tom Cotton became an infantry officer).

But nearly half a century after the last involuntary induction, the shadow of potential conscription still looms over young Americans.

In fact, many states have moved against the ability to resist draft registration as a form of civil disobedience (as a brave handful of Americans, including prominent libertarian commentator and personal mentor Paul Jacob, went to prison for doing in the early 1980s) by automatically registering males who apply for driver’s licenses or state ID cards. Both of my kids received postcards from Selective Service “thanking” them for registering, even though they never did so (the state of Florida did so “for” them).

Supreme Court rulings to the contrary notwithstanding, conscription is clearly unconstitutional under the 13th Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

And even if it wasn’t unconstitutional, it would still be slavery and slavery would still be wrong.

Instead of registering women for potential slavery, draft registration should be ended, entirely and permanently.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In 1974, US president Gerald Ford declared inflation “public enemy number one” and launched a public relations campaign against it. WIN (“Whip Inflation Now”) buttons were handed out. The administration suggested various ways of “whipping inflation,” such as carpooling and home gardening. It didn’t work. Double-digit inflation outlived the Ford administration by several years.

Nearly five decades after Ford’s failed PR project, big-time inflation is back, along with the same professed ignorance of its cause from politicians and government officials, and their same obfuscation as to what inflation even actually is.

There’s a reason for that professed ignorance: In the United States, at least since 1913, government policy is the cause of inflation, full stop.

The obfuscation  usually takes the form of describing rising prices as “price inflation.” But rising prices aren’t inflation. They’re the effect of inflation.

Inflation, simply put, is an increase in the supply of money versus the goods and services available for purchase. When there’s more money chasing fewer things to buy, prices go up, just like they do at an auction when more bidders with fatter wallets show up hoping to grab themselves one of Jerry Garcia’s guitars.

Yes, it really is that simple.

Inflation doesn’t HAVE to be caused by government, by the way. If we were using gold or silver as money and some mining outfit discovered a vein of one of those metals, dug it up, and quickly doubled the amount in circulation, that would be inflation too.

Such concerns were among the reasons cited for creating the Federal Reserve — a pseudo-private banking cartel — in 1913. Instead of leaving the supply of money to the seemingly random wanderings of markets, Congress handed its authority to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof” over to the Fed, which now creates “money” by, essentially, waving a magic wand.

In theory, the Fed balances the supply of money (as “Federal Reserve Notes”) with production so as to minimize inflation. But in reality, whenever Congress decides to use its power to “borrow money on the credit of the United States,” the Fed waves that magic wand and creates more.

Over the last year or so, a LOT more.

In the last 18 months, the US “M2” money supply (coin currency, physical paper, central bank reserves, demand deposits, travelers’ checks, savings deposits and money market shares) has increased from about $15.4 trillion to nearly $20.4 trillion.

That’s a 24% increase, annualizing to an inflation rate of about 16% — if production of goods and services kept up. But it didn’t. US Gross Domestic Product dropped from more than $21.4 trillion in 2019 to less than $20.1 trillion in 2020.

Inflation is a hidden tax. Instead of hitting you up for a dollar or ten, the government just makes that $100 bill in your wallet worth $99  or $90 in terms of what you can buy with it now as opposed to what you could buy yesterday.

The only way to “whip” politically created inflation is to separate money and state. Which explains why the American political class is scared witless by cryptocurrency.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY