RiverDog wrote:I disagree. Yes, slavery was utterly disgusting, but it doesn't trump the Holocaust. IMO the systematic execution of millions of men, women, and children in a process that often included ghoulish experiments on live humans was a way worse crime against humanity than slavery. It's not even close. If I am given a choice of life under the bondage of slavery or being tortured to death, I'll take slavery.
It's not a way worse crime. I highly suggest you read up on American slavery. You will see what was done was the following:
1. The reduction of the African man to the state of an animal to be bought and sold at will in perpetuity including killing him if you felt it was necessary much like killing a hobbled horse or sick dog.
2. The breeding of the African man like livestock to the point where he did not know his own children. Often selling the children taken from their mothers on the slave market.
3. The breaking of the spirit of another human being to reduce them to an animal state where they believe they are permanently inferior including their children who were taught at a young age to obey their masters. This included a combination of psychological and physical abuse to reduce humans to this state.
4. The indoctrination of an entire society of people on a racial hierarchy that supported the reduction of the African man to a slave state much as the Nazis indoctrinated much of the German population to believe the Jew inferior and an enemy.
So let's just say I feel you should do some reading on American slavery and read what it took to reduce an entire group of men and women to an animal slave state where they were considered chattel across an entire society. What kind of physical and mental torture it took on them. How many died during the Trans-Atlantic crossing since they were treated like animals tossed into a cargo ship with those surviving being sold and those getting too sick tossed overboard or allowed to die below until their bodies were tossed overboard or burnt.
Riverdog, this is what I have been trying to illustrate to you in these discussion. And some dayI hope you read up on American slavery from deeper sources like slave accounts and books written by people on how to "Train Your Slave" and the like. American slavery was a systematic effort across many European societies and contnued in America to reduce a group of human beings to a animal slave state in perpetuity. Not like the slavery you read of in the Bible or common tribal slavery or indentured servitude, but a real systemized effort to turn humans into livestock.
That crime is easily on par with the Nazi movement. American slavery took a group of people put their lives completely in the hands of people that viewed them as nothing more than animals who lived and died on their whim and were only as valuable as their economic value made them. They couldn't have families of their own. They often couldn't know their children. They couldn't stop their children from being sold. They couldn't protect their families. They couldn't be men and women. It was the systematic destruction of the human spirit.
I learned to despise American slavery because I read up on it. The version you see in movies, in the general history books, and documentaries does not do justice to how terrible and evil American slavery was. So let's just say we very much disagree. Seeing your children bought and sold before your eyes while you can do nothing is every bit as bad as seeing them killed.
It's why I have I been trying to explain to you that the African man will have a difficult time ever respecting The Founders of this nation. They perpetuated an evil ever bit as bad as Nazi Germany for far longer than Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany lasted 20 years? American slavery lasted 74 years as America and 400 year as a European institution not including segregation and general racism. It was absolutely terrible and once of the worst recorded human crimes in history.
That is why I am so proud of Abraham Lincoln and why I consider him such a truly great man. Most politicians can only manage a few things at a time. Most nations that engage in a Civil War are completely ripped apart, often for decades after the war. Yet somehow Abraham Lincoln successfully held a nation together after a Civil War while abolishing slavery during the same 5 year period. Lincoln was an amazing man. I am thankful he was an American.
I'll see if I can find you some good short articles on what I'm talking about. American slavery was terrible including The Trans-Atlantic trips to bring slaves here that killed so many.