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| Source:Reason Party- author James Baldwin debating William F. Buckley, at Oxford Union, in 1965. |
"James Baldwin vs. William F. Buckley (Part 3)"
From Reason Party
Back in the 1960s America was the land of the free the home of the brave. But for very few people with African-Americans being forced to essentially live in an authoritarian state. And live as servants to the majority of the population and not as free Americans. But where would America be without hundreds of years of free slave labor from the Africans that the European-Americans got by kidnapping them from Africa and brought over to America to work for free. It's one thing to pay illegal immigrants slave wages and pay them under the minimum wage. But that is still better than not being paid at all.
People especially on the Right in America always talk about wealth redistribution and transfers of wealth from wealthy people to the less-fortunate, as that is some type theft or something. But what about the hundreds of years of wealth redistribution that happened in North America from African’s to Europeans. Europeans living well and living wealthy and a big part of that having to do with the fact they got free labor from African slaves. That is the biggest redistribution from one people to another in American history.
This is not a debate about whether America is a great country or not, or what we stand for as a country and people is great or not. Probably only the Far-Left thinks we are not a great country with great people. And the Far-Right thinks that only they are great and represent the best of America.
This is a debate between James Baldwin and William Buckley, about whether the principles of what America is supposed to stand for and what we represent, the basic idea of individual freedom and does that benefit everyone or not. And the answer to that is of course it doesn’t, because we have so many Americans who simply don’t live in freedom, but subsidize Americans who do.
