Bill cunning in the Great America, and we just celebrated in a sense juneteenth, June nineteenth, which was the date that San Antonio slaves were advised by a Union officer that they were in fact free, and between Juneteenth and the
fourth of July. I've read many columns that indicates the real holiday, the real freedom, should be June teenth, and that the fourth of July should be taken down as a holiday because so many Americans were not free on the fourth of July, they weren't free until June nineteenth, etc. And I find that reprehensible and wrong. I don't mind having an additional holiday, many
people want to be off work. But nonetheless, we find ourselves now having to defend the United States of America against the radical left and defend America's interest in slavery, which by the way, was strictly a Democratic Party function. The Republican Party was formed in eighteen fifty eight by eight Braham Lincoln to stop slavery. As the Democrats who imported the slaves, kept the slaves, beat the slaves, raped the slaves, and then fought a war in my country,
declared war in the United States of America. So they could keep their slaves in America the Union one and then after that for the next fifty or sixty years, the Democratic Party formed the Ku Klux Klan and other apparatuses to enslave more blacks than to beat them. But the Republican Party fought it like warrior poets. So when I go to the Catholic League website this fourth of
July weekend, I see debunking, debunking slavery myds this July fourth. Joining you and I now from New York in the Catholic League is Michael McDonald. Michael McDonald, Happy fourth of July, and welcome to the Bill Cunningham Show. And can you tell the American people the essence of this column penned by Bill Donahue With your leadership, I'm sure about debunking slavery myths on July fourth and defending this country. Stay happy forth there, Bill, Always good to
talk with you. Yeah. So it's very simple, as you laid out. The radical left, the woke progressive crowd loves canceling the fourth of July. They want us to believe that like the New York Times sixteen nineteen project states that America wasn't founded on July fourth, seventeen seventy six, a great day, But instead it was founded back in sixteen nineteen with the introduction of
slavery to the territory that would eventually become the United States. They love going around talking about how the Constitution stripped black people of their personhood even and embedded slavery into the American institutions, and ultimately that leads to the white supremacy that we see today. And all of that is just total, absolute bs and
garbage. It is just this continuing attack on America. One of the things they like to point out, Bill is the three fifth Compromise, which was actually something that was put into the Constitution as a poison pill against slavery. Right, So, when the founding fathers were sitting down in Philadelphia to write the Constitution, the slave States wanted every single slave they couldn't vote, they should count as a whole person in terms of the census, which would then
give the South approximately fifty percent of the seats in the Congress. Right, just just like today, it's all just determined by population in the states that they wanted to count the slaves as people in terms of the census. But didn't want to give them any rights for being people. The North, on the other hand, said you don't want that's now we're not going along with this. If you're not giving them rights to be people, then they shouldn't
even count in the census. So this way, then the North, if that proposal had gone through, it would have been closer to a sixty to forty split in favor of the North, really diminishing the political power of the South, which right, that's that's a huge deal of the South wanting to keep pushing west and expand slavery. Without that political power, that would become
significantly harder, and so ultimately it was a siding cooler heads prevailed. It would be a three fifth compromise, so the North would maintain a little bit more of an advantage in the House. That gave them fifty three percent of the seats roughly, and the South got forty seven percent of the seats.
And if you look at American history even up until the Civil War, that is huge because it is that favor, that three fifth compromise, giving more political favor to the North ultimately is what limits the expansion of slavery to the point that it's dying a slow death by the eighteen sixties. All right, let's go back a little bit beyond that. Right now, in America today, on this fourth of July weekend, the UN says numerically, there's more
slaves today than ever before in human history. In fact, it was the British, the English, the Americans, Western civilization is the entity in the eighteen thirties, forties, fifties, and eighteen sixties had said we got to stop slavery. It's got to end. So America was at the forefront of stopping slavery along with the Brits and many others, while other parts of the
world accelerated. In fact, only about fifteen percent of the slaves that were sold by African leaders to the Europeans made it to the United States of America, most one elsewhere. Correct, Yes, that's correct, And United States was very strong. It steeped in that Anglo common law tradition of actually recognizing people's rights, which in a lot of ways states back to things said by the popes in the sixteenth century on limiting the practice of slavery. So the
Catholic Church was right there really pushing that this concept of human rights. The basic decency of all humans created equals should not be subject. No one should be subjugated to slavery. It's a moral wrong, and that is ultimately what's the tipping point. But if you look, as you pointed out rightfully, slavery is still a functioning institution and a lot of these cultures that have not raced Christianity Christian values that are not steeped in the common law tradition of the
Anglo Saxons. So yeah, this is a big problem. Is it's not even unique to America. I mean, even the international slave trade wasn't started by a bunch of European explorers going into Africa. You know, Vasco da Gama didn't go into African sale by the way, we're doing slavery now and
we're taking a bunch of you with us. It was starting the African chiefs, warlord what have you, already had their people as slaves and said, hey, European explorers, we can sell you some slaves if you'll give us some money or rifles or whatever it is, the beads, whatever the hell they were trading at the time, right, So that's that's where this comes from. It wasn't like a bunch of white people showed up and said, we're taking you to America. Now, this grew out of an institution that
is slavery. Unfortunately, the institution that dates back all the way to the beginning of human civilization. It is just, unfortunately, been with us. Aristotle even was like, yeah, you know, slavery, it's been around forever, so it can't be morally bad. And that's the thing that if you go far back in your ancestry, you're going to find that your ancestors
were slaves and at another point that they owned slaves. Like it's it's just true, We've all done it. There shouldn't be reparations just simply because of that. Everyone at one point owned slaves and everyone another point was a slave. So you know, you know it's time. At some point soon I'm
going to get an award as a great Irishman. And I going back into Irish history, the Brits imprisoned, enslaved, and killed, I would say murdered millillions of Irish Catholics over the years because they were the wrong religion. But also the Irish were considered to be like rats and cockroaches, resulting in the Potato famine of the eighteen forties and fifties with a specific intent by the Brits of killing as many Irish as they could find wherever they could be located.
And so I still have anngst against London and against Britain for its treatment of my ancestors for hundreds of years. In fact, it it's reported that about one third of the Irish were killed, i say murdered by the Brits over the eighteen thirties, forties, fifties and sixties. And that was the
nature of things at that point. And to get on the slave ships, there were literally thousands of African chieftains who sold their own people into slavery, and Thomas Sole points out that there were literally thousands of black Americans who owned slaves in the South. There were about forty five thousand slave owning blacks who owned tens of thousands of slaves in the South. So to smear only America
with this is ridiculous. It's all wrong. I hate it. I wish all this hadn't happen, but we didn't start it, but damn it, we finished it well, absolutely a one percent right there. In a lot of ways, what the like sixteen nineteen Project likes to accuse Americans are doing is more probably apt than Ireland in a lot of ways. That was really the test run for how brutal you can be with colonialism, and they realized after multiple Irish rebellions did okay, actually we got to temper this back a
little bit. But even though to the point about African Americans owning slaves before the Civil War, it is actually, you know something that's very interesting, right, about ten percent of the country owned slaves, About ten percent of free blacks owned slaves, so they're kind of like right on par with everyone else with what they're doing. You know. They make this big point about criminal justice reform coming out of the left today that well, there's more black
men in prison, therefore the institution must be wrong. Well, if we're to apply that logic that the blacks owned the same the same percentage of blacks owned slaves, then maybe we were more equitable back then, before we even had this crazy notion of equity. I'm reading a UN report today there's an estimated thirty million men, women and children in the world that are enslaved, physically confined, restrained and forced to work or controlled through violence or in some
way treated as properly property. Today there's more slaves seized from Africa over those four centuries. That was the slave trade before, during, and after America ended it. I'm proud of my country to stop it. In a sense, I'm proud of Western Europe to stop slavery. And it did not begin.
America as a country was not formed until seventeen eighty seven when we had the constitution, and the sixteen nineteen project ignores history that the land we call the United States were controlled by the Dutch, by the French, by the British, by the Spaniards, by the Portuguese, and by the Indians in between sixteen nineteen and seventeen seventy six, which was what about one hundred and fifty six years that other European nations controlled the land we call the United States
of America. And when America was formed, the founding fathers, over the objections of the democrats in the South, wanted to put in the constitution the availability of freeing slaves in this country, which was a brand new idea and shocking to the rest of the world, and in fact, we went to
war. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party to stop the Democrats. And I'd point this out too, Michael McDonald to the Catholic League in eighteen seventy six, when Tilden defeated Hayes on the popular vote and there was a tie up in the House in the Senate, who should be the president the Republican Party.
Hayes struck a deal with Tilden who said that okay, you can become the Republican President, Hayes from Ohio, but you have to agree to get all the federal troops out of the South so the Democrats in the South could be came the brutalization once again of blacks in the South, which became the ku Klux Plan and Jim Crow Laws, and that entire history talking about canceling
someone for their political beliefs. The modern Democrat Party in major cities have largely destroyed those cities with progressive, left wing philosophies that have not been There's been no come to Jesus meeting between African Americans and the Democrats in your city of New York, or in my city of Cincinnati, or in Chicago saying look what the Democratic parties done to us over the past two hundred and fifty years and right now the cities are destroyed and because of the policies, and the
black family is destroyed because of the Democrat Party. Wonder will there be a come up ands for that? Oh, there needs to be one. And go just a little bit further back in American history. You know, in eighteen sixty, the best the Democrats could do they had one candidate. One candidate the essentially three they fielded that the best he could do to condemn slavery is, well, it should be a matter of popular sovereignty. We're gonna
let the states vote on if slavery is right or if it's wrong. So yeah, good good luck stopping that if that's the best your party could do. And it's a shame because that continues on to this day. You know, there's a lot of progressive thinkers on the left going back into history that essentially have said that, well, you know, the blacks can't really take care of themselves. And these are left wing individuals saying this, right, such as Paul Fitzkew, America's first sociologists, right, he, Oh,
they can't take care of themselves, so we have to have slavery. This is what essentially the left was saying in the eighteen fifties. And if you look at just like today, you're talking about the cities like look at New York, one of the least favorable environments for school choice, yeah, in the country, and that would be the quickest way to give every single American a hand up to make sure they get into a good Catholic school, a
good private school, a good charter school. But here in New York they're putting the kaibosh on expanding the roles for the charter schools and just forget about anything else involving school choice. That would be the number one with the Democrats to this day continue continue to just keep down black people, working class people, Hispanics. They don't care. But can we really be surprised They've got a demented old fool leading their party right now who said that, you know,
he didn't want his kids growing up in a racial jungle. So can we be really surprised? Can we be really surprised that the best hope is that we get good common sense leaders in Washington that can set the tone and say, listen, we got to get back to the values that made a rate in the first place that that is the only hope. And you know, I'm a little bit biased. I did do four years in the Trump administration, so clearly, clearly I do have a dog in the fight.
But the Demo Credit Party continues on that legacy. Okay, maybe they're not going around and saying high minded ideas like oh, we popular sovereignty, Well, we'll let the states vote if they want slaves or not. But their policies are just as devastating on black families. Today, I watched Thomas saltan abortion. There's more abortions of black babies in New York City than births.
And so if you have black skin and you live in a democratically controlled blue city and a blue state, the achievement rates of African Americans educationally, family formation, criminal misbehavior, and other debaucherous acts are through the roof. And so many black folks are saying, we can't take the lies anymore told to us by the Democrats. We need to get out and get out among the red cities in the red states where we have school choice. I live a
little Cincinnati, Ohio, and the public school system is awful. It's terrible. But as far as school choice. Fortunately, the lawmakers in Columbus, Ohio have said, you got school choice. Here's an eight thousand dollars voucher. And thousands of black kids are leaving the inner city, thank god their parents recognize the opportunities and going to suburban schools where black kids are more than welcome and form family structure and behave in a certain fashion, which of course
has to happen. But to be in New York City or Chicago, or Atlanta or DC and to be ruled by the Democratic Party lied to on a repeated basis, the same philosophy that enslaved black folks in the South is the
same philosophy in charge today in the major blue cities. And I look forward to an occasion where this so called mainstream media will say, this is what you promised, this is what you delivered, and let's cancel the Democratic Party because let's face it, it is not good for the American people, whether in the military of the cops, educational enrollment, family structure, whatever it
is. Abortions has become a sacrament to the Democrat Party. Well, Michael McDonald, I got to run, but thanks for coming on to you and Bill Donnau at the Catholic as a catthitolgig dot org dot com and you and yours dot org have a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. And thank you very much. Thank you you too, Billy, You're great American. God bless you. Let's continue with more if a line ever becomes available. You know the routine. Bill Cunningham with you every day. You're Home of the Reds
playing tonight in New York on news radio seven hundred WLW. What does summertime in the Ohio River Valley mean to you? From the deck of a BB River