Slavery was not America’s original sin

By Josiah Lippincott

In the Feb. 2 edition of the Collegian, “Hillsdale students should celebrate Black History Month,” Elizabeth Troutman claims that slavery constituted America’s “original sin.” But as every school child now knows, the first African slaves permanently arrived in America in 1619—well over 150 years before the colonies declared their independence from the British empire. Therefore, her claim is false.

mis is not, for instance, the most likely person to read the New York Times on a regular basis. Many of those publications’ readers would have never heard of the school prior to those hit pieces. They certainly are not the type to listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Fox News. Each of those articles, then, reached millions of people whom Hillsdale never could have found.

While it is tempting to lump all the readers of eventually lead them to the truth about Hillsdale.

Even if no one was curious, however, it would not be a problem. When people become incensed about something, they tend to rant about it. To their friends, on social media––any possible method to make as many other people angry about the same thing.

Eventually that ranting would reach people who agree with Hillsdale, or at least do not want to write

In other cases, the mere existence of the school is enough. Those papers are desperate to prevent Hillsdale from achieving its goals, which is proof that Hillsdale must press on.

It would be easy to ask, for the sake of fairness, that socalled journalists stop writing their hit pieces. I ask them to do something very different––write them. Publish as many as you can.

Hillsdale’s future supporters and students thank you.

Catherine Maxwell is a freshman studying the liberal arts.

Putin’s successor could be his chef

By Jack Little Putin’s chef

his next course.

is preparing

During the fall of the Soviet Union, Yevgeny Prigozhin, like many young Russians of his generation, sought to make his fortune in the new Russia. While many of the other men who would become oligarchs chose to go into commodities such as oil or natural gas, Prigozhin had a get-rich-quick scheme — selling hot dogs.

Palace intrigue over possible successors dominates external analyses of Putin’s Russia, and Prigozhin is now in a unique position to step forward as a continuation of Putin’s brand. Hot dog salesman to president is not a common pipeline, but it may be on the horizon.

Prigozhin is no longer merely known as “Putin’s Chef” (a nickname acquired due to both his close personal ties to the Russian president and his massive catering business) but as the founder and de facto leader of the Wagner Group, a little-understood and seemingly omnipresent mercenary organization with substan- tial links to Russian military intelligence. Wherever there is trouble or intrigue, and the Putin administration stands to gain something, Wagner is close behind.

Much of the focus on Wagner has been on its involvement in Syria, where it has aided forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the decade-long civil war, and in Eastern Europe, specifically, Ukraine, where Wagner has served as a front-line unit in the Donbas. However, Wagner’s most unique ability is not as a combat force, but as a tool able to be deployed by the Kremlin in ways not directly attributable to Russia. A private military force, operating with plausible deniability, is the perfect force for an age of rapid breakdown in traditional military and great power competition.

Despite the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, Wagner has yet to find its forces locked up in Eastern Europe, but instead, has expanded its footprint in Africa. For instance, following the coup d’état in Sudan which saw the toppling of longtime leader Omar al-Bashir, Wagner mercenaries provid- ed security for the military council which seized power.

The French government, which has traditionally had a significant interest in African affairs, accused Wagner of spreading anti-French propaganda and in turn, building up support for Russia in Sudan. In the Central African Republic, Wagner has aided the government in their decade-long civil war — their influence was only ameliorated by the withdrawal of French security forces in 2016.

The expansion of Wagner’s influence over the last few years is not to say, however, that Prigozhin is some sort of spy-thriller mastermind. He is not, to use the title of a recent film, “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.” The effectiveness of Wagner is not as a peer competitor force, nor as an army in itself that can take on less-powerful nations, but as a group operating as an extension of Russia’s foreign policy, in limited situations and circumstances.

In Ukraine, Wagner has been forced to conscript convicted prisoners to fill their ranks, and estimates, although they vary wildly, conservatively say that they have suffered a roughly 30% attrition rate.

Prigozhin has, unlike other oligarchs, made himself both a public and indispensable figure in Russia’s foreign policy. This week, he published a video of himself in a Su-24 bomber, claiming that he had participated in an operation supporting Russian forces in their push to secure the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut. Oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich (the former owner of Chelsea Football Club), have attempted to create separation between themselves and Putin. Prigozhin, on the other hand, has never missed an opportunity to demonstrate his fealty to Putin.

Prigozhin’s possible future ascent hinges on loyalty: the loyalty he displays to Putin, and the loyalty his men have for him. The war in Ukraine has allowed him to expand his power base and has truly made him a force to be reckoned with in future power struggles.

Jack Little is a senior studying history and politics.

Before the United States of America existed as a legal entity, a quarter million slaves had already been transported to the original colonies. The Founding Fathers did not have a choice in the matter of African slavery and a sin must be an act of the will. Therefore, slavery was not the original sin of the American regime. It was, however, a practical political problem the Founders wished to solve.

They took efforts to curtail and ultimately eliminate the practice. The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in the upper Midwest. The Constitution made provision for the complete future abolition of the slave trade and neutered the use of slaves in measuring representation in Congress. Prominent early American politicians including Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln worked to eliminate slavery by colonizing blacks elsewhere. Those efforts did achieve some measure of success.

To call slavery America’s original sin is to falsey damn the whole country for the acts of a small minority. This blanket assertion leads to dangerous notions of collective guilt. At the least, the claim does not encompass a Christian understanding of sin. It does, however, reflect a fundamentally leftist view of justice.

The modern American academy, following the Soviets, castigates America as a fundamentally racist, imperialist, and colonialist power. America, in this framework, can only achieve absolution by, in the words of Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-GA, repenting of the “worship of whiteness.” This is the dominant view of our time, shared by all institutions of corporate, political, and media power. America’s real civil religion is anti-racism, decolonization, and opposition to antisemitism. Our real heroes are not Abraham Lincoln and George Washington but Barack Obama and George Floyd. ABC plays John Lennon’s “Imagine” at the New Years Eve ball drop in NYC—not the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

“Wokeness” has been around a lot longer than the last decade. Former President Franklin Roosevelt’s assistant secretary of the treasury, Harry Dexter White, intentionally passed classified information to Joseph Stalin’s agents. During World War II, the American government gave money and weapons to Ho Chi Minh and Stalin alike. During the Cold War, American diplomatic and economic pressure helped the Zimbabwean African National Union—Political Front take power in Zimbabwe. ZANU-PF proceeded to install Robert Mugabe, a brutal communist dictator. In the face of the American elite’s overt favoritism for the global Left, it is little wonder then to hear conservatives parrot narratives slandering the American character. Hillsdale students, however, should aim to be better than this.

Josiah Lippincott is a doctorate student at the Hillsdale Graduate School of Statesmanship.