Liberal Myopia on Parade in History

There are certain things you can see coming from a mile away, and (ironically) liberal myopia is definitely one of them.

So it was this morning as I published today's "American Minute" by historian William Federer. The piece highlighted Sojourner Truth's Christian faith and her inspired work in the abolitionist movement.

Realizing how liberals have hijacked every civil rights figure possible and distort them to further their demonization of America and Christianity, I was virtually certain that liberal drool would come dripping out from some corner of the Left in response. And I was not mistaken.

Because she felt I and her readers needed a history lesson, in response Anna at DakotaWomen posted a speech by Sojourner Truth which is often cited by feminists.

Anna says she has "a feeling Sojourner wouldn't be allowed into some of the higher-profile fundamentalist churches in South Dakota were she living today and making speeches like that."

Really? I wonder which "higher-profile fundamentalist churches" she means, and why she believes that.

Interestingly, the version of Sojourner Truth's speech published by Marcus Robinson about a month after it was given is significantly different than the version published some 12 years later and quoted by DakotaWomen.

The version published by Robinson was a little more Christ-centered (acknowledging that Jesus "never spurned woman from him") and a little less useful for fueling feminist loathing for Christianity, so you'll have to decide which is more likely to be accurate and in harmony with the Christian faith expressed by Sojourner Truth in today's American Minute.

Its interesting, too, that the issue with which Sojourner Truth is most closely identified--the abolition of slavery--bears striking similarities with the most pressing civil rights issue of today: abortion.

You see, some people in the 1800s felt black people weren't really human, and as such didn't deserve human rights and full protection under the law.

Some people today feel that unborn children still inside their mother's wombs aren't human either and consequently don't deserve civil rights and equal protection under the law.

They manage to believe this despite the fact that these children--different from other children only in development--have human DNA, unique human DNA that makes them separate and distinct from their mother (in other words, not a part of the woman's body), with all the genetic material they'll ever need for the rest of their life already present.

As you can see, the discrimination based on skin color of the 1800s was no more scientific and fact-based than is today's discrimination based on developmental level.

And as the ironies mount, we see that the fringe element within Christendom who in the 1800s attempted to justify their denial of humanity did so then in defiance of the plain teaching of Scripture, just as a fringe element does today.

A further irony is that many of those who perpetuate this denial of human rights are women, and since abortion is decimating the next generation of black children at a higher rate than any other ethnicity, it is perhaps most ironic that this denial of human rights is most acute in the black community.

It seems so hard for humans to learn from history, doesn't it? Thankfully, as genuine Christianity has promoted human dignity for women and black Americans, so Christianity will continue to promote the dignity and worth of the most innocent and vulnerable human beings in society.

On a final note, notice that while the storm troopers of myopia over at DakotaWomen might be afraid to link to a "truth site" (they consider the truth about liberal errors to be "hate") I've experienced no anxiety in linking to them. Perhaps I'm just more tolerant that the apostles of tolerance at DakotaWomen.