It appears that Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachman has a issue with slavery. Not only has she been embroiled in several controversies over her interpretation of history and how the institution of slavery fits into the historical panorama, but she also has been rather liberal in her application of the term and its derivatives as comparisons. As analogies, similes, and metaphors, they work well enough (at times). But taken as a whole, it appears that Bachmann may go to the well too much and might want to branch out when making comparisons.
The latest comes from her statement made after she signed the "Marriage Vow" pledge, a 14-point document whereby she has vowed to not only honor her own marriage vows, but to work to constitutionally eliminate same-sex marriages and ban pornography. But it was in the preamble of the "Vow," a pledge put forth by the conservative Iowa group Family Leader, where it compares modern African Americans with slaves of pre-Civil War America.
"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families," the pledge read (the Family Leader has since eliminated the offending portion), "yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household* than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President."
Bachmann's camp quickly issued a statement: "In no uncertain terms, Congresswoman Bachmann believes that slavery was horrible and economic slavery is just as horrible."
Just as horrible? Where is the substantiation for such a comparison? In fact, where is the "economic slavery" to which she refers? She, of course, is referring to taxation, which she claims to abhor in any form.
Bachmann was on "Hannity" on Fox News Channel Tuesday evening as well, stating that the slavery part of the preamble wasn't in the copy she signed. Are Bachmann's views of recent history are as muddled as her interpretation of John Quincy Adams' role in the Revolutionary War, as a member of the Founding Fathers, and the Founding Fathers' "tireless" efforts to end slavery. Why would the Family Leader add one line to their "Marriage Vow -- A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family" after Bachmann signed it? Easy answer: They wouldn't; Bachmann most likely simply overlooked it, perhaps so taken with the ideas of eliminating same-sex marriages with a Constitutional amendment and rejecting Sharia Law that her tax lawyer training simply dismissed the slavery lines as filler. And what's another falsehood to tack up with alongside all the others Politifact has gathered on the Congresswoman?
On "The Colbert Report" Tuesday night, comedian and faux conservative talk show host Stephen Colbert offered a montage of Bachmann's past and present use of slavery as a comparison to those things with which she happens to disagree.
Colbert pointed out the many different types of slavery Bachmann had stood against over the years: Health care reforms, the national debt (payments to which she calls "bondage to debt"), and the "personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement" of the gay lifestyle. He also pointed out that Bachmann's sensitivity to slavery derives from the fact that, to her, "everything is slavery."
Perhaps Colbert is correct. Perhaps Bachmann does see much of the world as slavery and non- or anti-slavery. Perhaps that is how she can so easily compare physical ownership slavery to economic slavery, human bondage to a taxation system with which she disapproves.
Still, perhaps it is time to put those issues to rest and find some new metaphors, similes, and analogies.
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