So Michael Medved, semi-famous movie reviewer and radio host, who has of late morphed into a weird "Hollywood vs. America" right-wing concern troll, has published an op-ed at Townhall that says that slavery in America just wasn't as bad as all that. No, seriously.
The entire op-ed is too long to cut and paste here, and a snippet would do it no justice. So for your amusement (or if you read the whole thing, as I did--stay away from sharp objects--revulsion), here are the bullet points upon which Medved makes his case, ironically entitled Six Inconvenient Truths:
1. Slavery was an ancient and universal institution, not a distinctively American innovation.
2. Slavery existed only briefly, and in limited locales, in the history of the republic - involving only a tiny percentage of the ancestors of today's Americans.
3. Though brutal, slavery wasn't genocidal: live slaves were valuable but dead captives brought no profit.
4. It's not true that the U.S. became a wealthy nation through the abuse of slave labor: the most prosperous states in the country were those that first freed their slaves.
5. While America deserves no unique blame for the existence of slavery, the United States merits special credit for its rapid abolition.
6. There is no reason to believe that today's African Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained behind in Africa.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the logic of a 29%er. And they wonder why the GOP doesn't get the African American vote.
