1/ It has become common in recent years to quote Frederick Douglass's great 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Douglass was scathing in denouncing white Americans of his day who were complicit in slavery while celebrating liberty.
teachingamericanhistory.org/library/docume…
2/ Yet Douglass insisted that while the Founders may have been flawed, they were also heroic: "The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men," he said. "It does not often happen to a nation to raise at one time such a number of truly great men."
3/ "They were statesmen, patriots and heroes," Douglass said of those who signed the Declaration in 1776. "They loved their country better than their own private interests.… Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country."
4/ Nor did Douglass regard the Constitution as a hypocritical pact with slavery: "In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT."
5/ "I do not despair of this country," Douglass said. He knew that "the doom of slavery is certain," thanks to "the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions."

Douglass hated slavery, but he deeply loved America.

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More from @Jeff_Jacoby

17 Feb 20
Each #PresidentsDay I write a column about a 19th-century president most Americans never learn about in school. This year's topic: Zachary Taylor, a war-hero-turned-president. His death just 16 months into his term may have made the Civil War inevitable.
bit.ly/2vxdFrW
For #PresidentsDay 2019, I wrote about Benjamin Harrison.
He had perhaps the noblest political lineage in US history and was a highly gifted speaker. Yet in person he was highly off-putting — even supporters called him "the human iceberg."
bit.ly/2BFhag9
In 2018 I described Chester Arthur, a hack who was named vice president to balance the ticket — only to become president when James Garfield was murdered. Amazingly, Arthur became a genuine reformer, turning against the spoils system he had long embraced.
bit.ly/2ttgm9r
Read 7 tweets
1 Sep 19
World War II began 80 years ago this month, when Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union collaborated in the invasion of Poland.
The two totalitarian powers were allies for nearly two years. In that time the Nazis conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland & France, and bombed much of London into rubble.
During the same period, the USSR invaded Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and waged terrible war against Finland.
Read 4 tweets
17 May 19
Just 10 days shy of his 104th birthday, the great American novelist Herman Wouk — and my former shul-mate — has died.
bit.ly/2w5KM32
Herman Wouk "indelibly & wonderfully changed my life," I wrote in my newsletter, Arguable—and not just by writing such brilliant works as "The Caine Mutiny" and "The Winds of War." I am blessed every day because of the impact of this great American Jew.
bit.ly/2tlQKuz
The two greatest influences on *his* life, Herman Wouk used to say, were his grandfather, who taught him to study Talmud, and the US Navy, in which he enlisted during World War II.

Wouk's Navy years live on in "The Caine Mutiny." His Torah study is deathless in a different way.
Read 4 tweets
12 May 19
No, @RashidaTlaib, Palestinian Arabs did not provide "save haven" for Jews. They assaulted & murdered Jews, urged on by their leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, an admirer and ally of Adolf Hitler.

bit.ly/2VT7x8U
In 1929, Palestinian Arabs broke into the yeshiva in Hebron, murdering every student they found there. Then they lynched Jews in the streets. When the town's rabbi tried to shelter frightened Jews in his home, the Arab mob attacked and killed him and his family.
A week after the Hebron massacre, Arabs in Safed launched a new pogrom. There was "a systematic slaughter of the Jews," wrote a British eyewitness. "The inhumanity of the attack was beyond conception. Women were gashed in the chest, babies were cut [and] old people were killed."
Read 7 tweets
18 Feb 19
For #PresidentsDay, how about some presidential history? Each year I devote a column to a 19th-century chief executive you probably never learned about in high school.

My subject this year: Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States.

bit.ly/2BFhag9
Last year, I wrote about Chester Alan Arthur, a sleazy pol who became president by accident — and turned, against all expectations, into a conscientious and honest reformer.

bit.ly/2ttgm9r
My 2017 column told the story of Millard Fillmore, a wretched president given to conspiracy theories, ethnic bigotry, and anti-Catholic prejudice — and unwilling to to do anything to condemn the spread of slavery.

bit.ly/2SavkuS
Read 6 tweets
13 Jan 19
Like all federal judges, #RBG has a lifetime appointment and can't be compelled to retire. But she's 85. She's had three occurrences of cancer. Should she really be clinging to a seat on the most powerful court in the land? We badly need an amendment to limit SCOTUS terms.
The problem of life tenure on the Supreme Court has been growing more and more apparent.

In July 2005, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 80, issued a statement denying "rumors of my imminent retirement." Two months later, he was dead of thyroid cancer.
As life expectancy has grown, and as the SCOTUS has become ever more powerful, justices are staying in office much longer than they used to. Charles Evans Hughes, who was chief justice from 1930 to 1941, found it "extraordinary how reluctant aged judges are to retire."
Read 10 tweets

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