As Compared to Which Utopia?

Democrats uniformly believe America is hateful, evil and needs to be destroyed to save it. The problem is their standard of comparison has never existed.

Democrats are back at it again.

Well, to be honest, I’m not sure they have ever stopped.

America is evil, racist and bigoted, its founding was illegitimate and it really was founded on slavery in 1619, not a desire for freedom in 1776.

There is a reason they go back hundreds of years to find a point from which to extrapolate their premise - it is because if we took an raw and honest look, we would have to discuss the damage done by the progressive, socialist and woke agendas that America has endured for the past century.

And then it would be revealed that the very people complaining about how bad America is, if in fact it is, are the people who played a leading role in making it that way.

I don’t know how to do this without sounding like a racist – but as I keep hearing Democrats claim that America is a horrible, racist place, and according to some, owes reparations, to whom they are not entirely sure, but it is because the very founding of America was a racist act. The basis for their assessment seems to be a belief that America was unique in the world regarding the evil institution of slavery.

Well, it was not. Not even close.

Since slavery is the major hammer the left uses, I know of only one way to measure what America has truly become – and that is to compare (in today’s terms) America to the countries in Africa from whence came slaves.

This is not a claim that slavery was a positive situation – but it happened and the past cannot be changed – all we can do now is to compare the progress – both social and economic – since slavery ended in America to the same elements of progress in those origin countries.

According to research, most of the slaves in America came from what are now the African countries of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Mali; and west-central Africa, including what is now Angola, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

Let us assume there had been no slave trade and no Africans were brought to the US. Now compare the economic and social conditions of those nine African countries to the conditions of slave descendants in America today.

In the period since slavery was exterminated in America, slavery in these countries continued to exist, frequent coups and war continued, corruption and poverty has reigned and tribal conflicts and genocide have continued. On top of that, China has entered the African continent as an economic colonizer with its “belt and road” initiatives, seducing poor, corrupt nations with modernization projects and financing projects with loans that could never be repaid. When the debtor nation finds itself in default, China just takes ownership of the collateral, often a port, some major infrastructure or natural resource.

Let’s also keep in mind that while we are constantly lectured about how much more enlightened Europe is than Americans, many of these African countries remained colonies of those same “enlightened” Europeans, not gaining independence from their European masters until the 1960’s and 1970’s.

America is generally thought of as the driving force in the Atlantic slave trade – but America accounted for roughly 3.6% of the slaves transported to the New World (about 388,000 people).

I am not trying to excuse or defend the institution of slavery. If I could go back in time and change American history, that would be one of the things I would change – but when I hear people complain that America is bad, my first thought is “Bad as compared to what?”

The question of what Utopian nation they are using as a standard of comparison is relevant in any discussion of how “bad” America is.

“As compared to which country in history?”

It is plainly disingenuous to compare contemporary America to some mythical Utopia or hypothetical standard that has never existed – it is much more legitimate to compare it to the best objective standards that exist in historical reality.

To be objective, we have to ask the painful, uncomfortable and politically incorrect question, “What would be the status of any given contemporary American black citizen if they were still resident in the origin country of their ancestors?”

And since that is a question of evaluation, not one of excuses, we actually need to ask that question of every racial and ethnic group in America today.

Apply that question to the status of America in pre-colonial eras, and you find the indigenous people weren’t blissfully cavorting around like the Eloi of H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine”. There was constant war over territory, raiding and kidnapping, cannibalism and human sacrifice.

If people honestly answer those questions, today’s America comes out pretty darn good.