Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Feds Make Juneteenth a National Holiday
The US Congress passed a resolution yesterday by huge, bipartisan margins that made Juneteenth a national holiday. Today, President Biden signed it into law. So, tomorrow is going to be a day off for federal workers and should be for everyone else. The nation was founded on the idea that all men are created equal. June 19 is the anniversary of the announcement in Galveston to black Americans in 1865 that slavery had been abolished. What could be a better event for acknowledgment that the end of chattel slavery?
Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, in June 1865 and issued General Order Number 3 on June 19. It read, "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them, becomes that between employer and hired labor. The Freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."
It was not ideal. Freedmen should have been allowed to leave the force labor camps that were called by the genteel name :plantations.: Staying put and working for wages sounds very optimistic considering that white Texans had just lost a war and had little ready cash. Nevertheless, free and equal in theory is the way free and equal in practice gets started.
This week, the bill sailed through the US Senate on a unanimous vote. Nothing in the Senate gets that kind of support. A resolution acknowledging that orange juice is orange in color would probably have a few votes against it in these divided days.
The House of Representatives' vote was not quite as inclusive. Fourteen members voted against the holiday. Their reasons varied from not wanting to create a paid holiday for reasons of fiscal responsibility to arguing that the day was part of the far-left's agenda to undermine America. There is no far-left in America to speak of; no political discussion of nationalizing Amazon, Tesla and Microsoft exists (but perhaps, should).
These are the members who shamefully voted no: Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Andrew Clyde, Scott DesJarlais, Paul Goser, Ronny Johnson, Doug LaMalfa, Thomas Massie, Tom McClintock, Ralph Norman, Mike Rogers, Matt Rosendale, Chip Roy and Tom Tiffany. None should win re-election.
This resistance to the idea of commemorating the end of slavery is silly. For instance, Juneteenth has been a state holiday in Texas since the 1970s. If governors on the hard-right (which does exist in the US) like George W. Bush and Greg Abbott can let Texans have a day off to consider the end of slavery, perhaps it isn't all that big and bad and scary. After all, Texas still has a private sector that can't keep the lights and heat on or the water running -- just like the Republican-Insurrectionist Party prefers to properly organized and operated services.
Juneteenth is another step on the way to forming a more perfect union.
© Copyright 2021 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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