Slavery If No U.S.?
by Mike D’Virgilio
Issue 118 - October 22, 2008

Several weeks ago on The View, Whoopi Goldberg questioned John McCain about whether he wants to select judges who interpret the law based on the original intent of the founders: “Should I be worried about being a slave again?” This is what the founding of America means to a large portion of the left. The very idea of America is tainted and thus illegitimate because of slavery.

Forget that slavery existed in the colonies for well over a hundred years prior to the Declaration, that the economy of the colonies, especially the southern colonies, was inextricably intertwined with that despicable system of subjugating a whole class of human beings, that without compromise on that issue America would most likely never have come into being, and that America paid the price of well over six hundred thousand lives to eradicate slavery from our land.

Imagine history without the compromise with slavery that made America possible. Can you? To my knowledge this has never been attempted in any kind of work of fiction, but I would argue it is sorely needed. The left, indicative of Ms. Goldberg’s comment, is fundamentally ashamed of the American experiment, and anger toward America infuses the basic assumptions of many and probably most who identify themselves as liberal. I would argue as well that many black Americans, more understandingly, harbor this same animus. Not only is this a misplaced discontent, it’s also poisonous. Long-term anger is a toxic motivation.

How do we address such misguided thought? What is more powerful in the public imagination, and thus the beliefs and attitudes of the American people: a polemic or academic argument in book or documentary form, or a great movie with popular actors? There is obviously an important place for the former, but the latter has a much more powerful, immediate and even long-term affect on real people in everyday life.

Here’s what I’m looking for: Someone to write an historical novel that will be made into a blockbuster movie about what the history of the last two hundred might have looked like without the compromise with slavery that made the United States of America possible. Some, maybe many, maybe most on the left would cheer no United States of America, and a left-wing vision of such a place would of course be idealistic and bear no semblance to reality.

In fact without that compromise there would likely have been no Louisiana Purchase, or no Missouri Compromise. There almost certainly would have been no Civil War and thus slavery would have continued throughout the 19th Century and maybe longer on the continent. Much of the southwest and California would likely be Mexico, and maybe much of the Midwest and northwest Canada. However the west was settled the Indians would still probably have gotten a raw deal. There would have been no America to come to the rescue of the allies in WWI, or to help defeat the Nazis and Japanese in WWII. And the Soviet Union would most likely still exist.

The case could be made artistically that the world would be a much less friendly and prosperous place without the United States of America, drastically much less friendly. Most normal, non-leftwing Americans know and believe this already. But the left still gets away with staying stupid stuff like Whoopi did. Most students in our public schools and universities get anti-American propaganda right in line with Whoopi’s sentiments every day. Not to mention everywhere else in popular culture. A great work of popular fiction would reveal the utter tendentious stupidity of such sentiments and one day possibly even make them much less prevalent.

There have been many great books and movies about the founding of America, like the wonderful John Adams series recently on HBO. Most Americans love this country and its founding, which is why Democrats, the party of the left, are often on the defensive about their patriotism.

But no one in any imaginative, and surely no popular way has challenged the left on this fundamental assumption of their worldview, that somehow America would be better or even exist if the founders had not compromised with the South. That the world would be a better place either way. It wouldn’t. So we need someone to step up the plate and get to writing.

Any takers?

Mike D'Virgilio is Founder and Executive Director of the The Culture Project http://thecultureproject.org/