58 thoughts on “No, Michelle”

  1. I’m not even sure why the narrative was brought up at a Graduation Ceremony other than to take a dig at the Founding Fathers of the United States. I guess Michelle needing everyone to notice the chip on her shoulder.

  2. So, Michelle Obama, was the White House built by slaves? Parts of the original, yes, but you aren’t living in the original.

    What an odd argument. By that standard any building that has ever been renovated was no longer built by the original workmen.

    Enslaved black Americans helped build the original White House, and some of the work they did remains to this day. It is not a completely new building. It’s totally accurate to refer to it as having been built by slaves.

        1. It was just a political dig because she thinks Trump hates immigrants despite being married to one.

          The deliberate misportrayal about the distinction between legal and illegal immigration is just as, if not more, nasty as anything Trump has said. How long have these slanders been going on?

          The implicit insult here is one against Trump’s heritage. It is the same as the overt attack regularly made by Hillary, Sanders, and the rest of the Democrats that as a nation of immigrants, anyone who isn’t for open borders isn’t a real American and is racist. Michelle is saying that Trump’s family immigrated but he isn’t a real American, he doesn’t follow the dream, because he doesn’t support open borders. It is very similar to an accusation of being a race traitor.

          Why bring Trump’s heritage into this? Isn’t that supposed to be explicitly racist? Or does it depend on who does it? None of us should ever make fun of someone’s heritage, unless they are white and/or their family name used to be Drumph.

      3. So, to recap:

        * Michelle Obama makes a factual statement
        * A blogger responds with a bizarre claim that renovated buildings cease to have been built by their original builders
        * You post a link to said big post, scolding Mrs. Obama for making a false claim
        * I point out that Mrs. Obama’s statement is true
        * You ask “Even if it was, what was her point?”

        I think the context makes her point pretty clear, though you’d have to ask her to be sure. What I want to know is: what was your point, in making such a bogus objection to her true statement?

          1. You know that it’s a bogus objection, which is why you fell back on “Even if true.” The White House was built by slaves. Michelle Obama lives in the White House. QED.

          2. The White House the Obama’s live in was built in the 20th Century nearly 90 years after slavery ended. Jim, your and Michelle’s claims otherwise are what’s bogus.

          3. The White House the Obama’s live in was built in the 20th Century

            Nope. The White House was not built in the 20th century. If a school history quiz asked “in what century was the White House built?”, 20th would be marked incorrect.

          4. If a school history quiz

            That’s because public schools in the era of Obama are poor.

            Since, the link was already provided to back up my point; Jim’s rebuttal is rather hollow.

    2. Jim,

      It’s totally accurate to say some portion of the exterior sandstone was cut and possibly delivered from quarry by slaves. But Scottish immigrants laid it under the supervision of an Irish architect.

      Other than the exterior shell, there is nothing else left of the original White House in the interior (non-West Wing) post 1949. Didn’t you read the article?

      If you want to credit slaves for the construction of the current White House, certainly, by the same logic, you must give credit to the British Crown for creation of the Declaration Of Independence…

      1. According to the White House Historical Association, “slaves quarried and cut the rough stone that was later dressed and laid by Scottish stonecutters to erect the walls of the Presidents House.” “Free and slave blacks burnt bricks used to line the stone walls in temporary ricks on the Presidents House grounds.” AFAIK, that stone and brick is still there: there wouldn’t be a White House without them.

        What’s funny is that usually people emphasize the historical continuity of famous buildings, because there’s a cachet to having stood the test of time, even with major renovations along the way. But in this case some feel the need to sever the present building from its origins, presumably to bury the role of slavery. I wonder if they’d raise the same objection to someone mentioning that the Capitol was built by slaves? It, too, has been extensively modified since it’s original construction, but we generally refer to its every incarnation as “the U.S. Capitol”, just as we refer to the White House as simply “the White House”, and not “the original White House” vs. “the post-1814 White House” vs. “the post-1952 White House”.

        by the same logic, you must give credit to the British Crown for creation of the Declaration Of Independence

        A poor analogy. The Crown did not create any part of the Declaration of Independence, and the Declaration has never been modified or renovated.

        1. In Jim’s world, the lumber yard “builds” homes. The iron miner “builds” skyscrapers.

          Then when the structure is gutted and rebuilt it out of different materials, the lumber yard and iron miner still gets credit.

          His ignorant gods have decreed it so, and they are never mistaken.

          1. If I direct you to go quarry and cut stone specifically for my house, you are among the people who built my house. If I direct you to come to my property and make bricks for my house, you are among the people who built my house. If I later gut the house and replace some but not all of your work, you are still among the people who built my house. This isn’t hard.

        2. temporary ricks

          Did you miss that part?

          The link under discussion does allow that slaves helped in the process of constructing the current White House but Michelle said they built it. Why does she want to strip other Americans of their contributions? She could have said the original White House.

          Either way it was a little sloppy but her aim wasn’t to be a historian but to use a commencement speech as a vessel for political attacks.

    3. Slavery of all ethnic groups has exists for as long as humans have. Some have even sold themselves into slavery. However, I’ve never owned a slave.

      Almost any politician will rent themselves out if the price is right… or those they control.

      1. There have been many societies with slaves, but there have only been a handful of slave societies, in which the entire society was dependent on slavery for economic survival. In relatively modern times I can only think of three: Brazil, the Caribbean and the U.S. South.

        1. The point is Michelle has no special place with regard to slavery and I am certainly not guilty of the slave trade (directly or indirectly.) She wins no points trying to lay guilt on others nor points for victimhood.

          It’s divisive for no purpose.

        2. in which the entire society was dependent on slavery for economic survival.

          I guess if you count spoils of war as being their main dependencey instead of slavery.

    4. What is odd is that something that happened over 200 years ago should be used to apply massive amounts of guilt upon, and therefrom extort concessions from people alive today who haven’t hurt anyone….who abhor slavery…..

      1. Even stranger is that the African American descendants of those that enslaved people hold it over the European descendants that fought a war to free the slaves!

        (It was primarily African Muslims enslaving other Africans)

        2. One side of the U.S. Civil War fought to preserve slavery. The other side fought to preserve the United States. The U.S. did not win the war in order to free slaves, it freed slaves to order to win the war.

          1. Jim, you know full-well that the continuation of slavery and the origin and prosecution of the Civil War are a lot more complicated than that. Are we to assess all of your other remarks on the strength of what you just said?

            By your reasoning, WW-II in the Pacific was not to liberate China from a conquering power committing atrocities against civilians but rather for the U.S. to get back its colonial territories (Philippines, Guam)? Really?

            It may not have been what U.S. soldiers, sailors, and Marines were “fighting for”, but the occupation of China sure as anything got us drawn into war with Japan. The goings on in China and how they were presented in the media sure as anything is ever sure influenced American public opinion, which led the Roosevelt Administration to place trade sanctions (oil and steel), which put the backs of the Imperial Japanese “against the wall”, which led to . . .

          2. The #1 motivation for war on the part of the South was the preservation of slavery. The #1 motivation for war on the part of the North was preservation of the Union. The goal of freeing the slaves motivated some of the individual participants — most notably the 200,000 blacks who enlisted — but it was not the primary motivator for the decision makers of either side.

          4. You can look at Lincolns own writings and see he was anti-slavery.

            The question is whether Lincoln (and the North in general) went to war to free the slaves. The answer is no. Here’s what he wrote to the abolitionist Horace Greeley in 1862:

            My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

            You also blithely ignore the massive abolitionist movement

            Yes, there was an abolitionist movement. But it did not have enough influence in Washington to make abolition the primary or even secondary war aim of the Union. The Union included slave states that continued to practice slavery. Congress did not pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing slavery until the very tail end of the war, and then only by a slim margin.

            The Civil War resulted in the end of slavery, but that wasn’t the goal of either side.

          6. The reason the South seceded is because part of the Republican platform was anti slavery.

            The 1860 Republican platform was that slavery should not be allowed in new states and territories. It wasn’t that the slaves in existing slave states should be freed, much less that they should be freed by force.

          7. In hole — dig deeper.

            Lincoln’s entire public stand — Lincoln/Douglas debates and all — was on the containment or restriction of slavery to those places it was already practiced. Leaders in the slave-state South stood on the principle of expansion of slavery into the Territories — acquired by the purchase of Louisiana, the incorporation of the Texas Republic, and the Mexican war. Depending on what sources you read, they may have had a kind of Manifest Destiny ambition to expand slavery into territories yet-to-be acquired, perhaps in Central or Latin America.

            Lincoln’s middle-road containment strategy was intended to have slavery gradually disappear over a very long time, very much an “evolution not revolution” stand from the language a century later.

            Once he has elected, the South could keep their slaves as far as the new President was concerned, but that was not good enough. They quickly seceded from the Union, which created a crisis for the new President, but that wasn’t even good enough. They then laid siege to Fort Sumter, a Federal facility, and then took its soldiers prisoner. All actions that were hard for Lincoln to ignore. Lincoln had already given up a lot of the advantage of quick, preemptive action in letting the Civil War come to him in order to maintain the moral high ground, a principle known to many of Rand’s fine readers.

            So technically, Lincoln did not have the North wage war with the South to end slavery because he was perfectly happy to have the South keep their slaves. But Lincoln’s goal was the eventual elimination of slavery through a containment policy, which the Southern leaders saw as an attack on their way of life, perhaps correctly viewing slave holding to be in an expand-or-die situation. So the South waged war on Lincoln, which was a direct consequence on Lincolns long-term vision of ending slavery.

            If a person cannot grasp this, how is one to give credibility to other certain pronouncements from that person?

          8. So technically, Lincoln did not have the North wage war with the South to end slavery because he was perfectly happy to have the South keep their slaves.

            Right.

            So the South waged war on Lincoln, which was a direct consequence on Lincolns long-term vision of ending slavery.

            Or, to put a finer point on it, a consequence of what they imagined to be Lincoln’s long-term vision. There is no indication that Lincoln ever envisioned forcing the South to give up their slaves; he hoped they would eventually be persuaded to give them up of their own accord, perhaps in exchange for compensation. But the South was unwilling to tolerate even limiting slavery’s expansion.

            If a person cannot grasp this, how is one to give credibility to other certain pronouncements from that person?

            Is this directed at me? What it is that I am not grasping, in your view?

      2. For the democrats, you as an individual don’t count. You’re group membership is what counts. And by their twisted reckoning European descent is “slave master” and dark skin is “victim of the European”. They are every bit as racist as they accuse the opposition of being.

        1. Unless you are a Democrat, then you are a good white. If you aren’t a Democrat, then you are responsible for all the sins any white person ever committed, even if you belong to a party or follow an ideology opposed to those historical sins.

    5. This is a pointless argument that she makes. It is designed by Progressives to dismiss anything the Founding Fathers did because they were all slave owners. The implication is that people will dismiss the Constitution as a relic of our slave-owning past.

      1. Yes, it is part of the effort to delegitimize the USA’s existence and to advocate for the fundamental transformation away from our founding ideals to implement socialism.

  3. “AmeriKKKa sux”, of course. It’s been her only point since her sociology undergraduate days.

  4. I do agree with the point Michelle used as a vessel for her political attack. The USA is a place where people of all colors and backgrounds come for opportunity and can succeed. This idea is the polar opposite of what we usually hear from Democrat politicians and activists.

    Had a Republican said this, our friends to the left would say its racist or to check your privilege or some such nonsense.

  5. I agree with FC:

    You can’t extort concessions from people who aren’ t made to feel guilty over sins that were committed 200 years ago by non-relatives.
    Or guilty over alleged racism today.

    The Progs never stop. They never let up. They constantly push and push the narrative – guilt, racism, evil, privilege and so on.

    Would that So-called conservatives pushed and explained the Conservative Proposition with half the vigor.

    The narrative got the Obama’s where they are today…why would they stop pushing it?

    1. Note, the narrative isn’t that Barack is a product of a rich white banker’s family, eventhough he is.

          1. She was a vice-president of a local bank that had lots of vice-presidents. They lived in a small apartment. Obama went to private school on scholarship. They weren’t poor and they weren’t rich.

          2. Obama went to private school on scholarship.

            Obama’s mother, child of his grandparents, got a doctorate in Anthropology. While Obama’s parents abandoned him to pursue their interest, the grandparents pulled strings to get their grandson into a prestigious preparatory school using other people’s money. This pretty much set the tone for the rest of Barack’s life of privilege.

        2. Nonsense Jim, Madelyn Dunham was a VP for the Bank of Hawaii. Her husband managed a furniture store. They could afford to put their daughter through college. They were “not rich” in the same way Hillary, advisor to Goldman Sachs, was poor in 2001.

          1. Even non-rich people could afford to send their children to the University of Hawaii in the 1960s. As it happens my wife attended the UH a decade after Ann Dunham, and even then it was so cheap ($500/term, I believe) that she could cover tuition with money from her summer job.

            The Dunham’s weren’t rich or poor, they were middle-class.

          2. College was cheaper before the creation of the federal Department of Education, but you digress.

            I do find it funny how progressives call the middle class one-percenters, but point out the bankers in their group, and suddenly they are poor people living on handouts.

  6. I would suggest that anyone commenting actually read the speech. It was as pro-American a speech as any given by a First Lady, filled with examples of American exceptionalism (“our singular American genius”, America is “the strongest, most vibrant, most prosperous nation on the planet”, and so on.) There were no explicit references to Trump, except in the form of boosterism for college grads who immigrated here, underwent hardship, and are now going to make something of themselves and in doing so, give back to this country, because that’s the story of America, a place that keeps getting better. Rah rah!

    1. It harkens to Zinn’s idea that America is only better because of those wonderful college kids in the 60s who dropped acid and smoked pot and ended racism. That is, America was racist and anti-diverse in the beginning, but now it’s great!

      That implies the Constitution and its ideals are just drivel because it was designed by racist white males.

    2. “our singular American genius”, America is “the strongest, most vibrant, most prosperous nation on the planet”, and so on.

      That’s not American exceptionalism. Neither of the Obama’s understand what that is, as he demonstrated with his comment about how the Greeks probably think they’re exceptional.

      1. First of all, my overall point was that Michelle Obama’s speech was very pro-American.

        About American exceptionalism, I took Michelle Obama’s words out of context. If you go back to the speech, you’ll see that she was indeed saying that “America’s singular genius” and our position as the most vibrant, etc was due to – and now I’ll quote the New World Encyclopedia’s entry on American Exceptionalism, which in turn quotes Alexis de Tocqueville regarding the phrase he coined as meaning ” the American idea of ‘nationality’ was ‘;different, based less on common history or ethnicity than on common beliefs.”

        http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/American_exceptionalism

        However, it is interesting to note that the Wikipedia (or more precisely, the people contributing to the relevant Wikipedia article) take a different position:


        American exceptionalism is one of three related ideas. The first is that the history of the United States is inherently different from other nations.[2] In this view, American exceptionalism stems from its emergence from the American Revolution, thereby becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called “the first new nation”[3] and developing a uniquely American ideology, “Americanism”, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy and laissez-faire for business. This ideology itself is often referred to as “American exceptionalism.”[4] Second is the idea that the US has a unique mission to transform the world. As Abraham Lincoln put it in the Gettysburg address (1863), Americans have a duty to see that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Third is the sense that its history and its mission give the United States a superiority over other nations.

        Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and other American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the U.S. is like the biblical “City upon a Hill”—a phrase evoked by British colonists to North America as early as 1630—and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.[5] The theme of superiority is a common target for attacks from critics.[4][6]

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

        Finally, I find it amusing that Donald Trump uses the phrase to mean “America is superior”, and he rejects the phrase:

        I don’t like the term. I’ll be honest with you. People say, “Oh he’s not patriotic.” Look, if I’m a Russian, or I’m a German, or I’m a person we do business with, why, you know, I don’t think it’s a very nice term. We’re exceptional; you’re not. First of all, Germany is eating our lunch. So they say, “Why are you exceptional. We’re doing a lot better than you.” I never liked the term. And perhaps that’s because I don’t have a very big ego and I don’t need terms like that. Honestly. When you’re doing business—I watch Obama every once in a while saying “American exceptionalism,” it’s [Trump makes a face]. I don’t like the term.

        1. Trump understands American exceptionalism even less than the Obamas do.

          And what it consists of is not simply common beliefs, but the nature of those beliefs: individualism, free minds, and free markets, i.e., classical liberalism. Concepts that are anathema to Barack Obama, who wants positive rights in the Constitution.

        2. Exceptionalism is based on a very simple concept. It’s not any of those other things. It is based on consent of the governed (which itself is not actually possible.)

          Americans are not subjects to an imperial body (though many try very hard to be exactly that.) They have inalienable and innumerable rights recognized as coming from god. Our rights do not come from government as they do from every other non exceptional country. Our rights can not be listed because they are w/o number.

          It is the presumption of liberty which too many are quick to abandon (and ridicule those that are not… according to Ben Franklin those ridiculers are not entitled to security or liberty.)

          1. Our rights do not come from government as they do from every other non exceptional country.

            Indeed. It was those concepts and the strong belief in them all that ended slavery in America. It is what MLK Jr. believed while Democrats were passing Jim Crow laws to control bathrooms. Today, we still have Democrats wanting to control every aspect of individual life, even down to where and how we use the restroom.

    3. I read it. The only time the Obama’s speak favorably of our nation’s founding is when it is used to attack others. The rest of the time, they use the founding as a source of illegitimacy, just like Jim did with the Civil War.

      There were no explicit references to Trump

      It was a blatant political attack against Trump.

  7. Well, I can understand her point–because, clearly, if Michelle and her husband–like Baghdad Jim himself– value anything, it’s liberty!
    Coerced labor–or coerced anything–is anathema to these heirs of Frederic Douglass!

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