Juneteenth Isn't What They Told You

[00:00:00]This is a re-upload of an episode that I originally published on June 19th, 2021, the day of the very first Junth official federal holiday. There's a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to the meaning of Junth. I think this episode gives an important perspective. So, take a listen and then drop a comment about your thoughts on this new holiday.

[00:00:29]The Peter Schiff Show.

[00:00:34]This special episode of the Peter Schiff Show podcast is sponsored by The Truth.

[00:00:40]And the reason it's the truth and not one of my other sponsors is because I don't want to put any political pressure on any of my sponsors. I had a big problem when I did another podcast and I talked about the Derek Schovin verdict and why I didn't think it was just and one of my sponsors was then under so much pressure for sponsoring me that they ended up dropping me. And so I don't want to put any of my other sponsors under a similar spotlight. And so I've produced this podcast separately so that I can speak my mind and talk about the Junth federal holiday. And it's very appropriate that I speak about it today because after all this is June 19th. What's different about this June 19th is this is the first time that it's been a federal holiday. Now it happens to fall on a Saturday. So to the extent that anybody really wanted to celebrate Junth, they could have celebrated it all day long today because it's a Saturday and people aren't working on Saturdays.

[00:01:50]But the US government thought it was so important that every federal employee get off on Friday that they rammed this holiday through in record time. The House of Representatives just approved it on Thursday afternoon after the Senate approved it two days earlier. The Senate did it by unanimous vote. There wasn't a single senator who had the political courage to vote against this.

[00:02:20]There were 14 brave Republicans who voted against it, but obviously that's insignificant in their number. So, it passed overwhelmingly in the House. And then later that day, Joe Biden signed it in one day so that yesterday, the following day, could be a federal holiday. Now, why did everybody work so quickly to make sure that all of our federal employees got the day off with pay yesterday? Well, of course, one reason is nobody wants to deny federal workers who are also voters a day off with pay, right? I mean, who wants to be against paid vacations? And so, nobody wanted to stand in the way of all of our employees taking Friday off with pay.

[00:03:12]But the other reason that so many people were so quick to support this was because they wanted to virtue signal how much they don't like slavery and how much they are not racist. Because the left really succeeded in making support to make Junth a national holiday by making it a litmus test on racism.

[00:03:37]Meaning that if you were not in favor of making Junth a national holiday, well, you were a racist. You clearly like slavery. You wish it never ended. And that's the reason that you're against creating a national holiday to commemorate the end of slavery, which is complete nonsense. You can be opposed to making Junth a national holiday and not be a racist, and you can still be glad that there's no more slavery. I don't think there's any member of Congress. I don't think there's anyone in the country who is upset that we no longer have slaves. I think everybody agrees that slavery was a bad thing and they're glad that it's come to an end. But merely supporting this national holiday doesn't actually change anything. It is not going to change any of the problems that are now being attributed to racism because we've now embraced this holiday and somehow proved that we're not racist. All of these problems that are being attributed to racism are not going to go away. In fact, the reason they're not going to go away is because these problems have nothing to do with racism.

[00:04:48]America is not a racist country. Are there some racists in America? Sure.

[00:04:54]There are racists of all races, but overall we're not racist. In fact, proof that we're not racist is that so many members of Congress were willing to sign on to this legislation merely to prove that they're not racist. Because in America, the worst thing you can be accused of is being a racist. Right? So, if racism wasn't so abhorent, it wouldn't be that bad if somebody said you were a racist. I mean, if we were all racists, well, what difference does it make? the fact that so few of us are racists and most of us look down on racism. That's why nobody wants to be unjustly accused of it and so people are willing to do anything in order not to be accused of it. And that is the real problem with this holiday because I think the left really smells blood. The radical left knows that they can get Republicans to do anything they want so long as they couch it as a litmus test against racism because there's all sorts of legislation that they would like to see enacted. And all they have to do to get Republicans to cave and accept all kinds of socialist bills is simply put it in context of race. If you are against this piece of legislation, well then you're a racist. And the only way to prove you're not a racist is to support the legislation. And that is what happened with Junth. I mean, first of all, let's talk about Junth because everybody is rewriting history to make this day so much more significant and important in the elimination of slavery than in fact it actually was. In fact, I never even heard of June 19th. That's how insignificant it is nationally until I think last year for the first time people started discussing it and a lot of Americans I think to this day have no idea what June 19th is. Now of course we're going to start rewriting history and trying to embellish the significance of this day. But on a national level I don't think the day has much significance. Now, it has a lot of significance in the state of Texas, which is why ever since 1980, June 19th has been a state holiday in Texas. But it was never a holiday throughout the United States because the significance was mainly in Texas, not for the rest of the country. Let me go over the background of June 19th in case you don't know what actually happened.

[00:07:29]But on June 19th of 1865, General Gordon Granger came to Galveastston, Texas to inform the state of Texas that the Civil War was over because it had ended about 2 months earlier. But, you know, Texas is kind of on the outskirts. They really weren't in the action. And so, it took a while before the Texans even realized that the war was over. And of course that meant that the slaves that were in Texas because Texas was a slave owning state and there were slaves there, they didn't realize that they were free. Now, the Emancipation Proclamation had technically freed them about 2 and a half years earlier because that was signed in 1863, but it didn't practically have any significance to the people who were living as slaves in the southern states because the southern states didn't recognize the legitimacy of that proclamation which took place in the United States because they were no longer in the United States. They had formed the Confederate States of America and they were at war with the United States. So the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free them until the war ended. Once the war ended and now Texas can rejoin the Union, well now all the slaves in Texas are free. But they didn't find out about it for a couple of months because they didn't know the war was over. And so supposedly this holiday is being sold to the American people as representing an independence day because the holiday is actually called Junth National Independence Day, not to be confused with July 4th, which is Independence Day. But the reason this holiday is being sold as a true independence day is it's supposedly when the last Americans gain their independence because the slaves in Texas are supposed to have been the last slaves. And that's why we want to celebrate June 19th because that's when the last of the enslaved Americans finally realized that they were free.

[00:09:38]And now that all Americans were free, we were all truly independent. And that is the reason for the holiday. Except none of that is true because the slaves in Texas were not the last slaves to be freed. They were freed on June 19th. The rest of the slaves and there were still about 50 to 100,000 slaves that remained slaves until December 6th, which is about what 6 months later. Those slaves were not freed until the ratification of the 13th amendment, which officially ended slavery in the United States. And that's because the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the southern states that were in rebellion at the time the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Well, not all of the slaveowning states were in rebellion. You had four states, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland that were not a part of the Confederacy. They were still loyal to the Union, but they had slaves. Those slaves were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. So when General Granger wrote into Galveastston and informed the slaves in Texas that they were free, you still had all these slaves in these other states who were not free and who remained slaves until they were emancipated by the 13th amendment. So the idea that the last slaves were freed on Junth is a myth.

[00:11:13]It's revisionist history. It is not true. If we really want to celebrate a day that commemorates the end of slavery, there are probably two dates that we should have picked to do that.

[00:11:29]One would be the ratification of the 13th amendment and that is December 6th, 1865.

[00:11:39]That could be Emancipation Day and it would actually be historically accurate and significant. That was a huge milestone. That is what ended slavery.

[00:11:50]The 13th amendment. Informing some slaves in Texas that they had been freed months earlier when they didn't realize it did nothing to end slavery. It simply communicated the end of slavery to the people in Texas. while plenty of other people remained enslaved because the 13th amendment had not been ratified and thus they had not been emancipated. So basically by celebrating Independence Day on June 19th, we're basically saying that those slaves that remained in slavery for another six months in Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, we don't give a damn about those guys, right? We don't care that they were still slaves. We're going to forget about them. Their suffering means nothing. We're just going to assume that slavery ended in Texas on June 19th and not in the rest of the country. And we don't care about all the rest of the slaves who did not gain their independence until December 6th. I say, why not honor everybody? If we're truly going to celebrate a day where all Americans became free, not just those Americans who lived in Texas, then we ought to celebrate that Emancipation Day on December 6th. The other date that I think could have been the date that we could have used would be April 9th because April 9th, 1865 is the day the Civil War ended and that's when General Roberty E. Lee surrendered to General Ulissiz Srant.

[00:13:34]The end of the Civil War really marked the emancipation of all of the slaves that had been emancipated by the Emancipation Proclamation. Because once the Confederate States rejoined the Union, now that proclamation had teeth and finally all of those slaves were technically free. And of course, the ending of the Civil War is what paved the way for the 13th Amendment and ending slavery for good throughout the United States. And of course, ending the Civil War in and of itself is something that could be commemorated. It was a horrible war. More Americans died in the Civil War than in all the other wars combined. The only good thing to come out of the Civil War was the end of slavery. So to me as an American, I think a holiday that honors the ending of that war, the reunification of the country, and the emancipation of slaves that day would represent a far more fitting holiday than June 19th, which in reality has very little to no national significance whatsoever. Yet the radical left has completely rewrote history and they have forced us all to accept their version of history and embrace this new national holiday on a day that very few Americans even today even understand or knew existed up until just now. Now I have other problems with creating a brand new paid holiday for all of our federal workers. One is I just don't think we need another holiday. I don't think we can afford another paid holiday. The country is broke. In case people haven't realized, we have a massive deficit as it is. And so we don't have the resources to give all of our government workers yet another paid vacation day. First of all, we already had 10 paid federal holidays where all federal workers get the day off. Now with Junth, we have 11. But that's not all. In addition to these 11 now paid holidays, federal workers also get 13 sick days every year. And then on top of that, on average, they get 20 vacation days per year on top of the sick days.

[00:16:05]Now, that's the average. So, that means some of them uh get more than 20 vacation days. That is a lot of time off. If you want to add this new holiday, that's 44 days off of paid vacation time. That is far more days than would be typical in the private sector. Remember, the private sector, the people, we're supposed to be the masters. The government, they're supposed to be our servants. Yet our servants are enjoying far more days of paid vacation than the supposed taxpayers who are in charge. I mean, I would say in the private sector, the average for sick days is probably maybe 5 to 10, somewhere in there, not 13.

[00:16:47]I've never heard of anybody in the private sector getting 13 sick days.

[00:16:52]Also, in the private sector, sometimes you get a couple of personal days a year, two or three personal days. So my guess would be on average people in the private sector maybe get a total of 10 days off for a combination of sick and personal days per year. And I think that would be on the high side. As far as vacations are concerned, I would say depending on how many years you've worked for your employer, you either probably get one week of vacation or maybe two weeks of vacation. But I think two weeks are tops. I think it'd be very rare for a private sector employee to get more than 2 weeks of paid vacation.

[00:17:26]So that's 10 days as opposed to the 20 days of paid vacation that federal workers get. So we are already overtly generous with the federal workforce, I don't think we needed another federal holiday. So to the extent that we decided as a nation that we wanted to have an official holiday where federal workers get the day off, right, in order to commemorate, celebrate, honor, whatever you want to call it, the end of slavery and the emancipation of the slaves. Okay, let's have that federal holiday. What federal holiday do we want to get rid of to make room for that one?

[00:18:05]Because we really have plenty. And so if we want to prioritize this holiday, well, which holiday should we take away?

[00:18:12]Of course, nobody wants to take away a holiday, right? What politician wants to do that? I mean, they want to give the voters something for nothing, at least the federal voters. I mean, most people in the private sector don't realize what it costs to give everybody a day off.

[00:18:26]So, they don't necessarily regard it as a bad thing. But the people who are receiving the day off, they would certainly be very angry at any politician who voted to deny them a day off, which probably means we got more federal holidays coming. Cuz after all, there's a lot of other causes that if you don't support them, well, you'll be a racist. So my thinking is there's probably going to be more federal holidays coming in addition to uh June 19th. But if you look at the list of federal holidays, there are certainly two federal holidays that stand out that we could have replaced with June 19th.

[00:19:04]Although I wouldn't again use June 19th at all. There is no reason to have a national holiday on June 19th. If you want to have a national holiday that celebrates the end of slavery, again, you either want to pick the date that the 13th amendment was ratified or the date that the civil war ended. Those are the two dates I think that are very significant in the struggle to abolish slavery, not Junth. So, if we were going to make one of those two days, and by the way, the reason I don't think that the Emancipation Proclamation, the anniversary of the signing of that proclamation, would be an ideal candidate is because that happened on January 1st of 1863. And January 1st, well, that's already a holiday, right?

[00:19:51]That's New Year's Day. And so, it wouldn't really make sense to try to have two holidays on the same day, especially since nobody would get an extra day off. So, I don't know that they would want to make that the day.

[00:20:02]So, but I think that the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, as far as our nation's journey to abolish slavery, the signing of that proclamation is far more significant than the events of June 19th in Galveastston, Texas. But looking at all of the federal holidays, the two that stand out are Veterans Day and Columbus Day. Not that I don't think there's a significance of those holidays. is I mean I want to honor our veterans and I think honoring Christopher Columbus is also a good thing. I mean at least from the perspective of the Europeans who settled this country, right? He discovered America. I don't want to get into a whole podcast about Christopher Columbus. But those are two federal holidays. We could have abolished one of them because you know what? Very few private sector workers get any of those holidays off. I mean the stock market is not closed on either of those holidays.

[00:20:57]I mean, all the other holidays, the market does close to observe them, but it doesn't close on uh Veterans Day. It doesn't close on uh Columbus Day. That doesn't stop Columbus Bay parades from happening. That doesn't stop people from honoring our veterans. You don't need a paid day off to observe Veterans Day.

[00:21:16]So, what they could have done is say, "Okay, instead of giving federal workers Veterans Day off, or instead of giving them Columbus Day off, well, they'll just work on one of those days just like everybody else in the private sector, and we'll replace one of those days with this new holiday to commemorate the end of slavery." That's what they could have done. I would have had no problem with that. Uh, but that wasn't even on the table because that wasn't a giveaway because it didn't give people an extra day off. Now, of course, another more controversial pick as far as a substitution could be Martin Luther King Day. Now, of course, Martin Luther King Day now is celebrated more widely uh throughout the country. The US stock market does close in observance of Martin Luther King Day. And by the way, that wasn't always the case. The Martin Luther King Day was signed into law to be a federal holiday in 1983, but it wasn't observed as a holiday, meaning nobody got the day off that worked for the federal government for another 3 years. It wasn't until 1986 that there was actually a day off. And the US stock market didn't start closing for another 13 years. It was 1989. That was the first year that the stock market closed in observance of the Martin Luther King holiday. But the reason I point to Martin Luther King as a potential substitute for Emancipation Day or Junth is because I never really supported and still do not support the Martin Luther King Day holiday. And you know there was a lot of opposition to making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. In fact it took about 15 years I think of wrangling uh in Congress. I mean a lot of people had tried to propose it. There was a lot of opposition unlike the lack of opposition that we had today with June 19th. In fact, I have the numbers. When the Senate voted on making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, the vote in the Senate was 78-22.

[00:23:30]So, it had pretty widespread support by the time it passed the Senate, but you still had 22 senators that voted against it. No senators voted against the June 19th holiday. In the House of Representatives, it was 338 to 90. So 90 members of the House of Representatives voted against that holiday as opposed to the 14 members that voted against June 19th. So it didn't have nearly the type of support. Now, Ronald Reagan signed it, but he initially opposed the idea of making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, mainly on cost. He didn't think the nation at the time could afford another federal holiday. And you know what? We're in even worse financial shape now. So, if we couldn't afford Martin Luther King Day, we really can't afford June 19th. But the point is that there was a lot of controversy surrounding elevating the birth of Martin Luther King to a national holiday. There was a lot of political pressure though, just like there is now, only not nearly as intense. In order to plate the left and to prove that you weren't a racist and that you support the civil rights movement, you had to support honoring Martin Luther King with a holiday. But what you really were supporting was giving government workers a day off with pay because you don't need a federal holiday in order to honor the memory of Martin Luther King. And my opposition to Martin Luther King's birthday being a national holiday has nothing to do with Martin Luther King.

[00:25:12]I'm not trying to take anything away from Martin Luther King as a heroic American, as a significant American in US history. I mean, there's no question of his significance. There's no question of his contribution. There are a lot of things about Martin Luther King I admire. There are some things that I don't. But I will acknowledge his significance and his greatness in American history. But that does not mean that he is the only great American who contributed to our nation and was a significant person in in our national history. And as of today, he is really the only American that is honored with a national holiday. And if I'm going to concede that he was a great American, I am not going to concede that he was the greatest American. There are plenty of other people as great or greater in US history than Martin Luther King. They don't have federal holidays. The only American that has a holiday in his name is George Washington. George Washington is the father of our country. Clearly, if anybody deserves a holiday, it's George Washington. In fact, celebrating anybody else, making anybody else's birthday a national holiday in a way diminishes the greatness and the uniqueness of General George Washington.

[00:26:45]In fact, that was one of the reasons that Lincoln's birthday never became a federal holiday. Apart from the fact that Lincoln wasn't all that popular in a lot of the southern states, people did not want to diminish really the significance of George Washington. And in fact, George Washington's birthday wasn't always a federal holiday either.

[00:27:06]It didn't become a federal holiday until 1885.

[00:27:11]But you know, the problem with Washington's birthday is nobody actually realizes that we celebrate Washington's birthday anymore because we all call it President's Day. And the reason we call it President's Day and not Washington's birthday is because in 1971 the date of the holiday was moved to a date that fell between Washington's birthday and Lincoln's birthday. So the holiday in effect falls on nobody's birthday, but it is close to the birthdays of both those presidents, which is why everybody began referring to it as President's Day. Although at this point, most people don't even realize who the presidents are that the holiday refers to. They don't realize it's a holiday for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. They just think it's a holiday for all US presidents. So, in other words, we're honoring the memory of Barack Obama, right? As much as we're honoring the memory of George Washington, we're putting Barack Obama and all the other presidents on the same level as the father of our country who could have been king. They wanted to make George Washington king. He refused to accept the crown. He could have been king of America, but he turned it down.

[00:28:28]He was a truly great man. I don't have time to really go into all of the great things about George Washington, but he was a very unique American. his day should be remembered and it's not. I really would like to go back to celebrating Washington's birthday on Washington's birthday. Forget about all this President's Day nonsense and just celebrate the father of our nation. But we don't even do that. We call it President's Day. The only individual that we honor is Martin Luther King. And I I just think that that's wrong. But I think that if we want to remember the end of slavery and the suffering of African-Ameans uh through US slavery, I think a better holiday for that would be emancipation day would be the signing of the 13th amendment or the end of the civil war. I think that would be a more significant day than Martin Luther King Day. Of course, now we've got both. And when Martin Luther King Day became a holiday, again, that was an empty gesture that was supposed to solve all the problems.

[00:29:34]Well, the problems have not been solved.

[00:29:35]They've been made worse by the government. And now we have this other holiday that's supposed to solve these problems. Again, problems aren't going to get solved. We're just giving our workers another day off. The problems are going to keep getting worse because we ignore the actual cause of the problems and instead just want to attribute them to racism. But not only do I object to the fact that we are elevating June 19th and making it far more significant than it actually was.

[00:30:06]And not only do I object to the fact that we're now adding another federal holiday that we cannot afford when we're broke and we are not substituting it for one of the other holidays that already exists. Or at a minimum, maybe just take away what are those 20 uh holiday days that our government workers have. I mean, maybe make it 19 instead of 20. At least make a trade-off there. Then they can still have uh Columbus Day or Veterans Day. But I also don't like the speed with which this thing was passed and made effective. They passed it. It was signed by President Biden on Thursday and then the very next day without any advanced warning all US government workers got the day off. Why did they have to do it so quickly?

[00:30:58]Couldn't they have made it effective the following year? After all, as I ear said earlier, June 19th falls on a Saturday.

[00:31:07]People had the day off anyway. What's the rush? Couldn't they have made the first official holiday where you get a day off of work a year from now? Right?

[00:31:17]Because as I mentioned earlier, when Reagan signed the law making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, people didn't get a day off from work for another three years. Why did the bill to proclaim Martin Luther King Day a national holiday? Why did it take three years to go into effect? Well, it's because the government actually cared about the people and was cognizant of the fact that people had plans, that people had schedules years in advance and that those schedules might assume that the US government was open on a particular day. Well, so they wanted to give people a long enough advanced notice so that this would not impact people's plans and so they can start to plan around this known federal holiday.

[00:32:13]Well, this Congress, this president couldn't give a damn about the taxpayers and how much they may be inconvenience by the fact that federal offices that were supposed to be open on Friday were abruptly closed. And let me give you a perfect example of some people who really got screwed by this because one of them was almost me, right? I have been going over my saga with respect to getting passports for my kid. In particular, my younger son, he's seven.

[00:32:47]His passport expired a few months ago.

[00:32:50]We wanted to renew it, but because of COVID, we could not renew it in the mail. Well, we had to do it in person, but our ability to renew in person was extremely limited due to CO. The only way we could do it was to make an appointment at a US government passport office. And the only way we could make an appointment was to wait until 2 weeks before our departure date and then we can go online and make an appointment.

[00:33:19]There was only one facility in the state of Connecticut. Fortunately, it's in Stamford, not that far from my house.

[00:33:25]And so that's where we intended to go except when we tried to make an appointment, we found out that they were all booked. Uh we couldn't get an appointment within the two weeks before our trip. In fact, the only state in the entire union that had an open space was in Hawaii. And I was prepared to fly to Hawaii in order to get a passport when I put out a tweet and a guy that owns It's easy passport and visa reach out to me to say, "Hey, don't go to Hawaii. I can snag you one of these coveted appointments in New York." And that's exactly what he was able to do. So, I have an appointment to go to New York City on Monday to the passport office, get the passport so that I can leave as scheduled on my flight the next day on Tuesday. Now, I'm sure that there are a lot of other people who are in the same boat, meaning they were planning on leaving the country on Saturday or Sunday or Monday, and they were able to get an appointment at a US passport office on Friday, just in time. Like I had my Monday appointment for my Tuesday flight. they had a Friday appointment which is the last day the passport office would have been open if you're leaving on Saturday, Sunday or Monday.

[00:34:51]Well, now all of a sudden these people were informed on Thursday evening that their appointment is cancelled because the federal workers that would have been on the job at the passport office now have the day off and the office is closed. And now these Americans are so they now have to call up the airline and cancel their flights, change their flights. They can't leave on Monday now because they're not going to be able to have a passport. So they're going to have to try to book the next available flight. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.

[00:35:24]It's going to cost a lot more money.

[00:35:26]There's no change fees now. But what's happened is airfares have gone way up recently. So, if you have to cancel a fair that you booked a few months ago and you have to rebook it brand new right now, the new cost is so much higher than what you originally paid. If you can even find the availability on the flights, people have to change their hotels. Imagine somebody who was flying to Hawaii like I was going to do. What if somebody was flying all the way to Hawaii because there was an appointment that they had scheduled for yesterday for Friday. They get on a plane on Thursday. They fly all the way to Honolulu and they arrive only to find out that the passport office is closed and now their appointment is on Monday.

[00:36:12]I mean, now they probably have to change their flight because now they have to leave later. They got to stay in a hotel for several more days. Maybe they also missed their other flight. A lot of people are getting extremely inconvenienced by the fact that all of these federal offices were abruptly closed. And I don't even think that the government workers really got that big an advantage out of this 3-day weekend that they didn't even know about until the evening before the 3-day weekend started. Because normally, if you want to take advantage of a 3-day weekend, you know, you make plans. So, you want to know that you're going to have a vacation well in advance so that you can plan on doing something. This was like a lastm minute thing. People found out, oh, I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

[00:36:54]So, it wasn't even that big a deal from the perspective of the people who just abruptly got the day off because they didn't actually have any time to plan a little 3-day vacation. So, all of this virtue signaling, all of this was politicians jumping on a bandwagon simply to prove that they don't like slavery. They're not racists. They want to apologize for slavery yet again. And the way to apologize for it is to agree to these ridiculous demands to take Junth, which is a date that has significance in Texas, but that has very little significance outside of Texas.

[00:37:33]And now this is a new national holiday.

[00:37:36]And I think as I said at the beginning, the radical left, right, the cancel culture woke mob, they are going to smell blood now because this really is going to embolden them because they realize how much they are now in charge.

[00:37:52]The country will bow down to any demand that they make because people are petrified of being called racist and they will do anything. They will support anything in order to not be called racist. Look, my doing this podcast, right? I'm now risking, oh, Peter Schiff, he's against the June 19th holiday. Oh, he's a racist. He's pro-slavery. Of course, I'm not pro-slavery. Of course, I'm not a racist. I just don't think that this date in history is so significant that it needs to be a national holiday. Nor do I believe that making this date a national holiday will do anything to solve the problems that are supposedly the results of slavery and any residual racism that still remains as a result of slavery. You know, if anything, this holiday will seek to further divide the nation. I think they will try to market this holiday as some type of black independence day as if the 4th of July really doesn't apply to African-Americans because they were enslaved. Well, you know, not all blacks in America were slaved. There were plenty of blacks who were free. There were plenty of blacks in the north who were never slaves. There were plenty of blacks in this country in 1776 when the country was formed. There were blacks who fought in the Revolutionary War. There were blacks who died fighting for American independence. So the 4th of July is independence day for all Americans. Even if some Americans descended from slavery, the independence of this nation is still the 4th of July from 1776. the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which I know at the time didn't apply to all blacks. It applied to some blacks who were free at the time of the signing.

[00:39:56]Yes, it didn't apply to all blacks, and that was a problem which was fixed and fixed for good by the passage of the 13th Amendment. But as American citizens, which all African-Americans alive today are, that really is Independence Day. If they want to celebrate an emancipation day and a date on which their ancestors were emancipated, fine. And again, you don't have to be the descendants of slaves to celebrate the emancipation of slaves because slavery was wrong. I mean, I'm not a descendant of slaves in America. I mean, I may have descended from slaves in Egypt or something like that because Jews were slaves too way back when, but even descendants of slave owners, even Americans who could trace their roots back to preivil war, whose ancestors own slaves, even these Americans can celebrate the end of slavery and the emancipation of those slaves. It doesn't have to be confused with Independence Day, but I have a feeling that this is what's going to happen. This is going to be a very divisive holiday. It's going to be a revisionist holiday. It's going to be the beginning of more legislation that is going to be crammed through Congress because it's all about making white Americans feel guilty for the sins of their great great grandfathers. And we're now guilty of a sin that we have to continuously atone for. And in fact, no matter how much we apologize, it's never going to be enough. We need more and more legislation, more and more giveaways, and who knows where this is going to end. What we need is some patriotic Americans who have the guts to stand up against this woke mob and to tell the truth. Apparently, nobody was willing to die on this hill when it comes to Junth. The question is, is there any hill that Americans are willing to die on in order to fight this battle? Or are we just going to surrender and allow this mob to completely rewrite American history and change the character of this country and turn it into a socialist nation rather than a constitutional republic?