The Debate Over Juneteenth

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast today. We will not be talking about the Southern Baptist Convention and everyone said, ah, the last week was a long week, which is why I actually did not put a podcast out on Monday, at least the video one.

If you're an audio subscriber, you got to hear an interview that I did on this book, "'Social Justice Goes to Church, "'The New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism.'". I would recommend purchasing this.

Obviously, I wrote it. If you don't have it, it's a pretty good deal. I'll put the link in the info section, 15 bucks, and you get an autographed copy. I should say, by the way, if you like the book, please go ahead and rate it on Amazon or Barnes Noble or wherever you purchased it, or if you purchased it through me, I think you can still go to Amazon and rate it.

I've been told by the publisher this helps to promote the book. I think I've only mentioned that once before. I'm bad at remembering to say that, but I wanted to say that because I remembered it. So, we're kind of taking a little break for a day and a half, and now it's time to start the audio podcast, or I'm sorry, video podcast up again, because there's a bunch of stuff that I missed, and it was on purpose that I missed it, just because I was focused so much on the Southern Baptist Convention, getting information to you, and that's the goal of this, is to get information to you in a systematized way, organized, help you make decisions.

You may not always agree with my analysis, but you don't have time to be sitting for two days in front of your computer watching the Southern Baptist Convention. So, if I can get you some information in little kernels of highlights in 45 minutes or an hour, then I hope that helps you, and I think it did help a lot of people.

So, that's the goal, to get you the information, and of course, I'm gonna give you some of my analysis on that information. One of the big things I missed, though, was the debate over Juneteenth, and this is not a debate happening on the national level.

Juneteenth as a New Federal Holiday and the Questions It Raises

Juneteenth is now a federally recognized holiday. It was signed into law last week, but this has gone so fast, people that haven't even heard of Juneteenth until recently haven't had time to process it.

So, there is a debate going on, mostly in the more conservative world, mostly middle America, what do you do on Juneteenth? What are the customs associated with this? Well, there really aren't many, or any, hardly any.

It feels more artificial. It's something that has been imposed through the halls of Congress and the presidency. It's not something that organically kind of bubbled up. The Fourth of July is like that.

It's an organic holiday that was celebrated without the sanction of the federal government, and then the national government decided to sanction it. But Juneteenth is not like that. In fact, two years ago, answer yourself honestly on this.

Three years ago, if someone said to you, are you celebrating Juneteenth? What would you have said to them? What questions would you have asked? You probably would have said, Juneteenth? You mean 19th, 20th, what do you mean?

What's significant about, well, you wouldn't say 20th. You said, you know, all the teens. 18th, 19th, 20th, 13th, what do you mean Juneteenth? Did I mishear you? And then someone would have probably explained to you, oh, it's the celebration of the freeing of the slaves.

It's a Texas holiday. And you'd have said, oh, I never heard of it. Well, today, it's a nationally recognized holiday. So you've probably heard of it by now, but you never grew up celebrating it or hearing about it or knowing anything about it.

And what customs do you go out and see fireworks on Juneteenth? What's the custom? And so there is a debate over it, though Republicans in Congress have almost all of them. I mean, there's some exceptions, but most of them have decided to get behind this.

Even the Make America Great Again agenda people have decided to get behind this. Now, I don't know if this is a strategic thing or if this is convictional, but either way, there's not a debate about it really in Congress, but there is on the popular level.

And I think that's worth talking about because this isn't gonna go away. Next year, it's not gonna go away. The year after that, it's not gonna go away. There's going to be, I think, a bit of a backlash.

And I want to explain why that might be. And I want to dive into the working issues because I did try to look at some analysis of this from conservative commentators, and I was very disappointed. I'm not gonna lie, I was very disappointed.

I was disappointed, well, I won't name all the names, but most of them mainstream conservative voices. And I just thought they're missing so many things. They're missing the bigger picture here. And so I want to try to give that to you as best as I can.

This is the bigger picture. These are the working issues. And then you decide for yourself, is this something that we should be doing? Is it something we should be doing now? Are there alternatives that we should have?

And then what's the future? Practically speaking, what's the future of this holiday? How is it gonna be used? These are all worth thinking about because I think in the future, you will be forced to think about it.

So hopefully this video is not banned from YouTube. Hopefully it stays up for a while. But even if it's not on YouTube, you can go to Rumble. You can go to Facebook. I post these videos in other places as well.

And so we're gonna dive right in. The debate over Juneteenth. Here are the working issues that I, as far as I can see. Is it the role of the national government to recognize national celebrations or create them?

Is it the role of the national government to recognize national celebrations or create them? Now, this is something you won't hear on most of the conservative airwaves. They're not even asking this question.

Should the national government be in the business of just foisting holidays on people? Or should they recognize holidays that people are already celebrating? There's a big difference between the two. Fourth of July is a great example of that.

There are already celebrations. Whether the national government recognized the Fourth of July or not, there would still be celebrations to this day. Can you say the same about Juneteenth? Is this something that is widely recognized by all people just about across the United States?

No, it's not. And so this gets into the role of government. Is celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation the best way to celebrate the ending of chattel slavery in the United States? Is celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation the best way to celebrate the ending of chattel slavery in the United States?

This is a legitimate question, and you won't hear this on the conservative airwaves or on the internet among your most popular conservative voices. But it's a legitimate question, and I'm gonna get into it later.

There may be a better way to celebrate this than celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation. Actually, that may not be a good thing to celebrate, perhaps. Will Juneteenth be used to further divide the country by competing with Independence Day and fomenting resentment?

This has been mentioned by many conservative commentators, and it is a good point. The bill that Biden signed includes the wording of Independence Day. Well, are there two Independence Days now? Is there one for a certain demographic and one for another demographic?

Or this is the question. Will this divide people? Will this be seen as something that belongs to one group of people and doesn't unite the country? And the country's in need of uniting right now. But is this the thing that's gonna do it, or is this just gonna further divide?

Is this gonna try to outpace the Fourth of July? Is it a competitor to that? Will it foment resentment? On Juneteenth, are people going to be, and I've already seen examples of this on social media, people that are reminded of slavery and then they just resent white people in general.

This is happening. So is Juneteenth gonna be just an opportunity for that? Number four, will it set a precedent for more government-sanctioned celebrations? I haven't heard this brought up either. Will it set a precedent for more government-sanctioned celebrations?

Think about this. Think about all the things the left would love to have, to celebrate, things that would be truly morally abhorrent to you. Now, of course, celebrating the end of chattel slavery isn't morally abhorrent to really hardly anyone.

I don't know of one person that I can think of off the top of my head that would be offended by that. I think we would all be favorable to that idea in principle. But there are things that the federal government could enact.

We already have a month called Pride Month, and could they go down a path of recognizing all sorts of things in the name of equality, which is the same logic they're using here, and I'll show you that, that will be reprehensible to the morality of traditional conservatives and Christians in particular.

That's a legitimate question. Is this a gateway drug? And then fifth, is this the right time to celebrate emancipation given political conditions? Is this the right time to celebrate emancipation given political conditions?

And I'm gonna show you a little more what I mean by that. This is not an abstract thing, it's more concrete. This is, you know, think about your neighborhood, think about where you live. How does something like this take place?

If you were tried, you know, with all the unrest that's happening, if you were to say, I'm going to organize a celebration to celebrate the ending of slavery, would that provide opportunities for, I don't know, riots or things like that?

Is this the best time to be doing it? And so that's a very practical question. And I just wanna bring to your mind a few things. I saw this this week. This is CNN reporting a 60 increase in crime in Atlanta.

60%. There's an Atlanta suburb that wants to separate from the city over this. If you try to do a celebration, like a really big, you know, Fourth of July level celebration, is this the kind of thing that you want during this time?

So very practical, very pragmatic, and I don't think anyone's doing big celebrations yet. If the conditions stay the same next year though, is that something you want? Celebration that at least includes in it some kind of a reminder about slavery.

And we know how critical race theorists have used that, how Black Lives Matter uses that. Does it become an opportunity for them when crime is already so high, there's already so much potential for division?

It's a powder keg in some places. John Cooper put this out on Twitter. The Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association just published a study likening whiteness to a malignant parasitic-like condition for which there is not yet a permanent cure.

This is true, guys. This actually was published in the Journal of American Psychoanalytic, whatever their journal's called. This is the, these are the conditions we're in. Is this the best time to be introducing something like this that has the opportunity to foment divisions when there's such a strong, powerful breeze against quote-unquote white people?

Now, I'm not gonna give you all the examples. I've seen some examples. I can't probably even find all of them of people using this as a wedge, using this to divide already. But I wanna just give two examples to you of what, the way Juneteenth is going to be celebrated moving forward, I believe.

And it gets into the authorial intent. What is the intent? What did Biden, when he signed the bill to recognize Juneteenth, what was he thinking? He said, we can't rest until the promise of equality is fulfilled for every one of us.

In every corner of this nation, that to me is the meaning of Juneteenth. This is exactly what I think a lot of conservatives fear, is that there is going to be division over this. And you can see it in what Biden said there.

He said, well, wait a minute, John, what are you talking about? The promise of equality, don't we all want that? Yeah, but what's your version of equality? What do you think that means? As opposed to someone on the other side of the aisle, what do they think it means?

We know what the hard left thinks of equality, what they believe that means. I mean, women should be competing with biological men in sports. I mean, that's equality. That everything that they wanna push is in the name of equality, just about.

And this isn't about celebrating something that happened in the past. Look at Biden's wording. We can't rest, usually holidays are days of rest, but no, not this one. We can't rest until what? The promise of equality is fulfilled for every one of us in every corner of this nation.

That's the meaning of Juneteenth. So Juneteenth isn't about the freeing of slaves, it is about using that particular event, which that's kind of deceptive anyway, because that really wasn't what happened in that event in total, but we'll get into that in a minute.

But using that event as a stage for which to launch a campaign to bring about some kind of egalitarianism. That is how Joe Biden is portraying Juneteenth. Do you think the Republicans who voted for this thought that this was what they were voting for?

Well, of course not. And the Democrats are very easy at playing this game. They play Republicans all the time on this stuff. Get Republicans to vote for things that are against racism or against sexism or something like that in their minds to support some kind of initiative.

But then the devil's in the details. The way that it's going to be wielded is not the way that the Republicans thought it was gonna be wielded. Remember, everything to the hard left is about the revolution.

It's always about that. You gotta look for it in everything. They're subversive. And if you don't know that about them, you're gonna be played every time. And we just found out that most of Congress is probably naive.

Here's the U .S. Military Academy at West Point. President Biden signed a bill designating June 19th as Juneteenth, National Independence Day. National Independence Day. Yeah, National Independence Day.

That's the term they use. This is U .S. Military Academy at West Point. The 12th federal holiday. Today commemorates the day in 1865 when Union soldiers brought the news to Texas of the freeing of slaves by the decree of the Emancipation Proclamation.

And here's the symbol that West Point decided to post. It is a black fist breaking a chain. And it says a celebration of freedom. And of course, this symbol, it amazes me how symbols have changed so drastically in the last few years.

The black fist was anyone pretty much of the generation above me, any one of the baby boomers, they would recognize that black fist and they would associate it with the Black Panthers, with resistance violence, revolutionary activity.

I mean, that's how it, and that really is what authorial intent would dictate. That is what it is, this style. But now you have actual institutions like West Point posting it. So I think it's gonna, if this continues to happen, maybe it loses its edge, I don't know.

But I find that fascinating. In fact, Twitter, you can see on this, that's the symbol that they're using. And it's also the fingers on that hand are different colors. I'm not sure if that's supposed to represent, I don't know what that's supposed to represent.

Maybe, I don't know, is it an African flag of some kind or I don't think it's the rainbow, but it automatically comes up when you hashtag Juneteenth. So this is about black people, it's a black fist, rising up and casting aside the chains that bind them, the barriers that they have.

So it's moving away already. I mean, the ink is not even dry and it's moving away from a celebration that unites Americans to say, hey, look, this is something all Americans can celebrate. This is something that many Americans from different regions had a part in, white as well as black.

And we can get, no, that's not what Juneteenth is gonna be about if this holds. Juneteenth is gonna be about not black people, and it's not even black people, because there were free blacks. It's not about slaves who happened to be black being freed.

It's about them freeing themselves. I think that's gonna be the trajectory. That's the symbolism here. Does that image unite? That's the question you need to ask. And then what's the purpose of a celebration, especially a national one?

Isn't it to unite people in common cause? Or if it's something else, we need to know it. Here's an article. I thought this was a pretty good analysis from Tennessee Stans. The significance of the new woke Independence Day cannot be understated.

And this guy's just calling it for what it is. Did anyone even look to see the name of the bill that made Juneteenth a new federal holiday? It is named the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act. Does that sound like a holiday on which we simply celebrate the end of slavery?

Or does it sound like a holiday that literally redefines how and when we became a nation in the first place? Anyone ever hear of the 1619 Project or a little thing called critical race theory? These are not mutually exclusive.

Just look around at the mainstream sentiment of those who are celebrating this new national holiday. Singer Macy Gray is now calling for a new American flag. Huffington Post put out an article titled the hypocrisy of honoring Juneteenth while condemning critical race theory.

Where congressional black caucus chair Joyce Beauty said making Juneteenth a federal holiday is important and long overdue, but is not the end of the fight to rectify this country's racist past. Take her word out, take her at her word.

This is just the beginning. And he's absolutely right. Spot on analysis from Tennessee stands. This is a wedge and it's going to be used for what it's going to go beyond the intent of many of the good-hearted and well-intentioned Republicans who voted for it.

They didn't know what they were getting or some of them did maybe and they'd still did it for pragmatic reasons because they didn't want to... Because you know what the left does with this kind of stuff.

If you don't vote for it, if you don't support it in any way, you must like slavery a whole lot. You must not rejoice that slavery is over. That's the wedge they use and they do it every time. And we got to stop being played by this.

No, it doesn't mean that. Actually, I see what you're doing and it's a despicable thing. That's the kind of thing you need to say.

It's despicable.

In the name of celebrating something that we all agree is good, you are smuggling in all these other things that are going to further divide us. I think a celebration over the ending of slavery should unite us.

That's...

And again, I'm just coming up with this off the top of my head, but that's the kind of rhetorical device that should be used. Not just, well, okay, I don't want to be called racist. I certainly agree that it was bad that we had slavery, therefore, I'm gonna vote for this.

That's being maybe well-intentioned, but it's being naive. Let's talk about the Emancipation Proclamation because this is what Juneteenth is supposed to celebrate. And this is what fascinates me and what many of you come to this podcast probably for, I'm guessing, is this kind of analysis.

If you're watching, you can see that posted here is a New Iberia, Louisiana edict, April 24th, 1863 from Captain and Provost Marshall. A .B. Long is the name of that Captain and Provost Marshall. And here's what it says.

The generally received impression that the slaves of this parish, so Louisiana has parishes, right? Not counties, parishes. The generally received impression that the slaves of this parish are free by force of the presence of the Union Army is erroneous.

This parish, St. Martin, is accepted by name in the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln issued at Washington, DC, January 1st, 1863. No further interference with the institution of slavery will be allowed by the Army authorities.

That may be necessary results from the police regulations. United States Army officers are forbidden by law of Congress to use force in the restoration of slaves to masters. If slaves free from their masters, they must work on government works, receiving therefore full rations for a full day's work.

If slaves voluntarily return to their masters, they will not be molested. If masters use force in abducting runaway slaves, the masters will be arrested. If masters inhumanly punish or whip their slaves, they must be arrested.

No punishment of slaves will be permitted except such as are practiced in the Army. This may be shocking to some of you. If you don't know Civil War history or Reconstruction history well, because you were probably always told growing up, Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves.

That's at best a half truth. That's not accurate. And this is just one thing I wanted to jolt you with to show you that this is an area in Louisiana that's controlled by the United States government. And this is in 1863, the war is still happening.

And it literally says that the slaves of the parish are not free. It's erroneous to think that they're free because specifically the Emancipation Proclamation exempts that particular area. Well, why would Abraham Lincoln do that?

Well, let me go through some facts about the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation declared the slaves in 10 states free, but there were 17 states in which blacks were held as slaves.

The portions of Virginia and Louisiana, which were occupied by union forces and states under union control, such as New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri were exempt from the proclamation.

That's right. It didn't free the slaves. It only freed slaves supposedly in jurisdictions in which Abraham Lincoln had no authority. So it didn't free one slave. It didn't have any authority. It would be like if you said, we're going to open all the churches in Canada and President Biden signed something that says all the churches in Canada can open now, but he doesn't say anything about churches in the United States in places where they still can open, if there are such places, or maybe restrictions.

There are still places they're restricted. So Canada, no restrictions, United States, we're not saying anything about that. Well, would that do anything? Would that have any effect whatsoever? No, it wouldn't do anything.

So for freeing slaves, it's a useless document pretty much, just about. Abraham Lincoln, September 13th, 1862 said this, understand I raise no objections against emancipation on legal or constitutional grounds.

For as commander in chief of the army and Navy in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measures which may best subdue the enemy. Interesting choice of words. He thinks of freeing slaves, or saying that he's going to in a jurisdiction that he does not control as a way to best subdue the enemy.

How's that? Nor do I urge, he says, objections of immoral nature in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South. So he says, look, that's fine. I, you know, it's fine. If this is getting you to where the Emancipation Proclamation, what the purpose of it was.

Insurrection and massacre at the South, why would this cause a massacre and insurrection? I view this matter, he says, as a practical war measure to be decided on according to the advantages and disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.

That's it, that's it guys. That's why on September 22nd, 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation included this terminology. It said, as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion. That was the purpose of it.

It also says the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons or any of them in any efforts that they may make for their actual freedom.

That's kind of like a by any means necessary clause. What it's saying is that the United States government is not going to prevent slaves who are trying to make for their actual freedom, any means they use to do that, so even killing their masters, whatever it may be, that there's gonna be no, the government of the United States is not gonna do anything to repress them.

Now, you may say, well, you're just reading into it. Well, if, and look, it's possible, that's not what it meant, I suppose. I find it very hard to believe given the historical situation and all the quotes about it, but here's the way it was generally taken at the time.

You need to know this. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. The Emancipation Proclamation encouraged slaves to a general assassination of their masters. Thaddeus Stevens, so opposite end of the spectrum here, hoped the slaves would be incited to insurrection and give the rebels a taste of real civil war.

The London Times, and this goes for the French as well, by the way, and this is, I could give you tons of examples from newspapers, I'm giving you one. The London Times questioned whether the reign of Lincoln's presidency was to go out amid the horrible massacres of white women and children to be followed by the extermination of the black race in the South.

They did not see this as helping slaves at all. They saw this as you're trying to foment a race war in the South, and what will be the consequence of that? Innocent people dying, and it's not going to help the people you're claiming to help.

It will lead to their death. New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky all rejected ratification of the 13th Amendment, and their slaves were not freed until it was ratified on December 6th, 1865. So friends, listeners, lend me your ear.

Is it smart to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation, or is there something else maybe that should be celebrated? If you're gonna celebrate the ending of slavery, why don't we pick December 6th, 1865, the adoption of the 13th Amendment?

Now there's an addendum I should probably make to this, and that is that a fourth of the population, this is an estimate, slave population, former slaves, died shortly after they were freed. Now that's a devastating thing.

A fourth from disease, from starvation, that many slaves died. That's out of the 4 million estimated slaves, a million of them died that were freed. That in and of itself, just historically speaking, is a cause for, it just, it breaks your heart.

It makes you sad, it makes you weep. When I found this out, I just thought this was one of the most horrible things I'd ever heard, and I wondered why in the world this is glossed over in most American history.

You hear about Reconstruction and how horrible the Klan is and these kinds of things. Look at the numbers for lynching. Compare that to a million dead slaves, former slaves. Think about the conditions under which slaves were freed into, a war-torn region ravaged by total war.

Think about the cost of the war on the region and what that did. Think about the way that many politicians, Republican politicians primarily, tried to use the slaves as wedges to gain control and power in those years afterward.

Think about the reaction from many Southerners. Think about, just think about the violence, think about the horrible conditions, and that's the biggest thing, it's an economic thing more than anything else.

Think about those horrible conditions that led to destitution and starvation. When you celebrate something like the ending of slavery, I think many people in their minds think, well, it was just this, it was a wonderful day, and I think it was for many of the slaves.

I mean, you read in their accounts how happy so many of them were to be free. You also read, in many of their accounts, how much they would miss their masters and things. You see both things side by side, which is very interesting.

But what comes shortly after that is grueling. The conditions did not change much, and if anything, in some ways, they got worse in the immediate aftermath. It wasn't until probably between 1870 and 1920 that you see some real economic stability and inroads being made, progress being made, literacy rates going up, all these kinds of things.

But in the immediate aftermath, you don't see all those things.

It was hard.

And so I just mention that to say that needs to somehow be taken into account, I would think, because you can celebrate these things, but the celebration also, you think about, this is the point I wanna make.

Think about the children of Israel when they were freed from Egypt, right? Which was actually, if you look at that biblically, it wasn't so much slavery, but it was the cruel way they were being treated by a foreign country.

That was what they felt that they were celebrating being liberated from, the fact that God did it. Because you even see there's laws regulating their slaves. Celebrate the Passover. And God is giving these instructions and saying, here's how you celebrate it with your slaves when they haven't even been quite freed yet.

So this is, it's an interesting, if you look at that, it's more complex than normally we even think of it. But many former slaves thought, they saw a parallel there, which is to be expected. They saw themselves in some ways as the children of Israel.

And this is, you don't understand, I think, most traditionally black churches and their theology unless you understand that parallel. And in that situation though, biblically, there was a celebration.

Passover is a celebration for what God had done to deliver the children of Israel. But then they wandered around the desert for a while. And then the purpose was, and this is very specific in scripture.

Read Deuteronomy. The purpose of God freeing them was to bring them into the land that he had for them. And they would displace all the other peoples there. It's actually not the most politically correct story, but God's given them a specific land for them to live in.

And so they, what's the grumbling complaint along the way? The children of Israel say, have you left us to die in the wilderness? It would be better if we were back in Egypt with the spices and all these things.

Well, if you look at that parallel, you look at American chattel slavery, that's the kind of question that I think would naturally have been asked. What, we were freed and quite literally, many of them were dying in the quote unquote parallel example here, wilderness.

It wasn't the great deliverance that the Passover was, where they come into the promised land and yes, God punishes them, but God teaches them these lessons along the way. And then they get to the promised land and God fulfills his promise to them.

The ending of chattel slavery is a lot more tragic. I think the silver lining, the thing that really, the thing that I think is the most inspiring, and this goes back to the slaves themselves, is how they progressed during that period, 1870, 1915, and really up until even the Great Society, 1960.

There was a progression like no other in literacy, economic mobility, despite barriers, despite barriers that existed. There were stories of heroes, of overcomers. George Washington Carver's one, Booker T. Washington's one, and this is one of the things I proposed years ago, and I'm not a member of Congress, I can't do these things.

Why not like a Black Heroes Day? I mean, isn't that, and I recognize there's some nationalist conservatives types that would say it should always be all Americans being, well, here's the thing. The people who came over from various parts of the Ivory Coast and formed slave communities, and some of them are different.

Some of them are regionally very different. You have like the Gullah people in one area, and they're different, and we all know this, but they came together to form a culture of kinds. There's a book called Roll, Jordan, Roll by Eugene Genovese, and its subtitle is The World the Slaves Built.

They weren't passive, and this is one of the things I can't stand about progressive history. They act like slaves are just passive. Black people are just passive. Any minority group is just passive. Any victim group in their minds is just passive, waiting for the saviors, the progressive saviors to come in and change the structure of society so they can finally get ahead, and without that, they're just helpless.

No, they weren't.

They were building something, even under slavery, and Roll, Jordan, Roll catalogs it. They were built, and they had a great effect on even Southern whites. This is an untold story that could bring people together that is not, because it doesn't serve a political purpose, probably, but they made great advancements.

Thomas Sowell talks a lot about this, the advancements that were made and how they were lost during the Great Society time. Moral decay is what, that's the main enemy to the quote-unquote progress, so what's my thought on this?

Well, my thought and my point, and I have much more to share with you, so I'm taking a little too long on this tangent, probably, but my thought is there was a book I was reading recently by Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative, and he talks about these different national mythologies and how nations need that, and that's true, but that in Great Britain, they went from this kind of like, I don't remember what he called it, overcoming victorious kind of mythology to an emancipation mythology, that that's what they're really about, is how they emancipated slaves and freed women and free healthcare for all and stop child labor and all these kinds of things, and it was a complete change of the national mythology.

We're going through that right now, and this is why I think a Black Heroes Day or something like that would have been much better. Identify tangible, tangible, real examples that exist that all people can come around and say, that's a hero, that's someone I want my kids to be like, that's someone that has good character, has virtues, and that's someone who should be held up and celebrated.

Why not do that? Why not make a day for a Booker T. Washington or something like that? If you really care about the Black community, if you really care about descendants, I should say, of slaves, not everyone who's Black in this country is a descendant of slaves who came here in the 1700s and 1800s, but if those are the people that you want to help and you want to give them something that's gonna help them, give them that.

Don't make it seem like they're always these passive kind of actors on the stage. They achieve great things using good virtues, and that's one of the problems I see with this Juneteenth, is the way that it's being celebrated, the symbolism.

Because it's so focused on the event, which is a group of mostly white people freeing Black people, it doesn't, it's just not, it doesn't have the same kind of response I think you'd have if you had, hey, that's someone who represents what we're about and did it well and we can look up to that person.

But the places where it is being promoted as this is Black power, it lacks the virtue. It's about violence, it's about overthrowing the system, it's about these kinds of things. Why not point to someone who was honorable, who exercised good virtue and make that a holiday?

That's my pitch, that's my, I wasn't expecting to make that pitch, but I figured I would just because I think that would be a much more practical remedy. But you know, make the Democrats vote against that, right?

Make them vote against Black Heroes Day or something like that. I mean, that'd be, it'd really turn the tables. That's a rhetorical device there, and anyone's willing to take it, but the Republicans don't seem to be, unfortunately, that smart about these things.

Theological Claims Being Attached to Juneteenth

Here's an article. This is at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, is where I graduated from, Southern Baptist School. This is their intersect project, and they had an article, and I just wanted to, here's some quotes from the article.