<p>“Lincoln was a political opportunist. He pandered to the pro-slavery moderates while they controlled the republican party, and then he pandered to the radical abolitionist wing of the republican party once they controlled the party.”</p>
<p>(Two Lincoln quotations given here)</p>
<p>Well, I can see it would be difficult to deal with you re: so complex a man as Lincoln. We ought not take his comments and post them here without explaining precisely why Lincoln said what he did. You make it sound as if Lincoln was making fun of blacks or displaying hatred toward us when in fact Lincoln was trying to defend his effort to end slavery against people who were claiming he was in favor of miscegenation and black equality, things that were abominations even to many abolitionists. This was the climate of the time and it was assumed of nearly everyone in power at that time.</p>
<p>His comment re: saving the union was given when he was accused of holding slavery above all else. The idea that he would be thusly accused shows us that his focus was on slavery more than those around him. The point he made here was that with the union under threat, his main goal was to save it by use of slavery or by ending slavery. I do not claim Lincoln was an abolitionist. He was a racist much like all whites of the time. But he was much better than almost all.</p>
<p>After accepting his racism and looking at him in context of his surroundings what do we see? We still see Abe Lincoln standing far above everyone else because, despite his views on interracial marriage, he still wished to see blacks free, and he wished it badly enough that he would not relent on this point. He wished it enough to lead the entire country in that direction, despite racism that was everywhere present, including in himself. He wished it enough to actually convince hundreds of thousands to agree with him, despite his racism. He wished it enough to actually help develop law that freed slaves, and later to give them citizenship, this, despite his racism. THAT is what makes him heroic. He did what no one else would. He pursued the right, despite his personal views and despite racism that was everywhere.</p>
<p>What does it say about Lincoln that he put a tyrant like John Pope in charge of handling the Sioux in the first place? To me, his association with someone that cold hearted is a lot worse than Ron Paul’s association with a few idiot writers. He didn’t whittle the list down to 39 out of the kindness of his heart, he did it so Europe wouldn’t aid the Confederacy. If you think Lincoln could give a rat’s ass about the lives and the property of Americans -even innocent young American children- then perhaps you’re unfamiliar with Sherman’s march.</p>
<p>The Indians that weren’t executed were forced to leave or face imprisonment/death. That’s not acceptable in my eyes.</p>
<p>And I wasn’t just criticizing Lincoln for enforcing the Fugitive Slave law, I was criticizing him for ACTUALLY VOTING FOR IT TO BE A LAW. Let that sink in for a moment. He was in favor of the fugitive slave law.</p>
<p>”What gets me is that people have their beliefs wrapped up so tightly with these sacred cows. So, WHAT IF you were right about Lincoln? WHAT IF?”</p>
<p>If Lincoln were what Vyse claims, I would be one of Lincoln’s loudest critics. But Vyse destroys history to promote a neo-confederate fantasy. So, I must reject his view. There is no need to ask “What if?” in this case because the facts are clear enough to reveal Vyse’s neo-confederatism as an abomination.</p>
<p>The problem with these issues is that one must know how to read and comprehend what one reads in order to understand them. It is easy to post a quote, but a lot harder to post a quote with the understanding of why it exists. Vyse betrays a severe lack of understanding of the historical backdrop against which Lincoln operated. He claims Lincoln was an opportunist and then gives quotes to demonstrate it while describing false reasons for quotes. But anyone who has even a few neurons upstairs can see the flaw even by looking at the quotes themselves.</p>
<p>Consider this quote</p>
<p>“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”</p>
<p>Vyse claims Lincoln was only being opportunistic, pandering “to the radical abolitionist wing of the republican party”. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and one could see it should one even take a look at the quote.</p>
<p>Lincoln is not claiming a desire to end slavery here. Indeed he is trying to tell someone here that his focus is not on slavery but on winning the war and preserving the Union. Horace Greeley was editor of the New York Tribune at the time. He wrote criticizing Lincoln not for failing to end slavery but for Emancipating slaves. Congress had passed the Confiscation Act that allowed Lincoln to free slaves of enemies and Greeley wanted to used the slave for the war effort. He didn’t care about ending slavery. He cared about winning the war and thought Lincoln should be more about winning the war than Emancipation. Indeed Greeley thought Lincoln should let blacks fight.</p>
<p>Lincoln’s response was that he WAS more interested than winning than in freeing slaves (since winning was paramount to Union survival AND freeing slaves). He is not pandering at all to anyone here who controls the Republican Party. He is trying to address a disgruntled editor of a newspaper. Wise men and women will read the record themselves, rather than trust southern hacks masquerading as historians.</p>
<p>[On</a> this hanging business that Vyse corrupts, please read this article](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862]On”>Dakota War of 1862 - Wikipedia). It was a complex matter. Neo-confederates make the story up, as if the Indians were just sitting around and Lincoln broke a treaty and lynched them all. There were abominations here long before Lincoln arrived, abominations that he even tried to fix. The situation was explosive, with Natives killing whites and whites demanding action. I cannot defend what happened, but I also cannot judge it too harshly because put in Lincoln’s shoes I doubt very much whether anyone could have done better.</p>
<p>Lincoln also set the precedent of suspending the Constitutional writ of habeas corpus–a precedent that F.D.R. would later leader to Internment during WW2.</p>
<p>Your need to resort to ad hominems and mudslinging (referring to me as a neo-confederate) proves that your argument itself is pretty unstable.</p>
<p>Is African American professor and champion of black education Walter E Williams a “neo-confederate” as well? It is largely because of his scholarship on Lincoln that I’ve come to the conclusions I’ve been sharing. Here’s one of his pieces:</p>
<p>(sigh – what to do here with such obvious nonsense?)</p>
<p>Ron Paul’s isn’t a case of mere guilt by association, Vyse. It is a case of guilt by repeated comments in his newsletters, under his name, that he failed to address for ten years. The guilt is legitimate, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not.</p>
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</p>
<p>It was all out war, Vyse. Forty-thousand Americans who were protected by the United States government were being attacked by Dakota Indians. Nearly a thousand Americans died in that war. The wrongs against the Indians had gone on for so long that negotiations were impossible. Moreover, Lincoln was fighting another war, the Civil War. Given these circumstances, I doubt anyone would have done better than Lincoln did. It was a tough spot to be sure. Any other president would have slaughtered the Indians indiscriminately, not even thinking of overlooking the cases personally.</p>
<p>And I do not call you a neo-confederate. It is your “thinking” (for want of a better word) that I call neo-confederate. It is infected thinking.</p>
<p>I don’t wish to continue this discussion with you. Your comment that the only good thing about the South is that it is being repopulated by Mexicans and Northerners was bigoted and despicable. The only infected thinking is being done by you, sir.</p>
<p>”Is African American professor and champion of black education Walter E Williams a “neo-confederate” as well? It is largely because of his scholarship on Lincoln that I’ve come to the conclusions I’ve been sharing.”</p>
<p>Actually, I have read him quite a lot. Some of his stuff I agree with, and a whole lot of it is pure baloney. But, you ought to consider that Williams is no historian. He is an economist, like virtually all southern hacks who masquerade as historians. I think we ought not look to economists to learn history. We ought to look to economists to learn economics and historians to learn history. But I suspect it is different in the South.</p>
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<p>The article is accurate and fair enough to show the complexity of the situation, a complexity you overlooked entirely. If I were to show a more authoritative source you would not read it anyway. I refer to wikipedia because it is complete enough, and will allow thinking readers to actually track and read the history for themselves, from valid sources, and not from third-rate right-wing black economist windbags.</p>
<p>”Lincoln also set the precedent of suspending the Constitutional writ of habeas corpus–a precedent that F.D.R. would later leader to Internment during WW2.”</p>
<p>The south did too. Lincoln had justification for the suspension in the US Constitution. On what basis did the South suspend it?</p>
<p>”I don’t wish to continue this discussion with you….”</p>
<p>You’re suck a goddamn hypocrite its not even funny. How would like it if I said “I imagine its different in the hood?”</p>
<p>And you’re not very smart either. You’re criticizing me for citing A p.h.d scholar and tenured professor Walter E Williams, yet you’re asking us to read an article on WIKIPEDIA!? Jesus, I hope you never have to do any real research, you’re going to be in for a shock…</p>
<p>”You’re suck a goddamn hypocrite its not even funny. How would like it if I said “I imagine its different in the hood?”</p>
<p>Are you really serious here? People are ALWAYS saying this sort of thing about the hood. They are always making fun of the hood, putting down its inhabitants, calling them names, and even ridiculing their educational state. It happens right here on CC, quite a lot. Often, the problems being mentioned really do exist, just as the problems I mention re: the South actually exist.</p>
<p>And you’re not very smart either. You’re criticizing me for citing scholar Walter E Williams, yet you’re asking us to read an article on WIKIPEDIA!?</p>
<p>Well now you did more than merely cite Williams. You claimed “It is largely because of [Williams’] scholarship on Lincoln that I’ve come to the conclusions I’ve been sharing”. There is a big problem with relying on this hack to learn of Lincoln. I did not rely on Wikipedia to learn of the Dakota Uprising. I only refer to it here to help interested people read about it, so that they might see for themselves how much you’ve corrupted the history.</p>
<p>So that makes it ok? Because people make fun of the ghettos, it means you’re entitled to make fun of the South? Please do us all a favor, and quit ****ing on the logic more than you already have.</p>
<p>You need to drop this victim’s mentality you have and join me in a constructive debate that includes rejecting the collectivist mindset, and treating people as INDIVIDUALS, not blacks, not whites, not Southerners, not “new Southerners”, etc.</p>
<p>Your axe to grind is not with me buddy. There’s no confederate flag on the back of my truck, and I would never consider voting for David Duke. I have black friends that I don’t treat any differently than anybody else. My family tree is Southern for as many generations as I’ve been able to track it. Your type of bitterness and vitriol for the evil white man is of the Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson brand, and I’m proud to say that the young black men I associate are going to defeat that sort of narrow mindedness when their generation is pulling the strings. They’re too smart to blame me for the horrible things my ancestors did; they’re much more content to play some Halo and leave racial animosity in the past where it belongs.</p>
<p>I can assure you that if I honestly believed Ron Paul wrote those newsletters than I would not be voting for him. Its sounds like your dream candidate would come from a neo-Black Panther Party.</p>
<p>It saddens me to admit that Ron Paul wrote the following blatantly racist statements in the 1980s:</p>
<p>“Yes, I know: blacks are nice cuddly people like the rest of us, the majority of them certainly. The problem is that at this moment in history, you have to take that proposition on faith.”</p>
<p>“But surely there are tests that could have been taken of Willie Horton about what makes for evil. A certain level of testosterone combined with certain genes. It’s a promising field, these inquiries into the biological origins of cruelty.”</p>
<p>“Even the bare rudiments of civilization will not soon come back to Detroit and Southeast Washington, D.C.”</p>
<p>I am truly ashamed of Ron Paul, and I must hereby withdraw my support for him.</p>
<p>Oh, wait a second – these quotes weren’t written by Ron Paul in the 1980s. They were written by New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz, in 2007 – not about blacks, but about Arabs. James Kirchick’s job? Peretz’s assistant.</p>
<p>Seems you didn’t have to go digging around at the University of Kansas for insensitive comments not written by Ron Paul 20 years ago, James. You could have just read your boss’s weblog.</p>
<p>”So that makes it ok? Because people make fun of the ghettos, it means you’re entitled to make fun of the South?”</p>
<p>I don’t make fun of it, if you wish to know the truth. I have a justified antipathy for the Old South and the attempt by many southerners to preserve it, because it has harmed vast numbers of Americans and still does so today. Indeed it even has a great role in creating those ghettos people make fun of.</p>
<p>”You need to drop this victim’s mentality you have and join me in a constructive debate that includes rejecting the collectivist mindset, and treating people as INDIVIDUALS, not blacks, not whites, not Southerners, not “new Southerners”, etc.”</p>
<p>I am more than willing to do this. But should you start up with all that neo-confederate stupidity about Lincoln being a tyrant who caused the Civil War, and any of that other nonsense that Ron Paul tends to hock, I am going to do all I can to denounce it as utter southern foolishness. Let’s be brothers, if you can, but let us do this always around the truth, and not lies.</p>
<p>”Your axe to grind is not with me buddy. There’s no confederate flag on the back of my truck, and I would never consider voting for David Duke.”</p>
<p>Don’t care about your truck. Don’t even care about whom you vote for. I care about people being forced by the government to support a Confederate Flag that is the symbol of hostility to their freedom. That is just atrocious, and it goes on right now—in the South.</p>
<p>”I have black friends that I don’t treat any differently than anybody else. My family tree is Southern for as many generations as I’ve been able to track it. Your type of bitterness and vitriol for the evil white man is of the Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson brand…”</p>
<p>Nope. No bitterness at all toward whites. I reject southern culture and for justifiable reasons. I also do not support either Jackson or Sharpton.</p>
<p>”They’re too smart to blame me for the horrible things my ancestors did; they’re much more content to play some Halo and leave racial animosity in the past where it belongs.”</p>
<p>I do not blame you for the past. I blame you for misrepresenting the past.</p>
<p>”I can assure you that if I honestly believed Ron Paul wrote those newsletters than I would not be voting for him.”</p>
<p>My concern is with how easily you dismiss them, even thinking I am wrong because I cannot do likewise. I do not think you are aware of just what this sort of thing means to a black guy, hearing himself being called an animal allegedly by a guy who you and so many others support for President of the United States. You may easily dismiss this because you can afford to. I cannot be so cavalier.</p>
<p>You don’t seem very interested in changing people’s hearts and their minds, you seem more interested in regional migration, international immigration, and eugenics. That’s not the correct way to condition a population, as history has shown. But in case you haven’t noticed, racial hatred doesn’t start and end with the white man. There’s no love lost between the lower socio-economic classes of blacks and Mexicans either. The blacks down here and in other border states are no fans of illegal immigration. Its easy for you to embrace it when you live so far removed from it, but they cant stand it, because they’re the ones having their jobs stolen and the price of their labor devalued. I’m betting that blacks will be part of the Republican coalition sooner rather than later if we don’t solve the illegal immigration problem. Exhibit A:</p>
<p>Lincoln sent General Sherman to literally burn the South down to the ground. I’m entitled to dislike him. But more importantly, I think I’ve provided ample evidence that he was a political opportunist, not a civil rights hero.</p>
<p>Let’s put this in perspective. Lincoln’s is your hero despite the fact that he’s an unapologetic racist. I’m pretty sure your defense of him would be that he’s a product of his culture and his times. The same then goes for the racists left in the South. Most of them come from older generations. Like Lincoln, their generation is not as progressive as mine is. However their generation is quite a bit more progressive than Lincoln’s, and they are adamantly sickened by the institution of slavery. </p>
<p>It sounds like what you want is revenge. You want a place which is historically responsible for slavery to be unrecognizable. Its not going to happen. The South isn’t going anywhere. We’re going to continue to folk dance and listen to Garth Brooks, and we’re going to do it in concert with our black friends, should they wish to join us.</p>
<p>There’s really no point in hating the South. Slavery was a fault of the human condition. Some southerners were willing to put aside their moral objections to slavery in the name of convenience, and the economic well being of their family. Had the North’s economy been agriculturally based, they would have done the exact same thing. In fact, the North DID do the exact same thing. Seeing as how cotton served as the raw material for the North’s textile factories, you didn’t really start seeing the Northern uprising over slavery hit until the 1840s when “king cotton” began declining.</p>
<p>This romantic picture you have in your head of the North as the intellectual superior to the South with high morals is illogical. Had the North been filled with arable land and began with an agriculturally based economy and had the South began with an industry based economy, you would have seen the roles reversed with regards to the slavery debate.</p>
<p>He basically explains that collectivism (of which racism is a part of) is inconsistent with libertarianism, because the former views people in groups while the latter views people as individuals. He explains that Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King are his heroes, based on their practice of civil disobedience, which is core to libertarians.</p>
<p>The controversial newsletters were supplied bu the UW Historical Library which has original hard copies. It is one of the outstanding historical libraries in the country and one of few to collect such documents.</p>
<p>I think for me to be interested in changing people’s minds I need to first respect their minds as reasonable. It is not my interest in changing the mind of neo-confederate revisionists. I merely wish to address their falsehoods with the truth.</p>
<p>With any sort of cultural change there is likely to be a great deal of friction. Blacks are unfortunately not enjoying the best job conditions in the South as it is. The Old South is passing away whether you or they wish it or not. Those who will adapt to the changes will therefore adapt to them, and those who will not adapt will perish. None of this is my desire. I very much dislike it all, but it is the very best thing I can see about the South. </p>
<p>Lincoln sent General Sherman to win a war against rebellious southerners. Sherman was not sent to sip tea with them. He was sent to kill them. It is why we should go to war only as a last resort. War is hell, in case you haven’t heard. Since their loyalties lie with the Confederacy, and not with America, neo-confederates obviously dislike Lincoln for sending Sherman to help win the war. But as an American who still honors the Union, I am glad he did. I am free because of it.</p>
<p>You have proved only one thing when it comes to Lincoln. You have only proven your possession of no greater than a fourth grade education in American history. Children tend to see life in clean-cut blacks and whites, where a man is either all good or all evil. For them to consider a man a hero, that man must appear all good, having no flaw. Learned men, on the other hand, are far more supple of mind. They understand that all humans sin and that it is the man who, despite his limitations and flaws in character, persists in striving toward the right who wins the honor. Lincoln was only a man, not the fourth-grade caricature you will only permit into your mind. He is worthy of our honor because, despite being flawed as all men are, he nevertheless saw farther ahead and responded to what he saw better than anyone else of his stature. It is one thing to declare distaste for slavery when you have no power to do anything. Lincoln declared his distaste while having power, and then he used his power to end it. Surely this man is worthy of America’s highest honor.</p>
<p>I do not merely excuse his flaws as the result of his time. Slavery was as wrong then as it is today. I am working to understand the man and account for why he felt as he did. When I do this, I see his world as he saw it, and I realize that it was a very horrid place. Yet the country had come to accept its horror as good and even preferable. Few could actually since the evil because it all felt so good to everyone but blacks. This one man, Abe Lincoln, saw the evil and literally worked against it, eventually losing his life because of it. The man was greater than the entirety of the South.</p>
<p>Blacks didn’t need Lincoln to be perfect. When a slave has chains around his neck, the slave does not need his benefactor to approve of the slave’s marriage to the benefactor’s daughter. The slave has only one immediate need – to be free. Tell me now, what Southerner filled this most pressing moral need for his nation? Not even one did. What Southerner had the guts and power to carry out the fulfillment of human freedom? Not a single one—not even Washington, Madison, or Jefferson did. Only Lincoln was able to do it, and he did it despite his flaws and all else. That he didn’t approve of interracial marriage is meaningless when the man is responsible for helping oppressed people go free.</p>
<p>To be clear here, I tell you Lincoln’s racism was not acceptable. But it was irrelevant because something far more than racial acceptance was at stake. Men were being physically owned and destroyed, and solving this problem was paramount. On the other hand, Southern racism was and still is most relevant because Southerners had the same exposure to enlightenment as did Northerners, but insisted upon remaining in the dark. They had the same exposure to human nature and its natural state of freedom, but, unlike Northerners, rather than move toward the Right despite their many flaws, Southerners insisted upon remaining in the Wrong.</p>
<p>It was not a simple matter of agricultural economies versus industrial economies, and the idea that the North turned against slavery only in 1840 is demonstrably false. The moral force against slavery came from the North even when slavery was employed there. The Quakers, for example, were hammering at the institution as early as 1688 and on into the 1700’s, when other Northerners joined the outcry. The complaint from the North against slavery was philosophical, even when the North owned slaves. And it was so significant that by 1787 Southerners were lobbying Congress to explicitly codify enslavement of blacks into the United States Constitution. Madison, to his credit, refused the explicit language, but allowed the “importation of persons” while permitting the North the freedom to end slavery by 1808. Southerners were so immorally engaged to slavery that they even tried to redefine human nature, unlike Northerners, declaring that men like myself were not even real men, and that slavery was natural to us. The South is not to be commended, and indeed it stands as an eternal model of willful ignorance and poverty of character. Those who today look back fondly to this now dying South reveal their own innate lack of honor whether they come from “older generations” or not.</p>
<p>I do not wish revenge, and such a thing has never even once crossed my mind. I want the wrongs righted-- for people to reach their natural state of freedom. They are still suffering from the old South. I am comforted that the place you call home, the place of such spiritual destitution it literally sent its children to die to protect the oppression of other humans, is near its death. Enjoy Garth Brooks while you can. There was a time when that sort of music was everywhere, and ruled the day. It does no longer. It is but a minor player in the culture of America. It will eventually become so insignificant that not even you will prefer it. Indeed it has already taken place, which is why Garth Brooks sounds more modern than say, Hank Williams, and he employs essentially the same progressions as everyone else. Country music is almost no longer even country music, and the South is almost no longer the South. In another generation, it will be gone, along with its Confederate Flag on public property.</p>
<p>This is what makes me nervous and suspicious. He says he didn’t write em. Tell us who wrote them then. I want names I want occupations I want it all.</p>
<p>There is no hard evidence that he wrote those words. On the contrary; it is quite established that he did NOT write those words. You can debate what he did about it, but not whether he actually wrote them.</p>
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<p>I did not claim any such thing!</p>
<p>I am simply trying to make the point that your holding on to grudges is helping to perpetuate the problem. It appears to me that you see the world with distorted lenses.</p>
<p>Have you ever seen ‘The Secret?’ Check out the part about the gay man who keeps getting beaten up, but then he has a major breakthru in thought, and begins to assert more confidence, and lo and behold, he doesn’t get beaten up any more, and begins to make friends with people whom he thought were homophobes. It seems a great deal of it was in his perception.</p>
<p>You claim that there is a lot of racism still going on. I’m not black, but I’m married to a Hispanic, and I just don’t see the prejudice that I saw back in the 60s. Back then, I was told to not ever date a Hispanic (much less a black) or the white guys would have nothing to do with me. Well I went and married a Hispanic…and guess what? IT’S NO BIG DEAL. I have never encountered any racism, EVER, neither has my half-breed son.</p>
<p>You might say it’s worse for blacks. I don’t know about that; where I grew up, in a SOUTHERN small town, there weren’t many blacks but there were a lot of Hispanics, and Hispanics were considered SCUM.</p>
<p>It’s just not like that any more, at least not according to my observation.</p>
<p>A few months ago, there was another thread here on cc in which a black person (maybe you?) claimed that white people never wanted to shake her hand, as if it were dirty. Since then, I have taken it upon myself to shake black people’s hands as often as possible. It helps that I started selling insurance, so I meet a LOT of new people every day. Well, I have been observing that if I offer my hand, they accept it with no hesitation. And just as often, they offer their hands first. And they do so confidently! Like there is no reason in the world anyone would refuse their hand. I just have NOT encountered any hesitation at ALL.</p>
<p>That is NOT to say that your experience is not valid. But so is mine! Both are valid! I invite you to consider that yours is not the only valid observation, and maybe your views are a bit, er, colored, due to preconceived expectations. Maybe if you let go of that old grudge, you would experience a new outlook on life and on whites. Maybe you would make more white friends, and see the GOOD in more people, including those who happen to reside in the south because they like the weather.</p>
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<p>Spiritual destitution?? Wow, that is a really strong statement. Drossel, slavery ended more than a century ago. The people who oppressed blacks were NOT the same people living in this geographical area NOW. We, the current generation, had nothing to do with it! To say that an entire geographical region is spiritually destitute is such a prejudiced blanket statement that I am astonished! Why are you so quick to condemn an entire culture? Can you find NOTHING of value in the culture? Even of the people back then, a century ago, they were so horribly wrong on this issue, but does that mean they were 100% evil in every way? What about the people who now support the Iraq war, with no regard to the tremendous suffering of innocent Iraqi children? Are they 100% evil, with no redeeming value whatsoever? Well, look around, they are all around us, and on this forum. Would you condemn them and their culture completely because they didn’t bother to QUESTION what is now considered ‘acceptable’ for whatever reason?</p>
<p>The southern people accepted slavery. They were wrong. Horribly wrong. And it was worse because it was right there, in their faces. Likewise, cultures had slavery for eons, and not just of black people but of people who looked just like them. Slavery existed in most parts of the world; our country was just one of the last to abolish it. Would you condemn all aspects of Egyptian culture or European culture because they ONCE had slaves?</p>
<p>I personally detest country music. But I would not begrudge people their right to enjoy that type of music, if they like it. I personally would be happy to see the rodeo go the way of slavery, because of the cruelty to animals. But I have friends who like to go to the rodeo, and I do not condemn them.</p>
<p>Truly, I hope you are able to find it in your heart to let go of this grudge. I think this way of thinking, this bitterness, does more damage to the black people in your sphere of influence than anything any politician could ever do.</p>