>The left does not have a post-racial utopia to offer, but a tribalized society of identity groups that cannot possibly get along, and that can only be held together by totalitarian force. The left was and continues to be, the party of control. The greatest conceit in human history is the notion that one person can determine what makes other people happy. The Declaration of Independence said ‘the pursuit of’ for a reason. When people talk about ‘happiness indexes,’ they are not talking about happiness. They are talking about control. The CO2-free utopia the left promises ⏤ should we stop using fossil fuels ⏤ does not exist, and nor does the apocalyptic future the left claims will occur if we continue using fossil fuels. The truth is that the cost of fossil fuel use is infinitesimally small when compared to the costs of everything proposed to get us off fossil fuels, whereas wealth is impossible without abundant cheap and reliable energy ⏤ which you can only have if you use fossil fuels. Climate alarmism is not about the climate at all ⏤ it is about control. The difference between inclusion and equity sounds small, but it is actually an insurmountable chasm. These words are essentially opposites ⏤ you cannot possibly have both. Inclusion means everyone gets a shot ⏤ that there are no artificial barriers holding anyone back. An inclusive society allows everyone to go as far as they can. Equity means that everyone gets the same outcome, which can only be accomplished by creating artificial barriers to hold back those who would otherwise be successful. Inclusion allows failure, but it also allows success, and failing once does not mean failing all the time, whereas equity sacrifices success in order to avoid failure. Without any opportunity to succeed, there is also no incentive to produce, so until someone figures out a way to distribute that which is not produced, equity will always be a path to starvation. But who truly wants equity? Nancy Pelosi and her $60,000 ice cream freezer? Bernie Sanders and his six houses? AOC, who makes more than 95% of Americans and complains about how little she is paid? There are of course people who truly believe in building an equitable society, but everyone in a position of power who wants equity also finds excuses to exclude themselves from it. If everyone is equally poor except the leadership, that is not equity ⏤ it is serfdom. As such, equity is not about making people equal. It is about control. There are two basic kinds of societies, and every society on Earth fits in somewhere between these two extremes: 1) Each person owns their own productive capacity and can do with it as they wish, and 2) The productive capacities of all people are the property of some elite group, and the elite can use the productive capacity of the people however the elite wish. The pyramids were built with the second kind of society, as was the Soviet Union. Europe used the second kind of society until it ended serfdom (which in the case of Russia was not until 1861). The plantation system of the Antebellum South ran on the second system. Even in the Northern states, slavery existed at the founding of our nation. In 1780, Pennsylvania became the first state to end slavery ⏤ four years after the Declaration of Independence declared that ‘all men are created equal, with certain unalienable rights’. It was in fact this very thought, embodied in a document written by a slave owner, that inspired Pennsylvania, and eventually the world to abolish slavery. Which of these two kinds of society was the United States upon its founding? The answer to that question probably depended on who you were when the United States was founded. For the majority of people, the United States was founded as the kind of society where each person owned their own productive capacity and was free to do with their productive capacity as they wished, but in 1790 19% of the US population was slaves. For them, this was not a free country at all. People like simple answers, so most people look at America’s history of slavery either by downplaying it, or by focusing solely on it. Neither is fair. True history is often more complicated. Take Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. He took one essentially as his second wife ⏤ and she had no say in the matter. He owned slaves his entire life, and did not free them when he died. At the same time, Thomas Jefferson was an abolitionist who in 1778 drafted a law in Virginia to ban the importation of slaves (it did not pass), and then in 1807 successfully banned the importation of slaves throughout the United States. The plantation system ran on debt. Plantation owners took out loans to fund the spring planting season, and then paid those loans off (if they were able) after the fall harvest. The primary sources of collateral were the slaves, and as a consequence, plantation owners could not legally free their slaves, even if they wanted to, unless they were able to get out of debt and build up enough wealth to fund a planting season without borrowing again. Even if a plantation owner could do all of that, freeing their slaves would mean having higher costs than other plantation owners, which would mean losing money and going out of business such that some other plantation owner could take their land and run it using slaves. Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner who abhorred slavery, but who understood that the economy of the Antebellum South ran on it, and that slavery could only be abolished by banning it outright – and in the Antebellum South, the political will to do that just did not exist. Thomas Jefferson’s history with slavery is complicated, as is the nation’s. Just as with climate alarmism, with the ability to define ‘happiness’ for other people, and with the notion of ‘equity’, slavery was about control. Understanding our history with slavery is imperative to understand what kind of a nation our founders aspired for us to be, and we have to get that understanding right if we are ever going to build a better society for our children. Far from being the nation that created slavery ⏤ as many today seem to believe ⏤ the founding of the United States began the process of ending slavery throughout the world. Before Thomas Jefferson wrote the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” slavery was so common and considered so normal, everywhere on Earth, that it had not even occurred to any society to consider ending it, but as soon as people read, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they began to ask, “what about the slaves?” The Declaration of Independence started the conversation that ended slavery. Our founding principles also caused the fastest rate of growth in per capita GDP, and in the working and living conditions of the working class, in human history. If it were true that our country was built on slavery, or that slavery is the cause of our wealth today, then the rates of growth in slave-holding states would have exceeded that of free states, and yet ALL of the growth ⏤ the fastest growth in human history ⏤ was in free States. Slave-holding states had zero per capita GDP growth. Zero, as in ‘nada,’ or ‘none’. As crazy as it is to think about, the United States had the fastest rate of growth in per capita GDP when a large portion of the country had no per capita GDP growth at all. Far from propelling those states into wealth and riches, slavery was an albatross around the Antebellum South’s collective neck. Slavery was NOT the cause of America’s wealth. Freedom was. Note that ALL of the per capita GDP growth in the South occurred after the Civil War, and that though the South has made great strides in that growth, overall the South is still poorer than the North, even today. That is because of its history with slavery. The North was about freedom, and the South was about control. Had the Civil War been fought in 1800, the South would have won. It was because the people in the Northern States were truly free that their economy exploded, and by the 1860s the North was able to defeat the South. The left does not have a post-racial utopia to offer, but a tribalized society of identity groups that cannot possibly get along, and that can only be held together by totalitarian force. The left was and continues to be, the party of control.