Black activists and Democrat-oriented sympathizers have it easy. They complain bitterly about statues of Confederate notables such as Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and, in Virginia, Gen.  Lee, the great gentleman and military visionary of Southern independence.

Their argument is simple. These statues represent the southern Confederacy and its men, some of whom had slaves. Therefore, Lee others are racists, bigots and wicked.

By David Tulis / NoogaRadio 92.7

It is easy for these activists to get public sympathy for their cause, since most people would agree that racism, bigotry and wickedness are bad. Having made that step, people are willing to agree that, perhaps, the bronzes should come down for how they are perceived.

But activists overlook easily a dozen other forms of slavery that are far more important in keeping back the black man in his estate and in his inheritance.

I don’t want to fall victim to a common error among commentators and talk show hosts, that is, complain about an activists’ not choosing some other grievance rather than the one he has chosen to argue in the public square. Let Dr. Elenora Woods of the local NAACP express her disapproval of the Gen. A.P. Hill monument. One can have compassion for her in a new crusade. But there’s more to consider about the state of her people in Southeast Tennessee.

Monuments to distrust

➤ The first bit of institutional racism that Democrats and blacks ignore is the Tennessee gun statute, TCA 39-17-1307, inherently racist. It is intended to disarm black men of any weapon whatsoever, even clubs. Its predecessor laws in Tennessee were written in response to theNat Turner slave revolt in Virginia in August 1831. The statute is unconstitutionally vague, and is on its way out thanks to a criminal appeal by a devout Christian, the “Fiddle Man of Lawrenceburg,” as were vagrancy ordinances and other statutes that allow for the sweeping of the poor into the local jail.

➤ No. 2, the lie widely taught to blacks that the way to prosperity is employment. Not true. Employment is service. An employee is involved in a master-servant relationship, with the employer being the master. All the claims against the slave are enlivened in this relationship, which black activists and Democrat-oriented sympathizers overlook. They complain bitterly of Confederate notables such as Gen. Forrest, whose slaves fought voluntarily with him in many battles, but overlook the main paradigm in which to obtain liberty and independence — namely, ownership of business and service under contract (as between equals). In short, the 1099 vs. the W-2.

Dissolving black wealth

➤ A third element of slavery in Chattanooga is the fact that the banking classes have a private cartel to offload risk and inflation upon the poor public. Those called “the monied interests” by the anti-federalists back in the late 1700s use private-issue paper currency to offload private risk upon taxpayers and upload private gain unto themselves. Private money impoverishes blacks in Chattanooga; public money by way of constitution-respecting currency based lawfully upon gold and silver would effectively end the highly centralized, remote-controlled national debt economy (run mostly, incidentally, by Anglo-Saxons). Without lawful, public money of the kind required in the founding fathers in Article 1, section 10, there is only inflation; there is only the steady loss of buying and saving power among minorities, a secret tax against the poor black man, against you and everybody else.

➤ A fourth important lie that affect the black man and enslaves is the widespread use of the civil death sentence. The civil death sentence is applied across Tennessee by statute and afflicts blacks disproportionately. Its primary instrument: The driver license, a state privilege for which blacks apply in sheer ignorance. Anthony Gladden, at the wheel the night city councilwoman Demetrus Coonrod was stopped by police, apparently cannot use the public right of way for private purposes without state permission through the commercial application for an operator’s license. The civil death sentence holds power over people who “drive illegally” or who avoid the work and duty entirely by staying off the roads, fearing arrest and jail. Today, free traveling black men and women ask permission of the white master in Nashville to travel, even though for purely private purposes apart from any activity in transportation, traffic or commerce.

Legal status — the invisible shift

➤ No. 5. The conversion of the black man’s legal status from that of nontaxpayer to taxpayer. He forgets that the free exercise of the constitutionally guaranteed right to lawfully acquire property (income or other compensation) by lawfully contracting one’s own labor to engage in lawful, innocent and harmless activities for lawful compensation cannot be, and therefore has not been, imposed for tax revenue purposes and, therefore, an individual who is only engaged in lawful, innocent and harmless activities is not subject to any income or other revenue tax, and therefore, is not a taxpayer by law, and can therefore be properly described as a non-taxpayer. Confusion on this point, backed by U.S. courts, is part of black slavery today in the official economy.

➤ Another slavery, No. 6, is the public (plantation) school. In these daily camps in fine public buildings, students studiously avoid learning how to create capital, value, service, culture and language skills through writing and public speaking. They are denied access to their own genius and their own stories, and are trained to think separately and apart from their families and family tradition. And, necessarily, apart from God. The public school is the most important submission of manumitted black people to the old guard, the legacy system of official control of their private lives and families.

Mates & state permission

➤ The media and the Democrat party say voting brings change. Exercise of the voting franchise does not bring change, but ratifies the status quo. Voting maintains the facade that the people matter today, and that the system can be changed by changing the office holder. Belief in this casuistry keeps blacks in thralldom to politicians.

➤ No. 8, a virulent lie promulgated by the Tennessee Code Annotated is the state’s lawless claim upon the institution of marriage and its claim that only marriage contracted under its authority is lawful. As in olden days, the black man asks a human master for permission to marry. Under common law and under biblical law, a man enjoys a right from God himself to choose his wife, and a woman has a right to accept or reject a proposal for marriage in her own self, apart from the state. Before God, no third party outside those two families needs to be consulted for marriage to be created lawfully and in an enforceable way. Blacks ask County clerk Bill Knowles for permission to marry, the owner of marriage among blacks having shifted from the white master to the abstract (mostly white) state and its county agents.

➤ Dealings with the police are a bane to the existence of black men. Police deal with black men as if they owned them, had a proprietary interest in them. Police officers do not care about the barrier to their authority, which is to say probable cause, articulable suspicion or a warrant. Blacks are treated as if they were property, as in the Hanson Melvin case and many others. I’m losing count.

➤ Slavery No. 10 is at the root of the others. A weakened form of Christianity allows black people to believe that God brings salvation to the individual, but not to societies and states as a whole. As a result of doctrinal error, people ignore the power of God’s law as a structure by which to measure the deficiencies of the current system and also upon which to build a freer and more just society. The 10 commandments summarize God’s character and God’s requirement of individuals and men collectively.

The abuses of incarceration-related businesses, the burden of the bond system among defendants, carelessly used arrest powers, the probation industry and policing itself are the mechanisms for asserting ownership of black people today. Without the aid of social and political constructs from the Old Testament, black people have no hope in reform, and no goal toward which they can work socially and politically. Without a full faith in God and all of His revelation, blacks are denied a concept of progress, a social theory. If we do not have our freedom in Christ promised in the New Testament, He will not give us freedom among men, and will allow us to be enslaved and commandeered pursuant to misgovernment as described in the Old. The story of the Israelites suffering for their sins by being subjugated by Babylonians and others is a template for both the judgment of God and the mercy of God upon his people, then and now.

Distracting controversies

These, then, are 10 forms of slavery visible in Chattanooga today.

There are others but these 10 suggest the whole. To fulminate over statues of Confederate era great men is to distract the heart and mind of the black man today.

The black man needs not to think about anger and vengeance and being offended. He needs to think entrepreneurially, in terms of God’s grace, and to overlook the slight that the statute might represent to him. Rather than become agitated with offense, he should make mention of what the statute might mean to him, and encourage his listener to join with him and moving on. A confederate general on the lawn of the Hamilton County courthouse should not offend the black, but remind him of whence he came, and help him secure for himself the distinctions of liberty that he creates for himself by godly living, thrift, caring for the poor and asserting his rights before men because of a confidence that Christ secured his safety before the throne of God.

Before devout Christians a tyrant cannot feel secure.