Tag: slavery

REALLY? MSNOW Guest Suggests the Second Amendment Was About ‘Slave Patrols’

Left wing author Malcolm Gladwell recently appeared on MSNOW’s ‘Morning Joe’ and suggested that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees American citizens the right to bear arms, was really written about slave patrols.

He spends much of the segment complaining about the Supreme Court, which he says has been ‘a significant impediment’ in the left’s pursuit of gun control.

The most amazing thing is that what he is saying here is treated as completely normal by the hosts, who do not interrupt or correct him in any way.

Transcript via NewsBusters:

MIKE BARNICLE, MS NOW CONTRIBUTOR: What do you say about a culture, American culture, that when a disease is identified and it’s threatening and it’s killing people, you can talk about from the inception of polio vaccines through AIDS, we — we react, we find — we find a cure almost immediately. People feel relieved. Guns have been killing Americans on the streets for decades — decades. And there’s nothing we can do.

GLADWELL: Yeah. I mean, here I have two chapters in the book on the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has been a significant impediment here. They have — the last two major gun rulings — in the Bruen case and the Heller case — are abominations. And I had — I actually have fun with them because in both of those cases, the court plays historian and plays linguist, because in the Heller case, of course, Scalia famously.

And the — and the fellow justices try to make sense of the grammatical convolution that is the Second Amendment, which, if you read, makes — no one would ever write that sentence today. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s commas everywhere. There’s this weird initial what’s called an initial being clause. Does it modify the main clause? And all of these linguists lined up and told the court, “Okay, here’s how people in the 18th century used an initial being clause — here’s how James Madison used that clause. Here’s what James Madison meant.” What he meant was, we’re talking about militias here, and by militias he meant slave patrols, right? And the court had no interest.

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German Students on Strike Against Mandatory Military Service

German youth do not feel like going to war for their Globalist overlords.

We have been reporting here on TGP about how the lust for rearmament has befallen Europe in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

As is usually the case, Germany is one of the most engaged countries in this process.

In order to have sufficient manpower to make the Bundeswehr a formidable fighting force, Berlin is floating the idea of reinstating the compulsory military service.

Read: POWDER KEG EUROPE: German Men Now Have to Ask the Army for Permission to Leave the Country for More Than Three Months

But before such decisions are even implemented, students and teachers across the country are going on strike to protest against the possible reintroduction of the draft.

BBC reported:

“One of the organizers of the strike, Bela Breitner, from School Strike Against Compulsory Military Service said the federal government was ‘serious about gradually reintroducing compulsory military service’.

At one protest in Hamburg, demonstrators waved flags and held up banners emblazoned with the words ‘We won’t take part in your wars’.”

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How War Propaganda Justifies Conscription into Unjust Wars

Conscription is a form of indentured servitude. Murray Rothbard argued that everyone has a natural right to self-defense, but “we have no moral right to use coercion—the bayonet or the revolver—to force someone else to defend us.”

Rothbard argued that if we want men to stand in our defense, “the way to induce people to volunteer for hazardous jobs is to pay them extra as compensation.” And yet, instead of offering a wage that would reward men who sign up willingly, governments rely on force to press conscripts into service. The conscript is,

. . .seized by the authorities and inducted into the armed forces. There his body and will are no longer his own: he is subject to the dictates of the government; and he can be forced to kill and to place his own life in jeopardy if the authorities so decree.

This debate recently returned to public attention when it was reported that the United Kingdom is reconsidering conscription due to what the UK government sees as escalating hostilities with Russia.

Campaigners are protesting over the prospect of conscription returning amid mounting Russian threats against Britain. A coalition of 13 British peace and faith organisations has launched a petition demanding the Government rule out military conscription, or any compulsory form of national service involving the armed forces. . . There is currently no conscription in Britain, although concerns about World War 3 have fuelled renewed discussions on how the armed forces could be expanded.

For conscription to be even remotely tolerable by the public, it is, at the very least, necessary for warmakers to persuade the public that the war is just, and worth fighting. Otherwise, people are likely to revolt, as happened in New York when the Enrollment Act of March 1863 drafted men to fight Lincoln’s war.

On July 11, 1863 the first names for induction into the army were called. The next day, New York erupted into some of the most violent riots in American history. The office of the provost marshal—charged with enforcing the draft—was burned, railroad lines were destroyed, and telegraph lines cut. . . . Over one hundred people died in the rioting, thousands were wounded, and thousands of African Americans fled New York.

This attempt to corral New Yorkers into the war against their will followed soon after the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863. The implication, following the Proclamation, was that what had started out as a politically-driven war to save the Union was now a moral crusade to free the slaves of the South—surely a just cause! But very few were convinced. John M. Taylor observes that, under the Enrollment Act of 1863,

Wealthy Northerners could either fight or pay a $300.00 exemption from the draft. The Irish, mostly coming from meager circumstances, typically lacked the funds to buy exemptions. Whereas large numbers of wealthy Southerners fought, few wealthy Northerners did. William Tecumseh Sherman alluded to this, stating, “that without conscription there would have been no way to ‘separate the sheep from the goats and demonstrate what citizens will fight and what will only talk.’”

The Emancipation Proclamation was not seen by the draftees as moral justification to fight. For one, the Proclamation belied its own moral authority by failing to free all slaves and only purporting to free those under Confederate control. Freeing only the slaves of one’s enemies, almost two years into the war, marked the Proclamation as a war measure rather than a humanitarian edict.

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How the British Crown profited directly from human trafficking

The question of slavery and reparations has recently returned to the center of international debate, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean. The conference held in Ghana on reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, as well as the petition filed by a Jamaican delegation to the British king, engaged in the struggle for historical recognition. The debate has also been brought into sharper focus by an investigation published by The Guardian, which examined the involvement of the British monarchy in the system of slavery and the historical links between the Crown and the trafficking of Africans.

Taken together, the developments raise a fundamental question: How can the British monarchy and the British state genuinely address a past in which the Crown was directly connected to the economic and political structures of slavery?

There are symbols that, on their own, encapsulate centuries of history. A crown branded with a red-hot iron onto the skin of an enslaved human being is one of them. It was a real, documented practice carried out by the South Sea Company, directly supported by the British monarchy during the reign of Queen Anne.

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Jamaica demands Britain pay billions in slavery reparations

Jamaica wants £10 billion from Britain for slavery reparations. Ezra Levant has a response on Tuesday’s Ezra Levant Show. It’s not £10 billion. It’s one coin.

“Two men, a European and an African, standing face to face, shaking hands,” Ezra described, holding up the medal. Around the edge: “We are all brethren.” Underneath: “Slave Trade Abolished by Great Britain, 1807.”

Flip it over and the other side isn’t English. It’s Arabic. “Sale of slaves prohibited in 1807 Christian era, in the reign of George III. Verily we are all brothers.” Why Arabic? Because of who was selling the slaves.

“The way this is taught now, you’d think slavery was invented by Englishmen in the 1600s. It wasn’t,” Ezra said. “Slavery is as old as civilization. It’s in the Torah, the laws of Moses regulated. It’s in the New Testament. It’s in the Quran. Every one of those books treats slavery the way we treat the weather, a permanent fixture of the world, to be managed, not abolished.”

What had never happened before in human history, he argued, was a group of people deciding it was wrong and acting on it. “Overwhelmingly, evangelical Christians. Wilberforce, Clarkson, the Clapham sect.” 

“The moral code of the entire world changed, and it changed because of them,” he said.

“Here’s the part they don’t teach you in school,” Ezra said. “The Atlantic slave trade ran for about 350 years. The Arab slave trade ran for about 1,300 years. It started in the 7th century and it didn’t stop until the 20th. In fact, in some parts it still lives.” He cited Ronald Segal’s book Islam’s Black Slaves, which puts the total at “somewhere between 11 and 14 million souls.”

“There’s a reason there is no large black population in Arabia today, the way there is in Brazil or Jamaica or Alabama,” he continued. “Most of the men were castrated. Most of those died. The ones who lived were sold as eunuchs at seven times the price of a man who hadn’t been cut.”

The medal, Ezra explained, was written in Arabic precisely because of who it was directed at.

“When the Royal Navy showed up on the coast of West Africa in 1808 to enforce the new law,” he said, “the men marching slaves down to the beach to sell them to the ships were very often Muslim slave traders from the interior, men who read Arabic. That is who this medal was for.”

The museum says plainly it was intended to deter Arab-speaking African traders from sending slave caravans to the coast. “It’s not a souvenir. It’s not actually money. It’s a warning.”

Britain backed that warning with a navy. The West Africa Squadron patrolled for 60 years, capturing roughly 1,600 slave ships and freeing about 150,000 Africans at a cost of approximately 1,600 British lives.

Two University of Chicago academics calculated the bill. “They found the campaign against these slave ships cost Britain about 1.8% of its national income, of its GDP, every year for 60 years,” Ezra said.

“You know, NATO’s target for a country’s entire military is 2% of GDP. Canada’s not even at 2%. Britain spent nearly that amount for two generations just on other people’s freedom and got nothing back except a lot of dead British sailors.”

Then in 1833, Parliament abolished slavery itself across the British Empire. Eight hundred thousand people freed. And Britain did something no other country has done: it paid for it. “The slave owners got 20 million pounds. That was about 40% of the entire national budget that year.” 

The loan, arranged by Nathan Rothschild and Moses Montefiore, wasn’t paid off until February 1, 2015. “If you paid tax in Britain before 2015, you were still paying for the end of slavery, literally paying for it.” Measured as a share of the economy, the economic historians at Measuring Worth put that at roughly £133 billion in today’s money — “about $250 billion Canadian dollars. A quarter of a trillion dollars was borrowed by the UK to buy the freedom of other people.”

Against all of that, Ezra turned to the reparations push now underway. The Caribbean reparations commission hired the Brattle Group, which produced a number: $24 trillion US. “Trillion with a T. That’s roughly seven times the size of the entire British economy.” 

In March, the UN General Assembly voted 123 to 3 declaring the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity and urging reparations — “the transatlantic trade, mind you, not the Arab one, which ran four times as long.”

Nobody, Ezra noted, is asking Saudi Arabia, which kept slaves until 1962, or Oman, until 1970, or the descendants of the African kings who sold the captives. “They’re just asking Britain — the one country that spent 60 years and 2% of its economy stopping it.”

“No force in human history has done more to free the slaves, to stop the slave trade, and to enforce that ban around the world than the United Kingdom,” Ezra said, reiterating it took “60 years of its Royal Navy” and “a loan that took 180 years to pay off.”

He held up the coin one more time. “This little piece of bronze is what it looked like on the ground. A handshake, three words, and a sentence in Arabic. And so the men who’d been doing it for a thousand years would understand, it’s over. We are all brethren. They meant it.”

“Do you think anyone would strike a medal like this today?”

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Israeli-Ukrainian Man on Jewish Pilgrimage to Uman Is Captured by Kiev’s Man-Catchers and Forcibly Conscripted into the Army

From a religious pilgrimage directly to the front.

We have been reporting here on TGP on the absolute tragedy that is the forced conscription in Ukraine (also called ‘busification’).

Every day, new videos arise of man-catchers forcibly drafting men to fight and die for the Kiev regime.

Unlike in the early days of the war, when people lined up to fight, now no one is up to be sent to Volodymyr Zelensky’s meat grinder.

Those who haven’t fled Ukraine either live hidden inside their homes or else risk being caught and sent to the front lines.

Yesterday, it arose that a 49-year-old Hassidic Jew from Betar Illit, a father of six, was captured at the Ukraine-Romania border crossing.

The man was returning to Israel after a pilgrimage to spend Rosh Hashanah in the city of Uman, but was snatched and drafted into the Ukrainian army.

The Jerusalem Post reported:

“Jonathan Karlinsky Mashak from Jerusalem, a 49-year-old married ba’al teshuva who studies at a yeshiva, was born in Ukraine and immigrated to Israel about 14 years ago.

He was traveling on a bus operated by the ‘Derech Tzadikim’ company and was carrying an Israeli passport stating that he was born in the Soviet Union. However, according to a friend who was traveling with him on the bus, border officials identified him as also being a Ukrainian citizen after hearing him speak Ukrainian.”

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Democrat Jon Ossoff Staffer Embraced Reparations in Gates Foundation Grant Study He Coauthored

Georgia Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff’s data and analytics director received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study how to shame white Americans into embracing reparations.

A summary of the grant reads as follows:

Racially restrictive housing covenants – used by white homeowners to prevent migration of people of color into their neighborhoods – contributed to contemporary patterns of residential segregation, social stratification, and inequality. Yet, policy proposals to correct these historical wrongs have not gained broad support. Political scientist Bryant Moy will investigate whether awareness of racially restrictive housing covenants bolsters support for reparations. He will conduct a nationally representative survey experiment for his study.

Bryant Moy, who has been hired to Ossoff’s campaign ahead of the 2026 midterm election, also serves as an associate professor at New York University.

Additionally, he is a principal investigator at the Urban Politics Lab, where his biography states in part:

He studies urban and local politics, with a focus on racial inequality, local governance, and public opinion. His research uses large-scale datasets, survey and field experiments, and modern methods of causal inference to understand how local institutions produce—or undermine—equity and democratic responsiveness in multiracial communities.

Moy explains on his personal website that he wants to fix white Americans’ lack of support for reparations.

“Public support for reparations among white Americans remains divided…  This study examines whether informational and visual interventions that present the structural roots of racial inequality can increase support for reparative policies,” an explanation on his website of one of his studies outlines.

The study, titled “Can Knowledge of Racially Restrictive Covenants Increase Support for Redress?”  is listed as “under review.”

In August, a Fox News report unearthed a 2019 interview in which Ossoff himself said he supports reparations, saying “there is a debt unpaid.”

In the exchange, Ossoff agreed with paying reparations: “There is a debt unpaid. I think it is a very, very difficult question: how to pay it,” he said.

“But see, that should be the question — not if it should be paid,” the host responded.

“Exactly,” Ossoff replied.

The Fox News report added that far-left progressive groups like Movement for Back Lives (M4BL) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have made reparations a part of their platforms.

In the 2019 interview, Ossoff also said, “Forty acres and a mule was never paid out,” but has declined to sponsor Democrat Sen. Cory Booker’s legislation to establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals.

That bill, introduced most recently on January 9, 2025, has 20 cosponsors, all of whom are Democrats with the exception of Independent Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats. The list includes Sens. Mazie Hirono (HI), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Adam Schiff (CA), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI).

Ossoff faces Republican Rep. Mike Collins in November. Polls have shown Ossoff with a steady, but somewhat declining lead. Outgoing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has formally endorsed Collins.

“Jon Ossoff’s far-left agenda doesn’t represent Georgia values, and the future of our state and country demands a different direction,” Kemp said in a statement.

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Democrat Nominee for GA Governor Keisha Lance Bottoms: Black Women Conditioned into ‘Post-Traumatic Slave Mentality’

Black women are conditioned into a “post-traumatic slave mentality,” Democratic nominee for Georgia governor Keisha Lance Bottoms claims.

Speaking during the women’s event Radiant Conversations, Bottoms said, “As black women, we are conditioned. Girl, you can’t depend on anybody else. If you don’t do it for yourself, ain’t nobody else gonna do it for you.”

“And in many ways, that is a post-traumatic slave mentality,” Bottoms claimed. “That it is – it is not just on our backs. That this is a burden that we can all carry. It’s a win for all of us. And so it is just remembering that this is a sisterhood, that this is about community. It’s not about going fast.”

Bottoms continued: “It’s about taking others with you, and I’m just – I’m so grateful to have learned those lessons and to be able to apply them in this season.”

Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta and former senior advisor to former President Joe Biden, is hoping to become the Peach State’s next governor and has stated she will put President Donald Trump up to Biden’s record, asserting the former president “delivered” for Georgia.

“I will put Biden up against Trump’s record any day of the week, especially in the way he delivered for Georgia,” she said during an appearance on CNN’s OutFront.

She continued, adding, “The people of Georgia are talking about the cost of living. They’re talking about grocery costs. They’re talking about healthcare costs, 500,000 people in this state opted not to get healthcare after the big, ugly bill. Those are the things that people care about.”

Notably, Bottoms made her anti-Trump position abundantly clear when she announced her intention to run for governor in Georgia, deeming the commander-in-chief a “disaster for our economy and our country — from his failure to address rising prices to giving an unelected billionaire the power to cut Medicare and Social Security.”

“Donald Trump is no laughing matter,” she said. “Well, My grandmama taught me, no matter how hard they swing you never stay down. You fight back. That’s why I’m running for governor, because Georgia families deserve far better than what Donald Trump and Republicans are giving us.”

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Germany to Assist Zelensky’s Man Hunt

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has now suggested that Germany could provide Kyiv with information on Ukrainian men of military age living inside Germany. His words were revealing: “We know who lives here.” Of course they do. The government knows who receives benefits, who has registered an address, and who holds a residence permit. These men escaped Ukraine believing Europe was offering them sanctuary from a war. Now Germany is openly discussing using the information collected on those refugees to help Zelensky’s government find them.

Wadephul claims nobody should be sent back “under coercion.” Wonderful. Then why does Kyiv need their information? Ukraine already prevents most military-age men subject to mobilization rules from simply leaving the country, subject to various exemptions, because Zelensky desperately needs bodies for the front. We have all seen reports of the forced mobilization confrontations inside Ukraine. Men have been stopped in public places and confronted by recruitment officers while videos of violent encounters have circulated for years. Kyiv has repeatedly tightened mobilization because it cannot manufacture young men the way Europe can manufacture another billion euros.

Now the net may be expanding beyond Ukraine. The European Commission has already proposed that Ukrainian men who were not legally permitted to leave because of military obligations should not automatically receive temporary protection if they arrive in the EU. Think about what that means. Europe spent years proclaiming that Ukrainians were fleeing for their lives and that Europe had a moral obligation to protect them. Apparently that promise comes with an expiration date if Zelensky needs more men.

This is why I have called them cannon fodder. Zelensky is not going to the front. The politicians in Brussels are not going to the front. Their sons are not being grabbed and sent into trenches. They sit behind desks talking about defending democracy “for as long as it takes” because somebody else’s children are doing the dying. Ukraine has a manpower problem that another weapons package cannot solve. You can print money. You can manufacture artillery shells. You cannot print another generation of Ukrainian men.

Wadephul was simultaneously complaining that Ukraine was not buying enough weapons from German manufacturers. Germany sends billions to Ukraine, Ukraine buys weapons, and now Germany discusses helping Kyiv locate military-age Ukrainian men. The defense industry gets another customer, politicians get another speech about democracy, and some Ukrainian kid gets a rifle and a trench. This is what war looks like when the people running it have absolutely no personal risk whatsoever.

Many of these men went to Germany precisely because they wanted nothing to do with this insanity. They were promised safety in Europe. They established homes, found jobs, registered with governments, and trusted that the information they provided would be used to administer their residency rather than potentially assist Kyiv in contacting them over military service. Now those same databases could become useful to the government they escaped. You cannot call yourself a sanctuary and then start discussing handing over information on the refugees when their government needs more soldiers.

The neocons wanted their proxy war against Russia, and Europe went along with it like obedient fools. Every failed strategy required another weapons package. Every battlefield setback required another billion. Every shortage of soldiers required another mobilization. Nobody in government ever admits the policy itself has failed. They simply demand more money, more weapons, and eventually more human beings.

Europe should be demanding negotiations before another generation of Ukrainians is destroyed. Instead, politicians who promised to save Ukraine are reaching the point where they may help Zelensky locate the very Ukrainian men who fled the slaughter. Today Wadephul tells us there will be no coercion. Fine. Remember those words. Governments always begin by saying something is voluntary. The moment the manpower crisis becomes desperate enough, the definition of “voluntary” has a remarkable tendency to change.

This is no longer about saving Ukraine. You do not save a nation by bleeding its young men dry. You do not defend freedom by trapping men inside their own country and then looking abroad for those who escaped. Zelensky needs bodies because this war has consumed an entire generation, and the European political establishment refuses to admit that its strategy has failed. They promised these men refuge. Now they know their names, they know where they live, and they are discussing helping Kyiv reach them. If that does not disturb you, then you have learned absolutely nothing from history.

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Mapped: Lifetime Taxes in Every U.S. State

How much money do you have to pay in taxes over a lifetime?

This visualization maps the estimated lifetime tax bill for a single filer in every U.S. state, including federal and state income taxes, as well as sales, property, and vehicle taxes.

The data for this visualization comes from Self Financial, with estimates as of June 2026.

The analysis assumes a 45-year working life with constant earnings and tax rates, a life expectancy of 79.6 years, homeownership beginning at age 40, and ownership of five vehicles over a lifetime.

New Jersey Tops the Ranking

New Jersey has the highest estimated lifetime tax bill in the country at $1.36 million.

Massachusetts follows at nearly $1.30 million, while Connecticut ranks third at $1.25 million. New Hampshire and New York round out the top five, highlighting the Northeast’s strong presence near the top of the ranking.

Florida Has the Lowest Lifetime Tax Bill

At the other end of the ranking, Florida has the lowest estimated lifetime tax bill at $508,980.

Florida’s lower total is helped by the absence of a state individual income tax, reducing the tax burden that residents pay on their earnings over time.

South Dakota is next at $515,732, followed by Arkansas at $517,942 and Oklahoma at $526,333. Together, the four lowest-ranked states have estimated lifetime tax bills ranging from about $509,000 to $526,000.

States in the Middle of the Pack

Several large states fall closer to the middle of the ranking. Texas has an estimated lifetime tax bill of $615,932, while Georgia comes in at $655,532 and Arizona at $698,824. Pennsylvania ranks higher at $835,067, putting it well above these states but still below the million-dollar mark.

Having no state individual income tax does not necessarily translate into a low overall lifetime tax bill. Washington, for example, ranks 16th at $816,217, above many states that levy an individual income tax. The estimates also account for federal income, property, sales, and vehicle taxes.

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